Re: The Virtue
 

With Arco, what about awake Virtue O3S3H3G3Mf1Mg1 Dom 7 A2S4D5 (CBM)?
A2 allows Cloud Trapeze and Mistform. S4 gives you RoW. D5 gives fear and access to every path but Blood. Also, have someone by Turn 3 to forge helmet/black steel plate.

In vanilla, I'd go with A4D5.

Re: The Virtue
 

D5 over Dom 10 is almost certainly a mistake. Awe +7 is virtually impenetrable by indies, and hard for most players through the midgame. Also, increase the chances you're fighting in dominion =)

I also dislike the points necessary for an extra path, although death is certainly the right one if you do it.

I see no reason to take Mf1 to pay for G3 either. G2 Lk0 is fine.

Re: The Virtue
 

And how long did it stay there?
As mentioned by vfb, cold is a bit safer than heat through the first year. As far as I can tell, the likelihood for temperature change is influenced by dominion level and difference to surrounding provinces as well as season, which means that a low dominion, extreme cold temperature is rather likely to change during the first summer.
I ran half a dozen games with LA ULM cold 3, dominion 5 and the temperature does tend to rise during summer, but in none of those games did I have less than cold 3 for more than 5 of the first 12 months. Having a higher temperature 3 months were just as common as having it 5. (For reference, 5 months at cold 2 and 7 at cold 3 means an average gold cut of about 13% per month for a temperature neutral nation, 3 months an average of 13.75%. There is, however, the possibility to have the temperature go to cold 1 if it stays at cold 2 for a while - I have seen it happen in other instances - and that would make the loss a bit less.)
And in the following years, when your dominion has established itself and the surrounding provinces are going to have at least some cold, you will see higher temperatures less often.

Just for fun I ran 2 games (not much, I know) with an awake dom10 pretender and in neither of those did the temperature budge from cold 3.

And we are talking about a high dominion pretender in the case of the Virtue.

Look, I am all for taking luck, but the fact is that if it is steady gold income you are after, you get a lot more of it by paying for order with luck instead of temperature scales.
Ask yourself why you want O3.
Even going by your calculation of C/H 3 just representing a 12.5% cut (something that my observations do not support) O3 C/H3 would net you a 8.5% gain. O2/Misf2 will net you 14%. Understand that the effects other than income might influence quite a bit. In case you go for O2/Misf2, it makes very much sense to pay for O3 through a step in either direction on the temperature scale - not primarily for the income, but for the reduction of events.

In a similar vein the loss of supplies can hurt a lot. It all depends on how you want to play the nation.

As far as elephants and encumbrance is concerned, I tend to need an extra elephant in extreme temperatures when it comes to taking independents. I am not a very good player, so we can probably chalk it up to that, but however that may be, I need that extra elephant.

Hm, as I said before, I find luck quite beneficial for Arcoscephale and capital only fortune tellers do not really convince me otherwise. Moreover, only LA has decent fortune tellers. The MA Astrologer only has 5% fortune teller and EA does not have any fortune telling at all.

I do not advocate any extra production with Arcoscephale, but calling its units crap is going to far. In every era Arcoscephale has decent units beside tramplers. Certainly better than other than very special independents.

I want to second this.
D5 is nowhere near as effective as dom 10 in case of the Virtue.

Re: The Virtue
 

What is the recommendation by the last two posters of Dom 10 over D5 based on?

As far as I can tell the choice between dom 10 and D5 seems to depend if you want Death access or stronger Dom, and both are valid. From what I can tell it works out about the same in terms of combat effectiveness, at least before soul vortex is researched. (The D has a higher deviation on the morale rolls, which is bad, but also makes the combat shorter, which is especially good vs indies.)

Re: The Virtue
 

At least my recommendation is based on my direct experience with the Virtue both with dom 10 and no death and with dom < 9 and D5.

A D5 Virtue without extra dominion is hit more often by indies than one with dom 10. (This is allowing for the fact that fights tend to be shorter with fear.) Without equipment or a couple of levels of magic researched she cannot afford that.

If you use her asleep and can give her appropriate equipment when she wakes up, this might change, but then she is not nearly as useful for expansion into independent provinces as lot of those will be gone.

It is also a matter of costs. D5 costs 45 points more than dom 10, and while I can often do quite well without death on the pretender I consider dom 4 rather risky.

As a general rule I would recommend to go for a sleeping Virtue if you want D5 on her. If you can find the points to have her awake with dom 10 and D5, I am all for it of course. As the game and research moves on, a Virtue with a number of death levels will be more powerful than one without, dom 10 or not, but the initial cost is much higher.

In CBM there is also the problem of the astral levels. If you want to use her as a SC, you need to add quite a few levels here, or she is unusable against anyone with reasonable access to astral mages some time into the game. This increases her cost even more.

