Most Usefull Research Path...
 

I was just wondering what people's research preferences were. I know that the best research path depends on what civilization you choose or what your strategy is but lets think of it as universal Usefulness...

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

why, if ONLY ONE of them I would of course research blood...

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This question so much depends on the nation you are playing. If you are Man, Evocation can be usefull, but it Evocation won't help you as much if you playing as Pangaea.

Also Construction by itself is useless, but you almost always need so you can cast spells in the other research paths.

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

Far from it, there all kinds of things to with construction, though it works much better with a good chassis to put equipment on.

Construction has summons, good globals, can approximate some evocation through items, can equip SCs, and especially with unique magic items can fill many other gaps. It's true that it is better for some paths than others, but less so than almost any other school.

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I forgot about the summons and the globals. You could create golems from the construction path and equip it with items, to make SC's. Plus you can cast forge of the ancients, and mast produce evocation items. Then there is the spell that enhances armor, and weapons of sharpness.
I will vote for that path.

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I think construction path is one of the most usefull stand-one path. However I voted for Conjuration because even with great items if you have superior summoned units you can take anyone.

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A properly equipped SC can deal with pretty much any summons without equipment. And conjuration lacks much in the way of SC counters.

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I chose construction because all nations can get something useful out of it.

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Construction is invaluable for all nations.

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So what you're saying, is that if you give your SC no equipment, they'll be properly equipped? XD

Jazzepi

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

He was saying "A properly equipped SC can deal with anything and everything that isn't properly equipped."

I voted for Enchantment. Domes, nice summons, some very good globals... It only lacks damage spells oustide Flaming Arrows and Foul Vapors and such.

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I would agree with Endoperez... Enchantment .

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I was one of the few who went for Thaumaturgy.
I have had SCs taken out with a lucky casting of Rage (they hit themselves) despite mr of 23.

You get most of the site search spells. great spells to counter undead. Paralyze / mind burn/ soul slay/ Enslave, comminions, soul drain, vortex of returning/ teleport/ returning. Lots of battle field debuffs.

all very nice.

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Blood is incredibly useful, cause it combines a lot of different abilities, such as, reinvigorating the user of it, increasing life span, even healing and mind control and still summons and has damaging aspects.

except for the hunting and the few nations that get blood.

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Construction, useful for every nation bar none.

Interesting that in what is essentially a wargame, evocation magic has faired so badly. I say interesting but I am not surprised, thugs/SC's tend to win everytime over, 'kaboom' magic. Even the high level evocation spells like shimmering fields, niefel flames etc lack a certain punch.

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The question is How could you build a SC without a good chassis.

AMA yes, Pendent of Luck yes, Amon Hotep yes, Magebane yes, Aegis yes, Boots of planes yes. So what? The only guy you could stack these items on to is a strategos, and with merely 13hp he just die to every single spell you drop there. Life for a life? No, a single level-one blood burst is already overkill.

And what if unique items are grabbed by other nation choose const?

ONLY ONE SCHOOL. Just like blood, to have a good go with const you need your nation have the ability to not only forge items but also use those const magics.

And blood come with enough SC counters..heck, with only one school blood player could have AC up without any hesitation.

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The contruction path comes with a good chasis. The golem.

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Blood isn't as self-sufficient as it looks though - you don't get any blood thorns or brazen vessels or even SDRs without Construction. That makes a lot of spells inaccessible except to your pretender and also trashes your slave income.

I think the only answer is that there is no answer: a one-school research strategy will always be crippled. No school is sufficient unto itself.

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Also a djinn using the Magic Lamp, etc.

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Question: when a lamp is re-created the djinn is gone. how about his equipments?

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I don't trust SC (had some bad (but short) experiences with them), so I would say enchantment, for all the reasons developped above by more experienced players.

I will had the summons are easy to cast, as a 1D mage can search for sites pretty easily, so you don't need much effort before starting to trample the ennemy's elites.(If you understand what spell I'm pointing)

PS : I preffer to field ubber battle mages, rather than SC, I find them to kill more ennemies for the same cost in gems.

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One other consideration - in theory you can trade for construction items. I know that if I can line up a good trading partner early I'm much more likely to ignore construction for a bit. And some of the con-0 stuff you can do without research is decent, particularly the earth items, I think you could have a pretty decent thug without any construction research - if you had the right chasis.

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Construction.

Cheap path boosters, SC items, per turn unit generators, assassins, supplies for large armies, underwater access for any army/unit, evocations, defensive items for mages, research boosters, gem producers, all the artifacts, communes, etc. No research path can claim to have it all, but Construction comes the closest.

In addition, if one could choose 2 research paths I would predict most would have Construction so they could enhance/access more of the other path more through items.

