[PvK]

There are several different approaches possible, depending upon your nation and the situations (i.e. independent mages, research levels, gem income, enemy activities, & magic goals). Combat pretender is one of the easiest, and can be effective at first, but I tend to think it's not generally the most effective nor the most interesting. If you do a successful pretender blitz then it's effective but not terribly interesting. If not, then it can accomplish rather less than another mage could by doing other things.

Site searching, one way or another, can make a big difference.

Some nations have mages which can be fairly effective out of the box.

However yes, often it makes a huge difference to getting effective spells, to use one of the many ways to boost the starting mages' power levels by one or more levels. Sure, the pretender can do things himself, but it's much better to have producable units doing things so the pretender can do other things that they can't. Empowerment, items, combat power boost spells, and communions can all do this - which ones to use depends on all the various factors mentioned above.

It helps to find desired abilities worth taking the effort to obtain, rather than just empowering and seeing what you get. Many effects aren't particularly useful except in an appropriate situation.

There are also ways to improve effectiveness a lot which don't involve just increasing power to reach the level needed to cast a spell - improving accuracy, reinvigoration, penetration, defense, speed, immunity, etc, can all make the difference between a bad investment and an effective tool.

PvK

[ January 19, 2004, 16:57: Message edited by: PvK ]