Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Is this confirmed? It's not in the shortlist and I swear I've seen Ancestral Vessels fire twice in a round. They seem to prefer to move forward then possibly shoot.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

It's erratic. They can shoot twice but often shoot move instead.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

This is a silly argument. The in game value of magic paths has little to do with the bless effects. High Death is most useful for nations with high Death already (Mictlan, for example, couldn't pull off a heavy death strategy until very late in the game, especially with an imprisoned god).

The conclusion I see from this thread so far is that in a straight, melee sacred comparison (the area that attracts the heaviest blesses) fire is better. If you are playing a nation that cannot depend so completely on its melee sacreds (meaning most nations) this kind of comparison is meaningless.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Not even true. Even a nation that does not natively get Death can easily alchemize gems, Empower one guy with D1, have that guy cast Dark Knowledge, and have a huge stockpile of Death gems by the time his Pretender arrives. It's not even hard considering the lack of really good uses for gems in the early game. Since this would be your gaming-winning tactic and synergizes hugely with a Blood-heavy nation like Mictlan, it's not even a bad idea.

But, I do understand how people's strategy to winning the game is often just "win more battles", making more complex strategies seem impossible.

Well, if you cannot depend on sacreds then discussing the relative merits of any bless is pretty useless since it plays little to no part in your overall strategy.

That being said, an amount of Fire Resistance or just armor to essentially cancel the Fire Weapons effect is pitifully easy to get in the middle and late game, so a Fire bless is basically just an attack bonus by then. By comparison, the Death bless is weaker in the early game but it never goes out of style; MR tends to ramp up slightly overall as people use summons, but the AN damage will still be useful even into the late game.

Add that to the increasing importance of Thugs and SCs in the middle to late game and the affliction bonus becomes dramatically more useful.

So if you want to take anything away from this thread, take this: Fire for early game, Death for late, and both are not that useful in either if you are using a nation that hits really hard already like Lanka or Neifleheim.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Basing a strat around alchemizing 200 gems to empower someone up to D1 to site search so your pretender has D gems is pretty absurd.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

No more absurd than spending the same amount of gems equipping five thugs or casting a single global that won't win you the game, and that's a staple of Dominions play. Spending gems to set in motion a plan that will win you the game is a far better choice.

And 200 gems is just a worse-case scenario. With Astral gems, a little luck from random events, or just some lucky site searching by finding a mixed-type site and the actual number of gems might be a lot less (and that doesn't even count the chance that you might get a Death random on a Wolf Shaman or some other indie recruitable mage or site mage).

I'm surprised that you consider it absurd. Afraid people might actually win games where you have the superior army and lands?

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

It's not like Utterdark = you win. If you're facing Ermor, the darkness will be irrelevant to them for instance, and they may not worry about the income loss either. Blood nations will be happy with it too. Spending hundreds of gems to empwoer someone so your pretender can cast a spell which is not a game-winner by itself looks a bit excessive, but it is a strategy. I'm not sure it's necessarily a better strategy than rushing your neighbour with sacreds and killing them before turn 32 and then use a bigger army, gold and gem income to win.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Ever fought a blood nation in a post-Utterdark game where you have a real army and they only have summons?

I'm not saying that you auto-win. By turn 35 or 40 a few well-scripted mages or thugs/SCs can still turn your armies into goo, but I'd put it in the top three tactics that let you steamroll nations or break the hearts of your enemies and cause them to go AI.

As for Bless Rushes, they are not the top three tactics. Having broken the back of more than one bless rush with such exotic tactics as "archers" or "level 2 magic", I don't rate it terribly high.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Now that really is absurd.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

If you have a real army and they only have summons, why do you need Utterdark?
Why wouldn't they have an army? Many blood nations have units that don't care about darkness (abysia, lanka's kalamukha and Mictlan moon or rain warriors). Furhtermore Agarthans, undead hordes from Ermor or Pangaea, R'lyeh autosummons and mind blasts, that's a lot of units that won't be affected a lot by the Utterdark.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

"Many" blood nations? Aren't blood summons demons pretty much by definition, i.e. immune to Darkness?

-Max

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Say rather that high X is most useful for nations with capacity to generate X gems. A Blood Fountain can do more for a blood nation, for instance. High Death is useful if you have at least D1 mages (Dark Knowledge is only D1). I agree that Mictlan would have problems getting death gems for a death strat unless their game plan was to ambush the first death nation they find and take its gems. Depending upon the game setup that might be viable/predictable.

