Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can check for yourself, if you want, by clicking on each school in the research screen.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

A possible solution is to limit the amount of points available for scales (and dominion) based on the pretender chosen. This is an extention of the pooled points, but its tied onto each pretender so that you can further try to balance the combatants vs. the mages.

Or you can just make the design costs of pretenders higher, or give some pretenders lesser (or greater) costs for certain scales. Or you can specify a minimum amount of magic that a pretender must take (again this is like the pooled points approach, but it allows a little greater flexibility in how to not underspend the points).

There are a lot of ways to address this problem, of course in MP if you have a good group you can all agree on limits or restrictions before hand, though I figure that takes alot of fun out of it (short of handicapping players).

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. I'm not too fond of 'early rush with stupid god' tactics. Interesting idea also with the presearched provinces.

*Edit: perhaps not a bad idea with 'earmarked' (is this a swedish expression or is it viable in english as well) design points * </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Earmarked is an English expression as well.

I would LOVE to see this added.

Sammual

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) Dispel becoming astral-only.
2) It has the only dome that can actually Last through a barrage of province-crippling spells (not including dome of corruption but it is partly astral, too). Every other dome either dissolves from successful hits or doesn't stop spells.
3) The transportation spells, even if nerfed, are still damn useful.
4) Acashic Record. Good luck finding enough astral sites with astral lvl 1 mages without this spell.
5) Astral just got plenty o' more power spells, Strands of Arcane Power, anyone? (ok I admit games are usually too short to get one off but there's always the danger as research is faster nowadays).
6) I hate seeing my expensive sacred units going down to massed Soul Slays. +1mr for astral lvl 4 actually seems like a rather good deal (can't recall the actual opposition number for magic resistance tests anymore [12?] but I recall every point above 10 helps a bunch).
7) The items, 'nuff said.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) Dispel becoming astral-only.
2) It has the only dome that can actually Last through a barrage of province-crippling spells (not including dome of corruption but it is partly astral, too). Every other dome either dissolves from successful hits or doesn't stop spells.
3) The transportation spells, even if nerfed, are still damn useful.
4) Acashic Record. Good luck finding enough astral sites with astral lvl 1 mages without this spell.
5) Astral just got plenty o' more power spells, Strands of Arcane Power, anyone? (ok I admit games are usually too short to get one off but there's always the danger as research is faster nowadays).
6) I hate seeing my expensive sacred units going down to massed Soul Slays. +1mr for astral lvl 4 actually seems like a rather good deal (can't recall the actual opposition number for magic resistance tests anymore [12?] but I recall every point above 10 helps a bunch).
7) The items, 'nuff said. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) Agree.
2) Not really. The "Dome of Arcane Warding" has time limit. Other domes are good enough. You can stack one dome over another - can we still do it in Dom2?
3) Yes. But it's not so overpowerful anymore. "Farey Trod" seems to be better than "Gateway" now. Also, Death gets the "Stygina Paths" for travelling (Thaumatury 8). The level 9 "Astral Travel" is good but well, it's level 9.
4) Why? How about "Astral Probing" - only Evocation 2? "Acashic Record" has a very high gem cost. It is only useful when you know there are more than one uncovered sites (not the case in Dom2?).
5) I think "Strands of Arcane Power" is the reason to avoid Astral? It seems to be just a massive "Mind Duel" and only one Astral mage will survive without a feeble mind. So, only an Astral King or Queen could afford casting it.
6) Useful. But give them Lesser Fear (Death 4), Regeneration (Nature 9), Protection +4 (Earth 4) are not bad deal neither.
7) What items? I find the most useful items in Earth and Nature paths - "Boot of the Behemoth", "Ring of Regeneration".

I find both Nature and Death are also hugely upgraded. I haven't had enough time check on Blood yet. Astral is good but I don't really find it overwhemingly so.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

I think prot +4 is earth 9, otherwise you just get reinvigoration. And 4 in any other magic gives small boosts to the combat of sacred troops...but if they keep getting soul slayed that doesn't really matter anyway.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Having designed a few gods and struggled to get any worthwhile bless bonuses at all... hmm.

Going from 8 to 9 is insanely expensive, even for gods that start at level 2 in something. It makes strong blessings only accessible to nations that get free design points (Caelum, Jotun, Abyssia, Ermor), or cripple themselves. I think setting the big bonus at level 8 and starting the incremental bonus at level 3 would be more interesting... plus... it would make rainbow mages much more fun.

-Cherry

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, you're right. I kept thinking Earth game incremental protection, but it gives incremental reinvigoration. Not bad for sacred mages, though.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

I have, so far, found two games in which Bless effects were tremendously useful:

1. Ulm "Iron Faith" theme. Quality Black Templars buffed with Earth and Fire bonuses. I often mowed through strong independent armies with a quarter of the forces they had.

2. Jotunheim's "Nieflheim" theme. Those giants are *begging* for bless bonuses. In general, I like to delay creating a prophet until I can field an army of quality troops; changing the number of magic levels I take to accomodate certain bless effects is minor in relation to the bonuses, even if it's only *one* army that gets the effects.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Trying to stick to the subject title.

I've only tested intensively with Ulm and Jotun. Without too many holy units, Ulm can't benefit too much from the bless effect. The "Iron Faith" is a possibility but I don't find it impressive.

But for Jotun, it's significant. The blessed Jotun Woodmen are very powerful. Jotun Scout is sacred, stealthy and cheap enough (50 gp). Being commanders, you can recruit them at any castle. You could, in theory, use them an a stealthy army. You will need a stealthy priest but that can be done by prophetize you first Jotun Scout. And of course, if you used the Niefelheim theme, the Niefel giants would be even more terrifying while blessed.