Is Man (Tower of Chelms) the Ulm of LA?

[Amorphous]

As I am rather new to Dominions, there are probably lots of things I am missing, but still I think the judgement on LA Man in general and the Arcane Magister in particular is a bit harsh here.

First off, a nation should reasonably be compared to another as a whole and not just on a unit-basis. Straight off comparing the Magister Arcane to the Staret is perhaps not entirely appropriate as the latter is an extraordinary and capital only mage.

The Magister Arcanes as is offer quite a lot. With A2E1S1 + 50%FAES they can craft Earth Boots, Starshine Skullcap and then Dwarven Hammers and Crystal Coins. 1 in 8 Magister Arcanes have A3, which means that if you provide one with an air booster, he can continue crafting boosters on his own. If you also provide a Ring of Wizardry later in the game, Magister Arcanes can craft elemental staffs, which together with the fact that 1 in 16 Judges have F1D1 and can craft Fire Skulls, mean that they can craft Flame Helmets as well.

Agema covered most about combat casting, but I think it important to reiterate that you have a lot of options even when using small communions. Since your Magister Arcanes all have similar paths they suffer very little fatigue in communions, so even small communions have no problems casting a couple of major buffs and then continue with things like Astral Fires, Gifts from Heaven etc.

A couple of squads of Magister Arcanes can be a major problem for your enemies and you can build them in every castle you have.


In line with Agemas thinking I think an SC something of a waste with LA Man. The troops are good enough to conquer territory at a steady pace while still providing a serious deterrent for anyone considering invasion in the early game. Consider that A4 gives your mages early access to air boosters, at least S3 makes Rings of Wizardry attainable and W3 and N2 lets you use some nature magic early and with conjuration 5 you can summon a Naiad to cover water and nature magic for you. A dormant Lady of Springs, Mother of Tuathas or any of the usual rainbow mages can do this while still having a decent dominion and quite healthy scales.

[AreaOfEffect]

The question has never been about the usefulness of the Magister Arcana in my opinion. They are indeed a solid mage. Their is plenty to do with each variant.

However...

That does not justify their cost. I can just as easily rant off a couple dozen uses for any mage with 4 magic skills in total. The ultimate problem here is that Man is magically hindered, both in the reliability of their research curve, and in their gem income.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Magister Arcana. His lack of mobility is easily countered by his ability to cloud trapeze. The fact that he has air magic more then anything else is synergistic with their troops, spite what others might say. When an opponent sees you deploying that much missile fire the natural solution is to cast storm. In turn Man should counter by casting storm power and evocation spells. Have your enemy waste the gems on a spell that helps you just as much as it helps them. Also, aim plus gift of the heavens can be devastating. The best part of the commander, you can make him anywhere.

None of this changes that fact that Late-Age Man can't close the deal in a competitive game. In the end, the upkeep they pay for the effective battle power they get hinders their opportunity for victory. Sadly the Magister Arcana is just one piece in the puzzle as to why Man has yet to achieve a MP victory. To blame the Magister Arcana exclusively would be crime.

Amorphous, as for comparing units on a one-to-one basis, you are correct. It is not reason enough to make a judgment. Improve the Magister Arcana and you will always find another "worse mage ever". My personal feeling is that, as a whole, Man is magically weaker then most, if not all, it's contemporaries. The lack of magic ability translates to a weak late game. The usual balancing factor would be a strong early game, but Man doesn't have this either in my opinion. Man has just too many needs by the end of the day, and the 120 "free" points just aren't enough.

[Agema]

I think what you've overlooked are the ordinary magisters. They look bad as no paths are guaranteed. However:

You've got 50% E, 50%A, 25%S. That means 6% have 3 paths, 31% 2 paths, 44% 1 path, and 19% 0. In research terms that means (0.06*5 + 0.31*4 + 0.44*3 + 0.19*0) = 2.86 each on average. That's not bad for 70gp, certainly much more efficient that Magister Arcana, and a similar research:gold cost many other nations will be paying. Magisters aren't going to die of old age, 25% can be communion slaves, and if you can't think of anything better to do with the 19% that have no picks, you could always save yourself the upkeep by suiciding them into indies or someone's PD.