-Max

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Ironically it'd be far more viable with a F9 bless.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I ment national troops. F.e. Lanka's kalah mukha warriors have darkvision but the recruitable rakshasas don't.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Let's think this through here.

* The goal is to have piles of death gems for your pretender to use for casting Utterdark the first turn he pops out. We'll neglect the Research angle in this post. Assume he's going to pop out on turn 37, giving you 36 turns of gem accumulation.

* Base cost to get a D1 mage without national D: 200 gems (or 100 pearls). I'll neglect the indy angle because you mentioned empowerment specifically. This is a fixed cost which generates no return.

* With only one D1 mage, you'll going to be more limited by mage-time than by province-count. Let's assume (optimistically) that you can get an average return of 1 death gem per turn per 2 provinces searched, by targeting swamps and deserts and by getting lucky with multiple-death-gem-generating sites. (In practice I think it's about 1 for 3 or less.) We'll say that half of these are level 1 sites, discoverable by manual D1 searching.

* Assume for simplicity that you can have a total non-death income which scales linearly with time. We'll say that on turn N, you get 2N non-death gems from national mages searching, etc. And we'll pretend getting to this point doesn't cost any gems or research. That means you can have 210 non-death gems by turn 14, which means that you can have a D1 mage and 20 death gems from alchemy by turn 15. That gives you 22 turns of gem accumulation.

* Under these assumptions, it takes either 8 turns of mage-time (manual site-searching), or 2 turns of mage-time and 6 death gems, or 2 turns of mage-time and 24 non-death gems, to generate an income of 1 death gem per turn. Your best bet is to search with Dark Knowledge until turn 31 (14 turns, cost 42 death gems, yield 2*Sum(1...7)=56, net 14 death gems) and then manually search for the 6 remaining turns because mage-searching wouldn't have time to recoup costs. If you get lucky and find the site on your first manual search, that brings in an extra 6 gems.

* That means you spent 200 gems alchemizing to D1 and searched for 22 turns to net 14 death gems and one D1 mage (and an income of +8 death). If you had just alchemized those 200 gems and kept the death gems you'd be 36 gems ahead.

* It should be clear by this point that if you really do want to Utterdark your way to victory by turn 36, bootstrapping your way to a Death income via alchemy + empowerment is not the way to do it. You'd be better off building on your core national strengths (water, astral, whatever) and alchemizing THOSE for your Utterdark. (By turn 37 you'd have an income of +74 non-death gems, a stockpile of 1406 gems, and you can alchemize that to 351 death gems.)

* You could also trade with someone who does have a core competency in Death (Helheim, Lanka, etc.). Or kill them and take their gems. Either way it's better than trying to bootstrap yourself.

-Max

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

You mean the Palankashas, etc.? They don't have Darkvision but they're demons, which is just as good. Undead and demons are immune to Darkness. Or is my memory playing tricks on me?

-Max

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Thugs don't get dispelled.

I have no concept of how you're proposing to get an Utterdark cast by a non-D nation to actually stick unless you save up your gems until well past turn 100.

It's 70 gems more expensive than a dispel (And dispel has a decent chance of getting a few bonus gems from a high-level caster), in a non-native gemtype that's twice as difficult to alchemize to compared to pearls for a dispel, and you can't even start site searching until you figure out how to actually GET a D mage, at which point you still only have one site searcher, and DKing 20 provs still takes 20 turns and 60 gems from that point. If this is a duel situation you also have to be fending off those 5 thugs you didn't spend your gems on while you research up to alt-9, and if it's a bigger game you have to contend with universal hate, and more importantly, gem-pooling for a dispel.

And I was replying to your statement that "Even a nation that does not natively get Death can easily alchemize gems, Empower one guy with D1, have that guy cast Dark Knowledge, and have a huge stockpile of Death gems by the time his Pretender arrives." Using a wolf tribe shaman to site search D is a perfectly reasonable strat, though still far from reliable enough to base a pretender build on since finding them and then lucking out on a random can be difficult.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I am curious what you mean by this. Personally I can't think of any tactic that wins enough to be called a "top 3" tactic. But I would say that Mictlan, Mictlan, Lanka, and Niefle's bless strategies make them top 10% contenders.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Pretty sure all demons and undead get a pass on dark vision. Even without it they don't seem to suffer a malus in the dark.

