Hey guys! After a few requests, decided to do Marverni! Let me know if you guys prefer the two part system, or if you'd rather I return to squishing it all into one ~40 minute video. And as always: thanks for everything and all of the helpful feedback and friendly comments!
I prefer squished but I’ll watch both 2 parters if I’m really interested in the topic. Anyways, thanks for the videos, really helpful for greenhorns, especially in this condensed form that is frankly lacking on YT.The game is hella fun once you start kinda getting it. Requesting a breakdown of ea Therodos while im here, first nation that kind of clicked with me and would love to know more. God bless.
@@leichenkocher Sounds good, I'll make sure to put Theredos on the list. We only have 2 nations in front of it, and I'm not deadset on sticking with them in that order, so it might be sooner than you think :P I have a particular fondness for overwhelming reap... err, undead swarms, so I just might prioritize it a bit more than normal ;) And thank you for the feedback! I'm starting to lean more towards squishing them all into one video, and just leaving out more specific strategies. Maybe make a second playlist of "deep dives" for each nation or something that go way more in depth.
@@thatoneguy5856 I mentioned it on your other comment, the various free ones out there are great, but mixed results. I'd recommend using 2-3 different ones for each image, and then comparing them to one another. The biggest difference I've noticed is SPECIFICALLY when I download specific LORAs or "models" for each one, and then try that out. That usually customizes it much better for you.
Great Marverni video. I was playing a lot of them last month, and struggled with early expansion so its great to see that covered. My playstyle leaned into a Dormant BloodFountain, Unaging, Larger, Blood Vengence with Stellar cascades as the target over gifts, with the option to either Earth Blood Deep Well or Mother Oak. Does prevent a cave EBDW tho. Something I found nice was that you can have the summoned Boars bootstrap you into Blood and Patrol when you arent in an active war with them. Looking forward to the next part and next nation.
They DEFINITELY help with the patrolling aspect of it, I just hated BV because of the fact that inevitably, SOME druid is going to go off-script and Gifts From Heaven murder himself, and given that the BV/druid strat is generally "cost them more than you cost you" and elder druids are cap only, I ran into a situation where unless I gave them magic bows and told them "script + fire at rear" they would off-script themselves to death :( Have you experienced any of that yet, or have you found the stellar cascades focus to work well enough that you can handle the attrition? Either way, thanks so much for the feedback! Glad its hitting home for ya!
@AOReaper I have indeed experienced the unfortunate Arch Druid commits self gifts on boars. My current solution to this? Just, dont research up to Gifts of Heaven, I view it as a trap for the nation. You have such high earth and astral communion access that I play my mages as a Buffers, Fluffers, and Snipers. I do Construction, Alteration, Enchantment, and especially Thaumaturgy. Mindburn, Soul Slay, eventually Master Enslave, after dropping Weapons of Sharpness, Legion of Steel, Iron Will, Regen, and all the new Animal Buffs. Am I missing out on THE Marverni evo spell. Oh absolutely. But if I want to run BV this is the way I find myself doing it.
@@MrCarodan 100% smart plan. I like it. As long as you replace "X spam" with "Mind burn" spam and somebody isn't capable of dropping antimagic on their troops, you're good to go. Sounds like you've got a solid plan my friend ;) Appreciate the feedback, as always! (And the new animal buffs are awesome to tinker around with!)
Using a god you can break into air for 50 air gems and have a communion based mass flight for your boars. Late game you should try and break into blood as every nation and avoid too many boars late as anybody can just enslave them.