If death access in general is the reason you want death on the Virtue, you could consider simply going with another pretender.

Re: The Virtue
 

My perspective is mostly based on points:effectiveness payoff.

A pretender which doesn't get hit wins combats. Awe +7 is really hard for virtually all independents to hit, and you have air magic for air shield. Its also pretty cheap to get Dom10, and has other benefits (each point of your dominion in the province you attack is +1 to all stats!). (7+14+21+28+35+42 = 147)

Fear +0 isn't *that* much fear, and its really expensive. D1 is 80 points right up front, and its another 16+24+32+40 = 112 points to get to D5, for a total pricetage of 192. That's an extra scale you just lost, and you haven't even bought any more dominion yet. And as the above poster pointed out, you'll take more total hits vs. independents even with the shorter combats.

Basically, I can't justify buying another path with Virtue because its so expensive. And you get perfectly good combat buffs with astral (personal luck, body ethereal) - which you're going to want to make S4+ for protection from mind hunting anyway. You don't need the death to be an SC later (although its inarguable you'd be stronger with it), but A+S is a good combination for buffing as is. (And if you take A4 you can also do things like drop Fog Warriors with a booster or extra gem - a booster you can forge yourself).

Edit:
In non-CBM I'd just take Air, or more likely, wouldn't take Virtue at all.

They're crap for their high resource cost. Might as well get the free 120 points for Sl3 and buy the much more reasonable indies who may be less effective, but also don't require tons of resources to build. I mean, its not like your national troops are going to win you any midgame wars, and you have an indie expansion unit, so they fill no niche except chaff. Indies are perfectly acceptable as chaff.

Re: The Virtue
 

Ah, fair enough, testing does show that the extra awe is the way to go for early combat effectiveness, I stand corrected.

That being said, MA Mari might still be justified in going for a fear build, since they don't have any SC chassis with innate D magic. The Cyclops is still likely a better choice, but a D virtue could at least be considered.

Re: The Virtue
 

Nah, MA Mari needs a Dom-10 D5 Wyrm!

Re: The Virtue
 

I experimented with it some time ago and it worked decently, but I have not had any opportunity to test it in a real game, so take it for what its worth.

Based on my experiments I recommend having her asleep. As mentioned earlier I just cannot get the performance I need out of her for indie expansion purposes without dom 10. And an awake dom 10 A4D5 Virtue is point-intensive enough that I had real troubles a bit into the game.
The pretender is powerful enough herself, but she cannot be everywhere and she really does not help winning fights when she is not there. You need her to start a death economy and summon chain, which may take quite some time. In all probability she will also need to help with developing an air economy and since you have nothing but the occasional mage with a single earth pick you have to pay premium for everything you forge if you are not able to trade for a hammer. Essentially I was playing Marignon with crappy scales and an absent SC for stretches of the game. Late mid-game or so everything came on-line nicely, but I very much doubt I would have gotten that far against real opponents.

Having her asleep saves me from having to take too much of a hit in the scales-department and though indie expansion is slower, it is no catastrophe, as Marignon can do decently without pretender help against indies.

I would be very much interested to see what a better player could do with it, though.

I really do not understand this.

First off, nothing prevents you from going for S3 and buying national troops. Sure, you will get less of them, but you will get less indies also.
And if you just want a lot of cheap bodies, your Peltasts are light infantry with shields and javelins for 6 resources. If you want something heavier in MA or LA you have the Hypaspists. They are like indie heavy infantry only with better stats all around - including mapmove 2 and insanely high morale for a non-sacred unit. They are expensive gold-wise, but you were complaining about resources, so that should not be a problem.
In EA there are the Icarid warriors that you have a hard time finding something equivalent to in indie provinces. They do cost a hefty amount of resources, but then again, they are hardly just chaff.

My point here is that resource-wise Arcoscephalean units are not especially expensive for what you get. Of course, if you just look at Myrmidons and Hoplites everything seems to cost a tonne of resources, but those are elite heavy infantry units without widespread equivalents in independent provinces. You do not have to buy those if you do not want them, as there are lower resource national troops to buy.

Re: The Virtue
 

Re: Amorphous
Maybe I'm thinking of LA Arco. I could swear I looked at an arco line up and it was all high resources. (Except for slingers of course, which are worthless compared to indie archers).

Attached (assuming i'm doing this right) is an plague hitting Lanka on turn 1 (message start of turn 2). O3 Sl3 H3 D3 Mf2 Mg1 scales, non-CBM.

I also saw a vampire count attack my capitol on turn 3 about 4 test games ago, although I remembered just after I overwrote it with a new test game that I was supposed to be saving such things. (Amusingly, said attack was chased off by monkey PD! Poo fling powers, activate!)