Noob+Man/Tuatha

[RibbonBlue]

I really like the Feel of Tuatha, but am not experinced with them at all, I am looking for some tips on how to play as them.

What are some stratigies that the Tuatha Theme can use for early expansion. If your playing Tuatha should you get the same kinds as magic as if you were Man? What kind of god design should you aim for?

What are some pros/cons of using Tuatha over Man, and vice versa?

[quantum_mechani]

RibbonBlue said:
I really like the Feel of Tuatha, but am not experinced with them at all, I am looking for some tips on how to play as them.

What are some stratigies that the Tuatha Theme can use for early expansion. If your playing Tuatha should you get the same kinds as magic as if you were Man? What kind of god design should you aim for?

What are some pros/cons of using Tuatha over Man, and vice versa?

Pros of Tuatha over base: Even better sacred troops, better access to air magic, and tough recruitable mages capable of taking provinces solo.

Cons: More expensive mages, somewhat worse research, not so easy access to vine ogres hordes.

In general, tuatha pretenders are all about making use of your great sacred troops. Both water and fire are good choices for a bless. Fire 9 is easy to come by with the moloch and gives great early game power with your troops. Water 9 is not quite so good in the early game, and it is harder to get it with good dominion, but it makes your mages very good later in the game.

For early expansion, a tuatha lord prophet (casting divine blessing, then lightning bolts) with 20 or so daoine sidhe can go through almost any indies. Also, whatever pretender you choose for a bless will probably be able to take provinces with a little research.

Of course, a non-bless or lesser bless tuatha is playable too. If you were using a more multi path/good scales pretender you would probably want a minor A5 bless so you can get easily to air queens, and use a few sidhe to hold off enemies while you longbow them.

[TheSelfishGene]

I used to like Tuatha over base Man but i'm not certain anymore. Knights of Avalon are extremely good, arguably the best in the game except for Black Templars, and to get the latter you have to pick a theme with non-existant magic. The etherial-piercing Alicorn attack makes them quite versitile into the late game.

The Tuatha is better than the Crone, but the Mother and Daughter are better than the Cidhe Champion and Cidhe Lord - the Daughter, with 2 Nature, sacred and only 80 gold, is quite possibly the best bargain in the game, and with spellsongs she is a powerful early game caster (for things like Protection). With a 10 gem item, she can cast Charm later on. Neither of the Tuatha-theme lower mages can cast anything useful except some of the cheap Air spells like False Horror.

[FrankTrollman]

Well... the Tuathans can cast spells like Mist Form and Barkskin on themselves, so they can aspire to being limited SCs. Fundamentally, I'm just not impressed with a SC base that has 15 hit points, it simply lives in the realm of lucky one-hit kills from soulless warriors.

I want my mages and my SCs to be different characters. The all-in-one packages of Tuatha and Vanir are simply too expensive for what you get. With a Crone you are paying for a spellcaster, with a Lord Warden you are paying for a warrior. With the Tuatha you have the option of paying for a spellcaster and warrior in one - but it costs as much as the warrior and the spellcasting combined. And on any given turn it can still only fight or research.

No, the cost you have to pay to get a character capable of "doing it all" is way too high. Specialized leaders and troops are definately the way to go.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

I've actually found that using longbowmen, just like you would with base Man gets you off the ground faster vs the indies. Particularly since you can basically always predict AI tactics. Then once I have a couple of good provinces under my belt I switch over to producing sidhe for use vs other human players.

[PrinzMegaherz]

Longbows + Sidhe and Air 9 Blessing work wonders, although this might not be as good as Fire 9/Water 9.
If you take fire 9, dont forget to set your sidhe to attack closest or they will stop next to the enemy hurling their spears which is much weaker than using their fireattack

[Kuritza_Dru]

Are the Longbowmen actually able to do something unless there's a real horde of them?

I've played the Thuata as a blood fountain, Blood 4, Water 4. Maybe something else 4 as well, or just Blood 6. Order 3 (luck economy doesn't work, sadly, and sidhe need money), Sloth 1, some Growth, Magic 3, Heat 1.
Hire some daoine sidhe to start an expansion. Set them to attack - when they hurl their javelins they behave quite silly. Some of them run too far and get killed one by one, etc.