Thanks for the comment! Animals (of course) are always going to be vulnerable to MR negates stuff (even the MR easily negates like Master Enslave), but you have counters for that. Flyers set on attack rear, antimagic, earthquake cast early (goodbye communion!), similar things (I'm obviously being VERY quick with this if you need more detail: I'm happy to provide). Blood, despite some opinions, is not overpowered late. Especially not for nations that are NOT set up for it well. In order to provide the amount of blood slaves you need late to command the game, you're going to be paying crazy amounts of gold AND a lack of research for it. Example I can think of: 600 blood slaves costs roughly 4800-7200 gold as another player has already calculated to you in just gold losses. Not to mention the cost of the mages TO blood hunt, including the lack of research (close to 1000 RP for that turn alone)... everything in Dominions has a cost, and blood magic is no exception. There ARE certain blood NATIONS who are strong at blood late, mostly in the ways of efficiency, which helps with these costs, but it certainly is a vast overstatement to say that every nation should break into blood... that's simply not true. And keep in mind: you're talking to somebody who loves blood magic :) Still: appreciate the feedback and commentary! Sometimes strategies like these can work in singleplayer (the 50 gems to break into air is a great example), but often in Multiplayer, its just too expensive to pull off successfully. You're more often served better by leaning into your strengths and capitalizing by making your opponent's fight under YOUR conditions for winning ;)
@@AOReaper No that's fair. I just find having an ace up your sleeve to be an interesting play, especially for communion nations that can boost elements so well. I only say break into blood for late because it's easier to break into than other paths, as you can still gather slaves with inefficient non blood mages. This does have a gold cost as you said, but the path has strong spells. Not overpowered in any way. I especially like being able to put reinvig into communions so they burn out a bit less. Not necessarily a must have I guess, but for something you can do without any paths in it, you might as well try if you have the room to.
@@TTHJJD100 It is certainly one of the easiest paths to break into, but I would say one of the hardER paths to STAY in, if you have to break in. Your mages, every time you empower them in Blood magic, have a chance of being tainted, so you end up with some issues developing a blood economy that is sustainable from nothing, so to speak (and a LOT of luck is needed... we've all learned about luck from Dom 6 certainly hahaha). That being said: your line of thinking isn't wrong. I like the flexibility and the ideas, I just think maybe they fit a little better on particular nations than others ;) And don't forget - you mentioned putting reinvigoration into communions... in Dom 6, now, sabbaths and communions are completely separate. Be cautious trying to use our old Dom 5 strats in this new one ;)
I agree with your comment that the noble choices of units are underestimated and thought I had to choose an awake (with bad scales like yours) or having reasonable scales and that go with nobles - and as I still routinely burn through some cheap chaff units as well taking fire with commander morale bless seemed to help. Real problem with mage pool getting diverted into tattoo casting though so needed the old 1 recruit cost H1 commanders or indi clerics to help do blessing on non prophet armies.
Yep! And as I'd mentioned to somebody else already, Marvernis biggest issue is their reliance on communions + their cap only greater druid means they need to have a plan to ultra protect those old goofballs. Makes it really scary if you don't have a preventative bless, or some kind of defensive focused script for them. Morale bless definitely helps with the boars not trampling as much, but try out "righteous wrath" instead. If boars are dying, they "inspire" one another into +6 morale, and that REALLY helps. Anything preventing mass tramples kills one: and boom - super morale pigs!
@@AOReaper Thanks. I guess e.g. Imprisoned Archmage D6 O1 P2 H0 M1 M1 / F4 A4 W1 E5 D3 N4 G3/ Righteous W/Larger/SR/LLV/2UD assuming the UD helps old druids as well as human sacreds with the regen/heal available to nature mages/communions. Better than commander moral mid game but not so good Early.
@@andrewcole4843 I might even urge you to skip the high dom bonuses (O1/P2) to get a better setup bless wise for yourself, or even more magic scales. That prod/order (in my humble opinion) really doesn't feel needed for these guys.
