Third times the charm
I need some advice from any veteran players that know what they're doing. I've been trying out the Kirkostaculas(The Clown nation) and while I really like the hilarious lore I simply can't figure out a decent strategy for about mid to late game which is why I dropped this game several months ago. Here are the pros and cons of the nation as far as I am able to decipher.
PROS
>Really strong Mage Priests with lots of abilities.
>Powerful Air, Astral, and Water with a good chance of level 3-4 for all of them on 15-25% of mages, maybe a little less.
>Have a small amount of fire and death which can be very useful for breaking into powerful fire summons and skele spam.
>Useful lineup of troops with many roles like circus monkeys for tying up enemy troops, stilt units for patrolling, a stealth priest, and lots of sacreds.
>One recruit anywhere sacred that requires a temple, and one recruit anywhere sacred stealth priest that requires a lab and temple.
>Several Leaders are sacred and can be very useful thugs/anti-thugs one of which is very cheap.
>Many Large sacreds of size 3 to 5 for that bonus damage against manlets, and those giants have a much higher att/def skill than usual.
>Sacreds all have a turmoil bonus of +1 which gives them a +1 to various skills like att/def skill for every point of turmoil and 15 points of unrest.
>Recent additions to their spell pool allows for very strong expansion.
>The Summon Unicycle Jousting Tournament is a very useful spell for getting unicyclists one of your best basic troops very quickly.
CONS
>Heavily dependent on capital and if you get hit with a BVC you're fucked from the word GO.
>Those really strong sacreds are all very similar to each other so if you get a counter for one you counter half of the clown's roster. These counters are also cheap and easy to get compared to what they counter. This means basic archer plus arrow enchant devastates even their best troops.
>Sacred stealth priests GOT NO FUCKING ARMS! Funny but not helpful.
>Garbage Pretender choices and not very useful heroes.
>No shields except on one basic unit which means your hell blessed Enormous Clowns can get BTFO if Storm isn't up.
>Your powerful mages are also very expensive with the most expensive one being 550 a pop. This causes enormous problems with money especially if you end up without many high income provinces. This also limits my ability to choose certain scales that hurt my income too much, I'll already be taking +3 Turmoil.
>Speaking of Storm, it's so important to counter arrows you are basically locked into Evocation at least until level 6 maybe 7 making you predictable.
>To counter what can be devastating losses to your very expensive Clown Mages you can go into Conjuration up to level 8 making you even more predictable.
>No nature, no earth, no blood except on one mid to late game special summon which locks you out of some of the more useful forge items for your thugs and mages.
>No nature means they can be crushed with Foul Vapors and if they didn't get a tile with nature mages, or a blessing with nature defense they can be outright destroyed by many nations.
>Going deep into forging doesn't benefit them much because they can't use any of the special spells except your pretender with earth or whatever.
>You HAVE to go into forging because The Create Clown college spell which allows you to make your most important mages for late game and costs 20 Water gems to make. Not to mention also requiring a temple and lab to recruit them. This also drains your water gems which limits you somewhat.
>If anyone chooses +1 Order or above for their dominion you're SOL because all your sacreds are the same, and will get -1 to their skills for every point instead of +1.
So far I can counter arrows with monkeys for a distraction or use storm. I can counter money problems by having a good expansion and capture high income provinces giving me a good start, and get my research going. The one problem I haven't been able to get past though is needing the clown college spell for mid to late game. It basically throttles my research, production, and income the whole shebang. I can have a good early and mid game, but I just can't come up with a good blowout late game strategy. The thing is despite all their strengths the glaring flaws the nation has sets them up to be a very weak nation, and ironically a cruel joke. Which suits them perfectly to be frank, but I want to be able to play them game and not get curb stomped early by basic units. Can anyone help me out here? I know we have some really good players here.