[PvK]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
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However, this isn't anywhere near the boost that the Giants get from Dominion. When you look at it that way, why is Dominion cheaper for those who benefit from it more? From a game balance standpoint, this doesn't make sense.
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There are more points of comparison, though. For example, dragons benefit heavily from high dominion, but they start with only level 1. Titans have high dominion and benefit from it, but may be weaker than other combat pretenders with lower dominion, in other ways (e.g. Dragon is 50 points, but will tend to defeat 50-point giants in single combat unequipped, because they aren't as deadly and lack built-in armor.) The usual strength of the humans is their low cost for additional paths. Additional paths are useful for filling in national gaps and for broadening the possible spells and items (and magic-power-boosting items), as well as for site searching.

Many players do seem to think though that humans are a weaker choice than combat pretenders. I'm not clear how much of that is just the initial impressions of players who see the surface but not the potential of other choices. Having a combat monster may be easier to take advantage of, but it may be that when one does the right things with a rainbow, it ends up stronger in the end. I'm undecided, and my play style tends to favor middle-range compromises, including using human pretenders sometimes. The only time I tried to play all-out SC pretender, I was wiped out by the AI - no doubt partly because I was new to the play style.

I think you may be on to something though with the idea that humans should be less expensive, and that the cost is against the floor already. Dominion is one way to adjust that a bit, except that as others pointed out, they are the ones that don't need so high a dominion anyway, and it has thematic side-effects.

The costs and/or path costs of combat pretenders could be increased, but then that would weaken the strength of possible designs, so some players might not like that.

If it were possible (is it?) to mod negative costs to the human pretenders, that might be another approach. Humans would thus have even more points to play with.

You could also try modding spells so that some of the more popular spells required multiple paths in various combinations... but that would be a major change to gameplay.

PvK