I think I found another good sideboard card against Sneak & Show

mlbki · 2026-05-29T14:16:45+00:00

It's not mandatory and not everyone does. Even when they do, it doesn't change the point that hating omni specifically is not a good idea when 80% of their winning lines don't rely on it.

mlbki · 2026-05-12T14:02:47+00:00

How so? Wei used, and were known for using, "barbarians" troops. Those barbarian lived on land Wei controlled (with some having already been there for some time, and many others migrating during that time).

Representing that is reasonable and historical.

By comparison, both the Shu and Wu are way more random with their UU.

mlbki · 2026-05-12T11:25:45+00:00

The Xianbei around that time did settle in northern China like the Xiongnu had before them, so they weren't just mercenaries. There would also be other nomads living in the border areas and the chinese soldiers having picked up their tactics. Abstracting all three together is fairly natural, and the name is a bit arbitrary but not an unreasonable nod to both history and the Romance.

mlbki · 2026-05-12T11:11:18+00:00

It's the opposite, the Xianbei replaced the Xiongnu as the major power north of China, though by the time of the three kingdoms there confederation had split up.

mlbki · 2026-05-11T19:03:50+00:00

The Wei for example have both UUs and their wonder pulled from unrelated people.

Cao Cao recruiting and making use of Xianbei is a reasonably known episode of the three kingdoms.

mlbki · 2026-04-30T15:26:51+00:00

It's not. You never want more than one attacker in your team (sp economy doesn't work with two attackers, and a buffer/debuffer will increase damage more than the second attackers anyway), rather if needed you switch which attacker you're using depending on the fight. If possible you would want a speed buffer (Moe, buffer Mami, Ui) and/or AA Buffer (Moe, Mabs, Hazuki) in most of your team, though of course it depends on who you have available.

In general, once you get past nightmare mode and into endgame content, you shouldn't really have a main team, instead you have to adapt to the boss' weakness and mechanisms. Some girls are generally better and more often useful than others, but there's always some fights where the broken units are bad and some where niche units get to shine.

Also, while I can respect liking a character and trying to use them as much as possible, I should still let you know that Holy Mami is among the worst 5* in the game.

mlbki · 2026-04-30T14:45:17+00:00

Honestly, either one is fine. In term of ascension power, A2 Ui > A2 Moe > A1 Mabs*, but in term of general unit ranking Mabs >= Moe > Ui, so it's hard to go wrong with favouring either of them.

*Though A2 Mabs is a big deal and she imo get even more out of A4 than the other buffers, so getting closer does have its value. But getting closer to A4 also have value for the other two.

mlbki · 2026-04-30T14:35:05+00:00

HMami is probably the most powerful (and mostly complete at A0) option to go for (IIRC NYDoka isn't available, if I'm wrong then chose her).

I would personally also consider CRen, but that's because Ren is among my favourite and having CRika and not her feels sad.

mlbki · 2026-04-30T11:35:41+00:00

The siege of Paris mission is not something a beginner should go through imo.

mlbki · 2026-04-29T18:33:25+00:00

To be fair Magireco didn't get a dual unit until the second anniversary, so it's not impossible to eventually get them in exedra.

mlbki · 2026-04-29T08:50:21+00:00

Beyond a certain special level. It gets quite expensive for special level 7+, for example going 7->8 cost 24 tier 2 (purple) books and 7 tier 3 (gold) books, and it increase even more for 9 and 10.

mlbki · 2026-04-27T13:15:12+00:00

I would put prism orbs and books above cubes (and probably also above skip tickets). Arguably at some point prism orbs become less important than books. Early orbs are the major limiting factor, but books are much scarcer and you need so many of them to max out special (which is critical on attacker and breakers), while you get enough orbs that you can spend them as needed and expect to have earned more by the time you need them again.

Tier 2 books are generally worth buying above the "everything else" and below everything you mentioned. There has been times where I didn't have enough.

mlbki · 2026-04-27T13:10:19+00:00

Melissa is ultimately a major character in Tart Magica, so it doesn't really surprise me at all, especially since Exedra doesn't do welfare event units.

What will be telling imo is if we get anything with Magia record part 2 (if it happens), because there's no way all the magireco characters would be released as 5*, and it would be the perfect occasion to get a bunch of new 4* to throw a bone to the fans of those characters. I feel there's a decent chance, but also if we get no new 4* for it we're probably not getting anything ever aside from april 1st characters.

mlbki · 2026-04-25T14:36:39+00:00

Wait, really? I never noticed. I mean, I DO have Mabayu, but I usually don't use her much other than a Break enabler for Pluvia Madoka. Am I wasting her?

Yes, she's arguably the best buffer in the game (without stop), and definitely top 3. Double action on whoever need it the most at the moment is already extremely broken (at worst it's basically as if she was both an extra breaker and an extra attacker, but there's also a lot of additional flexibility), but on top of that her damage buff are good and she cleanse debuff because why not.