I can't remember if rakshasas are demons, but I believe they are.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I agree empowering to D1 is quite silly, but there is another angle that make *much* more sense for a blood nation that I've used before - Mictlan. Taking D on your pretender and empower into *blood* (assuming you didn't have the design points), this is immensely easier for a blood nation and gets you vampire lords (and for Mictlan some nice national summons). Of course you're not going to be dropping UD on turn 36 like this, but it's a much more realistic way to actually get it up around the time you're ready to switch to a blood only economy.

Note (I bet Micah remembers this game) do *not* go with burden of time under the assumption that boots of youth will protect your mages. Miserable, miserable way to end the game by killing off all your own good mages...

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I think betting a strategy on a gem type or mage you can't easily access is a recipe for disaster.

I think we'll all have played games where we've had shockingly bad, or even no income, in certain gem types, including gems that are fairly integral to the nations (I've played EA Agartha, 30 provinces fully searched, total death income of 3). Finding mages is even worse: I want to weep when I read guides that blithely say things like "Get an indy X mage" (unless X = nature), because sure as hell I've played quite enough games where I can't find any.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Bad strategies seem impossible. And the problem with most "complex" strategies is it leaves little room for calculating your opponent's moves/strategies.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Oh I agree. I can't tell you the number of times I've played an Air nation like Caelum only to find my provinces have no air income or played a Blood nation and found that all my provinces have like 2K people or that someone beat me to the unique demons and suddenly all my endgame plans are dust.

But some plan is better than no plan. It's a self-deception if you think you can just make a nation based on a few battle tactics and respond to the conditions of the game and pull out a win.

I guess that was the point I was trying to make. Is getting a decent bless with endgame uses and searching for Death gems with the plan of casting the Utterdark the "super-winna of all planz"?

No. But it does beat "and then I Bless Rush people and just have more stuff." Bless Rushes are fine if you are playing vs one opponent and once he's dead you win the game. Bless Rushes are also fine if you are playing on a very large map and can expect to own 30-40 provinces before you meet your next neighbor (and he'll own 10-15 by then).

But for any other situation, a Bless Rush is just an early game tactic and not a game-winning strategy.

It works like this. On a big map, a Bless nation starts taking a province a turn around turn 2 or 3. By turn 7-8, he's taking two a turn. By 15 he's taking 3 a turn(the rate slows as he needs to start backtracking and moving to the front). By turn 20 when he runs out of indie provinces he attacks his first enemy and he has a ton of crap and he grinds down lesser nations.

On a merely large or medium map, he runs out of provinces and attacks his first enemy on turn 12. Instead of having three or four times the provinces of his enemy, he has maybe 150% the provinces. If the enemy can smash his initial army, chances are good they can be on his doorstep before he can even build a replacement. Game over.

And that's your gamble. You have invested heavily in your early game in the hopes that it will bootstrap you into a strong late game.

But, it still won't win the game. A game-winning strategy sounds like this: "and then I do it, and start taking five or more enemy provinces a turn while losing almost no troops and none of my own provinces."

Casting the Utterdark when properly prepared can do that. Building badass SCs when other people can't can do that. Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that. Building unbreakable armies like Blessed Gandarvas, or Mandaha-backed Demon armies, or armies backed by mages with gem-producing items who cast battlefield-destroying magic that they are immune to can win you the game. Putting up the Astral Nexus and getting a gem income in the hundreds and then using that to get piles of summons or ritual magics can do that too. Running around with ten tough armies who can Astral Travel or otherwise skip over enemy armies and dissect enemy empires can do that. Building Master Enslave mages who usurp entire enemy armies can do that.

The list is long, but "bless rush" is not on it.

So yes, I rate Death higher than Fire because it opens a tactic to winning the game you otherwise might not have. Opinions will vary.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

It doesn't work like that *at all*

As a bless nation I take
1 the second turn.
2 the third.
3 the fourth.

Somewhere after that you start to be limited by geography.
But my usual target for mictlan or lanka is 48 or so territories before the end of year 2. And usually I avoid players as long as I can.

