Re: Most powerful race? Pretender?
 

I'm on turn 165 in a solo game playing Ulm with a Cyclops. I am relatively new but I have learned volumes about troop movement and how to get access to certain magics and abilities through this race. I consider them a forgiving race to play because there are so many heavy units you can field. Heck, even my crossbowmen wear Plate!

So you can learn the mechanics of combat and conquest by throwing masses of heavy infantry at the enemy, and explore the magical options at your leasure.

I don't have the spell paths down yet (some guys here have a plan on what they research first and what they want to get to in what order). So I'm just playing with forging all kinds of cool stuff and giving it to commanders to see what happens in combat.

Ulm is a good combat race, and they have smiths who forge. The downside is no sacred units, weak priests, no mages, and all units are rather vulnerable to magic (low mr).

Next I will probably play with Marignon.

Re: Most powerful race? Pretender?
 

If you play with Ulm, you can set a high drain scale, as your smiths are immuned to the effects of drain scale when researching. On the other hand, drain scale makes magic casting that require MR penetration a bit harder. I.e. it is easier to resist spells in a Drain dominion.

Not enough to prevent losing valuable troops to magic, but could be useful at times.

-Gateway103