Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favorite
 

I will be starting a 6 player PBEM game soon.
Looking to run a different race other than Ryleh.
Will be playing Karin map, 3 starting provs., indys at 7, rich world, occurences at 55, others kept at standard.
If you choose to help the feeble minded (me), please list you setup with the following:
Race/Pretender form/Magic/Scales/Dominion/Castle.
I am not much for risking my god in battle but if you insist that this is the best for your suggested race setup then I will give it a shot.
If possible, please list reasons for setups so i can try to learn what to look for in the future so I will not have to bother you again.

Many thanks,
Glock30

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favorite
 

if your playing style isn't about risking your god, perhaps a rainbow mage or sphinx? or immortal (lich, pheonix, etc.)

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Marignon pheonix 9 air Order2 dom 6 watch tower.
Expand using xbows+wind guid+knights+blessing, its fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Latter on add in commuinions of fire blasting astral mages.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Vanheim with a F9 W9 Golden Naga seems pretty strong in my test game. It's all about blessed Vans baby!

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

You get this cheaper with a moloch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Then use a Moloch. Regardless, your Vans (backed by sacred hasted mages casting 2 lightning bolts per round) will cut through independents like a hot knife through butter, and, if you're lucky, you'll capture an enemy capital or two in the early game.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

I have to agree with the last part of that quote: it is all about blessed Vans!

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

What is with people and PBEM games? Are you trying to make more work for yourself? Why not just run a regular server with just quickhost or something?

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

My own favourite design for a Pretender; it can work for virtually any nation, provided they come with the basic Pretender type.

Meet the Virtue! The Virtue is effectively one of the cheapest Pretenders, with a standard Dominion value of 4, and costs 50 points. She is also fully mobile (and flies), and comes with all the item slots. She does lack hitpoints, or a "saving throw" ability like Immortal, and so the trick will be to avoid being hit in the first place (Awe helps in this regard, especially against independents).

The Virtue lives and dies with her magic paths. In the standard game, she comes with Air 2, and nothing else; getting any other path costs 80 points. She will pay dearly for those new paths, but they will help her greatly. Let's look at all the paths:
- Fire is not the most useful path around, as it has few spells requiring a high level in the path, and few of its spells are useful in melee early on. Good Fire spells for expansion are Fire Darts (gets more and more dangerous for higher levels of Fire magic) and Fire Shield.
- In expansion, Air gives access to Mirror Image (greatly reduces the odds of taking a first hit), Mistform (greatly reduces the damage taken when you *are* hit), and offensive spells like Lightning Bolt and Shockwave. Air also gives access to Storms, Flying, and has some very nice summoning rituals (Call of the Wind is nice when you need some fodder, Air Queens are very nice).
- Water grants to Quickness and Breath of Winter, speeding up your Pretender and giving her a passive damage "weapon". It is by no means necessary however, especially as Water is the easiest path to raise.
- Earth gives to Ironskin/Invulnerability, good spells to raise your protection. A few points of Earth also ensures access to Dwarven Hammers/Boots of Earth, and allows the forging of Staves of Elemental Mastery with Air.
- Astral has many useful spells, and is one of the most versatile magic paths around. As such, it is often a good idea to have Astral magic. In expansion, Astral gives spells like Personal Luck (50% of avoiding any attack), Body Ethereal (75% of avoiding any attack, but can be easily countered by your fellow players), Astral Weapon and Astral Shield, among others. Astral has many other uses, such as powerful battle enchantments (Will of the Fates), teleporting spells, most items related to raising or lowering magic resistance, all around path boosters, among other things.
- Nature offers the Regeneration spell for expansion, but not much else beyond that. Nature is another path that can be useful, due to many rituals and life-safers items (regeneration heals the unit, and reduces the odds of getting an affliction).
- Death grants the Soul Vortex spell at Alteration 6, but nothing too useful early on. However, Death is another powerful path, with lots of rituals and items: Banelords and Wraith Swords are common uses of Death gems, for example. Death is also the easiest path to boost, if you can lay your hands on the Sceptre of Dark Regency (an artifact giving a +3 bonus to Death).
- Blood magic is useless for expansion, and difficult to use in battle. However, it offers some very good items, and rituals galore: Ice Devils are a favourite of Blood users, along with Blood Thorns (or Hell Swords) or Soul Contracts (gives you one devil every turn). Blood is easier to increase than most other paths though, as you will have an easier time finding blood slaves, so empowerment can be a solution.