Research conjuration 3, cast 3 CoW on your home province and set the Hawks to patrol. Blood fountain starts blood hunting, sidhe champions switch to the Blood magic, you need lvl5. As soon as you have it, summon Frost Devil (s). Then research Construction. With construction 4 you can equip the Devil and get a very decent SC, with construction 6 you can equip him even better (blood thorn at the very least). Plus, you can forge some war bows for the sidhe champions. They have great natural precision, and they can cast Aim. Warbow-equipped Sidhe champions with precision 20 can hurt.
Conjuration 6 lets you summon lamia queens, who can help your fountain bloodhunting - you can even start hoarding soul contracts.

I don't really know if it is competitive in MP because I've only played team vs team games. I guess team vs team games are really a different experience. But in single player it works great, and it's fun.

[Saber Cherry]

Kuritza_Dru said:
Are the Longbowmen actually able to do something unless there's a real horde of them?

Yes, they kill mages and commanders with their immense range, and outrange enemy archers. Try "Fire Archers," which seems to target mages too. Flaming Arrows turns them into a potent weapon and may be worth taking a mobile Fire pretender.

Set them to attack - when they hurl their javelins they behave quite silly. Some of them run too far and get killed one by one, etc.

I set javalineers to "fire closest." Are you keeping them in a single group? Single groups tend to stay together as a block, while small squads run into the problem you mentioned...

Warbow-equipped Sidhe champions with precision 20 can hurt.

Even more with a Fire 9 or W9/F9 pretender

[Kuritza_Dru]

Well they do have an immense range indeed, but I speak about early expansion now. If you hire like 30 archers and tell them to 'fire enemy archers', will you overshoot them all? Will it help you, when enemy infantry (or worse yet, cavalry) will reach that puny light infantry of yours? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but sidhe seem to be more effective.
I have tried to set the Sidhe to 'fire closest'. Some idiot or two still run(s) ahead and dies. With these sidhe, 35 gold each, sacred, capitol-only, it hurts. And yes, it's one large squad.
Can you give me a sample Fire9/Water9 pretender for the Tuatha theme? It seems that you'll have to ruin your scales completely. You can't have misfortune 2 with the Tuatha. So as somebody wrote already, yes, your blessed warriors will rock. All 9 of them.

[Saber Cherry]

Kuritza_Dru said:
Can you give me a sample Fire9/Water9 pretender for the Tuatha theme? It seems that you'll have to ruin your scales completely.

No, I almost never choose 9/9 blessings - too expensive. 9/4 is the highest I'll go except when playing Machaka or Neifelheim (in which case I'll do 9/9 or 9/4/4 or maybe 9/6). I'm just saying they'd be impressive W9 is best for sacred mages and high-defense sacred warriors. But it's nice to have enough fire magic to cast Flaming Arrows, so W9/F4 might be good. A Frost Father or Blue Dragon can get W9F4 with neutral scales and Dominion 5.

If you hire like 30 archers and tell them to 'fire enemy archers', will you overshoot them all? Will it help you, when enemy infantry (or worse yet, cavalry) will reach that puny light infantry of yours?

Man has light and medium infantry, but they also have Tower Guards (13 defense, 13 protection) and Medium Militia. Tower Guards last a while, and Medium Militia (when modded to cost 5g) are also a fairly effective screen for your archers. Of course in the default game you should never buy any Militia, but using the Rebalance mod they are quite useful to protect your archers. You can also use them to protect your Daoine Sidhe: with 10 Sidhe (350g) inside a block of 30 Medium Militia (150g) there is a much lower chance of their high defense being overwhelmed by multiple attacks, because most attacks will land on the Militia.

In the unmodded game, it's more tricky since 4 of Man's national units are utterly useless. But screening archers with a few (15-25) Tower Guards or (20-40) Spearmen will allow them to rout all the enemy infantry before being attacked, if you have lots of archers, and they stay at the far back of the battlefield. Don't use Longbows against heavy cavalry and knights without Fire Arrows. Grouping your Sidhe with Tower Guards (same movement rate, high morale, and much cheaper) will cut down the losses due to being overwhelmed by multiple attacks. And I mean same group, not overlapping rectangles.

Man should be able to expand using nothing but Longbows and a small screen of chaff into all independents except Knight/Longbow and Heavy Cavalry. The higher the indy strength, the higher your archery hit% will be. Don't set them all to "Fire Archers" for expansion, though. And don't spend all your initial gold on mages and prophets, as it will only delay your Longbow-based expansion. It's nice to have a prophet on Turn 3 but Tuatha / Sidhe Lords can't Smite, Longbowmen don't need Fanatacism, and Daoine Sidhe can be blessed just fine with monks. Keep them back with the archers and tell them to hold and attack, then you won't lose any unless your archers fail to rout the enemies.