[Pocus]

Originally posted by Jasper:
Interesting. Did the Rainbow mages do well?

RM perform well in pbem which dont emphazise on rushing behaviors, that is you have to play on medium to big maps, and with independants or scripted provinces which prevent dashing toward the enemy capital. I'm not saying that they do well in all conditions.
With the aforementioned restrictions, yes in my experience, they do well.

What was the advantage? Their high cost, low Dominion, fraility, and huge loss of magic skill when they die seem like severe drawbacks to me.

they dont die, as you shall not bring them into battles. They are of the archmage sort, ie 10 HP. Only Ermor can have solid RM.

All I can think of is their edge in site searching -- but is that really worth all the downsides?

depends also of the magical sites %. Sure, if you play with 20% sites frequencies, youd better focus on something else. Aside that they help in research early, search for some provinces, and then revert to items forging, or special rituals. Just an example amongst others, with their ability to forge nearly everything, you can add +1 magic items to your mages, so they can start searching for sites in any Category (that is if you have a nation with random pick, but most have that).
RM are really affordable with nations which have more than 500 design points, Abysia, Caelum, Jotun. True, I have rarely seen RM with nations without this extra boost in design points.

If I were playing a Rainbow mage, I would intend to use them in combat later in the game (e.g. after researching Enchantment 7 for Phoenix Pyre, and stacking on boosting/reinvigoration items). Adding Astral 2 seems like little gain for a potentially serious drawback, and I'd rather raise something else to a 3 instead.[/QB]

This is where we differs. RM have low levels everywhere, and are fragile. In the end game they are even more busy than in the early game, as they are always needed for a special forging purpose. They are often the bottleneck. I never found taking astral 2 a problem, as they never see battle (for me).

edit : jasper, I realize my tone was perhaps not friendly enough, sorry for the wording, it must be a bad french to english translation

[ October 06, 2003, 09:16: Message edited by: Pocus ]