LA Marignon Questions - Page 3

Kobal2 · #21 February 24th, 2012, 06:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

but money events stop being useful later on and you'd prefer the gem events.

Actually, I'd say money events never cease being awesome for blood nations, as they let you fort up your blood hunting provinces to protect them from raids. Sure, you can also do that with Three Red Seconds, but that costs you a lot whereas free gold is free gratis.

If you're going the bloodsac domkill route, then one more fort+temple never goes amiss.

It also lets you put up labs in provinces blood hunted by good mages (like geotics, fallen angels, vamp lords...) so they can cast or forge in a hurry if need be, shift to research on turns they get bad rolls and have to let unrest die down, or just regain some sanity re: slave shuffling micro.

Shangrila00 · #22 February 24th, 2012, 03:50 PM

Oh sure, but the question isn't whether or not you can use 400 free gold, you always can, but whether you'd rather have 400 free gold or 5 free death gems. And once my initial round of fort building is done, I would typically say the death gems.

Kobal2 · #23 February 24th, 2012, 05:56 PM

Well the thing is, blood nations never have enough slaves (even when they're pulling 400+ a turn) and they're especially vulnerable to jokers teleporting in to say hi.

Regular nations can always use one more fort of course, but there's a point where they're already maxxed out on mage recruitment per turn, at which point additional forts become token defence which is not really needed as such : they won't die out even if they lose a 5+ gem province or two (or ten) for one turn, then take them back the turn after.
The same disruption really messes up blood nations however - either their hunters get killed, or they just flee but won't be able to hunt the turn they move back in, and even assuming the raiders are dealt with they'll have left a heap of unrest behind which further delays blood hunting.

Basically, in the late game a raid is a mere one turn's income disruption for a regular nation ; but at least 2, more likely 3 turns' for a blood nation. Which is why fortifications are even more appreciated than usual.

Shangrila00 · #24 February 24th, 2012, 07:10 PM

Well, I'll point out that Mari's Goetic Masters can natively cast Hellfire, Leech, Life for a Life, and Infernal Prison, with the last 2 admittedly a lot of research with limited reward seeing as how Mari has little reason to summon anything other than Fallen Angels. If you know how the enemy is going to raid, there's very little your blood hunters can't stop short of a full sized army except maybe Earthquake/Rain of Stones by a lifeless caster. (I can't think of any, are there?) Oddly enough, the removal of SDRs has signicantly weakened raiding on bloodhunters, since no longer are most hunters defenseless B1s carrying SDRs.

It probably ends up a matter of preference though, fortifying your own territory vs. using extra gems for more offensive punch.

P3D · #25 February 24th, 2012, 08:17 PM

Keep in mind that against some nations, the Royal guards are
less useful. Against Gath they are useless. If you had the misfortune to meet them early, rush Blood research to get Blood Boil.

Soyweiser · #26 February 25th, 2012, 01:35 AM

After Blood nations reach blood 9 teleporting raiders die like flies. The banishment spells and life for a life take care of most of them. The research window where you can actually tele raid blood nations is very small. And small groups of hidden troops can also get killed by imp spam.

And if you lack the blood levels to go for the higher level ones, enough sabbath slaves give you higher levels. Blood is super strong as a magical path.

Amhazair · #27 February 25th, 2012, 10:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

[...]whether you'd rather have 400 free gold or 5 free death gems.

With a nation with strong recruit-everywhere mages (And Mari certainly qualifies on that front) I'd take the gold any day of the week and thrice on fridays. The problem isn't that gems aren't nice, but that most of the gem events tend to give so damn few of them. Seems half the time I get 3 gems or so which, frankly, doesn't get me too hot in my pants. (I haven't done any testing on this mind you, just casual observation, does anyone actually have solid numbers?)

Corinthian · #28 February 25th, 2012, 12:48 PM

Yea, gold events are only ever bad if you hate your recruitable mages.

And as for the gem events, they vary quite a bit in potency. Some events like broken mirror, or cursed by a witch, will only give you one 1d6 gems. Open ended rolls just like any other dice in this game. So you could theoretically get an infinite amount of gems from a single event. 2d6 events are probably the most common though and there are at least four 4d6 events.

I did some counting earlier and apparently watergems are the most common type to get from events as two out of four 4d6 events are water and they also have several other good events. I once got 90+ watergems from my turmoil/Luck dominion by turn 30. I was playing LA Agartha. I did not have even a single watermage.
Death is also very common if you have death scales. Least common are blood followed by air.

And a last point about order VS luck. Luck is best if you have a small empire or high dominion as it relies on you having your luck scales in every province. Order is better for nations with weak dominion as your capitol benefits disproportionally.

Shangrila00 · #29 February 25th, 2012, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amhazair

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

[...]whether you'd rather have 400 free gold or 5 free death gems.

With a nation with strong recruit-everywhere mages (And Mari certainly qualifies on that front) I'd take the gold any day of the week and thrice on fridays. The problem isn't that gems aren't nice, but that most of the gem events tend to give so damn few of them. Seems half the time I get 3 gems or so which, frankly, doesn't get me too hot in my pants. (I haven't done any testing on this mind you, just casual observation, does anyone actually have solid numbers?)

It's not as if every gold event gives you a thousand, plenty just give you a pitiful 100 or 150 gold, which isn't exactly exciting either. And the really huge gold event, the one that gives 3000 plus a magic item plus fire gems isn't order dependent, so you'll actually get fewer with order. Mari's mages are middle of the road in terms of power, their most notable feature is cost effectiveness. Mari simply doesn't need event gold to recruit all the mages it wants, especially once its armies start shifting to demons.

And for that matter, all this is assuming you are even able to get an empire large enough to max out events per turn with order 1. Most maps you won't get that big before winning.

triqui · #30 March 4th, 2012, 04:14 PM

You dont need an awake SC at all. Specially if you play CBM 1.92 instead of vanilla, Royal Knights are cheaper now and can wipe indies easily.

I'll go with some rainbow pretender able to build items you might need. Air 4 allow for Air Boosters. S2E2 allow for cristal coins, as well as earth boots boosters. A4E4 allow for staffs of elemental mastery. And so on.

Another possible option is to take a Forger god, with a discount to forge. A f2b4 can cheapely get a few blood boosters and become a Soul Contract factory, building one per turn (even cheaper with a forging hammer), so you can create a huge amount of devils in the long run.