Are there any good Mari Players out there?

[Spacepain]

I haven't posted for a while, but I'm getting back into Dom2.

Marignon default theme has really tickled my interest.
Right now, my nation set up is:

Moloch
9 Fire

Wizards Tower

1productive, 1heat, 1growth, 1fortune, dominion 7.

General Strategy is to build nothing but flaggellents as standard unit, and simontaneously building 2 iniates then 1 friar. This way, every 3 turns I have one Friar ready to go kill stuff with 21 flaggelents.
I keep iniates at home to research.
I build lots of Wiz towers and temples. They mean I can build more Flaggellents per castle, and increase number of flaggent makers.

Magic wise, I'm getting plenty of points for research, but I'm having trouble getting gems, and breaking into additional magical elements, I'm completely bound to Fire and Astral. Plus, I have no idea what to research.

I'd appreciate some ideas for what I should do magically speaking, and suggestions for tweaks to the rest of my game plan

[Norfleet]

Well, the second thing that caught my attention is that you took productivity, despite the fact that you intend to produce nothing but low-resource flagellants. Why? Is the production of capitol-only Chalice Knights really worth it? Take sloth instead.

Now we move back to the first thing that caught my attention: Your failure to take Order-3. Where did you plan to get your money? Order-3 is practically a must, for without it, unless your nation receives oodles of free troops or is dead, you are broke! Flagellants may be cheap, but Grand Masters aren't, and you may need them as your only source of randoms unless you find indies.

Luck-1 is Meh. Take Misfortune-2 instead, especially since you basically must take order unless you enjoy being broke. That ought to give you plenty of points to pay for order, and you can probably even remove the heat after switching Productivity for Sloth and Luck for Misfortune. Feel free to blow the rest on Magic for the research boost.

Given the fact that your pretender doesn't offer you any magic that your nationals don't, the best way for you to break into alternative magics will probably be Acashic Record cast off your Grand Masters. All of them are at least S2, and can manage the task with self-forged Starshines. You might also get a lucky S3 one that can do this out of the box. However you do it, the Grand Masters are going to be important for branching out your magics. Rings of Sorcery and Wizardly, forgeable by an S3 Starshined Master, are going to be your friends, especially if you don't find any indies. Jade Amazons are particularly tasty for Marignon.

[Spacepain]

Thanks for the input.
On the idea of pure or near pure flaggellents, is that a strategy that will work through out a game.

In the solo game I'm playing, early-mid-game I'm already struggling with keeping all of my flaggelents fed! This could become a much larger problem later in the game when I'll need hoardes of the things to effectively beat opponents. I don't think that keeping a bunch of nature mages around is really economically feasible either.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
On the idea of pure or near pure flaggellents, is that a strategy that will work through out a game.

No. But it is a strategy that will get you to the next part of the game, and they'll always retain a role as cannon fodder. Sooner or later, however, you'll want to take advantage of the elbow room you carved out with the blood flagellants to fund a more serious weapons program for building more useful, nondisposable combatants to go with your rabble. Given your pyrocentric design, this looks like it will be Fire Kings, possibly Arch Devils if you can get blood flowing. The Fire Kings look like your most readily obvious bet, and it doesn't hurt that if you want to branch out beyond Fire and Astral to any real extent, you'll probably need Acashic Record to get that gem income going. Both of these options are down the Conjuration path. Something to shoot for, I guess.

I don't know why you'd pick those particular scales. Standard scales for Mari (and I use them quite a bit when I want to play with armies) are:

Order 3, 2 Misfortune, 1 Magic (this can be raised to 3, if you want to depend on high speed research).

Then you have plenty of points to spend on Pretender design, Dominion and Fortresses.

With this setup I depend primarily on xbowmen for my hammer and then Grand Master/Witch Hunters for magical power then depending on what kind of direction I went with my Pretender ( I don't like going fire with Marignon, since they are pretty good on that front) use him to fill the gaps.

[Boron]

if you want to keep the fire 9 moloch you could play marignon diabolic faith . you get blood for fire then .
you have very cheap blood hunters this way .
only drawback is that your best bloodmages are astral 2 blood 2 .
so you have only access to fiends of darkness + serpent fiends but not to devils like abysia or almost everything like mictlan .
but you keep all the normal units which normal marignon has

[Vynd]

I don't see any way out of the problem of feeding your men without getting some nature mages and forging wineskins or similar stuff. You already have a good fort for supply purposes. One thing to consider is if you can get by with less flagellants and thereby cut down on the starvation.

As cool as flagellants can be, I wouldn't neglect Marignon's other troops. They're all pretty good, but Marignon practically begs you to build lots of cheap crossbowmen and send them out with a mage scripted to cast Flaming Arrows. Of course, your crossbowmen do not play well with your flagellants. But sooner or later your opponents are going to notice this and bring their own archers to the party, and you're going to need something that can kill them. Marignon's mages are also quite powerful in combat. Holy Pyre is a nice spell to have right out of the gate.

[archaeolept]

diabolic faith is fire and blood, not astral and blood. I like it, but the forced turmoil makes it a bit difficult to really use.

the moloch is ok, but his fire magic is redundant and he is not capable of being a true SC, as he will retreat from battle when his imps die/rout.

flags are fun, but i'm not sure that F9 is enough to make them viable, at least against human opponents. they are extremely vulnerable to everything, especially missile fire. you could try A9 and use them as picket troops for your flaming crossbows. or you could try the classic F9S9 giant flaming head, as that quite helps their surivability.

you can get the flaming head but you'll need atrocious scales: order 3 sloth 2 death 3 misfortune 2 magic 2 mausoleum, w/ F9 S9 baphomet. However, all you need are the flags for fast early game expansion.

[djtool]

I wouldn't worry about feeding your flaggy's mand the woodsmen/druid provinces are so common your practically forced to have one in your kingdom.

[Spacepain]

One recurring issue I see is the Moloch.

Is the increased damage given to blessed flaggellents worth the 9 fire?