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| Anyone have ideas about Marverni? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 1 2016, 01:37 PM (1,754 Views) | |
| sunbeam | Nov 1 2016, 01:37 PM Post #1 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I've been looking at these guys lately, thinking about playing them extensively for a while. What do you do with them though? I get that you can build up and use Stargazers to spam Stellar Cascades and Solar Rays. That's a fine trick, but what else is there? Okay you can do communions and use the Elder Druids to cast big buffs and battlefield spells. That's good, except that they don't seem particularly good at that compared to other factions. The biggest problems to me seem to be that: 1) The Sacred troops are pretty bad. And not only that they are recruitable capitol only like they were Hinnom Giants or Vans or something. It's really necessary for such a pathetically weak sacred to be Cap only? 2) The regular troops are horrible. They may be cheap but you get what you pay for. 3) The summoned boars are pretty bad too. They trample but are only size 3. Hard for me to evaluate these things, but glancing at youtube videos they don't seem like they are that good. You get them from a summon, so I guess that is something. Rather have elephants though. 4) What are you supposed to use Gutuaters and regular Druids for? With the limited paths and the randoms, are you supposed to have a communion with these guys so they can cast anything at all in combat that is useful? Really thinking these guys might be the biggest achilles heel for the faction. 5) Elder Druids seem overpriced for what you get compared to other factions. STR and cap only for a guy who is a lot less capable than other comparable units, and is old to boot... when you get to a unit like this, the money is out of the window sorta. I'd rather pay 100 more gold for another path or two, particularly since he is old, because I won't have too many of them anyway. Anyone got any angles on these guys? Particularly the Gutuaters and Druids? I can see how you use Stargazers. But the Gutuaters and Druids have to be the ones to carry the load in combat aside from Cascade spam. And they don't seem to have the potential for most of them to be useful. I looked at Sum1won's rebalancing mod. He gave the Eponi cavalry a hoof attack? Geez I don't think I would ever recruit that unit myself. Protection 12 on a cavalry unit? Maybe the dynamic for them changes a lot with the Army spells, dunno. |
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| frondeur de rhodes | Nov 1 2016, 03:11 PM Post #2 |
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Chud
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"Such a pathetically sacred troops", "horrible regular troops", it's difficult to answer to such a categorical opinion. They have a very good value for money. The gutuaters and the druids are your main combat mages, if you want something other than the stellar cascades spam. And you want to buff you troops in fact. Because they scale perfectly and because eath, astral and nature are the best buff paths in the game (with the exception of fog warriors and mass flights). With so many sequani stargizers it's not hard to make some communion slaves. The water and earth gutuaters are born to research. The astral gutuaters research and sometimes communion. The nature gutuaters can cast wooden warriors to buff the troops or sleep cloud to support the stellar cascades for exemple. The water druids research and sometimes communion. The earth druids are really nice, with an earthpower they can cast all the good earth stuff like destruction, curse of stones, maws of the earth, iron bane, marble warriors, legions of steel, strength of giants, blade wind without forgetting gifts from heaven. The astral druids can cast soul slay for exemple. The nature druids research and sometimes communion. In fact, if you think you will be rushed in a MP game, it may be preferable to recruit druids and go for alt 2 for earth meld than to recruit sequani stargizers and go for evo 5. I agree with you about the elder druid, only 17 research points (against the average 19 research points) and capital only and slow to recruit and old age, it's a little bit to much. But he's still your biggest mage so he's still an useful tool for the biggest spells or for the site searching. One interesting thing, the earth/nature elder druid is the best gifts of heaven caster of the game : summon earthpower -> eagle eyes -> gifts of heaven spam. |
| rodriguezZzZZ | |
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| Rejakor | Nov 1 2016, 03:26 PM Post #3 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I wrote this guide a while ago for marv. It's a bit dated now. Marverni started doing a bit better after I wrote it, though. http://dom4archive.kermodebear.org/www.des...revolution.html |
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| deplorable | Nov 1 2016, 03:29 PM Post #4 |
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Tartarian
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Enlarge/Army of Giants on the boars maybe. You have enough nature mages to spam Enlarge as soon as you research Alteration 2, anyway. Goes well with Earth Meld. Makes them big enough to trample normal cavalry. Higher research gets you Luck, Cheat Fate and Body Ethereal. Thaumaturgy and Enchantment give you Gift of the Hare and Berserkers at a low level, Haste and Rage of the Cornered Rat at higher levels. Just spit-balling ideas. Can't promise they're good ideas. |