A note on path levels and blessings: starting from level 4 in any given path onwards, you will gain additional blessings, varying depending on the path. Nature 4 will allow your holy troops to go berserk if they are hit, and so you will likely want to stay away from Nature if all your mages happen to be blessed. Otherwise, they could all decide to get into melee, and they will not retreat once they are engaged. Likewise, if you take any Astral at all, you will want to get lots of it: Magic Duel is a low-level spell that targets Astral mages, and the higher level mage has the best odds of winning. The catch is, Magic Duel does not seem to take into account magic boosts coming from items/spells, so you will want a very high level of Astral magic. Level 6 is the minimum I would settle for in Astral magic.

You should pick your paths depending on what you want to do, and on your nation: I usually go with the sorcery paths my nation lacks, Blood excepted. My Virtue setup could be along those lines: Air 5, Earth 3, Astral 6, Death 4. This Pretender is expensive to get, but can take provinces on her own, can do a good job at (re)searching, and has a wide array of magic at her disposal. She will often spend the early game taking provinces (and looking for sites once in a while), but should be kept well protected later on, until she is *really* needed on the battlefield.

A possible battle setup could be: Mistform, Air Shield (if appropriate), Body Ethereal, Invulnerability (or Ironskin), Mirror Image, Personal Luck (if Air Shield has not been taken), and Attack Rear. This results in a powerful melee fighter, good at trashing the independents, and able to do damage to other opponents. However, both Mistform and Body Ethereal are negated by magic weapons, so you should be careful when using her against other players (if you choose to do so).

Outside battle, she has access to many useful rituals, especially if she can get that Death artifact (bringing her to Death 7). What she will do with all those paths will depend on the gems you find: some ideas are Air Queens (powerful air mages and fighters, especially in a storm), Golems, the quest for other powerful artifacts, high-end Astral rituals (Wish, at Astral 9, in particular), Tartarian Titans... All of this means a lot of research however, so you should focus on that particular area of the game.


Now comes the fun part: the rest of the design. If you tried the design above, you will notice it costs a lot of design points. You will need to gain back some points with poor scales, but thankfully it can be done without much harm. Standard scales are as follow:
- Order 3: Gives you more gold, and reduces the odds of bad events happening.
- Some Sloth, or Sloth 3: If you are not planning on recruiting a *lot* of mundane units, you will probably want to take some Sloth.
- Heat/Cold: As per your nation preference, though you may want to go all the way to 3 for nations having a preference of 2 (Heat/Cold will be affected by climate).
- Death: I would stay away from Death if possible, as a Death scale tends to result in more common famines. It will slowly reduce your population, but the effects should only matter for games lasting a long time.
- Misfortune 2: You will still have *some* chance of getting a hero, and with your Order scale, bad events should be uncommon. They *may* still happen however, but even Luck 3 will not protect you from the odd lab burning on turn 2.
- Magic 2: Magic increases your magic research speed, and is a good thing to have. You should aim for Magic 2 or even Magic 3, but the effects of the Magic scale are less and less important as you increase it.

Dominion value should be as high as possible, somewhere between 6 and 8 for an average nation. It will ensure you are not killed because of a weak Dominion, and Dominion 6/7 should still be cheap enough.

Castle: The Watchtower is a common choice, as it is very cheap. It costs a mere 300 gold and no design point, and takes only two turns to build. Another usual choice is the Castle, at 80 design points and 450 gold: unlike the Watchtower, the Castle has decent stats, but you will pay for them. Other castles may be interesting depending on your nation, but their uses tend to be more specialised.

So, this setup would be:
A Virtue, with Air 5/Earth 3/Astral 6/Death 4, Watchtower
Scales: Order 3, Sloth 3, Heat/Cold 1 (or your nation preference, if it is not the standard), Death 3, Misfortune 2, Magic 2. Dominion value of 7.

I used that setup with Arcoscephale, and it seems to be working quite well, while being difficult to use at full efficiency (I am pretty sure I missed many possible uses of all these paths). Still, the basic idea behind this design should be helpful to you, especially the mix of raw power (in expansion at least, as items will be needed against the other players) and versatility.