Of course I prefer maps with many adjacent territories. And bless strategies have won me *many* games.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Yeah, hate to say it K, but your progression there sounds more like standard non-bless/SC pretender expansion.
A real bless rush strategy should let you send out a indy-clearing army at least every other turn. And on smaller maps, you're gunning for that first neighbor. (And hoping he isn't doing the same.)

I agree you need more of a plan than bless rush and win your first war, but don't underestimate how much of an advantage a fast start can be.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

More territory translates rather directly into more gem income and more blood income. You will agree that a more effective bless means faster territory gain? But that's only the first step, you need to follow it up with more forts and more sitesearching and more bloodhunting. There's no reason you can't pursue a so-called "game winning" strategy in addition to supercharged expansion with a strong bless.

So yes, a bless means you have "more stuff", but it does not mean simply "more sacreds".

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

You'll note I said "take a province" and not "send out an army". Practical matters such as being able to reach new indies or being forced to go around provinces with something crazy like 30 knights or six Dark Vines or something means you most likely won't be consistently hitting the benchmarks until the turns I outlined. Its more a matter of the geography of your map more than anything else, so you might be much faster if there are lots of connections on your map and no impassable mountains or special indies that require you to merge two or more province-taking armies.

But yeh, on very large maps where you can actually enter 48 indie provinces before meeting a neighbor, you don't need any other tactic. I totally said that. In fact, I wrote a page explaining that.

It is not a coincidence that people believe that Bless Rushing is very powerful AND people like to play on very large maps.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

K- just go and try a F9W9 bless rush. on turn 3, it is entirely possible to take 2 provs with jags. on turn 4, you can take 3, unless you happen to have a capital with only 2 neighbors. you don't circle you cap first of course. if you have 4 neighbor provs, turn 5 your taking 4 provs. just go try it. its insane to think a bless rush nation won't take 2 provs a turn until turn 7

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Connections isn't sufficient. I mean, unless jags are far more awesome than i think they are, a bloodhenge druid province will stop you cold. As will any number of other nasty independents. So if you see nothing but tribal warriors and militia/archer/infantry combinations, sure, i believe you. And while K might underestimate the speed a little, i think you vastly overestimate based on the assumption 1 turns production of jaguars can take *any* indie province.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Squirrel, both you and K are *very* wrong. Jags are just as good as I say they are.
jags laugh at cavs, cat, elephants.

Its the *slingers* you worry about not the elephants. slingers and archers have a tendency to kill your blessing cleric about one time in three.

I'm not *assuming* anything - the last 4 games I have played as mictlan the low was 38 territories by the end of year 2. High was 50 something.

Sure BHD might cause you to leap frog around. But you *want* to leap frog. The idea is capture as many territories as possible and fill in later.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

But were we talking specifically about Mictlan? They aren't the only Bless nation here, and they play a lot differently from Neifleheim or Lanka or one of the Vans (to name a few of the nations who can field a viable Bless Rush).

And how many provinces in this map? How many players?

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

You are so wrong you have no idea.
Look the last game I won as Mictlan - I was fighting Marignon, starting turn 7. As mictlan you don't try to take fortresses - at least not at first - you have to destroy forces - demoralize the opponent. So I was raiding him for 10 turns or so. I attacked my second opponent around turn 15.

If you read any of my threads on mictlan - making a force that will *take* a province costs 235 gp. No more no less. For archers you tag on 3 slaves.

I'm not talking huge sparse maps. I'm talking maps where you have the standard 15 provinces per player.

Try it.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

You said bless rushes aren't a viable strategy. I said I routinely expect to take 48ish by the end of year two with Mictlan (Ea/LA) or Lanka.

So yes, I specifically said mictlan and lanka. Blesses on xheims are for the most part not optimal.

Niefle has a bless strategy - and its a powerful one - but you can't call it a bless rush. Niefles strategy relies on a lack of attrition, and SC's to win. Fun - but not a bless rush. Plus the problem with his bless is capitol dependency - there are some very easy counters.

As for #of players - I dont care. ter/player - I don't care. Anything within the realm of normal play is fine by me. Stronger indie settings make bless nations work better. Smaller maps probably help bless nations more on average.

Map geography matters - lots of choke points makes for a very static game - not suitable to bless rushes.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Yeh, I totally want to trust you based on "that one game where I schooled everyone...."

