MA Man in latest CBM

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

In this case, the flavor is even fine as is - its not about where they're trained, its about where they are *available*, and since they seem to roam the world after training, they are available everywhere.

The other problem might be that there is too many of them - the Wardens are supposedly the elite few.
But then, players have a habit of recruiting the elites exclusively...

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Redeyes

The other problem might be that there is too many of them - the Wardens are supposedly the elite few.
But then, players have a habit of recruiting the elites exclusively...

The problem is that resources are in general stupidly high so that they're the limiting factor on recruiting heavily armored troops of any quality, even with Productivity 3. At which point, if you're going to be spending all those resources for n+-2 units anyway, you might as well get the best units for those resources. Gold costs do not serve to effectively discriminate in the case of armored troops because gold is a liquid asset while resources are not.

Basically, its a question of massability. If two units are within epsilon of each other in massability, the better unit will always be chosen over the other because it will out perform and is approximately as easy to mass.

[Illuminated One]

Well, the one thing to fix that is not having "better" but different troops.
Bowmen and Knights (which are Man's army according to the nation description) would both be recruited if you couldn't spend your gold on clearly better sacreds.

[thejeff]

Well, the sacreds are only clearly better if you've sunk the points into a strong bless at pretender creation.
And the blesses suggested for them are not path the nation particularly needs on its pretender.

I haven't spent a lot of time with the new Man, none in MP. My impression was the the change made using a bless strategy possible, but far from the obvious choice. Wardens aren't that good. The stealth is nice, but they're still expensive, hard to mass, slow, unshielded humans.
And taking the obvious EN bless does nothing to address Man's serious magic diversity problem.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by vfb

Cleveland did well with a E9N?A2 cyclops in a big MP game (sorry, the name escapes me), not even using CBM. A monk or two with a few Wardens can take on the PD of quite a few nations, and it's free in terms of gems.

I can certainly imagine the Wardens being a very useful raiding force, just a shame that you'd probably need such an unhelpful bless (magic path diversity wise) to get them going

Although now that the Lord Wardens are H1, probably not much point recruiting the Monks unless gold or resource contraints come into play. Since in CBM 1.6, the Lord Warden does everything a Monk does with extras.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Bowmen and Knights (which are Man's army according to the nation description) would both be recruited if you couldn't spend your gold on clearly better sacreds.

The other aspect is the question of upkeep, as is you can have roughly 2 knights, 5 wardens, or 7 Longbowmen in you army for the same cost. With those numbers I think Wardens are a rather apparent better choice for your standing army.

Anyway, this problem is much deeper ingrained in the system and can't be solved easily.
A starter might be to rebalance the cost of the knights - they are 50% more expensive than Marignon's equivalent, for instance.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Calahan

Although now that the Lord Wardens are H1, probably not much point recruiting the Monks unless gold or resource contraints come into play. Since in CBM 1.6, the Lord Warden does everything a Monk does with extras.

Really? I'm not sure I'd pay nearly double for just being slightly more buff- unless they were for leading raid squads. I wouldn't mind making monks 25 gold though.

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Well, the one thing to fix that is not having "better" but different troops.
Bowmen and Knights (which are Man's army according to the nation description) would both be recruited if you couldn't spend your gold on clearly better sacreds.

I find it hard to believe wardens everywhere instantly obsolete Man's longbows and knights- or even necessarily the other infantry. Look at Bandar Log, white ones are are basically the poor mans (everywhere recruitable) wardens, and they hardly define the nation. Yes, they are quite a bit worse, but they are also much easier to mass and compete against other troops which are generally much less attractive.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Really? I'm not sure I'd pay nearly double for just being slightly more buff- unless they were for leading raid squads. I wouldn't mind making monks 25 gold though.

Well to me it depends how you look at it. I'm not crazy about the idea of paying almost double just to have a unit with more buff stats, but at the same time I just don't want to recruit any Monks at all. My current MA Man experiences in Forge of Godhood shows me their only real use is building temples, as it's already well known how pathetic H1 priests are at preaching. Unless you're spamming them in which case I would go for the Monks I guess. Although can't see spamming H1 priests to be that useful, although do admit to never having tried it as far as I can remember.

And although I haven't tested it specifically with the Monks, I have doubts about their ability to safely lead stealth raiders (although as you say you would would use the Lords for raiding). Since from pasts experience I know that a H1 priest leading a handful of troops will run up behind those troops if he has nothing else to do once his hold/bless script runs out. And with no stealthy archers to "stay behind", you'd either have to give the Monk an item to use, or hope the battle is won before he gets to the front. I doubt a Lord would need such provisions.

So while double the price for a Lord Warden is unattractive, I'm not fond of the idea of paying 30gp for a more-or-less useless Monk unit. Even if they are cheap. I'd rather forget the Monk existed and say 50gp for a stealthy priest that can lead a decent sized number of troops (hence limiting the number of Indy commanders you need) and also be thugged depending on bless/equipment, isn't that bad a deal. MA Man are almost always going to be in trouble in MP games, and when trouble comes I'd rather have a bunch of Lords on hand than a bunch of Monks.


If Monks were cheaper or had a higher priest level, or better stealth etc., then I'd re-examine it. But right now I can't imagine me recruiting a Monk over a Lord if I had the money and resources for it that turn.

[quantum_mechani]

Better stealth is also quite possible (though personally I consider that a minor consideration compared to price).

[Mojo the Avenger]

I played a cbm 1.6 game with man to see how the wardens would perform with a bless. Personally I think they did great. I think they might have some long term multiplayer potential because their natural resist is so high, but I've never played mp so from a strategy point of view I really don't know how they'd work out.

From a strict mechanics point of view they're butchers. I took W9E4F4D4, the theory being that more attacks hitting more often and distributing afflictions amongst anything tough enough to survive one hit will make 2 reinvig powerful enough for them to go the distance. Not to mention increased defense and faster battlefield movement.

They crushed anything that the computer threw at them. It wasn't even close to a fair fight.

It seems like that bless might be workable in MP. It gets you into 4 more paths, and the nation doesn't really suffer for it.

I think the total set up was dormant frost father, dom 7, T3, P3, C1, G0, L2, D2