Making the Armageddon God
 

Always trying to think of wild and crazy strategies, i came to the idea of what i guess i'll call the "Armageddon Pretender" strategy. Of course.. it may not work very well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Basically the idea is to take -3 in every scale, buy the cheapest castle you can, and pour all your points into magic for your Pretender. Making him/her/it so powerful he shatters alternate dimensions every time he moves.

Depending upon which Pretender you choose you can i think get at least 3 paths up to 9, more or less depending on starting costs and stats.

I assume the only nation that could have a ghost of a chance surviving under such harsh scales would be AE/SG Ermor.

So, which Pretender to pick and which magic paths to take? Is this viable? ^^

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

It's pretty standard for AE/SG Ermor, though usually it's better to have magic and luck instead of drain and misfortune.

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

I run this as a fairly standard fair Ermorian god: Turmoil, Sloth, Death, all at 3, with Luck and Magic usually in my favor for SG, and I can even go for Drain in AE. But mostly, Luck isn't a bad thing, with Turmoil. Losing half of your zero population doesn't really bother you, but having your temples and labs explode every other turn will become annoying really fast.

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So, you are describing the standard undead Ermor pretender. I have not heard of anybody using such a pretender for other nations than Ermor, but for Ermor, everybody does it. (With possible variance in the luck and magic scale depending on taste and whether you play Ashen Empire or Soul Gate)

In my first MP game as Ermor, I ran with "Darkbringer, Goddess of Dark Magics, Lady of Ashes, She Who Opened the Box of Woe, The Adversary, the Everburning One", who was a Lich Queen with Soul Gate, dominion 10, an Ermorian Citadel, Scales -3/-3/-3/-3/-3/+3, and Fire 4, Air 3, Water 3, Earth 3, Death 9, Nature 3.

(We were playing on a fairly small map, so it was important to get a dominant dominion that would fight the opposition right from the start)

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

I played a number of test games using this strategy. It actually can be quite useable. If you take very low dominion then you can arrange to always be expanding OUTSIDE your dominion. If you choose a race with good sacred units then you can really pile on the bless-bonuses. You might get 9/9/9 but I usually went with 4's across the board and then as many 9's as I could (I was able to get all 4's and 2 9's)

You have to be a power expander since your home territorys are going to fall to ruin behind you. And not all the minuses are all that bad either. You will be taking a cheap castle so -3 on productivity isnt a major killer as long as you build new (cheap) castles outside of your dominion. Same with labs and researching. Having -3 magical isnt totally bad since it can help protect your home area against attacks. With so many magical areas your god is a maximum site-searcher anytime you have to stop for a minute and with enough gems you can make lots of equip which can offset the lack of major research. Max heat/cold also can be defensive if you make proper use of it. You plan on doing all your battles ahead of your dominion anyway.

[ March 21, 2004, 14:14: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

a mictian strategy

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

DLC hit the spot. I think mictlan could really profit from this one...

And gavin, there are plenty of summons that require high magic skills. Being able to summon several of them from different paths of magic is definately a good way to make use of a pretender with really high magic (in addition to that mictlan already has a plenty of sacreds.)

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

A Knight of the Unholy Sepulchre blessed with +4 att, +4 def, flaming weapons, 75% shock resist, 80% air shield, 50% quickness would be pretty nasty I suppose. Still a bit fragile however, and methinks an Ermorian pretender should have more breadth (max site searching for alchemy income, free castles, what-not) than depth. *shrug*
With others, might be doable on a low-indy setting.

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wouldn't think that they would benefit that much. Their sacred troops, while numerous, are not particularly durable, so you must be able to replace them. You also need a large number of non-sacred troops to make up the rest of your army, since you will suffer losses as Mictlan. A turmoil scale really hurts you, since you need to buy large numbers of troops, and because your mages are extremely expensive. Sloth is playable, but essentially restricts you to armies of eagle warriors and jaguar warriors. A death scale of more than 1 is not a good idea for a nation that relies on large amounts of troops and blood magic. You could go to heat 2 I suppose, but you are already strapped for cash at order 3 and heat 1. A magic drain scale could work, if you can keep your dominion out of a research province, but that will put you seriously behind the research curve when compared to what magic 2 mictlan priests can accomplish.

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

Some of the Mictlan sacreds are also capital-only, right? That might cause problems in a map of decent size, or a fairly slow game.
If they survive to build up enough of a blood machine for summons (cross-breeding for bulk fodder, say) than it might be less of an issue, but then there's not many units left to bless (other than angelic types), with sacred non-Void summons being rather rare.

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

Yes Jaguar Warriors are the only holy national troops available outside the Mictlan capital.

The real power of my Mictlan forces, however, is demonic.

I don't find myself really needing to build particularly large armies, nor for my main human troops to do a whole lot of fighting, or to suffer many casualties. About the time the enemy troops start to engage my main human troops, the enemy gets mightily abused by all sorts of demons coming from all directions.

PvK

[ March 21, 2004, 20:17: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Making the Armageddon God
 

The problem is that your SuperPretender can still only cast one ritual/forge one item/attack one province per turn, or cast one spell/round in combat. This is why it is better to have several specialists, like arcosephale's mystics, each with high magical ability in one or two paths, rather than one uber Rainbow Mage. You can also load the specialist with the boosters specific to his specialist school, whereas your Rainbow mage won't have enough equipment slots for all the boosters he could potentially use.

Trying to get three level 9 blessings for your sacred troops might be worth it in the long run, otherwise your pretender would only be paying off in small, quickly resolved games. And even then, since you wouldn't have much time to research the high level spells, a melee SuperCombatant would no doubt work just as well.

For spellcasting fun, you would probably do better to have a pretender capable of casting Wish with a few astral boosters like the crystal coin, then hunt for astral sites and build clams until your pretender can "Magic power" wish his or her way to magical supremacy.