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| sunbeam | Nov 1 2016, 03:56 PM Post #5 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I've found the Body Ethereal thing intriguing. But how do you hit the boars with it? I guess I could have a mass line of Stargazers casting it off the bat. Obviously I've experimented with it in the past. For example I've tried to buff cavalry with it using a single caster. But the range is one, and even small squads of cavalry don't get many "hits" on individual units with Body Ethereal. Playing other factions I've also tried to use Aim to buff archers. Same problem with hitting enough units with it to make it seem worth it. Dunno though, the Stargazers are cheap enough maybe I could bring like 20 or something to put in the middle of a big blob of boars and hit most of them. Kind of wish there was a "Do absolutely nothing for two rounds but stay here" command. Guess it wouldn't help with undisciplined troops though. |
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| sunbeam | Nov 1 2016, 04:59 PM Post #6 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I read your guide and have used a lot of it. Really liked it. But one thing that puzzles me is why you didn't cover the Clam of Pearls more. I've found that thing so useful that Volla is my favorite pretender for LA Man. And assuming that there is a source of water gems somewhere to be found around your start location, I'm not sure any nation is as well equipped to make that item without jumping through hoops as Marverni. |
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| Red_Rob | Nov 1 2016, 05:13 PM Post #7 |
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Dreamer of Dreams
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Am I misunderstanding you or are you describing the Hold and Attack order? That makes the unit wait and do nothing for two rounds, then advance on the enemy. Pretty perfect for applying buffs or holding back until the evokers have blown their load. |
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| sunbeam | Nov 1 2016, 05:29 PM Post #8 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Does it really work that way? I kind of don't believe units obey scripts to a certain extent. With LA Man the Tower Guards will stay in place and shoot arrows. When I try the same command with cavalry they seem to ignore it and attack. My mages also seem to have a mind their own as to what to cast. They'll cast the first spell usually, but after that they start to cast whatever they want as opposed to my scripted False Fetters or whatnot. Maybe it's the range to the enemy for some of the spells though. But it sure does seem wonky. Hmmm thinking out loud, when I tried my experiments with Body Ethereal and cavalry I had them in two groups of ten at the front of the battlefield. Maybe because they started close they went ahead and attacked? Same with melee units too. Guess I need to experiment, I've had my melee guys all lined up as close to the enemy as possible. |
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| KoboldLord | Nov 1 2016, 06:44 PM Post #9 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Marverni is a communion nation, and it is mostly helpless without its communion. Troops are chaff used to block for your mages, and you are rush-bait until you have enough mages with enough research to be worth blocking for. Within those bounds, Marverni is actually an exceptionally capable rush-bait nation if it manages to survive the early game without getting torn apart by waves of savage elves or demons. Elder druids are mostly for sitting back in your base casting rituals and crafting items, as you can't make a communion to do that. They are occasionally of use in battle, but for the most part any job an elder druid can do in battle is a job a regular druid can do just as well. There are precious few battlefield spells that aren't usable with a modest communion, and your slaves are only 45 gold apiece so you can use them or use them up pretty liberally. Your most important item to forge is enough crystal matrices to outfit your communion masters for your armies, as it lets them skip manually casting the spell on the critical first turn of battle. It also lets you use indies like bone tribe or amazons as communion masters if you've managed to acquire them, as even an occasional random off a normally bad indie mage can arrow fend if you have it plugged into a communion with a matrix. Note that your druids come out of the box capable of crafting matrices. For the late game, you kind of want to plan to transition to a gem economy that de-emphasizes your communions, since your opponents will get more and more access to communion-buster spells and you probably will not be able to counter every possibility at once. If being rush-bait early on seems kind of bad to you, well, at least Marverni shares that quality with the majority of nations in the game. An awake expander or a bless for your mediocre sacreds might convince the elves to rush your neighbor instead, who also picked another mostly-human research nation with good mages but bad troops.