That could be said about almost any of the paths with their unique summons and globals. Even without artifacts you still have a wide variety of powerful items. The same cannot be said about Blood as without your uniques the best SC you could summon would be only an unequipped vampire lord or succubus.

If some MP game ever started based on limiting players to 1 path then the others might target the Construction nation just so they could hope to grab some items to make their uber mages or steal some nicely equipped SCs for themself. But with the right diplomacy the Construction player could make himself the invaluable goto guy for the needs of the others. And who wouldn't want to ally with the only nation who could make the good items? Besides you have to go kill that Enchantment Nation before they get Arcane Nexus up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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LOL! What is he going to do with all of those gems? Dispell people to death?

It would make for an interesting game, but I think that everyone would simply go with construction. OTOH blood and making a pretender that could cast Astral Corruption is a decent play considering no one could dispell it.

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That depends on what you want to accomplish.

Since what you want to accomplish is: killing all those that oppose you, the most useful path, for most nations, is evocation.

Obviously there are exceptions - some nations prefer to kill with thaumaturgy, for example. And, yeah, construction does provide an acceptable mass-death quotient, and it helps you to unzip it and let loose on the smoldering corpses of your enemies, once that state has been effected. But oh, evocation - nothing compares to you.

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I don't suppose there is anyway to set up a test game where each nation gets only one research path. It would have to be an honor system I guess.

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Well it'd be an honor system, but it'd mostly be pretty obvious if you cheated.

Anyway, everyone around here is pretty honorable, so that would work fine I think.

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Construction really is the backbone of the game. Items open up far more possibilities than the other paths.

Enchantment is probably the next best, with the superb globals and good summons and buffs.

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You would probably after sign up with your nation plus the single reseach path. Like:-

Pangaea - construction
Caelum - evocation

Might make for a fairly quick, fun game. It would of course be very, very obvious if a player broke the rules.

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For longer games you could allow the first two levels of all paths, to let players have access to many must have spells. I can't imagine a game on a big map without the site searching spells

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Enchantment is far more versatile than Construction just scrolling across the list of each shows the variation. Construction is very important yet if given the option of only one it's Enchantment.

Enchantment provides critical game spells such as:
Global Spells:
1) Earth Blood Deep Well
2) Arcane Nexus
3) Thetis Blessing (attacking water nations)
4) Gift of Health <Priceless)
5) DISPELL -- Taking out enemy globals!

Critical Battlefield Buffs:
1) Strength of Giants
2) Flaming Arrows
3) Anti-Magic (entire army!)
4) Haste
5) Arrow Fend (major)
6) Mass Flight (major during storming castles)
7) Mass Regeneration
8) Long List of battlefield spells for resistances
9) Storm Warriors

Great Battlefield Spells:
1) Unraveling (magical units go Snap-Crackle-POP)
2) Raise Dead or Skeletons
3) Foul Vapors
4) Heat from Hell or Grip of Winter
5) Rigor Mortis
6) Mists of Deception (recently identified as being too powerful)
7) Demon Cleansing (double damage on demons)
8) Friendly Currents (underwater spell)

Important Teleporting Spells:
1) Cloud Trapeze
2) Ritual of Returning
3) Faery Trod

Good List of Summoning Spells:
1) Revive King / Create Revenant
2) Claymen (underwater optional)
3) Pale Riders (underwater optional)
4) Enliven Statues (underwater optional)
5) Reanimate Archers (one of the very few archer summonings)
6) Carrion Reanimation (major)
7) Lichcraft

Good Offensive and Defensive Spells:
1) Army of the Dead
2) Seeking Arrow
3) Most of the DOMES are here

Good Buffs helping SC's types to actually stay alive:
1) Breath of Winter
2) Resist Magic
3) Personal Regeneration
4) Astral Shield
5) Flight

Second Chance Spells:
1) Ritual of Rebirth
2) Twiceborn

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

It'd be real interesting playing in a game where you can only research one path. Heck if you didn't want it to be "fair" at all you could just randomly assign the path. Things don't always have to be balanced to be fun.

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Without construction, getting casters for most of these is quite a trick. And arcane nexus is far less impressive when about all you can do is dispel.

Haste is about as far from critical as you can get, I'm not sure I've ever seen a casting of it that even had a noticeable effect in battle, let alone being worth it. Resist spells and strength of giants are not exactly must have spells either. In fact, the only true 'critical' spell I see there is flaming arrows. And again, many of these are hard to very hard to reach without construction.
Unraveling is not only special purpose but rather ineffective (causes decay, magic beings tend to have lots of MR and very long lifespans). Mists of deception is only too powerful as a bug, as intended it is pretty marginal. The only truly all around useful spell here is raise skeletons. Lots of high path-level requirements as well.

