Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Entirely as Max said.

If your sacred has generally fairly average non-bless stats and is attacking fairy average opponents, F9 will cause damage-dealing at up to twice the rate D9 will.

D9 gets you a far better magical Pretender and other situational benefits, but if your tactic is an explosive early expansion using sacreds, you'd take the F9 bless.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Or to express things another way... what bless and pretender paths you want depends more on your nation (and its sacreds) than on the perceived relative power of the blesses. Arguing that one is generally better than another seems silly, as statements like "any time you take a X9 bless, Y9 would be better" are just begging to be proven false.

In my experience, Dom3 is not a game that bears generalisations well.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

You, Sir, are demonstrably wrong!

Sorry. I couldn't resist the meta.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I have always wanted to use a fire and flee strategy to try out a death raiding strategy.

Just time and time (and time and time) I cannot make it effective. Whether going with blessed monkey archers, or commanders armed with bows of war - it seems that character actions are too valuable to waste trying to run an attrit strategy.

Ie, just better to try to win.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

I am willing to duel any moderately skilled dominions player to prove the premise that F9W9 is better than D9W9. I will play La Mictlan to prove the premise.

Moderate being defined as non hall of fame.

Any race is fine - any other design options, so long as the opponent has (at least) D9W9.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

What I love about this game is that the blesses are so "all in" balanced that debating them can go on for many forum pages. One can argue that even a "weak" B9 or a9 bless can be mitigated by air and blood's spell power and flexibility.
My $0.02, ;)
-ssj

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Why W9? D9 synergises better with ranged sacreds and mages, which aren't many n LA, and W9 is worthless for mages and archers.
I wonder whether D9 increases the affliction chances of Pythium hydras' poison clouds. I think D9E8 or D9N4 with Pythium are better than D9W9 for instance...
Also, do you think a F9 bless will help you if your opponent picks Abysia?

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Well, if your plan is "on turn 35 I toss down an Utterdark so big that it won't go down even if an S9 is in this game and people alchemize and pool thier available gems, and then anyone without 10K gold in the bank and/or doing Blood in a serious way for the last 25 turns will be worthless by turn 40", then wasting Death gems or even Astral gems on boosters is just you not doing your plan as well as you could and increasing your risk of failure. Even with Hammers or other Forge bonuses, those gems are better spend in your Utterdark if you've decided that's how you are going to win the game.

The fact that a D9 also helps your sacreds in combat is just a bonus.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

With all respect K, that's an argument like saying a sledgehammer is better than a chainsaw at felling trees because the sledgehammer is better at breaking rocks.

Re: Fire vs. Death heavy bless
 

Lol. I rate the magic I put on a Pretender on how likely it is to let me win the game and the potential Bless is just one part of that.

To use another tree analogy, you need to see the forest for the trees to play this game. Focus only on how a thing lets you win individual battles and you will probably not win the game.