I play Bless nations all the time. My experience is that on a normal-sized map the other players see your quick expansion and dogpile you before you can get any meaningful lead in provinces. My last three games as Lanka ended for me when 3-4 players attacked me at the same time. Sure, I averaged destroying one and crippling two others, but I did not reach the endgame.

And that's why it is not a game-winning tactic unless you play on a large map. Its a fine tactic for winning fights, but winning a game requires so much more and I'll put my eggs in some other basket.

It seems like you've been getting a free pass from the Dominions community if they are letting you expand on those maps, and I can't take account of "and maybe I get lucky and my opponents are chumps or buds of mine" in any tactical or strategic decisions I make.

On the bright side I now know why you think the way you do, so I don't have to keep arguing with you on the chance you have valuable insights. It's been fun.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Sure, attack the player, instead of the points.

*IF* you play bless nations all the time, you would know that it does not take until turn 7 for a bless nation to conquer 2 territories per turn.

You say its not a game winning strategy except on a large map.
Fine.

How about we settle this on a small map. Say.. Albatha. I'll take EA mictlan. You take any EA nation you want (except grossly unbalanced hinnom). Of course to make your point you'd logically not have to choose a bless nation.

Plain vanilla game.
Standard settings.

You say large benefits bless- I'm giving you small.
You'll know I'm starting with an f9w9 bless at the minimum - you can keep yours secret.
You're even a better player than I. Still won't matter.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Hilarious. Reread the thread, especially the part where I note where Blesses are game-winning strats on very big maps AND small maps with a single opponent.

So if you win, you prove me right. If I win, I am right again by proving that Bless rushes that lose their first battle tend to lose the war.

How about we just skip the middle part and just recognize I'm right?

Or even better, how about we just back away from any trials by combat and agree that our results have varied. I truly believe that you truly believe you are right and the only way you will change your mind is to have a run of multiplay games like I have had.

In all seriousness and semi-friendly jabbing aside, the last time I proved someone wrong about a strategy game by playing a public game with them he ended up in a hospital because he had a nervous breakdown the same day he received the turn where I did the killing stroke to his empire. I'm not going to claim credit for his personal problems, but from then on I decided that being proven right in public is not worth it, especially for a game that is supposed to be about fun.

Peace.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Even on small maps with 4 players, a strong bless can help a lot. With a good bless you can take out one opponent first and then turn on those two other players who are busy fighting each other.
Also, a bless strategy can go well into mid-game (EA T'ien Ch'i is a nice bless nation for that reason: demons of heavenly water nicely complement the warrior of the 5 elements by being tougher and summonable anywhere).

Also, a strong Fire bless doesn't preclude a late game strategy. I like F9S9 with Mictlan for instance. Since I pick S9 you guess that end-game strategies revolve around that rather than Death and I think S9F9 > S9D9 without compromising late game.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

[quote=K;706473]I've played way north of 300 games of dominions.. more than 50 mp games... although only maybe a dozen here. Losing 3-4 games because you're gang banged can happen to any nation and doesn't prove the lack of validity of a bless strategy.

If you say the game averages 10 opponents - heck you rate to lose 9... losing three just proves bless is giving you an advantage =P

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Maybe you play on very different maps than I have. Or maybe we're talking past each other. Obviously there's a difference between taking provinces and sending out armies. I find that becomes more significant later in the indy clearing phase. I don't think I've ever been in a game where, with a little planning I couldn't reliably find provinces to take with at least the 1st and 2nd armies. By the time they have to start back tracking the 3rd army should have targets to attack. And every other turn is slow for a uber bless nation.

From your original post:
I simply don't see how sending out an army at least every other turn can lead to progress like that. Sure there will be some backtracking and some indies you have to bypass or combine to take, but to do that badly most of those armies won't be attacking most turns. If you're that constrained by geography, skip the bless and just use regular troops. You should be able to do as well.

And as I said, you need more of a plan than just bless rush. I'm not disagreeing with that. But you're claiming an uber-bless is ineffective even at what it's good at.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Actually K, from the opinions you've posted in this thread, it looks like a majority of games you've played are either against the AI or players that are giving you a free pass. Your claims sound so out of touch with the way a game with vets would run that I would find it time consuming to comment on every misinformation there. You are consistently just ignoring what people say will actually happen in lieu of a made up scenario where you claim will be true just to somehow back your hilariously incorrect statement that D9 is a better bless to take than F9.

