Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Not sure if you're playing single player games or multiplayer games, but computer opponents have a really tough time expanding into water provinces. If you're finding the game too easy you can switch to one of the land nations.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Single player, and I like sitting in the water and hiding, thank you very much!

I'm still figuring the game out... just realized I've wasted my time researching blood magic, for instance. Also, I researched construction to the maximum before learning that all I needed for an Amulet of the Fish was a little air magic and construction 4.

I'm not quite ready to embarrass myself in multiplayer yet, give me a week.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Hm i mainly use 3 kinds of pretenders:

Awake dragon, for speeding up expansion and often with lvl 9 for the bless too if i have useful bless troops.

Works well with nations like mictlan or vanheim.

Imprisioned oracle or fob for uberbless, cool for rushes. E.g. Mictlan f9w9b6 FoB.

Dormant SC god, like the risen oracle. When you have researched your first buffs you have your god then too and the 150 extra points give you 3 more scales http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
As SC god i only pick immortals, the other SC gods are imho too fragile now in Dom3.
The immortal SC god dies too, but because he is immortal it is not problematic then. And if he wiped out 50% of the emeny army before dying he did a good job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Dragons? They seem to suck a la pre CB mods ( a lot of pretenders seem to be once again massive suckage, or massive bonus - look at WItch King). I've found a couple of pretenders that rock for awake pretenders though to speed up the early conquering.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Agreed. Low dominion, high path cost, + the extra points you need to make a dragon awakened, dragons are REALLY on the low end of desirable pretenders here.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Eh dragons seem to suck maybe, but Kiss and Caine, keep in mind the doubled research costs and how difficult it is to get your 2nd castle.

So the dragon is i think the only pretender that can go on expansion on turn 2.

Fireshield is enchantment 3 now. For a GK you need imho fireshield and ironskin, that is 2x level 3 research, that takes quite a bit to be researched, 2x 200 rp.
Also the GK is a bit nerfed, only 2 dominion and 120 points.

Also taking the lvl 9 bless for your dragon is somewhat affordable.
Imho the dragon is a good chassis.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

What's this Witch King you speak of?

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

Hm, I've never used dragon pretenders in Doms 2. tbh, but Im gonna try them out in Doms 3. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

They work best with "weak" indies.
In my Dom2-Blitzes in the channel indy 6 was normally the default setting.
Now we take either indy 6 or leave it on the dom3 default, which is indy 5.

If you play with indy 8-9 dragons do probably not work well.

But with indy 5-6 they very often rout the indy melee troops with their breath attack http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

In yesterdays blitz i used a w9 dragon and he did conquer 1 province per turn for me from turn 2-12 ca., then i ran into opponents.
The dragon helped me a lot there imho, i was able to conquer the most indy provinces in this 7 player blitz. So i could afford to make naps with my 2 neighbors and could comfortably build up and start blood hunting (i took mictlan EA).

With the dragon you usually get more indy provinces. And after that for raiding he is somewhat useful too.

A dragon usually means 5-15 more provinces then your enemy if he did not also take a dragon.
But some nations are better at expanding as others.
So the above statement is only true if you both have a nation that can expand about as well as your opponents nation.

If you want to try a lvl 9 bless strat the dragon is optimal normally imho.

Re: Pretender, awake, dormant or imprisoned?
 

I agree with Boron. In Dom2 Dragons were rather 2nd-grade pretenders as they weren't the best chassis for bless-9 and neither were they flexible enough for other uses.
But yet when I played Dragons I was rather happy, you would get either a rather cheap level-6 dragon, or the same at level-9, maybe more costly than optimal pretender, but in all cases able to eat indies right from turn 2, or kill easily enemy pretender before turn 20 or so when they get fully equipped.
In Dom3 I also think they're an even more viable choice when taken Awake or maybe Dormant.