Basic Nation Analysis - EA Mekone

We've talked about Mekone before, back when I was doing my single-player analysis, but now it's time to go slightly more in-depth for the multiplayer context! Mekone is a cool nation, and one that does have some things going for them; overall, however, a number of penalties relegate them to a lower tier. In other words, they're fun, but they're unfortunately not that good.

[HisRotundity]

One peculiarity of Mekone is that your Ephors and Gerountes always start off as Old Age even when you take the Unaging blessing, while Archons and Basilei get the normal age reduction from that blessing. It's minor, but worth noting.

[kennyjohnhorn]

Mekone has a national weapon with the god-slayer spears that they can craft throw it on your kitted out assassins you get from the yearly event and hunt some pretenders.

[Kaiser]

What I've learned about Mekone is, nothing is General purpose. Each unit has a role and to ask of it to do anything else is how things fall apart.

[vagrant]

I'd say that the brass bull is slightly more viable in Mekone than in other greek nations. Since it's a summon it doesn't really need upkeep and it's in the same research level as weapons of sharpness which is almost always good. It could be used as a decent raiding unit. Mekone does have the native paths to actually make the brass bull with some boosters. With multiple attacks, resists, heat dom and their innate heat aura they could also be good at dealing with small armies. They're sadly still expensive though.

[zergs]

As a note: Order and turmoil don't really affect unrest THAT much. They affect the natural unrest decay. Normally, unrest decays by 1/10th every turn. Order 3 ups that to 1/7th, Turmoil 3 reduces it to 1/13th. Percentage wise, it's not that big a difference. 10%, 14% and 7.5%, respectively.

Though the thing is that turmoil and missfortune mean you get A LOT of +unrest events.

[VeilingSun]

The Mekone Incident: Humans and the Gods meet at Mekone to work out the arrangement of sacrifices to the Gods. Prometheus plays a trick on the offerings to aid mankind giving them the better deal. Zeus, angry at the deception, either due to genuinely being deceived, or chose the lesser offering in order to have an excuse to vent, hid fire out of spite for the humans. This is what led to the stealing of fire from the Gods and the gift of it to mankind, with Prometheus' punishment for the theft.

So is Mekone the faction of Prometheus?

Anyways, seems like a Thug Nation is alive and well for this faction.

[TheAleatoriorandom]

Always nice to see one of these, thanks to them it feels like I´m finally getting a good idea of the different nations.

[DPuljiz]

Note that Regeneration actually lowers the chance to get affliction so Reinvig + 2 is much better than Unbreakable. Also Recuperation + Unbreakable is superfluous. Reinvig also help later with phoenix pyre... if one survives that long. Magic scales are usually best when you have recruit anywhere cheap mages. With expensive mages the few extra RP you get per mage is not worth the cost of the scale, besides you can buff the RP with owl quills and lightless lanterns much more efficiently. I think the best option would be going with a dormant drakon or imprisoned statue with minor blesses + regen when it comes online.

[dogebestest]

Yeah Mekone is a cool idea, very nice looking sprites, awesome Spartan flavour, but they may be a bit too much outside of the box for their own good.

[johansvensson]

Looking forward to seeing the Mekone LP a ton!
Did you mention the Thaumaturgy national spell where you raise your gigante cap? because I have a hard time understanding how to use it effectively.

[DesignatedMember]

GeneralConfusion: Welcome viewers! Today we will be talking about the weaknesses of Mekone... and their strenghts.

Viewers: *giggles*

GeneralConfusion: Hey they do have strenghts!

Viewers: *giggling intensifies*

Also, fire paths makes you older? How peculiar.

[werotan]

i also adds awe vs sacred +7 for the cheap cost of 5 water

[cipherpunk]

I'm surprised that you didn't mention the fact that the slave troops can be promoted to free men.

[teekay]

In a way its annoying but in another way its quite cool that as the nation goes into later ages they actually get a grip on what they are supposed to be doing and by Phlegra they are quite awesome. Its such a shame they start all over the place and crappy but its almost as if the gigantes decided that since it didnt work in EA they would get MORE tyrannical and vicious and it actually works for them.
Still...i am dying to play them more, more minor balances fingers crossed.

[JeroenDoes]

giant hoplites just seem silly to me. Hitting smaler enemies would be pretty hard with a spear in compasison with a club. I think that dwarfs are far more likely to use spears so the range of the spear can compansate for the size of the dwarf but for Giants there would be better choices.

[nicolash]

what about a air pretender to cast trade wind?

[srsilver]

My problem is I can't see a reliable late game for Mekone.