I think one thing worth noting is the 2 magic scales Man's cap site gives you. You can take neutral scales and still get +2 magic in your cap for research, or you can dump magic and still be neutral in your cap.

Opening joke made me chuckle.

The worst thing about MA Man is that their sacred cavalry is so good that I can't justify getting any wardens, and I love those units, too. But they're both cap-only, and the cavalry heal afflictions. So that's that. :)

Man is a very cool nation. I've been playing them in MP. One thing I found I ended up highly valuing for the monks was an Inspirational bless. Now you have a 35 gold, leadership 60 commander to gather up Logrians so your forts can focus on churning out castle units.

These national overview videos are my favourite, absolutely love these and single player matches where you make the same considerations while playing.

A really fun global to get up in the late game for man is Eternal Twilight. First, the ability to passively insta-kill enemies in your dominion is useful to prevent raiders in your territory, and since IIRC enemies need to pass a morale + MR check to avoid dying, it combos well with the Dark Skies global, which gives enemies a penalty to morale equal to the number of your dominion candles in a province, and the Dreams of the Awakening God global l, which gives any province without any of your dominion in it an 85% chance to gain 1 dominion spread. On top of that it gives a huge penalty to enemy income and resources, which is always nice. But Eternal Twilight also has another effect, namely that it causes permanent twilight, giving all your glamour mages +1 to Glamour. Given that all but one of your mages are glamour mages, this is a big deal. 105 gold for a stealthy spy with with Glamour 2 is extremely nice. As an added benefit, if you get spirit sight or darkvision on your bless, you also negate the penalty it gives, which is nothing to sneeze at. It’s not Darkness, but it’s still useful.

You missed the Barghests, the death summon that is a sacred dog somewhat similar to the Cu sidhe (or you could describe it as a bigger sacred black dog) Those are probably more worth your death gems, especially if you have a strong bless.

The Foresters have the middling range of protection that they do really benefit from a bit of buffs; a stealth party of 30 of them plus a Mother of Avalon to do Wooden Warriors and maybe a bit more; so I think this nation could be a good one to practice doing raiding parties supported by a single mage for buffs, which can be a really strong pattern in some wars. You kinda need two fort turns of Royal Foresters to lead enough Forester troops to reliably beat 10 PD... That all said, it's worth mentioning that monks have 10 leadership and thus can be used to lead stealth raiding parties too.

I think heroism bless is extra good for MA Man. The bonus stats on your knights of Avalon is powerful, plus they will survive long enough to get 5 stars. The main thing is that it can boost the research level of your monks despite them ignoring magic scales.

MA man seems to have got a massive boost by the Dom 6 changes, it's like Ilwinter have been reading Terry Pratchett and listening to Steeleye Span! A couple of concrete points, there are a couple of research boosters available now for glamour and nature, and there are some cool looking faerie knight summons in the same paths so any thoughts on the best gem spends and research priorities. Also I was going to ask about pretenders, so very keen for the next videos.

I love national overview videos. I also love that Man has a strong bless option now. Thanks for letting me know.

For a bless, after a bit of messing around in single player, I think you want to go for a utility bless more than a heavy combat bless. Your sacred cavalry are already excellent without a large bless, and you are you have a lineup of sacred mages. Obfuscate is interesting, because it makes your Daughters of Avalon and Knights stealthy, which opens up a bunch of possibilities in terms of raiding. Arcane Finesse is extremely useful since so many glamour spells can be negated by MR. Far Caster is also decent, albeit a bit less impactful now that you don’t have easy access to air evocations. It does mean that your mages can get more aoe buffs on your troops before they move out of range. Reinvigoration is also never a bad pick, although having spellsinger makes it a little less relevant. Wind Walker is extremely helpful at basically every stage of the game. And Weightlessness is…not the greatest for you, but not completely useless either. For starters, it makes your sacreds immune to earthquake. And it negates much of the encumbrance of your knights (probably better for MA Ulm or Agartha or EA Atlantis though). Meanwhile, Enchanted blood gives you a tiny bit of regen and some MR. And the Inspirational bless makes your monks *much* better leaders. And the Enlarge bless is useful and always active. A bless combination I tried was Arcane Finesse, Enlarge, Heroism x1, Slow Weapons, Wind Walker, Blood Surge, on an imprisoned rainbow. This is enough to allow your sacred cav to clear indies fairly reliably early on, makes your mages tougher and their Magic more effective for the mid and late game, and the Wind Walker will give you a major boost to mobility in the late game. It also happens to work extremely well with your Wardens of Avalon, turning them into extremely effective elite units to deploy in small squads against big, high hp monsters that rely on protection to survive. Enlarge gives +3 strength. Blood surge gives another +3 strength when it activates. And slow weapons will ensure that not only will elite units have a more difficult time hitting back, but also that you hit more often, and as an added bonus, will find their movement speed slown to a crawl. You could also swap out Slow Weapons for Withering Weapons, if you know you are going to be dealing with a lot of living SCs/thugs and sacreds like Phlegran Tyrants or Anakites.