This it not necessarily the most cost-effective Pretender around, but it should do well. Other interesting "hulls" for a similar design are the Ghost King or the Phoenix: the Ghost King can get new paths more easily than the Virtue and is stealthy, while the Phoenix is Immortal (it cannot be killed inside friendly Dominion).

I think I will add another design for Arcoscephale, this time on a different direction, and without as much rambling as that one.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Wow....thanks Al....awesome help there!

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

A couple more points I had forgotten:

- This setup is vulnerable to flyers, as most (if not all) combattants relying on spells to have a fighting chance. You should stay clear from provinces with flyers (Raptors and Tritons mostly) before you can get a Staff of Storms.

- The Virtue can also be used as a spellslinger, relying on Orb Lightning or Shockwave. In this case, she should have some reinvigoration, either in the form of an item, or the Summon Earthpower spell. If a commander is too fatigued, anything can be a threat, including Ghost Wolves: fatigue lowers defence and protection, and that's never good news.

- That setup also results in a few minor boosts for blessed units, namely a weak Air Shield and a +2 bonus to Magic Resistance. It is nothing to write home about, but +2 to MR is nice enough, especially as it stacks with all other bonuses to MR.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Take Mictlan, do a F9W9 moloch, turmoil 3 sloth 3 heat 3 drain 3 growth 3 luck 3, dominion 7, watchtower.

Just build hordes of jaguar warriors and eagle warriors and overrun your enemies with sacred hordes of doom http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

As long as the map is not bigger than around 80 provinces and unless you don't fight caelum/man/vanheim or pythium your opponents should have nothing to beat you in the first 20-30 turns.
I mentioned those 4 nations because they are all 4 airnations and thus can research seeking arrow quickly which will hurt your priests and thus eventually stop your advance or at least delay it significantly.
The longer the game continues the more vulnerable you get.

But playing with a dualbless is great fun and very exciting in the earlygame and midgame. Can you overwhelm your opponents quickly enough? Or do they find something to delay you long enough to develop countermeasures?

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favorite
 

Alneyan
Very good and informative post, thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

However for the setup you describe I don't think the Virtue is the best choice ; a GK is cheaper and immortal, a Titan is marginally cheaper and more sturdy (they dont'fly naturally though).
And your scales are real crap, you'll have a hard time getting conventional early game armies, then you'll have decreasing gold due to heavy Death scale...

Personally I use high path costs Pretenders mostly for focused magic/high level bless (F9A9 Virtue, or even S9F9 Oracle) , and prefer to have 3, less often 4-paths SCs out of Nataraja, Moloch, Titans or other high-HP chassis.

Immortals are somewhat special as they allow to get reusable killers, and thus profit from having varied magic (think of it as "payloads" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ).

Then you have the good'ol Rainbow, that you can mix with Immortal chassis to have very effective pretenders out of a GK or Lich.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Ghost Kings are not immortals PDF, so you cannot get Immortality *and* the cheap cost of a GK. If you do want an Immortal, it will have to be the Phoenix or the Vampire Queen (or the Bog Mummy for a nation specific Pretender, or the immobile that is Immortal and whose name I have forgotten... the Glyph, I think). But I agree there are better choices than the Virtue, particulary the Phoenix, but what can I say? I simply love the Virtue.

Note, however, that the scales are pretty much standard fare, at least in those games here, and you can certainly do very well with them. If you use Zen Scales mod, it may be another matter however (I never tried those scales under the Scales mod). Some national units can be recruited, especially archers, or mercenaries can do the fighting, but the main fighting force will be the Pretender herself, as soon as Alteration 2 comes online, with the other units handling the weak independents. Sloth 3 gives... let me see, -30% resources or so, and resources are what will slow you down while recruiting those heavy infantry units. Still, the difference is not that important, and national units are not a necessity. Jurri won a game with Jotunheim while recruting a minimal number of national troops, and those were mostly fodder in the very first few turns (before turn 5 I think).

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Spending 240 points = 6(!) scales on making a Virtue a semi-rainbow pretender is ridiculous.

This can only work with low indies (<7) and >12 prov/player, with easy expansion and no early threat, and easy research.

