Crystal Shields ... Sigh. They are expensive, even if you do get a good searcher for Earth. My main searcher is either a Celestial Master with a Earth and Death or a Lot5E with a Death. Also Nature is good since so many sites are Nature 1. The trick is getting him up to Earth 2, Astral 3 (for the shields) they are not that glamourous. Cost something like 20 Astral 20 Earth gems to forge and are heavy thus netting you less spells because most of the time you can only script what you want first off (Quickness etc.) then under computer control it chooses the most fatiguing spells instead of chaincasting ones that they can repeatedly do.

I hold onto my Astral (outside of Power of the Spheres, which I always have scout runners ready to supply for) unless I need to Alchemy for making summons, since they are such a big part of S&A and a Pack of Summer Lions or Fall Bears can make a big difference in it's army strength. Otherwise I save them for an Angelic Host. A good % of the time I find a pretty healthy death income and keep on the Spirit Mastery and Revive Mound King to carry them around with the main army.

Where I seem to be falling, is really penetrating those heavy troops of the enemy. I wish that S&A had access to X-bows, that would at least give them a half-decent way to deal with them. That and the fact if I don't build my pretender exactly right; I have a gem income I can't use and armies with vast holes in them (Because of summons and the fact that Celestial Masters suck at summoning anything other than Demon of's).

If the Random 2 slot would both be to 1 path that would be best, it would at least give you a shot at not having to make your pretender do all the work.

Edit: I wish that Luck 3 would upgrade the vanilla luck events. Like instead of 30 Militia (nearly useless with S&A since most of what you can recruit is on par with militia, and they eat a ton) upgrade it to 20 Heavy Infantry if you get that same event in a Luck 3 enviroment. Instead of 20 Flaggelants, upgrade it to 10 Knights.

[ December 04, 2003, 05:36: Message edited by: Zen ]