[Boron]

Originally posted by Mardagg:
Its certainly mainly a matter of playing style.
I rarely take VQ`s,because I encountered already so many in my MP-games,especially before the fix,that its a bit boring for me.
I agree,that in order to take a VQ with quite strong magic,Death:3 is an option...with S&A at least.
I am more a defensive player and I just hate to know that my income is decreasing while not expanding.

You are right with population killing spells...but that doesnt matter to me in midgame at all,since I rely on summonings by then
I only take Growth 3 for the early game income advantage.
I am forced to take Turmoil:1 and since I dont need much resources,I of course take Growth instead of Productivity to get income bonus.
Your tactic just relies more on your Luck:3 scale than mine,in order to get enough gold early on to get your Celestial Masters,Temples,castles.
Also you have more difficulties,if you have a bad starting position,e.g. with strong indies and/or small provinces only bordering you.

with strong indies i have less difficulties because of the vq ( expect the 1% fliers like gargoyle indy province ) .

but i own dominion only since 2 months so i played only in 2.12 and have never seen the uber 2.11 vqs . the little powergamer / perfectionist in me still thinks the vq is the best choice for the nations who can afford .
but i begin to think that the vq still needs a slightly nerfing by 10-20 higher path costs or something like this or restricting her for everything else than bf ulm , ermor + pan cw .

when i play 2-3 more months i will probably get bored by the vq too . the problem is mostly fliers are a real problem for an unequipped vq but there are only really few nations ( caelum , abysia , mictlan ) who can go on either strong or many fliers early game .
so earlygame even an unequipped vq can be thrown each turn on an invader with no risk and not too bad chances to kill or at least seriously damage the invader .
no other pretender that can do this unequipped comes to my mind .