Your impression that a bless strat is somehow worse off in a small map versus a big one due to "dogpiling" is ridiculous as any good player using an uber bless are able to fend off 3-4 non blessed nations early game without very specific counters easily while stomping them one nation at a time with strategic use of chokes and general good planning in expansion tactics. Bless nations are favored by several things, namely difficult research and lower gem frequency but more provinces is certainly not one of them! The moment a bless nation destroys a main expansion force of a neighbor, you not only massively set back his expansion rate significantly but you force him to wall up while you slowly take the ring around his capital. Once your siege sets in, it's leave and forget since the income from a capital shouldn't be underestimated on it's own.

People have given points on why W9/F9 or E9/n4-8 are effective. Your own actual point to back your d9 suggestion was the entirely silly "Rush for utterdark = game winning plan" when any nation without innate death/blood access is already at a massive disadvantage at any death gem stockpiling versus a death nation in this strat.

Then you posit this with a paragraph claiming that game winning strategies are "Building badass SCs ... Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that..."

That whole spiel makes it sound as if you're playing against newbies, AI or players stuck in the stone age of research while you're hitting 9's. On top of the fact that your point of Arcane Nexus shows your inexperience since the spell is either banned or good players WILL dogpile you and significantly more so for casting spells like Nexus or Utterdark than playing a bless nation with an out of the gates province rate.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Yeh, I used a very conservative model to illustrate a point about expansion on different map sizes. In a more reasonable model, or even an ideal model the rates are much higher.

But how am I going to know that I've been placed in a "constrained by geography" part of a map until after I've started?

Oh, you can hold off 3-4 players for a while. You can even take down one of your attackers and take his stuff.

But you won't win the game because while you are embroiled in a war with 3-4 players and holding your own or slowly expanding, other people are in wars with one guy at a time and by midgame and lategame they've been expanding their research and hoarding their gems for globals while you've been sending mages into battle and using gems for spells and combat magic.

But sure, in a perfect game you could win despite all that and take all comers.

You've never scoured provinces with Horrors and taken them with flying demons? Or seen how effective Horrors can be vs armies without heavy mage support, especially when Astral Corruption is occasionally upgrading Horrors? Or shutdown enemy troop production with Rain of Toads?

Its a viable enddgame strategy if you have been turtling for a while and have a stockpile of blood slaves.


Yeh, I don't play in a lot of the games the vets run because I think its pretty cowardly to play in a game where the Utterdark and Astral Nexus has been banned. Removing spells that bring a conclusion to the game just means you want to set up a game that favors your strategies because you are afraid someone might beat you.

I also don't play CBM games. Does that make me "out of touch"?

I've played a lot of multiplayer and as far as I can tell the only difference between vets and noobs is that vets know how dangerous each other are and they either turtle until endgame or they dogpile one player at a time (unless they are neighbors to an obviously weak empire). They also pool gems to knock down game-ending globals and trade a fair bit.

Your experience has varied. I get it. The reason I don't respect you or your opinion is because my experience has obviously varied from yours and on more than one occasion I have pulled off plans that "accepted opinion" consider impossible or unwise.

I get it. I take risks you won't. I play in games where someone might cast the Utterdark, and you won't. I'll cast a game-ending global and risk a dogpile by other guys with equal research because its endgame and I consider it the only time you can effectively fight a dogpile off. I play on medium maps because turtling and fighting indies for 20 turns bores the crap out of me.

Seriously. I understand where you are coming from.

Now you can get the last word in to sooth your pride and ego by reiterating the same unconvincing points. Or not. Your choice. I'm done either way.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Yeah don't argue with K, he's so right you might actually GO MAD from, you know, how right he is. OR DIE.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

D9 Blesses: SERIOUS F'N BUSINESS!

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I have not played as many games as K, Kissblade, CP or theJeff but I think I have played enough to have a healthy respect for heavy bless nations. Quick expansion, not just against indies, but also against other players can often net enough provinces to put them in a very strong position as your nation goes in to the middle game. As more provinces (and capitals) mean more gold (so more mages) and more gems in the medium to long term.

