Re: About Champion Skull
 

I wouldn't use the skull on researchers, since they gain experience from researching anyway. They usually all end up with one star quite quickly, and two stars (50 xp) will take forever even with the skull.

I've been meaning to check and see whether the skull gives experience to your troops too, like that one site, Academy of War. And... unfortunately it doesn't. I might use the skull for precision boosts to mages, but nothing else and probably not even that.

-Max

Re: About Champion Skull
 

Perhaps it would be a good idea as Jazzepi suggests to give it a nice boost to +5 exp? I certainly like the concept of the skull, and would like it to be moved away from the 'usually not used' category of items.

Re: About Champion Skull
 

IIRC winning a battle is worth 4 xp (1 for being in a battle, 4 for winning a battle), so the skull is like winning a battle every turn. The problem is that every time you "hit" in a battle, it's worth 1 xp, so thugs tend to ratchet up experience quickly and don't need the skull, while armies don't benefit from the skull. It's a bit of a puzzle how to use the skull effectively. I guess it might be nice to let newly-born thugs start their first battle with 1 star instead of 0. 2 stars would take about 15 turns, which IMHO isn't really worth it. Even at +5 per turn it probably wouldn't be worth the wait except in peacetime.

-Max

Re: About Champion Skull
 

I once used a skull pretty effectively. It was in Dom2, a game with CB Blood of Humans Abysia and one of my Newts got the Adept researcher heroic ability. He managed to rack up enough kills with Fire Darts that he was near the top of the Hall of Fame by the time I had enough mages to pull him off the front lines and I stuck him in a lab with a Champion's Skull so it took something like 30 turns before he finally dropped out of the Hall. He has something like 30 research point total, 3 from his F1, 2 from the modded research bonus and 25 from the ability. There were times when he counted for nearly a third of my entire research...

Re: About Champion Skull
 

Another situation where a champion skull might come handy is making a combo of it with the Academy of War site, or with The Ancient Master for even greater effect.

Re: About Champion Skull
 

I'd really like to see this item upgraded to +5 XP. A small change would make it useful. As it stands, it's one of those "no niche" items that is completely useless.

Jazzepi

Re: About Champion Skull
 

Bah. It lets you stack yet something else on your warriors, with no risk, indefinitely. I generally make at least one in all my SP games where I'm paying attention to trying to keep some heroes alive.

Re: About Champion Skull
 

The only use I've had for champion's skulls is for training thugs/SCs prior to deployment. Like if it will take me more time to forge thier equipment or if I'm at peace with my neighbors

Re: About Champion Skull
 

Ok, but that is a good use. Your new thugs who wait a few turns all those +1's in their first battles, without using any magic slots during combat, and you can share the skull behind the lines essentially forever.

I think it's a very useful (but subtle) item.

Re: About Champion Skull
 

Completely useless? Bah. What nation do you play? As Agartha, it takes forever to get anywhere, so why not put that 'in transit' time to use?