They aren’t the nation you wanted, but they are the nation you needed. Vigilante Lord Wardens are gonna clean up the crooked streets of dominions, and send those crooked pretenders to the tatarian slammer where they belong!

“If you don’t have units that hit hard, you can’t take out high protection units.” Like, for example, a Monolith. Defending your opponents cap. Not that you’d know anything about that!

@TheMelnTeam

3 жыл бұрын

Lictors hit harder than anything in this roster unless you stack strength on bless and cast strength of giants on sacreds. But high prot is usually not > 30 prot when it comes to dealing with actual armies early on. Also unlike his Ermor game if he DOES need to kill such a thing he can have mages with shatter on advance and spells.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheMelnTeam which we certainly will be doing >:)

Q: "0:46" A: A miserable pile of secrets.

Pathless magisters actually can't research, the game ui just assume they will get at least one path (I'm not sure how it decides whether it count the random paths in the research points, my guess is on the average total level of the mage). Of course even pathless it's still a mason spy. Though I think a mason is pretty worthless in LA for a nation with standard forts.

IMHO The tower guard is the best massable archer in the game, and the defender the second. Nothing else can stand up to the combination of heavy armour and shield, at least not in an archer duel. Caelum has a sacred version, but they are cap only, slow and don’t really fit with whatever else Caelum is doing. Man just does archers, so in addition to being solid units in their own right, defenders/tower guard support the rest of the army by acting as arrow bait, (the best the rest get is Jaguar tribe armoured slingers, or a commander with arrow fend) Best expansion option is the knight, then warden, then light axe man. Everything else either is too resource heavy to mass before you clear your cap circle, or ineffective against heavy armour. For proper armies I use massed tower guard behind a line of short spears and light axemen, and a flanking force of knights. Defenders, long spears and heavy axe are too slow strategically. Was better in dom 4 when you could use a commander with 100 bodyguards in double line formation as your blocking force, and be able to rely on them to hold their position.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

I tested a bunch of expansions, knights could work, but they kinda got roasted by xbows or heavy cav sometimes. Defenders expanded best for me, but i mixed in wardens with defenders to do better in case of a bump. Also i dont think it occurs to me all game that tower gaurd are map move 2. Shame on me.

Excited to see you in a scrappier bout! I would've gone with LA pangea, built in awe and formation fighter is too fun

A good overview. I've played a few casual games with Man, and I liked them before and after the games finished. I think they are a tad too predictable. You have one mage, your early research tends towards conjuration for elementals, evocation for T-strike, and enchantment for Flaming Arrows, Strength of Giants and Antimagic. Rain of Stones used to be a big deal... A few things I hope to see in the game are Strength of Giants on Foresters, playing the Judge lottery for that sexy FD crosspath and then breaking into fire spirits. Man really needs some extra diversity, and Falling Fires and Fire Elementals are nice pickups. Sadly, fire isn't that great in vanilla. Finding a way to spend your nature gems is important. You are super excited to find lizard shaman as this nation, so fingers crossed. Taking an awake expander with nature can certainly help. You are completely without thugs...unless you've discovered some way to make that happen with Lord Wardens. Perhaps a big Death pretender coming in late game would be good? Build up a bank of D gems with judges/dark knowledge and break into Death when the god enters play? I can't wait to see what you did!

What a piece of work is Man

I distinctly remember that Saq did a war bow decay lord warden build ( that's a mouthful.) He got second place with that. What's your opinion on that? ( haven't watched video yet) For reference i think this was the game GC was LA TIen chi in

@cz85

3 жыл бұрын

It was in Lucid's tournement too :P

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah I talked with saq. After the talk i think i decide strength buffing is going to be better for bow of war shenanigans than decay, plus it will be better for smacking tough guys with swords.

Hey Lucid. Good luck in this game, LA Man is great! I hope you take a decent amount of astral on your pretender, because if someone puts up perpetual storm, I hope you can dispel it easily. Looking forward to the series.

Longbow ROF and range seems to be an optimal mage/support counter. Those who stay in the rear are usually squishy and vulnerable to it. Extra range is perfect for “fire: rear” command to clear out all those who stay in the back.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

Archers dont get fire rear though :)

@SinOfAugust

3 жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics Yeah, I actually tried it afterwards and got a bit sad... It’s like taking attack rear command away from cav.

What is Man? That is a profound question.

Has anyone tried wardens with fear? Have a melee line match forth with a small line of wardens behind on hold and attack. One cant depend on xbows long term due to friendly fire and bad AI where everyone targets the spawned in howl wolf.

Maybe a bit nitpicky, but unbuffed wardens won't deal with heavy armor better than crossbows, due to crossbows' .4 prot multiplier. If you give them +Str in your bless that obviously changes things.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

Im a little scared from my last tournament game where i had a a few hundred crossbows and couldnt kill a certain earth snek with regen. These wardens would chew that guy up, also would eat up fully fluffed ryujin (which also trolled me).

@Mewobiba

3 жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics That's fair. I was a dumbo and didn't watch until the end before commenting (sorry) and you did go exactly for that strength bless :P

@12:30 ish have you actually tried the defender vs tower guard? because extra precision and protection both makes it sound plausible that the defender could win a cost-cost battle.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

in an archery shoot out im 90% sure the defender wins gold for gold. The extra protection doesnt matter a ton with all the armor piercing potential of the crossbow, volume of fire should matter more. Havent tested it though - so i could be wrong!!!

@nttea

3 жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics Thanks for the reply! I heard an off-hand mention somewhere that extra precision matters a lot around the 10-point mark but i don't personally understand how the mechanics work that well.

Not a fan of regular crossbowmen due to the low morale. Probably bad luck or im terrible at playing the game, but they always seem to route at the worst moment.

I look at LA Man as basically MA ULM but slightly better mages with less forging focus and more reliable Death/Astral. The old age, non-sacred isnt great, but 170 G for 4.5 paths is pretty cheap. The line infantry is fairly poor. The shields on the spear are pretty poor, often your crossbows just kill your men right through the shields. The Heavy infantry is better but substantially more expensive in resources. The sacreds are awful. This is a Scales nation, and blesses are pretty much worthless. A good Scales expander helps, you are not particularly good against heavy blessed units. If you want good crossbow heavy infantry you can just get the non-sacred defenders and they actually have a shield. The only good national spell is summon bean sidhe for a 1A1D mage at conj 5. Its pretty much the definition of "C Grade" nations in the game and in LA its pretty weak, troops roughly about as good as Jomon but better in that it has shields and doesn't need water for its best mages. Atlantis, Lemuria and most of the really strong LA nations will rip LA Man apart.

@LucidTactics

3 жыл бұрын

I think you are underestimating their troops a bit. While a bit resource expensive, they are top of the line, not really a comparison with jomon. Enjoyed your analysis though.