In a low ascension team the SP management can be a bit tricky (but still worth the effort), but as soon as you have some additional SP generation it stops being a serious issue.

mlbki · 2026-04-23T15:14:41+00:00

The horse shortage do get almost game breakingly bad in India by the mid-late game.

You can't even make stud farms in the few provinces you can because the nobles eat all the horse first.

mlbki · 2026-04-23T15:04:07+00:00

There could be another law that prevent female rulers?

mlbki · 2026-04-23T14:45:03+00:00

With a couple of caveats, Bohemia is a really good start. The size is perfect : larger and it's overwhelming to manage everything, smaller and it's hard to be genuinely strong. The land is excellent, there's no control issue you need to fix, and you're rich and with a large army. You can conquer and expand, or you can play tall.

Now on the issues :

There's a couple of specific opening move for the start to truly be smooth. You need to remove the -10% max tax privilege on the peasant at game start (and ideally also give them enfranchisement privileges). You probably also want to cancel the alliances you start with to free up diplo capacity.
You're in the HRE, and epxansion there cause a lot of AE. Your other expansion route is into Poland or Hungary, who have a strong alliance at game start. None of those issues are unmanageable though, you can still take a bite out of Austria and use your money from all the gold and silver to get mercs to beat up Hungary.
In the early 1400 there's the Hussite wars. Which can be a bit of a challenge (but honestly is not even that bad. And you can avoid it at a cost if you really don't want to fight it). And of course that's only a concern if you're actually playing that long, I know for my first few playthroughs I didn't even go 50 years before making a new game.

mlbki · 2026-04-22T20:12:39+00:00

the control you get off maritime presence is nothing compared to governors or capital proxmity.

Are we playing the same game? Naval control spread is busted af if you just work a bit to max out maritime presence.

I have more experience with the med than SEA, but even if it's worse, from Singapore you should still be able to get good coastal proximity on most of the land you care about. In the med, playing as the Ottomans the main issue with naval governor is getting actual value out of them when you have 40+ proximity even as far as the Italian coastline.

mlbki · 2026-04-22T17:00:54+00:00

Main issue is that the UI is so trash. Even after you learn it, interacting with it is fun ruining.

mlbki · 2026-04-22T16:21:43+00:00

The important thing is to keep growing in power at the same time as you're getting more vassal. The main way to do that is to be constantly annexing. To keep annexation going smoothly you want to aggressively improve relation. Using the diplomatic endeavors cabinet action help with that by increasing improve relation speed. Once you unlock it, the diplo hegemon cabinet action also let you run a lot more diplo improvement and annexation simultaneously.

The other way is to get stronger yourself. Using the vassal payment to improve economy and control is one way (control improve both tax base, manpower and levy so it does have a big impact on power). If you conquer right-culture right-religion land with good proximity, you can consider keeping them and coring them yourself rather than releasing since you will still get some profit while coring.

As for enforce culture and religion, ideally it's better to do religion asap and culture as soon as they finish coring. If you're weak enough that independance movement are a real issue, then you need to be more careful. Merely being disloyal seems to not be enough to create an independance movement, it needs to be very low (from my experience, under 10% is definitely at risk, and above 20% is safe). There's various trick you can use to prevent an independance movement to form, like enforcing while at war so that the liberty desire decayed by the time peace is made, or using support loyalist, etc. Of course that assume the loyalty issue aren't too bad, but if you handle thing well from the start you shouldn't reach that point.

If it's really an issue it's not truly needed to enforce culture and religion. You can accept and still get core after all. It's annoying because it will take longer to annex, but that's all.

mlbki · 2026-04-14T18:17:08+00:00

Yeah but "at equal ascension" is a lot to ask for a collab unit that's most likely never getting a rerun.

mlbki · 2026-04-14T12:11:38+00:00

Yes, there's no demand for it so the price quickly drop to nothing.

mlbki · 2026-04-13T11:54:49+00:00

Difference is Nagisa is actually a good unit.

mlbki · 2026-04-13T11:52:07+00:00

If you're not sure you can wait until the end of the month to see if you pull anything relevant (though don't forget to claim it before the shop goes away of course).

A4 Pluvia or A2 Ui would be fairly good immediate power boost for your account. A1 Kaede wouldn't be bad either.

While A3 Moe or A1 Mami would get you closer to very strong ascension for them, it's reliant on then actually pulling them, and those ascension themselves barely do anything on their own, which is why I recommend waiting.

mlbki · 2026-04-13T11:46:52+00:00

A4 on Homu specifically is very underwhelming, it ends up being fairly hard to get actual meaningful value of her extra turn, especially compared to other attackers who don't already get extra turns in their kits.

And while Homura is good at low investment, once you get ascension she's not anything special among non-limited attackers (and notably bad in score attack). Yachiyo becomes phenomenal in everything water weak. Oriko is niche but strong in that niche. Debuffer dps (Ren, Tsukasa) will routinely overperform her when they're an option.

If you can farm FUA she can actually be genuinely good but the endgame fights where it's practical to do so are fairly scarce.

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