Fairy trod is quite high priced for something that only targets forest, and often doesn't even hit the _right_ forest. Ritual of returning is far less useful without teleport.

Only liches and archers (both from the same path) really stand out as great summons. And liches much less than normal without being able to access other paths.

Seeking arrows are good, but limited, army of the dead is very hard to get casters for with only enchantment, and the domes are hard to get casters for _and_ rather limited in applications.
A SC with construction will still easily carve up almost anything you can build that has to run around naked.
These spells are far more fun that useful. I have yet to see them be any where near decisive.

There is also the problem, that taken together, paths apart from death are left with very limited or almost no options. Astral gems are almost only for dispel, fire has no good gem channel, air can pretty much only seeking arrow or teleport, nature has highly limited options without high level nature to start with, water needs earth/water for it's only real gem channel.

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

Of course construction is great for HELPING other paths yet Enchantment stands better on its own. And Arcane Nexus is useful... you should check out a useful feature called ALCHEMY which allows you to trade gems for other gem types.

Construction is good yet Enchantment stands better on its own which is why it's better in my opinion. If given only one choice it's hands down Enchantment since so many options are available. See you're arguing construction is better because it helps other spells. Depending on the front line enemy armies many of those battlefield buffs I mentioned are critical.


Most of the spells I've listed have been useful for many of my multiplayer games. The point of listing these battlefield spells is because on the battlefield Enchantment provides more options compared to Construction. Construction helps other spells which makes it very good but Enchantment is strong enough to stand on its own.

The point here is that Enchantment has spells for traveling 30 provinces across the map and Construction has only two unique items.(one which horror marks and the other only works as the gateway spell)


Enliven Statues is also really useful especially for a Earth9 Pretender. Enliven Statues are great for protecting the front line of the battlefield with very high protection, amphibous and huge shields they provide time for spellcasters. Both Enchantment and Construction have good summoning spells.

I find most of the spells listed as useful. More options is better. Same as previously mentioned... the point is Enchantment has these spells available where as Construction does not have these spells. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

A SC with unique artifacts can be very powerful, yet Construction by itself doesn't allow for many SC options. You have the Golems yet with Dominions_3 I have found it quite easy to take down most SCs especially when they rely purely on items to survive.


Of course these second chance spells are not useful for most games. Yet again my point is the more options the greater the value.

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

Someone could crank out a mod with say 7 identical ulms (maybe EA TC? or some other multipath nation), each using 1 path. Would still come down to player skill but would give a better idea as to feasibility.

Wonder if it would be rainbow pretenders or specifically built pretenders for those few specific spells.

Probably a couple 9's as well if the pretender choice/school/bless worked out.

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It's true that construction is huge aid to other paths, but that isn't per se why it is better. Construction is self sufficient, enchantment is the one that needs support of other paths to reach all of it's options.

On arcane nexus, even if you manage to get to the huge astral requirement without using construction, when forced to alchimize it starts to not look too much better than clams.
I would not agree that on average it stands better on it's own. For a death nation, perhaps it's a close call between the two, for pretty much anyone else your options are far more limited by enchantment. Again, my argument is not that construction helps other schools so it's the best school, it's that other schools have difficulty accessing many options without construction, and construction provides good outlets for every gem type, which probably only conjuration can also claim.
There is no argument that enchantment has more battlefield spells, and many of them have niches. But again, none of these effects are critical, and construction has it's own options of similar power (in fact, skelly spamming can be done expensively but with more staying power using construction to forge skullfaces and reinvig items).

Now, personally I would say that the enchantment version of skelly spamming is probably on the whole better, but construction has many such tricks, that are available to most nations eventually. Where as to make good use of the enchantment version you must be playing one of a specific set of nations, or get lucky with indies. This I would say is the general comparison between construction and any other school: other schools can often do a specific thing better, but construction lets any nation have a lot of options.
Actually the gatestone works as astral travel (technically speaking it's bugged at the moment so you need to research thoum to make it work, but as it's an establish bug with IW, lets assume it working as intended). Between having access to those uniques and those three spells, I'd easily choose the items. Fairy trod (generally) and ritual of returning can't be used to stomp enemy armies before they move, and you are going to have a hard time finding a good chassis to use cloud trapeze for the purpose in enchantment. I should also note that through armor of virtue you can lay ritual of returning on a great many commanders.
They do both have good summoning spells, but construction also has many other useful gem channels for any path. I'll also note that through hammers and the forge it has a the capacity to bring giant discounts on most these additional gem uses. And further, construction can take advantage of blood, something no other school but blood can do., further increasing it's usable gem income.
There are lots of useful spells in lots of schools, but I don't think you can claim enchantment has more raw options than construction.
Those options that allow you to take down SC easily do not lie in enchantment. Construction has more chassis option than it would first appear; golems, the djinn, mummies from amon hotep, werewolves, and anything national. Granted many of these are fairly poor chassis, but many schools (like enchantment) lack good ways to deal even with them.
Construction doesn't exactly lack them either, it has the Ankh. Again we come to which has more options, so I'll just say one more time, I think you are overlooking a great many options available to construction, and overestimating the number of enchantment options you can access in any given game.

