[Patrik]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

Sample of how it went:
t.8 - 10 provinces 468 gps
t.9 - 13 prov 551 gps
t.10 - 16 prov 733gps
t.11 - 19 prov 873 gps
t.12 - 20 prov 961 gps

This was with all non-sea indie's gone and a border with AI's. Time for war with large amounts of troops for the job. This is a very good start by my books and it did not seem to have involved much luck - though no real bad events.

This is indeed a very good start!! I think it makes a lot of sense to stop at about this point (i.e. t.12) when comparing different setups for starting strength. Looking at what you have at t.20 (as was suggested by Pocus) depends much more on the strengths of nearby computer AI's.

I would rarely play with drain 2 though. If you don't find those sages (and I 'never' do ) - how do you manage??

Another possible weakness is your pretender as a SC. About the only spell you can use for boosting is Quickness (Breath of Winter doesn't really go well with your dominion or your troops ). I guess Quickness - Raise Dead can be quite good though. To me it seems that taking high magic on your pretender to get good Bless effects have more obvious benefits (for the Pretender) in other Paths (Earth - increased prot, Fire - Fire darts, incr fire shield, incr attack, Air - incr. prec., mirror image, orb lightning etc.)

These extreme themes are cool though!! Have you looked anything at what can be done with Fire 9 - for example in combination with sacred cavalry? If both the normal and hoof attack hits (and with +4 to attack it's pretty likely) you get FOUR damage rolls (normal, hoof, and 2 with 8p AP damage) .