Oh man i was so looking forward to you doing MA man. The new sacreds and buff spells for archers just seemed like they got some huge changes and while they probably hurt a little losing their air power i do think glamour is a really cool path for them to be able to use

You missed barhests but they're basically slightly more killy death path cu sidhe, if your build has a use for cu-sidhe then you can bulk out their numbers a bit if you can break into death.

I absolutely love the art work!

Thank you for this Dominions 6 content ❤

I was just playing with pretenders last night for this nation. What good timing!

Based Fomoria also gets Geas. It's a bit hard to notice if it actually does anything, like with a lot of spells. Maybe if you look for it very carefully, but I never noticed it much.

I guess superior moral +1 can mitigate the weak link of the limited moral of monks and mothers even if not needed for the sacred units.

Love your National Overview videos! Any plans on reviewing the new nations that came with Dom 6? I know you touched on the changes with late age C'tis and have a game with EA Pyrene, but I'm really looking forward to your take on the other new nations. Also, question: how do you feel about the changes to most of the elf nations where they lost some/all their air in return for glamour?

MAH MAN!

Lucid, thoughts on strong blood for keeping crones from dying as much? Added bonus of some easy PR for foul vapors even though that's already accessible

Ma man!

The wise men are very reliable access to quills early, and are one of the reasons i consider Drain2 to be viable. You don't have enough air access to spend air gems frivolously in battles, so turning them into RP instead via quills is very good

Can I make a suggestion/request? For your next SP campaign, please try indies at level 9 - it makes it so much more fun (imo)

I believe geas is pronounced "geesh." But yeah, a lot of those sorts of words really need a pronunciation guide. Shame D&D didn't include one...

The dark doggies should be good in caves

Choirs are still part of regular communions? Wondering if they got separated out as well. Seems like some crystal paths on the god would help augment the communions through the mid game.

just wondering am I noticing some weirdness with your voices audio in the videos recently?

Seems like a decent nation for a new player, some magic but not crazy in blood or astral communions and the chorus is fairly forgiving if you make a mistake with them. Decent troops decent sacreds and some solid mages. The limited magic diversity also helps with focusing on specific goals so you don't get overwhelmed as easily. Both glamour and nature have a new research booster in dom 6, so those monks can be easily boosted a bit. Construction 5 for both, 1Glamour magic dreamstone at +9 research 5 glamour gems and the homunculus 2 nature magic at 10 nature gems for +11 research. Nearly as good as a lightless lantern. The air magic gets you owl quils. So you've got a solid base for getting really fast research once you get construction 5. And in conjuration there are some interesting neutral summons you can play around with from the fay knights to the water kobolds, gnomes, bluecaps and eventually the fairie court. To get blood on the nation you could take a bit of death and nature to get the lamia queens in conjuration as well. You've got some interesting tools you can work with and it's not too hard to overcome their shortcomings in magic diversity I think. Seem like a fun nation.

How does the glamour works in communions? I thought nature communions used a nature spell to jump into communions, is there a glamour version of Chorus Master/Slave?

Old good Tar Valon styled faction from Wheel of Time book series.

Mp campaign when?

Sacred unicorn units ! 😁 Love it 😂

I wish slings in this game were historically accurate.

Man used to be a fun nation, then they went mainstream.

For all have sinned and the wages of sin is death but the free gift of god is eternal life in Christ Jesus god alone