Your magic and troops are capable enough for the early and mid game. Fairly obviously, you want to think about making your pretender capable of accessing late game power. You only need D2 to be able to eventually forge and summon your way to D6. As you can make astral caps and crystal coins already, Just S3 can get rings of sorcery then rings of wizardry, to S6 (and D8).

You won't be needing many of your S and D gems as your battle mages won't need them, so you can afford to splash lots on summoning and forging.

[Aezeal]

Agema raises some good points, nice posts I must say..

I say the only way to settle this is through a duel Agema with man against a midclass nation of AoE's choice.. or a small MP game with the same setup and 2-3 other players.

Let the fight BEGIN!!!

[thejeff]

And the 19% that have no picks are spies and engineers. Hardly useless.
They also don't need labs or temples to build, which can cut total costs even further

[Amorphous]

The research pace of LA Man may not be stellar, but neither is it particularly bad. And it is certainly reliable as shifts in magic scales does not influence it. If you really want to have higher research output you can always craft early Owl Quills and later Lightless Lanterns could be an option depending on gem access.

As Agema mentioned Magisters are indeed a reasonably cost effective researchers and the few you get without any magic paths are still spies and useable as such.

As for being behind in gem income, I do not really understand why that would be. Magister Arcanes can search for air, astral and earth sites without much problem and there are no particularly pressing research needs that prevents Man to pursue thaumaturgy 2 reasonably early. A Magister Arcane prophet running around searching for sites should be enough to get the initial income needed.

The initial income of 2 air and 2 nature gems seems to be about the standard amount for LA and though the national mages cannot use the nature gems, those same games make it very easy to get a larger nature economy going as long as the pretender has at least N2. At construction 4 a Thistle Mace and any of the frequent independents with a nature pick gets the job done.

The Judges can be used to start a small death economy and even without access to rings of sorcery or wizardry they can propel Man into death through the Bean Sidhe (I do not recommend it as it might take a few summons to get one with D2, but the option is there). Once construction 6 is attained Judges can also provide a fire booster making it possible for the Magister Arcanes to search for fire gems with magic.

Water is something Man does not have access to easily, though the Bean Sidhe does have a water pick as an option if I remember correctly. As I said in my earlier post, water and nature are reasonable picks for a pretender and Naiads can then cover that end.

Blood is something I have not tried out with Man, but I suppose the patrol bonus of the Judge may be of help.



Overall the Magister Arcane is expensive, but it still fits well within the budget as I see it. There really is not much else to spend the money on, but Magister Arcanes and castles. The units of man are not expensive gold-wise and there is always the possibility of using higher taxes in combination with Judges.

[AreaOfEffect]

I've already chosen my nation to play, it's Man. Trust me, I like Man for most of what you have said, and for a lot of reasons that you all have missed. Late-Age Man is an interesting faction. It's strength lies in the flexibility of their commanders and foot knights. A magister can fulfill a array of roles, as does also the judge. Their H2 priest is one of the cheapest in the game and that matters when Ermor is on the boarder. You can have your best infantry hold any line you want them to by setting them to fire. When you want punch, send in your cost effective mounted Knights. There is so much to love.

However...

I still maintain that Man underpreforms people's expectations. First of all, lets, for a moment, forget what your god can bring to the table. I prefer to first examine what a faction is capable of on it's own.

Without the aid of a god, the usefulness of half your gem income is generally limited to what a nature 1 indy mage can do with it. This of course assumes you can find one in the late age. As for site searching, thuamaturgy 2 is indeed not that far away. The magister arcana can reliably site search air. You might be able to search for earth if your lucky, but you still need earth gems after that. Going up a different tree, evocation, let's you now site search astral... with no astral gems. In order to site search death via spells, you now need to recruit a completely different commander, who isn't reliable at all. Manual site searching is limited to fire 1, air 3, earth 2, astral 2, and death 1. That's not impressive, especially since that spans all your mages with all of their unreliable randoms. Aside from air, none of this promises the really good sites, which you need for solid gem income and indy mages for diversity.

