Guide: MA Caelum - Fear of Flying

[Aezeal]

hmmm I can follow Ewierl's post, I can follow MAxWilsons post, but I can't follow the logic of Micah's last post. I think the word relative needs to be put in there somewhere and then it would be obvious that Ewierl is right. That is of course unless you take the higher upfront cost in the equation like Max says.

[Sombre]

What Micah is saying makes perfect sense to me. Say you have a 150 gold non sacred and a 200 gold sacred commander. They are identical apart from the sacred status. Losing the 150 gold mage in battle is less painful than losing the 200 gold mage in battle. Maybe the sacred has already paid for its extra up front cost with lower upkeep for many turns - it still makes no difference to the fact the 150 is more easily replaced.

[KissBlade]

I just thought he meant it's because you don't need yet another frigging temple to make your mages.

[JimMorrison]

Ultimately, I do not see anything close to a +50% cost correlation on sacred commanders, especially not high end mages, most of the time. On units it can easily be upwards of +100% cost, but mages vary so widely in cost/power between different sources, that I am not even sure that one can draw a direct correlation at all. What it comes down to, is some nations have weak mages, and some nations have powerful nations..... but the sacred mages are not always the most expensive for the amount of power that they possess.

As an example compare:

High Seraph - 6.1 paths, 280 cost, mundane
Celestial Master - 6.1 paths, 250 cost, sacred
Starspawn (blue) - 6.1 paths, 280 cost, mundane
Bakemono Sorceror - 8.1 paths, 300 cost, sacred

All of these mages are MA, all are recruitable anywhere (save the Celestial Master), and both of the sacred mages are better cost/power ratio than the mundanes.

[AreaOfEffect]

Going big is a perfectly reasonable strategy for Caelum. From what I've seen of Micah's play style, he tends to field only the biggest and the baddest. I haven't seen him field any summon that wasn't a straight up SC, aside from demon knight hordes that is. Its a play style for Timmy. I'm more of a Johnny.

Though you may not follow the logic, you can't simply ignore the advice of someone who wins as often as Micah does.

[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

What it comes down to, is some nations have weak mages, and some nations have powerful nations.....

'Bottles of living bottles' ha ha

[MaxWilson]

Paths mess up the correlation because they ALSO affect cost, just like sacredness and stats. Compare Mounted Hirdmen to Helhirdings, though, or EA Sauromancers to LA Sauromancers. And I'm not at all sure that KO applies the rules across-the-board. I do note that the Bakemono Sorceror is probably cheap partly because it has lots of oldage (although IIRC good hitpoints), and the Celestial Master is cap-only (as you noted), and the the High Seraph has Flying. So while I agree with Sombre's and Micah's gist, that sacreds are more expensive, I also think it's easiest to put the "advantage" of profaneness in concrete terms of power-per-gold.

I think anyone would agree that if it were a choice between 150 gold sacreds and 150 gold non-sacreds with identical stats, the sacreds would be better except in really weird situations (i.e. facing lots of MA Ermorian Heresy spam or MA Ulmish Guardians). You don't ever have that choice, though.

-Max

[Psycho]

AoE, you seem to be playing the same nations as I do. I have just recently finished a game with LA Man and I am playing another one with MA Caelum now. If you make a guide for Kailasa next, that will be creepy.
Anyway I wanted to give some praise, some critique and some of my thoughts. Not too much though, as my opponents could be reading this.

I disagree with taking a titan pretender. I believe that the rainbow pretender is the way to go with this nation. You lack magic diversity and are not vulnerable early on with the mammoths. The mammoths are also great for early expansion. If you fear early rush, you can always go for evoc4 and thunderstrikes as your first research goal. If you take the titan pretender just for the extra water gems, I think that's faulty. You'd be better off taking some fire and death. With all the archers you'll be recruiting (since the infantry is terrible), why not have the opportunity to cast flaming arrows. And death is death, you always need it. Also, I don't see the reason for water on pretender, your mages cover that.

No sacred mages is a problem with research, as you will pay big upkeep for your mages and thus have less of them researching. Also, since all your troops except mammoths are total crap, as soon as your opponent finds a solution for mammoths, you will have to start fielding your mages a lot, which translates to falling back in research.
Generally I wouldn't recommend owl quills as I don't find them effective for their cost, but this is one nation where I would make an exception. Compared to skull mentors you get the same amount of research for 2 gems more and you need three times more mages to spend their time forging. With Caelum you will have plenty of air gems for all your needs, so no need to worry about the first thing. Caelum also has cheap A1 mages for making quills, so you won't lose too much research by their forging. Those A1 mages are also MA Cealums most cost effective researchers, so you will want to recruit some of them. Not too many though, as there is not much else they can do.

Empowering with 50 nature gems with a nation that has no nature income and no nature mages can be problematic. Yes, it will pay off in the long run, but it will be very hard to scrape the initial investment. I guess you could summon naiads for more clamming, after the first empowerment, but that will use up lots of water gems.

I liked the idea about fear and yazatas. That's new for me. I always compared yazatas to gandvharas, they cost the same but are much weaker, so I decided I won't be summoning any of them. But this synergy you presented sounds nice. Spentas give you magic diversity, but IMO are too expensive at 60 astral pearls. It will cost you 360 astral pearls to get them all, not 300, at least in vanilla. Also, I never noticed about storm flying abilities of storm generals and storm guards, although their name suggests it. That's nice to know.

Wingless are nice to mix in with mammoths to boost their moral, but even better are longdead. You can use a high seraph with a death pick to summon a mound king and make him your prophet.
All spire horn warriors have 50% shock resistance. The storm warriors battlefield spell gives them 100% shock resistance, so you can safely use them with air evocations - thunderstrikes, wrathful skies, etc.
Flying mammoths can be nasty into the later game as well. Imagine mass flight + fog warriors + quickening + will of the fates combo.

In the end, although I think this is a nice guide, my mind hasn't changed. I still think that MA Caelum is the weakest of all three.

[AreaOfEffect]

Thanks Psycho for address that typo. Fixed it.

I can understand that the titan pretender with water magic seems wasteful, and really it is. Though its only one of my silly ideas about getting more water gems. I also figure that since your god starts out site searching, having that water 4 could really make the difference for executing the strategy to its fullest. In short its the extreme. I know that if I really wanted the most effective Caelum, I would pick death and/or fire as well. Maybe go with the great enchantress. Why use water gems to get pearls when you can go straight to the source. It still sounded fun though...

I didn't mention flying mammoths because there are several other Caelum guides and all of them mention it. Besides, this guide is thematically focused on what you can use with fliers. Mammoths don't fly on the map without a lot of construction.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

'Bottles of living bottles' ha ha

Nations of living bottles!!

And while I agree that you cannot discount Micah's PoV, through sheer virtue of his demonstrated proficiency, I do think that there are numerous ways to play most nations, and for some of them, in fact, riding them hard and fast may not be the best solution - and/or other options have the potential to lead to equal success.

All I know, is with my own playstyles and preferences, Caelum is -all- about finesse. Other than using mammoths for your early expansion (and first early war since you may have dozens left over), Caelum has vast potential to segue into something fluid, amorphous, and so supple that there is no one point that you can break, yet it possesses the tensile strength to flay the flesh from your nation with deceptive ease.

Anyway, I'd REALLY like to win a game with Caelum before I unveil the details of my own strat, so it'll be a few months, I suppose. Til then, you will all have to do with this strat, which again is quite gorgeous, and has a grace all its own, but is totally different from my own approach, or Micah's approach. There, three totally different ways to look at the nation already, and still most people disagree with AoE and myself about their potential for greatness.