Of course, happy to help! Like I may have mentioned before, I put ALL requests on a list, and it takes me some time to reach them, but I'll always get 'em all :)
I think scales troops of marverni are strong for humans, 14 gold for 13 attack, 15 def, 17 damage, 12 prot+shiel is not overpriced in my opinion, especially given the fact that with tatoos active they basically have fullplate level of protection with elven level attack skill. And you can easily buff them with strength, body ethereal and later with universal protection, regen and mr. Bare chestes warriors on the other hand are really bad, even with tattoos they don't have enough protection and have worse stats
Very true, some of them have decent stats for the price, though you're really banking on enemy's not having magic weapons to penetrate the invuln, and the cost is VERY high compared to other chaff to fill up lanes to protect your mages. Remember, a 14 gold unit x 3 per square is a cost of 42 gold vs 30 for a normal human troop with slightly less stats, and when battlefield evocations (or elementals ~turn 6?) start showing up, entire squares disappear quickly, so you're banking on slightly improved stats being worth that extra 12 gold per square, which is a dangerous proposition. That being said, I don't think leaning into Marverni's troops a bit more is a BAD idea, I just think it comes with its risks, like anything else. As long as you're aware of them, its fine to do! It always depends WHAT you want out of your infantry. Line holders? Boars and cheaper chaff do it better. Damage dealers? You're going to lose to ANY buffed decent elite infantry units in the age (Vanheres, for example), so I tend to take them into account with that. Emphasizing the units that have higher resource costs is ALWAYS a good idea after early game, because it makes your gold more efficient, but without min/maxing at that point, I don't think you'll see too many problems until you run into things with ~22+ protection, or even worse: ethereal (fire elementals will slaughter these poor guys, as will air elementals for the same reason - even though their ethereal trample damage was cut in half). I would much rather (on Marverni) put my gold into more gifts from heaven casters, and deal 999 damage all over the battlefield, but that's just a preference.
@@AOReaper I think it's more of late game issue, enemy needs a lot of evocations to make them not worth a cost, plus you could easily cast army resistance buffs. And in early game they are very strong even without tatoos, in my testing they sometimes beat even steel maidens with the same numbers, and consistently stomp them with tatoos. And you have great paths for early pointbuffing/small area buffing: body ethereal, mossbody, skins, strength of giants, temper armor
@@AOReaper also I tried them in expansion and they just murder indies even without buffs, they even beat barbs with lower numbers, though took some attrition in process
@@williammclyr3330 Yes, but you also need to keep in mind your OWN evocations. You could be dropping gifts by mid-game fairly consistently, and people will CERTAINLY be using fire/air elementals against you extremely quickly. Its less forgiving to spend 42 a square vs 30 (or free for the piggies), so that's the approach I tend to take. That being said - they are very well priced (as I think I showed in expansion here) when they have the point buffed national spells against indys, I just don't like the increased costs vs the cheaper units. I couldn't agree more with you about the bare chesteds, they're terrible, but I don't like higher priced humans that don't protect themselves from the typical vulnerabilities. Even with a +5 FR battlefield wide buff, for example, they're going to get slaughtered by abysian soldiers, because the heat will eventually overwhelm them, and a fireball will direct hit and kill a square (just a quick example off the top of my head). I think you might be surprised at just how quickly players in MP get evocations and elementals going. I ordinarily see them in the first year. Regularly. Admittedly a TAD slower in dom 6 than 5, but still I see rushes with them often, so I may be a bit more concerned about them then you should be. I look at it from the classic 200 vs 200 with mages. 200 x 10 = 2000 gold, 200 x 14 = 2800 gold... I'd prefer the extra 800 for an extra 3 druids who can summon earth elementals or spam gifts for me. Like I mentioned before: they definitely have value, I just tend to weigh values in terms of "ease of countering", and middle of the road human troops tend to be too easy to capitalize on for me, and I also face a LOT of the same crap in EA in MP. Abysian hell-blesses (will walk through these troops no matter what you do), Vanhere's blessed for damage, and already have enough prot to resist infinite numbers of these guys, high defense elves in 3v3 battle line formations + evocations = walks through them. Fire elemental spam (even against fire fend, they slaughter entire squares of these guys just like normal humans)They just don't fit my personal criteria for "strong enough for an increased cost", which may be wrong - its just the way I play, and see games being played. If they had something REALLY stand-out about them that I could abuse (20+ damage, or maybe 19+ on 2 attacks with berserk?) I'd capitalize on them for sure, but it just isn't my cup of tea to heavily invest in them, because every point buff is a lack of a battlefield wide spell I could be dropping (casting iron warriors on these guys, vs casting gifts... I take gifts). Oversimplifying perhaps, but I hope that helps!
@@williammclyr3330 This is true. It requires that you take a bit more productivity than I did to get a critical mass of them, but then they're very solid. Once you hit the point where you can national spell their protection, they become quite good vs indys in terms of attrition as well.
Im a noobish player, and my oh my those scales scare me haha. Does tanking your economy make this build pretty difficult for beginner players still learning communions?
