"In the late era the Spanish influence is heavier than the Albigensian. Later Gothic concepts of occultism and devil worship are incorporated along with seafaring and missions abroad." – Illwinter

Let’s start with the good news: Marignon defeated Ermor. It took everything that they had, and each & every Knight of the Chalice perished in the penultimate battle, but Eldregate had finally been put to rest. The Holy Chalice itself was captured and brought to the House of Fiery Justice, posthumously completing the Sacred task. The bad news is that this required a Deal with the Devil(s); as other Kingdoms fell to Ermor, Marignon’s leaders had the Inquisition strike a bargain with infernal forces, and Blood Magic was accepted by the feudal theocracy. Marignon’s army became dependent on the Devils that the Infernal Lords supplied, especially in the face of ever-mounting Undead hordes, and the Infernal Lords themselves were called to smite Ermor after the previously-mentioned penultimate battle exhausted both sides’ forces. Marignon had thus taken on a debt that they could never repay, and anything that might placate the Infernal Lords is now permitted as long as the Inquisition oversees it. Still, blood-spilling is a lot less worrisome for Marignon’s nobles when it’s on their terms, and many of them are now looking for stuff to do. Recent advancements in shipbuilding and navigation have allowed them (and the Priests) to look to distant shores, with God, Gold, & Glory in mind.

Sailing, Blood, and magic diversity for Cavalry is a good trade, right?

Right?

Marignon is held together (more or less) by its Inquisition, the militant fist of the House of Justice's militant arm, the House of Just Fires. These guys repel hostile Dominion even if you haven't hired them, in provinces and forts that belong to you, having a 30% chance to remove an enemy candle from each of these places each turn (and a 60% chance if there's a Temple). They're less effective at spreading your own Dominion, able to do so only to a maximum of 1 candle (2 where there's a Temple).

The House of Justice	The Royal Academy
Enables recruitment of: * High Inquisitors * Goetic Masters * Hand of Justice Kills Undead (25% chance) Produces 1 per turn	Enable recruitment of: * Architects * Admirals * Royal Navigators Produces 12 per turn

• The House of Fiery Justice's holiness does 10 Armor-Negating Magical Damage to roughly half of the Undead in its province each turn (Magic Resistance negates).
• Prefers starting on a Coastal province.

General description of the units in the nations rooster, any standouts, shared qualities aka temperature, any foreign rec, what makes a good basis for planning around

Marignon's main lineup is stronger than Jomon's but suffers the same weakness of lacking shields in the age of crossbows.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Flagellant 10 4 5 + Foreign Rec	Sacred Start Affliction(75)	Despite being crippled naked men, They are excellent chaff. with a temple and their flails, they make very spamable glass cannons. They do lose out to other infantry as mainline expanders and line units as Flagellants die too quickly to keep the commanders safe. Whey works better as axillary with linemen taking the blunt while they come latter to reinforce with flails.
	Crossbowman 10 10 9		Another important part of Marignon, Already ignore most enemy prot and mages can cast Flaming Arrows and Wind Guide.
	City Guard 8 10 5	castle defence bonus(1)	Cheap Halberdier that's poorly trained but uses fewer resources. Not good except when you need siege chaff.
	Pikeneer 10 20 9		The guy with a long pointy stick. Not as good compared to other troop choices since dominions 5 nerfed repelling.
	Swordsman 10 28 9		Your go-to troops. Swordsman is well balanced with good Defence and attack skill while Halberdier deals more overall damage with 50% being piercing damage for greater armour penetrating. Beware they die quickly to ranged attacks.
	Halberdier 10 22 9	Castle Defence Bonus (1)
	Palace Guard 20 27 31	castle defence bonus(2)	Elite Halberdier. Better protection and body armor at double the cost and extra fatigue.
	Royal Guard 20 33 31	bodyguard(3)	The swordsman in fullplate to bodyguard your mages. Slow but only effective in the early game before mundane weapons stop working against assassins. Even better a swinging and hitting with his hunk of metal but Crossbows are still too good at puncturing armor.
	Hand of Justice 19 22 21 Capital Only	Sacred castle defence bonus(1) patrol bonus(3)	Sacred mixture of Halberdiers and Palace Guards. Cap only but they have less upkeep than Halberdiers while being better a patrolling out unrest from your blood hunting.

• Holy Pyre: Evocation 4 2. A situational side-grade to Falling Fires that lets some of your weaker Mages deal a lot of damage to Undead and Demons. It's also a decent alternative to Fireball in that it isn't a missile spell and thus has a much higher likelihood of hitting the enemy.

• Contact Harbinger: Conj 6 25 4 (summon Harbingerx1): LA Marginon does not get enough Astral to summon any of the Angels watching it, so consider Empowerment or design your Pretender with this in mind. As an 32 Angel, the Harbinger is a strong and useful thug that can be wherever you need it to be.

• Bind Harlequin: Blood 1 1 1 (summon Demon Jesterx1): Gives you a "Morale-booster" for your Demons, who could also be used to counteract the -1 Morale penalty for having living and undead/demonic things in the same squad (if you somehow need to do that). Marignon has out-of-the-box Devil summoners that the Jester can keep up with, but these Devils are generally better off in their own squad anyway.