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Why hasn't weapons of sharpness come up in favor of construction? It lets a block of any half-decent national unit cut up most SCs in a couple of rounds. (Petrification and high awe/blood vengeance being the main exceptions, with possible trouble coming from phoenix pyre causing the chaff to all die from the explosions. Forcing every SC to have luck/eth to stand a chance really cuts into their gems, since wraith crowns ain't cheap)

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Although tempting, if I was Blood I would rather have the other path nations suffer with needing higher path requirements and time to hinder their gem income and limit their access to good sites.

My last comment was more in jest, hence the wink at the end. But depending on the size of the map and number of players Nexus can prove quite nice even after Alchemy, especially if other players dismiss it and use their gems as usual.

To rephrase your question back at you, if you have the pearls for Arcane Nexus (& extra to keep it from being dispelled/removed) and choose not to cast it then what are you going to spend all those pearls on instead... you plan to dispell people to death? If so, I know of an enchantment spell that will get you more pearls. All hail Lord of Dispelling Enemies to Death! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

MA Ermor with UBER Scales, maybe a bless, and Thaumaturgy for the win.

Communioned Soul Slaying Horror Marking will rapidly persuade the SC builders of the error of their ways.

Spinx-Imprisoned, Dominion-9 Astral-9
Order-3,Prod.-3,Growth-3, Cold-1, Luck-1, Drain-2

Re: Most Usefull Research Path...
 

So after 65 votes HALF of the people in the forum think Construction is the best path... mmm... I believe you :S

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It also depends on what size map you are playing, If you are playing on a very large map then Alteration is Hands down the best choice. Just create a pretender with huge astral skill, Do everything you can to find Astral sites and start Wishing for whatever unit or artifact you want and wish for strength and more magic power.

Of course thats not to mention all the Good buff spells like Body Etheral, Luck, Mistform, Invulnerability, Pheonix pyre etc. to keep your mage\SC alive on top of the Chalice and other Artifacts you have already wished away from the dude with the Construction tree.

Plus you get a few descent globals like Fata Morgana and Mother oak, though you couldnt use Utterdark to your advantage unless you were playing LA Ermor in which case you would own even more.

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And the massive buff spells such as army of gold/lead, and the full-army mistform spell to make some insanely tough chaff

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Wish is overrated, except for gems and maybe magical power. What unit is worth more than four abominations? If you have the artifacts already, units like natarajas might be worth it, but noramlly there are superior options. Yes, there are a few wishes worth making (chalice, mage bane etc,) but it isn't really spammable, unless you need gems of ALL paths, and massing acashics might be a better path to diversity, since it will turn up path boost and mage recruit sites as well. Alteration boost sites also change things quite a bit.

Utterdark is not totally limited to LE Ermor. Any nation that has darkvision could make fair use out of it. Remember that commanders never desert. If you have all the mage you want/need, it can quickly deal with troop centred nations, especially if you get it early.

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Lol, one of my SC's could solo 40 Abominations... I'll post a pic in little while

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Actually I may do an experiment and play a hotseat game with myself and two nations and take a pic of my Pretender or whoever I want soloing 40 Abominations.. Hell I could create a Markata Monkey that could do it if I wanted. Which would be pretty funny.. usually I stick with Vampires since their immortal and fly and regenerate etc.. But Im still looking for a better chassis. I tried gift of reason on a Hydra hoping i could equip 9 helmets but alas I didnt even get one helmet slot =(

Maybe I'll even throw in a few devourer of souls just for the hell of it.

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A seraph is definitely worth 4 abominations

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Seraphs are something of an excpetion, since they are CHEAPER when wished for. However, most SCs, especially in the late game, are easily taken care of. Life for a Life, banish to inferno, disintigrate spam, petrify, possibly mass horror mark, maybe even paralyze/soul slay, mage bane is always an option. Most of those don't cost 100 pearls.

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Why are Seraphs so good?

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High Blood Vengeance and good overall stats, i think.

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Does the Seraph have a Hidden Blood Vengeance? I see the awe but not the blood vengeance... :S