Honestly: not really. The key to taking a hit on any dominion scales is to REALLY practice calculating out exactly what troops you want to build each turn (at each fort) and how much that costs you. Then you have a more specific calculation to make (i.e. "2 more berserkers vs +2 atk skill on each one, and +5 CR"). With the dominion hit I took on these scales, my calculations were very specific. Marverni (at least amongst the MP community) is fairly well known for a weak early game. You get rushed a LOT. Starting with an awake Pretender is almost necessary in that way, so taking less than optimal scales is kind of needed. In addition, taking a big bless like Larger and Quickness helps you fight off rushes because your sacreds can now compete, and in the future when you spend GEMS (not income) to recruit the boars of Carnutes, you'll be generating your pigs (sacred as well) for free = thus you won't be punished nearly as much for taking such poor scales. Hope that helps!
Hahaha, the AI sure won't know what to do with all of that crazy boar-spawn! If you're battling the AI, feel free to go crazy on the mother oak -> conj 5 rush and just spam spam spam ;) I highly HIGHLY recommend taking the death bless for "need not eat" for these guys in that case. You can handle the death scales, and the boars won't starve your whole nation like they often do otherwise that way ;)
@@AOReaper that's such a good idea to IP going for the need not eat bless. I look at some of those blesses wondering why they exist but I guess they all have their purpose. Love how these games actively encourage and reward creative thinking
@@CaptScrotes That's exactly it! The flexibility in ALL of the systems in dominions 6 is amazing. Look at the simple act of repelling? IF you take a larger bless (for example) to hit a size higher, certain units gain +1 range on their melee weapons, which SOMETIMES enables them to repel, which is based on attack skill, vs the opponent who can counter with morale boosts, or longer weapons, or... etc etc. Its an amazing game to flex your mind in, and frankly: we've got one of the GREATEST communities with this game that I've ever seen. Its amazing, and I'm glad you're here to share it with me!
Hey guys! After a few requests, decided to do Marverni! Let me know if you guys prefer the two part system, or if you'd rather I return to squishing it all into one ~40 minute video.
And as always: thanks for everything and all of the helpful feedback and friendly comments!
I prefer squished but I’ll watch both 2 parters if I’m really interested in the topic.
Anyways, thanks for the videos, really helpful for greenhorns, especially in this condensed form that is frankly lacking on YT.The game is hella fun once you start kinda getting it.
Requesting a breakdown of ea Therodos while im here, first nation that kind of clicked with me and would love to know more.
God bless.
@@leichenkocher Sounds good, I'll make sure to put Theredos on the list. We only have 2 nations in front of it, and I'm not deadset on sticking with them in that order, so it might be sooner than you think :P
I have a particular fondness for overwhelming reap... err, undead swarms, so I just might prioritize it a bit more than normal ;)
And thank you for the feedback! I'm starting to lean more towards squishing them all into one video, and just leaving out more specific strategies. Maybe make a second playlist of "deep dives" for each nation or something that go way more in depth.
What are ya using for the thumbnails? I wanna use the AI for a d&d campaign
@@thatoneguy5856 I mentioned it on your other comment, the various free ones out there are great, but mixed results. I'd recommend using 2-3 different ones for each image, and then comparing them to one another. The biggest difference I've noticed is SPECIFICALLY when I download specific LORAs or "models" for each one, and then try that out. That usually customizes it much better for you.
Great Marverni video.
I was playing a lot of them last month, and struggled with early expansion so its great to see that covered. My playstyle leaned into a Dormant BloodFountain, Unaging, Larger, Blood Vengence with Stellar cascades as the target over gifts, with the option to either Earth Blood Deep Well or Mother Oak. Does prevent a cave EBDW tho. Something I found nice was that you can have the summoned Boars bootstrap you into Blood and Patrol when you arent in an active war with them.
Looking forward to the next part and next nation.
They DEFINITELY help with the patrolling aspect of it, I just hated BV because of the fact that inevitably, SOME druid is going to go off-script and Gifts From Heaven murder himself, and given that the BV/druid strat is generally "cost them more than you cost you" and elder druids are cap only, I ran into a situation where unless I gave them magic bows and told them "script + fire at rear" they would off-script themselves to death :(
Have you experienced any of that yet, or have you found the stellar cascades focus to work well enough that you can handle the attrition?