With stronger indies, you'll run into lots of provinces which the Virtue cannot take alone or with just a handful of crappy units. And with a low number of provinces per player, every prov you cannot get (and have to go around) makes you loose momentum in comparison to the other players.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Stronger indies mostly increases the numbers of troops you will face, not their quality. Once a virtue has mistform and mirror image (with sufficient air magic) most indies won't hurt her. Once you've also researched shockwave, there are few indies that she won't conquer very quickly. I will quite happily take on knight and longbowman provinces at indies 9 with an A9 virtue. She'd be scripted as: mirror image, mistform, attack, shockwave, shockwave, cast spells.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

I'd probably go Air Shield, Mirror Image, Mistform, Attack, Shockwave, Cast Spells.

But Graeme's advice is good.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Air shield is good except when your enemy doesn't have archers and you've reasearched alteration 5. Then it gets you routed and killed when you cast a single false horror.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Assumption archers: Positive. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

What they said. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Even a Virtue going in melee with her buffs can work very well, though Air spells alone are unlikely to be sufficient (the only point is to get experience faster, I believe).

On the contrary, the better the independents, and the harder the research, the better the Virtue does: if independents are on level 3, then any small army will take them down, making fighting Pretenders useless in expansion. And the Virtue absolutely loves the Knights.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Well, I surely don't play at the highest competitive level, in our games (std research, indies 6-8, usually 20+ provinces/player) having "correct" scales are more the norm.
Additionnaly, from my experience, I've a difficult time using a non-immortal pretender (or very sturdy but suboptimal ones like Dragons) alone for initial expansion : you don't have any items, and not the necessary buffs (Alt3) before at least turn 5 (120 RP total, counting a 20 RP pretender + 1 additional 5 RP mage/turn), so you've a serious risk of having your pretender get afflictions (pray it's not Feeblemind !) or even being killed by a lucky Barb or Knight blow...
If you play a virtue how can you manage any non-militia indy force before you get Orb Lightning ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

I've just recently tried a Virtue, and was really satisfied with how she fared against the indies 6. She had Air 6, Water 1, Earth 3. Scripted to 'quickness, mirror image, air shield, stone skin, attack archers.' In a few turns it was iron skin instead of a stoneskin and mistform. Then I researched construction 4 and made her lucky & ethereal. Most of the time she wasn't hit a single time during combat.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Mistform+Mirror Image+Air Shield (if appropriate) is the standard defensive setup, and it works very well. Rainbow Virtues will add two more buffs, usually Ethereal and Luck, or the Earth protection spells. Then you can jump in melee, as the Virtue packs a lot of punch: that Flambeau is nasty. Alteration 2 is all you need to take most provinces, but risks are higher, and so I tend to concentrate on medium provinces until Alteration 3 kicks in.

The other way is to go in melee and cast Shockwaves (the AI will do that automatically when faced with swarms). This results in very quick routs, considering that Shockwave deals massive damage in a wide area, but I think you get less experience when playing as a spellslinger.

The melee setup also has the advantage of making it possible to smack down some enemy Pretenders, like the Vampire Queen or the Ghost King... but any of the three will be slaughtered when attacking anything flying and not casting any buff (well, the Vampire Queen will survive if she is in friendly Dominion). If those Pretenders are defending, it might still work out.

There is always a risk of getting into heavy trouble, mainly because of random spellcasters, but Immortality is not a guarantee of being 100% safe. If the Pretender finds itself in a province outside friendly Dominion (because the province was in friendly Dominion on the last turn, for example), that Pretender is at risk, Immortality or not. A Teleporting enemy commander is all it takes to kill your Immortal. It's not *that* likely to happen, but neither is getting Feebleminded by the independents.

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

On the matter of scales: Order 3/Sloth 3/Death 3/Misfortune 2/Magic 2 (or 3) is the common combination in a standard game, but it may change depending on the specifics of the game. Games that promote a permanent state of war will see more Productivity for example, as casualties are expected to be high in such games.

But even when planning to fight major wars, poor scales can make sense: in Entwined Destiny (6 teams of 2), Mictlan went with quasi Ermorian scales, and recruited massed Jaguar Warriors. They had a triple blessing of Fire 9, Astral 9 and Water 9, making them fearsome indeed. Mictlan did very well, won the game with their Ulmian ally, and I would think they were most powerful nation at the end of the game. A shame you cannot have four level 9 blessings though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
 

Well, I stay away from Death simply because I'm a huge fan of the RPG's, and I don't like to fancy myself as a doombringer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Takes the fun out of the game for me.