Where I think K has more of a point is that such growth and aggression can lead to gang ups. But it's not a sure thing. While it's in everyone elses interest that the early leader is taken down it is not in most peoples interested that they do much of the actual fighting - except the vital task of grabing provinces after the early leader power has been broken :p So such gang ups are fraught with difficulties. Plus there is seldom just one early leader or heavy blesser for everyone else to concentrate on. Nor is a successful early rusher easy to take down even in the mid game thanks to their large number of sacreds and the boost the extra lands, income and gems give them.

But while successfully using a dual bless only might result in a gang up, casting Utterdark certainly will. You basically kill the chances of many (most) other nations. They are dead unless your global is dispelled. While there may be some trust issues they are dead if they don't cooperate against you. Thats just not the case with an early bless fuelled leader. He only might be ganged up on and often only half heartedly at that.

I think the risk of a heavy bless strategy is not that it succeeds and puts you in such a strong position that enough enemies gang up against you but that it simply fails. An early bless rush is not a sure thing even against a none bless nation. All none bless nations need to have some defence worked out vs bless rushers. And while it is usually in the long run fatal to be the victim of such a rush you can't always be defeated in time (or even at all) to make the cost of the rush pay for the heavy blesser. And of course having paid in design points for a heavy bless sometimes you may find yourself surrounded by other dual bless nations and so with no comparative early advantage.

I think the original poster suggested that a D9 bless was as useful early on as an F9. Despite marshelling some interesting arguments I and most of the responders don't think this is so in most cases. There may be some scenarios where they are equal. But for early expansion F9 is usually a lot better.

But you don't have to buy in to K's Utterdark strategy to accept that having D9 on your Pretender is more useful spell casting wise than having F9. There are exceptions, but if you were offered a D9 Hero or an F9 one most nations would rather have the former.

Nor is it especially controversial to say by the mid to late game the F9 bless - while not useless - is not that big a plus as it was. F9 is at it's most useful in the first couple of years and declines in importance as the game goes on. You need to make it pay early in most cases and it's certainly strong enough to do that if you have the right kind of sacreds. While the effects of a death bless are still useful even in the end game, possibly more so when spells can affect the whole battlefield. Sure it's better to kill enemy SCs, mages and armies than afflict them, but thats still a useful side effect.

You don't see that many D9 blesses. For anyone to spend the points on a 9 or 10 bless of any kind that final bonus has to be good. And the resitable disease/2 AN just isn't. The main boost of the bless is the extra afflictions and the end game high death caster. But you don't need D9 for those. There are very few nations or scenarios I can think of where I would rather have an imprisoned D9 over a sleeping D6 Pretender. Thats still a +200% affliction boost and gets your Pretender up and about much sooner. Quite frankly Death 4 still gives you an affliction bless and opens the door to the death Thugs, Tartarians and the late game death spells at a fraction of the cost and without all the summoning X to call Y to summon Z needed if you have little to no death on your national mages or pretender.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

In my mind, an F9 bless is still useful late in the game, because it increases the amount of chaff the enemy needs to have to protect his mages. (Particularly if your F9 sacreds are buffed with things like SoG/WoS/Fog Warriors/etc.) The limiting factor isn't so much the bless as the fact that most nations don't scale well--unless you have good recruitable-anywhere sacreds (Mictlan) you won't be fighting his chaff with sacreds anyway, making bless irrelevant.

-Max

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Isn't that exactly what you were doing with your whole post ...?

That and you've contradicted yourself so many times in this post and well ... the entire time spent in this thread that I'm not even sure if it's worth the two pages to list and refute them anymore.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Clearly Kissblade doesn't want to risk going blind or losing a limb from K's devastating arguments.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

K turned me into a newt.........I got better.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

He's not going to take credit for turning you into a newt. But it is the reason he doesn't correct people's grammar in public any more.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

As far as I can see it, both the pro- and anti- D9 bless arguments are hedged under a vast stream of "ifs". IF you've been able to collect a huge stock of blood slaves. IF you don't get jumped by 3-4 adversaries. IF you cast utterdark and no-one removes it, IF you can expand freely because geography has been kind. IF no-one has been able to turtle. IF it's a large/medium/small map, IF etc.

All this really tells us is that lots of strategies are viable. The games everyone is talking about have had particular circumstances in game setup, what the other players have done and will also have depended how good they were.