Either way, thanks so much for the feedback! Glad its hitting home for ya!
@AOReaper I have indeed experienced the unfortunate Arch Druid commits self gifts on boars.
My current solution to this? Just, dont research up to Gifts of Heaven, I view it as a trap for the nation. You have such high earth and astral communion access that I play my mages as a Buffers, Fluffers, and Snipers. I do Construction, Alteration, Enchantment, and especially Thaumaturgy. Mindburn, Soul Slay, eventually Master Enslave, after dropping Weapons of Sharpness, Legion of Steel, Iron Will, Regen, and all the new Animal Buffs.
Am I missing out on THE Marverni evo spell. Oh absolutely. But if I want to run BV this is the way I find myself doing it.
@@MrCarodan 100% smart plan. I like it. As long as you replace "X spam" with "Mind burn" spam and somebody isn't capable of dropping antimagic on their troops, you're good to go.
Sounds like you've got a solid plan my friend ;) Appreciate the feedback, as always! (And the new animal buffs are awesome to tinker around with!)
Using a god you can break into air for 50 air gems and have a communion based mass flight for your boars. Late game you should try and break into blood as every nation and avoid too many boars late as anybody can just enslave them.
Thanks for the comment!
Animals (of course) are always going to be vulnerable to MR negates stuff (even the MR easily negates like Master Enslave), but you have counters for that. Flyers set on attack rear, antimagic, earthquake cast early (goodbye communion!), similar things (I'm obviously being VERY quick with this if you need more detail: I'm happy to provide).
Blood, despite some opinions, is not overpowered late. Especially not for nations that are NOT set up for it well. In order to provide the amount of blood slaves you need late to command the game, you're going to be paying crazy amounts of gold AND a lack of research for it. Example I can think of: 600 blood slaves costs roughly 4800-7200 gold as another player has already calculated to you in just gold losses. Not to mention the cost of the mages TO blood hunt, including the lack of research (close to 1000 RP for that turn alone)... everything in Dominions has a cost, and blood magic is no exception.
There ARE certain blood NATIONS who are strong at blood late, mostly in the ways of efficiency, which helps with these costs, but it certainly is a vast overstatement to say that every nation should break into blood... that's simply not true. And keep in mind: you're talking to somebody who loves blood magic :)
Still: appreciate the feedback and commentary! Sometimes strategies like these can work in singleplayer (the 50 gems to break into air is a great example), but often in Multiplayer, its just too expensive to pull off successfully. You're more often served better by leaning into your strengths and capitalizing by making your opponent's fight under YOUR conditions for winning ;)
@@AOReaper No that's fair. I just find having an ace up your sleeve to be an interesting play, especially for communion nations that can boost elements so well. I only say break into blood for late because it's easier to break into than other paths, as you can still gather slaves with inefficient non blood mages. This does have a gold cost as you said, but the path has strong spells. Not overpowered in any way. I especially like being able to put reinvig into communions so they burn out a bit less. Not necessarily a must have I guess, but for something you can do without any paths in it, you might as well try if you have the room to.
@@TTHJJD100 It is certainly one of the easiest paths to break into, but I would say one of the hardER paths to STAY in, if you have to break in. Your mages, every time you empower them in Blood magic, have a chance of being tainted, so you end up with some issues developing a blood economy that is sustainable from nothing, so to speak (and a LOT of luck is needed... we've all learned about luck from Dom 6 certainly hahaha).
That being said: your line of thinking isn't wrong. I like the flexibility and the ideas, I just think maybe they fit a little better on particular nations than others ;)
And don't forget - you mentioned putting reinvigoration into communions... in Dom 6, now, sabbaths and communions are completely separate. Be cautious trying to use our old Dom 5 strats in this new one ;)
I agree with your comment that the noble choices of units are underestimated and thought I had to choose an awake (with bad scales like yours) or having reasonable scales and that go with nobles - and as I still routinely burn through some cheap chaff units as well taking fire with commander morale bless seemed to help. Real problem with mage pool getting diverted into tattoo casting though so needed the old 1 recruit cost H1 commanders or indi clerics to help do blessing on non prophet armies.
