Early game with LA Marignon

[triqui]

Hi everybody.

I'm going to start a game with LA Marignon. On the long run, it seems pretty obvious to me that it is going to be a strong nation with strong blood magic, thanks to those spamable 70g diabolists. Early, they can expand pretty nice with Crossbows and Flaggelants.

In SP, i will rush to Construction 4 to get sanguine douses, and then swap to Blood ASAP. But against IA, you can defend yourself pretty well using Crossbows. Even Indy crossbows for that matter. But players use double bless, mass elephants, awake SC, etc. So i'm not sure how to research or what to research to be able to defend myself against an early rush. (i know the right answer is diplomacy, but if that does not work?)

Should i go to Evocation 4 first? If i use a lot of mages in battles, that would hurt my research a lot . Should i build a new fort soon (like in turn 3-4)?

I'm even thinking about an Awake SC. But then i give up the angelic summons, and the powerful astral magic, becouse i wont have Baphamut S9F9.

I have been searching the site, and i have found a MA Marignon guide, but nothing about LA.

Any advice?

[Baalz]

Seems like flaming arrows would be your first target if you're worried about a rush. Wind guide is also available and those two along with massed xbows should be more than most anything can ignore early game - air blessings on, say Mictlan could hose you but that's pretty uncommon. Don't forget to use your pretty respectable heavy infantry to buy your xbows the time to bring down the tougher things you might be facing like triple blessed jaguar warriors.

[Micah]

Mari's PD is also some of the best in the game...you get a crossbow and a pike for each point, which is 20g and a ton of resources worth of troops that happen to synergize very well with regular armies, since the pikes will march forward and tie up the enemy and die to friendly fire like good PD units are supposed to, and the crossbows will possibly soak up enemy fire and gives you extra firepower. I won a game due to pumping my cap's PD up to 55 or so when I got elephant-rushed. I pumped a full turn's worth of income into it, but they held the line along with a few mages for casting bonds/prison of fire and flaming arrows.

[triqui]

But using Baphamut instead of SC helps with late game astral magic and summoning of Angels, doesnt it?

[Micah]

Actually the blood angels are generally a better choice for a chassis than the ones in conj, and you can summon those pretty easily with goetics (especially since empowering blood is easier than empowering gems). If you take a cyclops you also get access to a hammer-maker, as well as the earth bless for your mages. He can also forge high earth items with a hammer, the baphomet has no hands and redundant paths with your nationals. The only real argument for a baphomet is access to the rings of wizardry and sorcery, but once you factor in the lack of hammers empowering a royal navigator to S3 (assuming you can trade for a crystal coin) is 45 pearls, and you'll save over 25 for forging the 2 rings with a hammer instead of your pretender's face. 20 pearls for an awake SC is a pretty good deal =)

Edit: Try a E6 dom 9 cyclops, order 3, heat 3, misfortune 2 magic 1. Or lose a point of earth and go for another positive scale, I just figured the bless was a better choice with all the angels.

[triqui]

Blood angels are better, but having both is even better And since one of them cost pearls and the other cost slaves, it is pretty good to use both resources.

However, you have a quite good point in the fact that empowering once a royal navigator makes for half the problem. However, having a f9s9 bless on the angels isnt bad either. MR is good to have in SC once soulslays/enslave minds/paralyze start to flow. And if we factor in the empowerment, the coin, the astral helmet, and both rings, we are talking about 100 pearls or so. That's the price of 3 angels of fury. So i could have 4 of them with baphamot by the time i could do 1 with an empowered sailor.

About having a hammer to forge, using the Forge lord is twice as good . Should i consider it?

I like awake SC for early expansion though. Especially flying SC. Moloch isnt bad.

So i guess i have a bunch of options, each of one has adventages and disventages.

Oh crap, this game is so good...

[Micah]

Astral bless doesn't give MR over 18, so it's actually completely wasted on the angels outside of twist fate.

[Jazzepi]

Early rushes come in three basic forms.

1. The sacred blessed troops.

2. Elephants, or some other trampler.

3. A SC pretender.

Lets address these out of order because some require less discussion than others. The most important thing to remember is that most, but not all, counters are based on researching the proper spells.

2. Generally these troops have low morale / low MR. Find spells that immobilize them, force them to make morale checks, or kill them outright based on an MR check. If you can forge them, the astral bow that causes Soul Slay upon hit is quite nice.

3. SC pretenders are a touch more difficult. If it's undead, look for a spell that damages it. Nature has maggots, I believe astral has a special spell that hits a single square for 5 points of AN damage which can also be cast off a Herald Lance, death magic has dust to dust.

Other pretenders, like a cyclops, are probably better dealt with spamming spells like lightning bolt, mind burn/soul slay, or some other form of direct damage. Also, pay attention to the morale of units you're trying to kill their pretender with. Pretenders that use Awe usually depend on it a great deal for their survival. High morale, mindless units, or undead units, are great for attacking them with.

I believe black bow of Beowulf feeble minds the guy it hits, so this is a good choice against pretenders who are buffing themselves going into battle.

Also, remember that if a pretender routes and has no where to flee, they die. And if a pretender is with an army, even a small one, when you kill 75% of the troops, that army, including the pretender, will flee.

1. Like pretenders, you really need to look at the composition of the blessed unit to consider how to beat it. Sacred units generally have high MR, and high morale, so soul slay spells are out unless there's an extremely low amount of those units, like the EA Neifhelm giants.

In another instance, I used earth grip against low strength Vans. The grip reduced their defense to 0, and then I swarmed them with cheap medium / light infantry. Another tactic I used was dust to dust against a bless rush MA Ermor who had shadow vestals.

I hope that helps some. Since your early magic is somewhat limited with LA Marignon, that should give you some ideas on what you can, and can't do. Also the size of the map (number of provinces / player) will let you get a rough idea of how far along in your research you should be.

Jazzepi

[thejeff]

What time frame are you talking about with "early rush"?

It seems to me that any counter depending on spells/items above level 4 or so isn't really meaningful. Especially items, since if you're rushing to research the Construction to get them, you're not going to have found enough sites to have the gems to forge them.
Even with lower level spells, if you have to pull more than a few mages into combat, it's going to kill your research.


Rushes are all about taking out at least one target before they get the research to stop you.

[Micah]

Oh, and there's really not much reason not to take an SC yourself with Mari...they have pretty good magic diversity out of the box, and an awake SC will help a ton with getting neighbors and resources next to your cap, plus the high dom for awe works well with blood saccing later if need be.