Good work triqui! LA Marignon really needed a proper guide because it's such a great nation. I have thought about writing one myself but now I don't need to.
I'm currently playing LA Marignon in MP, the game is well into late game(turn 52 iirc) and my position is very strong. So I think this is the proper place to share my observations so far.
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Lack troop variety: marignon have basically crossbow men and royal guards.
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Actually it is crossbows and men at arms. Men at arms is really good heavy infantry and it is ideal for guarding your flaming arrows powered x-bows. Royal guards are good but way too expensive , both gold and resource wise, to be used as mainstay unit. Definitely buy some but don't buy many.
Pretender and Nation Design
This section is where I actually disagree with this guide but different strokes for different folks as the saying goes.
Pretenders: Marignon wants an awake SC god but choice is simple and there is no competition really, take Cyclops. In my opinion cyclops is the strongest SC chassis of the available choices. In addition he can naturally make some critical earth equipment like earth boots & dwarven hammers(these save a metric ton of gems) and most importantly he can actually cast Forge of the Ancients, which is THE global you want as LA Mari for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
Scales: I say growth isn't needed at all. Growth simply doesn't function fast enough to be worth 120 design points. It doesn't raise any provinces with population below 5000 to reasonable levels in reasonable time frame to allow good blood hunting and provinces with population 6000 will hardly ever go below 5000 during the game. Provinces with population over 7000 certainly won't. Old age is taken care of with Boots of Youth and for cash order is better choice.
Heat is a good way to get points but I wouldn't take heat 3 because it starts to hurt ice devils quite a bit (hey nobody said you couldn't have the whole bunch of demonic forces
). Magic 1 is a must, I definitely agree.
For reference my pretender of choice was awake E6 cyclops with dom strength 10. My scales were sloth2/heat1/magic1. Never had any second guesses about it.
National Summonables:
Fallen Angel indeed makes fine thug with a little equipment or good SC with more equipment and proper self buffs, namely soul vortex, fire shield and possibly blood vengeance. She also happens to be a very good utility & battle mage and she has great undead leadership. In short, she rocks your world.
Harbinger makes a grade A thug because of the air magic buffs and extreme deployment range(cloud trapeze). Harbinger is also your fastest access to higher level air magic so empowering one to A4 is a good idea.
Angel of Fury is a beast in combat like you said.
Seraph owns hard but LA Marignon certainly doesn't lack SC chassises so getting these isn't an urgent thing.
Early game & expansion:
Equipping your SC with cheap trinkets is a wise move. I had my cyclops to return to the capitol for turn five just to receive his newly forged enchanted sword & enchanted shield, after that he started to totally crush everything.
Magic:
I tried using summon devil/demon knight but found soon that binding one mage for one demon/turn just isn't worth it timewise. It is vastly better idea just research to B6 and start using Ritual of Five Gates, which indeed rocks. For single demon summoning make soul contracts, after construction 6 even lowliest B3 goetic master can make them with booster items. Indeed make a LOT of blood boosters.
Summon Ice Devil is a top notch blood spell. IDs make excellent SCs and give you powerful water access. For summoning one empower a royal navigator with W random in blood and add in the boosters(brazen vessel, blood thorn, water bracelet and robe of the sea). For getting the robe use empowering, trade for one or hire master Gibur to forge it. Similarly empowering a harbinger gets you robe of the archmagi. Empowering a S random navigator gives good access to horror related stuff.
Magoth, the arch devil with F3S3, is indeed great for lots of things and one neat trick among others is demon gateway. Works exactly like normal gatewaying, for both defense & offense, but army of demon knights & devils is quite likely more dangerous than your normal bunch of troops. Fallen Angels can also use similar technique with stygian paths.
For battle magic darkness(alteration 6) needs its own sentence because it is the I-win-this-battle-now button against any mortal troops. Use it.
So there you have some comments/ideas, I'll add more when I'm not tired. All in all, I think players who haven't given LA Marignon a try will find your guide useful. Here's some cake and a medal for job well done. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon44.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cake.gif[/img]