Yep! And as I'd mentioned to somebody else already, Marvernis biggest issue is their reliance on communions + their cap only greater druid means they need to have a plan to ultra protect those old goofballs. Makes it really scary if you don't have a preventative bless, or some kind of defensive focused script for them.
Morale bless definitely helps with the boars not trampling as much, but try out "righteous wrath" instead. If boars are dying, they "inspire" one another into +6 morale, and that REALLY helps. Anything preventing mass tramples kills one: and boom - super morale pigs!
@@AOReaper Thanks. I guess e.g. Imprisoned Archmage D6 O1 P2 H0 M1 M1 / F4 A4 W1 E5 D3 N4 G3/ Righteous W/Larger/SR/LLV/2UD assuming the UD helps old druids as well as human sacreds with the regen/heal available to nature mages/communions. Better than commander moral mid game but not so good Early.
@@andrewcole4843 I might even urge you to skip the high dom bonuses (O1/P2) to get a better setup bless wise for yourself, or even more magic scales. That prod/order (in my humble opinion) really doesn't feel needed for these guys.
oink oink 🐷
Should try out either EA Mekone or LA Phlegra
I'll throw 'em on the list! Appreciate the feedback and comment!
Yay! Thank you!
Of course, happy to help!
Like I may have mentioned before, I put ALL requests on a list, and it takes me some time to reach them, but I'll always get 'em all :)
I think scales troops of marverni are strong for humans, 14 gold for 13 attack, 15 def, 17 damage, 12 prot+shiel is not overpriced in my opinion, especially given the fact that with tatoos active they basically have fullplate level of protection with elven level attack skill. And you can easily buff them with strength, body ethereal and later with universal protection, regen and mr. Bare chestes warriors on the other hand are really bad, even with tattoos they don't have enough protection and have worse stats
Very true, some of them have decent stats for the price, though you're really banking on enemy's not having magic weapons to penetrate the invuln, and the cost is VERY high compared to other chaff to fill up lanes to protect your mages. Remember, a 14 gold unit x 3 per square is a cost of 42 gold vs 30 for a normal human troop with slightly less stats, and when battlefield evocations (or elementals ~turn 6?) start showing up, entire squares disappear quickly, so you're banking on slightly improved stats being worth that extra 12 gold per square, which is a dangerous proposition.
That being said, I don't think leaning into Marverni's troops a bit more is a BAD idea, I just think it comes with its risks, like anything else. As long as you're aware of them, its fine to do! It always depends WHAT you want out of your infantry. Line holders? Boars and cheaper chaff do it better. Damage dealers? You're going to lose to ANY buffed decent elite infantry units in the age (Vanheres, for example), so I tend to take them into account with that. Emphasizing the units that have higher resource costs is ALWAYS a good idea after early game, because it makes your gold more efficient, but without min/maxing at that point, I don't think you'll see too many problems until you run into things with ~22+ protection, or even worse: ethereal (fire elementals will slaughter these poor guys, as will air elementals for the same reason - even though their ethereal trample damage was cut in half). I would much rather (on Marverni) put my gold into more gifts from heaven casters, and deal 999 damage all over the battlefield, but that's just a preference.
@@AOReaper I think it's more of late game issue, enemy needs a lot of evocations to make them not worth a cost, plus you could easily cast army resistance buffs. And in early game they are very strong even without tatoos, in my testing they sometimes beat even steel maidens with the same numbers, and consistently stomp them with tatoos. And you have great paths for early pointbuffing/small area buffing: body ethereal, mossbody, skins, strength of giants, temper armor
@@AOReaper also I tried them in expansion and they just murder indies even without buffs, they even beat barbs with lower numbers, though took some attrition in process
@@williammclyr3330 Yes, but you also need to keep in mind your OWN evocations. You could be dropping gifts by mid-game fairly consistently, and people will CERTAINLY be using fire/air elementals against you extremely quickly. Its less forgiving to spend 42 a square vs 30 (or free for the piggies), so that's the approach I tend to take. That being said - they are very well priced (as I think I showed in expansion here) when they have the point buffed national spells against indys, I just don't like the increased costs vs the cheaper units. I couldn't agree more with you about the bare chesteds, they're terrible, but I don't like higher priced humans that don't protect themselves from the typical vulnerabilities. Even with a +5 FR battlefield wide buff, for example, they're going to get slaughtered by abysian soldiers, because the heat will eventually overwhelm them, and a fireball will direct hit and kill a square (just a quick example off the top of my head).