• Heavenly Wrath: Conj 7 35 31 (summon Angel of Furyx1): This one is certainly the easiest Angel for LA Marignon to summon, but it requires an ultra-rare 2 Goetic Master and the Starshine Skullcap for native summoning, and you don't even get Magic paths for your trouble.

• Angelic Host: Conj 7 50 5 (summon Arch Angelx1 Angel of the Hostx6): An 43 Angel with a big flaming sword & a small entourage of smaller big-flaming-sword-users.

• Heavenly Choir: Conj 9 144 72 (summon Seraphx1 Angel of the Heavenly Choirx9 Harbingerx3): An 4444 Angel with a large entourage of smaller angels that could be made more-useful with Divine Name; the Harbingers are Harbingers, while the Angels of the Heavenly Choir can be made into excellent Commander-Priests.

• Reascendance: Blood 7 88 41 (summon Fallen Angelx1): An 333 Arch Angel with a Fear Aura and a more-sinister sword, this summon does a great job at breaking you into Death. Its HP is a bit low for thugging, however, especially since it can be relatively-easily counter-thugged due to having no Natural Protection & two weaknesses.

Create communions with Blood cultists with Fire plus some Earth and astral, and Astral Navigators with their Air, Astral and Water.

The best path you can boost is blood making the 3 pure boosters to make a blood mage 6 if you not just empower like normal.

Climbing waster with its too boosters makes a Royal Navigator 5 for water queens.

To grow in Earth, Air, Nature, and Astral. You have to empower with the rare gems or build a pretender to forge boosters. Summoning Troll Shamans, Ivy Kings, Troll Kings, Harbingers and or Faery Queens for magic diversity.

Fallen Angels is a national way to break you into Death, and 1 of the 5 Arch Devils can help you climbed astral if not on pretender.

Communions are the Basis of your combat magic.

Navigators form lighting batteries including Storm and, Conjure Air Elementals. your army needs Arrow Fend to get them by without shields against crossbows, Though Mist, or Teach men to fly with Gift of Flight as an earlier counter. Poler to your blood mages, Water is cold magic, Freezing Mist, Falling Frost, and Frozen Hearts as an alternative to shock damage.

They also single out enemies with Mind Burn/Paralyze and Soul Slay. Body Ethereal, Battle Fortune and Antimagic make your troops tough along with Fog Warriors, and Quickening.

Your Cultist on the other side provides a flipside for your Navigators, creating Blood communions, Throwing Fire spell, Buffing with earth, sniping with blood, and conjuring Horrors. The sabbath buffs with spell-like Iron Warriors, Strength of Giants, Rush of Strength

Get anti-thug/Supercombatent Curse of Stones, Maws of the Earth, Blood Boil, Agony, Harm, Life for a Life, Magma Eruption, Call Horror, Astral Fires.

Depending on how you set up your scale or in which climate your fighting in, You can lean into Cold or Fire as your main source of AOE damage.

Your Rituals of Summoning Devils. Starting with cultist Bind Devil, then casting Ritual of Five Gates for more diverse summons. Late game conjuring Arch Devils and Heilophagus.

A use of Fire gems is Terracotta Army to replace the human element.

As a late game goal, by Blood 8 you can summon a Fallen Angel to make Vampire Lords.

Do you have any National items(Construction Level, Price, and required Paths). Any unique generic items few other nations can forge? What item would be useful on your unit lineup (non-standard recommend thug gear)?

Despite being humans, You have access to a lot of good thug items for your Angles and Demons.

Evening Star, Carmine Cleaver, Frost Brand.

Helmet of Heroes and Horn of Valor grants an extra +2 from your Admiral.

Handful of Acorns or Bottle of Living Water for your assassin.

Crystal Matrix with Plague Doctor.

Boost your mage hitting power with combination Eye of Aiming, Eye of the Void, Spell Focus.

Booth had gone up in price Significantly after Illwinter realized how busted and abusable the items actually are, At least for LA Marignon, that national Discount makes the item capable to be considered, at least more so than the even more ludicrous price other nations have to pay.

• Soul Contract: Construction 2 724 31. A situational way to spend your early Slaves. Conjures a devil every turn for as long as you keep the commander alive.
  You have to make sure that paper stays in your possession for a long time to earn those slaves back instead of summoning 10 devils normally, or save it for vampires. Can be hard to keep due to a chance of being attacked by horrors and stealing that paper.

• Lifelong Protection: Construction 4 32 2. Summons 2 Imps every round of each battle. They are a flying harassing option and often the Summon Imps spell is Very fatiguing and slow to cast for a user. The imps do not stay after combat, like most other battle summons.

This is probably the most difficult section to get consensus for. Describe how strong the nation is during expansion, the early, mid and late game, and what makes it strong/weak at each of those points. This should give readers an idea of where the weaknesses of a nation lie (if they have not been shown already) and when to take advantage of a nation's strengths.

List some example expansion strategies here. If a strong bless or pretender is required then leave the specifics for the pretender section.

List some example pretender builds. Try to use the following format to keep authorship and pretender design rationale clear.

a guide to LA Marignon by 7thPath

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia