List top 3 MA MP races

[Shovah32]

A dom10 wyrm costs the same as a dom9 5 death PoD who is more viable late game due to slots yet still a very capable expander. The poison slingers are fairly good ranged troops and should be used with undead to avoid friendly casualties, the undead can also be used for underwater expansion and defence. Their sacreds may be weak but their national summons are tough and i wouldnt say their national troops are just sufficient; they have high prot infantry with shields, poison slingers who can work with undead and, of course they also have the elite warriors and runners who are very dangerous.

[Xietor]

I agree Ctis is tough.

Just not in my top 3. You said they were your 3rd pick as well, so we may not be disagreeing that much.

I cannot see Ctis>Ermor, but that is just me. Can take POD with ermor as well, better sacreds, infantry that is tougher, does not rout often(problem with ctis), better battle mages, good priests, plenty of death and astral abilities.

[DrPraetorious]

No-one mentions Machaka?

You have no national spells (because they are a source of weakness and indolence), you have only hatred, malice and violence.

You have no astral magic, which is unfortunate, but otherwise your magic is extremely strong and versatile, especially when it comes to delivering your message of the aforementioned hatred and malice.

You get spider riders! They pwn u!

Your biggest weakness is that you don't get water pretenders but you really want W9.

My suggestion:
try an imprisoned great sage with 3A,3S,9W and 4N. Dom 5, 3 Order, 3 Heat, 2 Misfortune, 1 Magic.

[Shovah32]

Until you get up to nether darts i personally would say ctis has the advantage in battle magic due to skeleton raising.

Ctisian troops do more damage than those of ermor and ermors only high prot troops(17, a number which is matched by the generally superior swamp guard) suffer from old age and so are slow, weak and quick to tire. Ctis has superior ranged firepower imo(both nations has javelins, ctis has poison slingers), both nations have standards.

Ermor suffers from its best mages being capitol only which is a big deal in larger games and ermor only has regular assasins.

Imo ermor only has 3 real advantages:
1)Tower shields, these make their troops difficult to harm with missile fire but a screen of swampguards can do the same job unless the enemy is firing into combat.
2)Reanimation. If i have a castle i'll be making mages rather than cultists and generally have better things to do with my mages than make a few skeletons per turn(and ctis can also raise alot in battle)
3)Astral magic. While ctis can get the same levels in astral as ermor due to couatls(meaning they have the same astral summoning/forging abilities) they cant get it in anywhere near the numbers ermor can. They also dont have access to nether darts but have skele spam and various other death and nature spells.

edit:I was considering machaka but they are either very lacking early game or quite weakened later due to scales. They almost require an awake pretender to survive on smaller/crowded maps(yes you can have a big bless but those spiders are expensive) and take a while to start up.

[Ironhawk]

Xietor said:
Caleum's pd is so bad though, that i think that one point takes them out of top 3.

What does PD have to do with anything in MP? All that matters is your mages and a couple of core national units.

[Xietor]

I will add that my personal favorite is Pangaea. They have several features i like.

1. Recuperation_This is a very good trait, all the more some in that it does not require management like the priestesses of arcos. or pretenders, fairy queen, chalice etc.

It shines in fights against Ctis, where disease does not ravage them. It allows troops to get 3 stars exp routinely, since they shake off injuries and disease.

2. They have 4 nice heroes with no mod needed. I like heroes.


3. Their troops have a lot of hps, and many very capable troops at low resource cost. The centaur longbow, 30 gold 4 resources. While Pangaea's troops are quite expensive, they do not die a lot.

4. Wide variety of troops. Tough low cost infantry(high resource however), armored calvary(high resource), centaur longbows, berserk infantry, calvary, and tramplers.

5. With a double 9 bless, tough sacred, but it is capital only(:

6. decent priests.

7. no old age problems.

8 access to blood.

9 king of nature magic, with access to earth and death, though no death mages.

10 Stealth troops of wide variety, so you could assault an enemy capital. Stealth preaching.

11. 3 great thematic pretenders, all with recuperation.

Disadvantages:

1. castles only get 30 admin., worst in game. makes it tough to get the armored troops when take sloth.

2. Expensive troops.

3. Expensive mages for research(350 gold), only 1 mage, the pan. Poor variety of magic.

4. nature is not the best combat spell line.

5. National summons limited to a death theme. reanimating
manikins kills population, carrion woods kills population.

6. no assassins or spies.

7. pd=average

8. mages cast touch of madness on ranged troops, other mages, basically anyone in range. And they seem to like that spell!

9. only sacred is capital only. Sacred not worth cost without huge bless.

[DrPraetorious]

PD matters a lot if you are fighing *against* Caelum.

He'll send out flying scouts, and if he knows how many Caelumites it takes to beat PD X, he'll split his forces accordingly and go wild. He'll lose, say, three of these armies, which are made up of worthless caelumite scum anyway so who cares?

Having good province defense drastically reduces the number of provinces you lose this way.

Vanheim does the same thing - if I can take twenty of your provinces with 5 van each, rest assured that I will do so.

And, of course, even opponents who don't like to micromanage will sometimes spam call of the winds / arouse hunger at your entire empire.

Against a clever opponent it's a real weakness.

[Xietor]

PD matters!

Pangaea is pretty good at taking provinces that you have temples in. At 400 gold a pop, and dominion being important, not being able to guard your far flung provinces with pd sucks.

[Xietor]

three other things i like about Pangaea, flying scouts with stealth 20, which also patrol well, and all of its troops have above average mr, nice when fighting astral races and R'lyeh.

Gift of health is a great nature global, and one of the best globals to have overall.

But Pangaea is not in my top 3, because it lacks good battle mages, powerful magics, and good summons that typically control the endgame.

[Micah]

Marignon's amazing PD has almost won me a game (it's still going, but I think I'm gonna win it at this point). I dropped 55 points into my cap at one point because I had a lot of gold from expanding into the sea but very few land provinces/resources, and what I had was tied down fighting on another front. I think underestimating the strategic value of being able to drop down 100+ troops instantly is a mistake. Granted it's not much of a concern late-game, but it's a very solid advantage before then.