Having thus selected the form in which our God will manifest in the earthly realm, I proceed to select my avatar's abilities and influences (scales). For Magic, I give the God
Astral-4. Zen had recommended Astral-5, but I decide to spend the difference on scales. Astral is chosen because we will be using some no-gem-cost spells from the Alteration and Enchantment schools that are quick to research (levels 1-3 in each) to provide all the buffs that our SC pretender will need in the early game. Later on, Astral will allow us to quickly move across the map via Teleport or Gateway, or to summon some of my favorite Arch Angels and/or Harbingers (which I find useful in SP, but not likely so in MP).
For scales I select:
- 3 Order
(we will need lots of gold to recruit the numbers of giants and casters we plan to use)
- 3 Productivity
(armored giants require lots of resources)
- 2 Cold
(the preferred scale for Jotun)
- 0 Growth
- 2 Misfortune
(we have to pay for the good scales somehow, and this is it)
- 2 Magic
(we will be doing a LOT of research, quickly)
I toyed with the idea of taking Growth 1 / Magic 1, or Growth 1 / Misfortune 3, but I decided that I really wanted the magic boost and Luck -3 was just too much to pay for Growth.
I then select the Utgard theme (25 points) because I want the Nornas (which give a 15% chance, each, to avoiding bad events in the province they are in) and I prefer Seithkonas to the (cheaper, but less flexible) Iron Woods theme's Vaetti Hags. The Seithkonas will be my main researchers, and also my primary battlefield support in the early to mid game.
I select the 80 point castle because we will need all the resources we can get, and the admin value of 40 will do just that. With the remaining points we have, I increase Dominion as much as I can (to 5).
Having completed the design of my realm and godly attributes, I assign a password to my pretender (though the game will be SP, I intend to use the same god in a MP game in the near future), and move on to selecting the game map and my AI opponents.
continued next post