I think you might be surprised at just how quickly players in MP get evocations and elementals going. I ordinarily see them in the first year. Regularly. Admittedly a TAD slower in dom 6 than 5, but still I see rushes with them often, so I may be a bit more concerned about them then you should be. I look at it from the classic 200 vs 200 with mages. 200 x 10 = 2000 gold, 200 x 14 = 2800 gold... I'd prefer the extra 800 for an extra 3 druids who can summon earth elementals or spam gifts for me. Like I mentioned before: they definitely have value, I just tend to weigh values in terms of "ease of countering", and middle of the road human troops tend to be too easy to capitalize on for me, and I also face a LOT of the same crap in EA in MP. Abysian hell-blesses (will walk through these troops no matter what you do), Vanhere's blessed for damage, and already have enough prot to resist infinite numbers of these guys, high defense elves in 3v3 battle line formations + evocations = walks through them. Fire elemental spam (even against fire fend, they slaughter entire squares of these guys just like normal humans)They just don't fit my personal criteria for "strong enough for an increased cost", which may be wrong - its just the way I play, and see games being played. If they had something REALLY stand-out about them that I could abuse (20+ damage, or maybe 19+ on 2 attacks with berserk?) I'd capitalize on them for sure, but it just isn't my cup of tea to heavily invest in them, because every point buff is a lack of a battlefield wide spell I could be dropping (casting iron warriors on these guys, vs casting gifts... I take gifts). Oversimplifying perhaps, but I hope that helps!
@@williammclyr3330 This is true. It requires that you take a bit more productivity than I did to get a critical mass of them, but then they're very solid. Once you hit the point where you can national spell their protection, they become quite good vs indys in terms of attrition as well.
Im a noobish player, and my oh my those scales scare me haha. Does tanking your economy make this build pretty difficult for beginner players still learning communions?
Honestly: not really. The key to taking a hit on any dominion scales is to REALLY practice calculating out exactly what troops you want to build each turn (at each fort) and how much that costs you. Then you have a more specific calculation to make (i.e. "2 more berserkers vs +2 atk skill on each one, and +5 CR").
With the dominion hit I took on these scales, my calculations were very specific. Marverni (at least amongst the MP community) is fairly well known for a weak early game. You get rushed a LOT. Starting with an awake Pretender is almost necessary in that way, so taking less than optimal scales is kind of needed. In addition, taking a big bless like Larger and Quickness helps you fight off rushes because your sacreds can now compete, and in the future when you spend GEMS (not income) to recruit the boars of Carnutes, you'll be generating your pigs (sacred as well) for free = thus you won't be punished nearly as much for taking such poor scales.
Hope that helps!
I have a lot of fun with these guys and boar spamming the AI. Not sure how they'd contend online but online is a pretty intimidating prospect still 😅
Hahaha, the AI sure won't know what to do with all of that crazy boar-spawn! If you're battling the AI, feel free to go crazy on the mother oak -> conj 5 rush and just spam spam spam ;)
I highly HIGHLY recommend taking the death bless for "need not eat" for these guys in that case. You can handle the death scales, and the boars won't starve your whole nation like they often do otherwise that way ;)
@@AOReaper that's such a good idea to IP going for the need not eat bless. I look at some of those blesses wondering why they exist but I guess they all have their purpose. Love how these games actively encourage and reward creative thinking
@@CaptScrotes That's exactly it! The flexibility in ALL of the systems in dominions 6 is amazing. Look at the simple act of repelling? IF you take a larger bless (for example) to hit a size higher, certain units gain +1 range on their melee weapons, which SOMETIMES enables them to repel, which is based on attack skill, vs the opponent who can counter with morale boosts, or longer weapons, or... etc etc.
Its an amazing game to flex your mind in, and frankly: we've got one of the GREATEST communities with this game that I've ever seen. Its amazing, and I'm glad you're here to share it with me!
@@AOReaper thanks homie! Happy to be here!
yeaaah