Your solution to research is apparently quill pens and a 70 cost mage that averages below 3 research. Less then three means that, on average, you lose the magic race because you can't simply match you opponents researchers one-for-one. Quill pens simply take the one useful gem income you have and wastes it on something that money is suppose to do. If we were to listen to all the advise above, those air gems are needed to site search air, make air boosters, and cloud trapeze your map move 1 mages. You need those gems for so many other tasks, making quill pens all the less viable.

Remember that everything has an opportunity cost. Simply ranting off all the things a unit can do or all the ways to compensate research doesn't outline a strategy. If your magister arcanas are site searching then they are not researching. If your making magister arcanas then your not recruiting your cheap researchers and you are inceasing your upkeep, which limits your castle building, which limits your troops. If your making quills then your not making boosters. Heck, you can't even make boosters without your god, so lets talk about that.

Let's talk about the needs of your god. So far we know you need nature. You should consider order scales, as you need money for magister arcanas and castles. You need growth to limit the death rate of your battle mages. Production might be considered a no brainier for this faction. I've already seen the suggestion for a rainbow god. Those aren't cheap at all. This makes sense though as you need better site searching, better research, and more magical diversity in my opinion. Yet, how confident do you feel about being able to turn away an early sacred rush? How about armored elephants? Making a pretender for Man is, in my opinion, one of the hardest gods to make in the game. You could take a great enchantress with nature, skip on growth, and use her gems to make shrouds for your mages. But to keep her awake or dormant you need to sack a lot of dominion and/or scales. Both are very important. Dominion because of Ermor and Ry'leh, and scales because of the nation itself. Taking the 120 from drain helps, but it isn't entirely free as it limits the research of your god and makes indy mages useless for anything but magic diversity. Other nations will have more points to work with as their free points are actually free.

I've got some solutions to the problem, but I don't really want to piecemeal my guide bit-by-bit in somebody else's thread. My point is that Man is at a great disadvantage against other factions in a fair fight. Bleeding their income dry with magister arcanas isn't helping. The mage ought to be revised.

[OmikronWarrior]

Some posters have made some pretty good arguments as to how to use Man effectively. They seem to depend, however, on the assumption Man can expand with out the use of an awake SC. I don't think thats the case. Remember, the assumption is an SC can grab one province per turn, so if you forgo the use of one you'll need to use your national troops to get 12 provinces by turn 12. Not an exact science as some players will insist you need 20 by turn 12, but thats the general idea. In my experiments in single player I was never able to hit that number with troops alone no matter how positive my income and production scales. If you need an awake SC, you're either sacrificing scales or magical diversity, both of which are tough for Man to and survive the long haul.

[Agema]

I agree that Man's pretender design is not obvious - I've done MA Man MP, where you're in a moderately similar position except your mages are far worse. However, many of the problems you raise here are experienced by many nations, such as awake SC vs. non-awake non-SC. It's a tradeoff of early for late power many have to decide on. Similarly, site searching strategy, how to dedicate mage time, is common to absolutely everyone. I don't think Man is unique or unusually bad in these sorts of way.

I think you're underselling magisters. 2.86 res per 70gp is not bad. Check out other late era nations: it's more gold efficient than a lot of others can manage (Atlantis for instance gets 4research mages at 140 gold.) The ones without magic will work as scouts and spies, so even the non-magical ones are not a waste of money. Also, 210gp for a magister is not bad. Go check out other nations - about 200gp for a 4-path old-age mage is Tien Chi's situation. Offhand, I could tell you MA Pythium's theurgs are 180gp, 4-path and old age.

I agree you have an issue with unreliable magic path access, particularly death. The fact you get N gems without a natural N mage is also bizarre, and pretty much demands some N magic on the pretender. A lot will revolve on how you make your pretender. But I'm not convinced their situation is as bad as you're making out.

[AreaOfEffect]

Magister Arcana is 250 gold in vanilla, not 210. 210 Would be much better.

Edit: The ~200 gold mages you referenced are also sacred, that cuts their upkeep in half. Not exactly comparable.

Edit: Be advised that my personal opinion is that Man isn't broke, just that it underpreforms people expectations and lacks competitive edge. Man only needs small tweaks in my opinion, and a compatible strategy of course.