If your scripted spell has a range limit and there are no valid targets in range, your mages will go off-script. False fetters is range 10, so the enemy basically has to be sitting in your lap.
Having an enemy squad attack your squad in melee will have at least a chance of interrupting most scripts, as they will defend themselves instead of running to the archer line or whatever it was that you wanted them to do. |
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| Joonai | Nov 1 2016, 07:23 PM Post #10 |
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Elemental, Fundamental, Animental...Berkamental?
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Yes, "Hold and Attack" really does work that way. The only time units go off-script is with Mages, who sometimes decide that the player is a big dummy and that their choice is better (and even then, there are several threads that explain why mages go off-script; they're out of spell-range of their targets, the scripted spell won't affect the target; opposing army is too small to warrant battlefield-wide spells, etc).
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| deplorable | Nov 1 2016, 07:46 PM Post #11 |
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Tartarian
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boars are undisciplined. you can't give them orders. so you can't hold them back to buff them. if you want to buff them, then you need to have your mages target them with spells on the first round of combat. for short range spells, this means you'll need to put the mage adjacent to, or in the same square as the target. buffing regular troops is different, as you can actually give them orders. |
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| Rejakor | Nov 1 2016, 08:31 PM Post #12 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Buffing boars, or any marverni troops really, is something you should only be doing as a specific counter. As a general strategy it's a waste of mages. Elder Druids are excellent shock mages - they can teleport into position to provide a massive local fire superiority, especially in a defensive movement trap against a tenacious enemy incursion force or a thug. Using sequani as slaves in communions led by druids will kill the sequani. I often kill my communion slaves to win important battles, but it's not something you do reliably. Battlefield buffs or enchants, then druids casting communion slave to 'turn off' the communion, and using North Star to make the sequani using cascades not part of the communion, is my general go-to. Clam of Pearls: I forget if your randoms can eventually craft this. Either way it's not a big deal. Put some pearls on a scout - hand out pearls for LotNS each turn you expect to fight. It's not a huge pearl expenditure especially given you should be armysplitting and expecting those armies to die (expeditionary forces, not 'one big giant clusterfuck army') so the cost is roughly the same (5 battles for a clam-holder should be death, on average). You should have the pearl income to support LotNS casts - if you don't, something is wrong. The marverni lategame, quite simply, is something you should be going into from a dominant position. Your field armies are still relevant, as an annoyance. Golems and teleporting/mind-hunting elder druids can be relevant, as can 'boar armies' of tough boars + armoured mages, armies coming from the sea, etc. But if you don't have at least 150% more resources than your opponents, you are just going to lose. Marverni is not a good lategame nation. It's why my guide focuses on early midgame. |
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| deplorable | Nov 2 2016, 03:21 AM Post #13 |
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Tartarian
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Buffing your troops is a waste of mages? Is this a meme? |
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| Itwastuesday | Nov 2 2016, 08:01 AM Post #14 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Using elderdruids to drop E buffs on manvernis is a waste when they could be doing other things, and casting body ethereal on them is horrible unless you're already casting it to protect the mage. |
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| deplorable | Nov 2 2016, 08:47 AM Post #15 |
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Tartarian
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Body Ethereal is a low level spell that most of Marverni's mages can cast without buffing. Like Luck and Cheat Fate it is low hanging fruit that you're probably going to have access to if you research Alteration at all. Kind of like low level buffs on the Thaum and Enchantment tree. Spells that protect your army also protect your mages. A stronger army means even more protection for your mages. Are you supposed to turtle up until you have Evo 5? No, you use the tools you have. Ruling out buff spells is laughable. Most of your low level research is going to be filled with Nature and Earth buffs. |
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The only time units go off-script is with Mages, who sometimes decide that the player is a big dummy and that their choice is better (and even then, there are several threads that explain why mages go off-script; they're out of spell-range of their targets, the scripted spell won't affect the target; opposing army is too small to warrant battlefield-wide spells, etc).

1:01 AM Jul 11