[Aetius]

(long)

I was not aware of the revisions to the Dominions 1 blessing effect until I read this thread, in particular Nerfix's breakdown of the modifiers. Playing the demo I have had only one pretender that was successful with the blessing effects, this pretender was a red dragon leading Ulm with the Iron Faith Theme. I must admit that the black templars are devastating with flaming weapons. However, late game it remains to be seen how effective a potent blessing pretender will be.

As pointed out in Chris Byler's post the cost of creating the potent blessing pretender are very high. For my Ulmite pretender I had to take significant negatives in the drain (-2) and misfortune scales (-3),if I recall correctly. The misfortune was partly balanced out by the strong order scale (+3). However, I was shall we say magically challenged and R'leyh in particular caused my nation fits.

I have noticed that the Dominion increasing effect of purchasing temples increases the number of holy troops that you can have. This observation made me wonder if it would be appropriate to have the pretender's blessing effect increase if additional magical empowerment is performed. I think the gem cost alone would balance things. Lastly, I noticed that rival AI pretenders frequently had one magical area in the 9+ range to obtain the greater blessing benenfits.