[Cainehill]

Originally posted by The Panther:
Obviously, I am a rank newbie. But what I actually said is that no pretender OUGHT to be able to kill level 5s and above striaght out of the box. The VQ is just one of many such problems against this obviously wistful notion.

You could always go down Cohen's path and insist on playing games with very difficult magic research, limitting pretender choices to human or immobile pretenders, and other complicated rules intended to make the game play the way you want it to, instead of the way the game designers designed it to be played.

But, bad news : even human pretenders, and immobiles, can take independent provinces all by their lonesome before turn 20. The immobile can teleport in and clean house.

The human can either hurl enough magical artillery to devastate medium sized armies, or have enough death magic to simply summon skeletons upon skeletons upon skeletons until the enemy is wiped out.

And not infrequently, the immobile or human pretender dies trying to do so.

*shrug* Instead of crying out to nerf the VQ, or to nerf all SC pretenders, try figuring out how to use your own pretender and national troops to their fullest.

I've got the second highest number of provinces in this game - and my pretender only this Last turn budged from the capital, so it obviously wasn't my pretender.

You can use scales to your advantage - either giving your armies a boost, or enabling a mighty pretender, or facilitating potent blessings. You can use even puny mercenaries to allow your national armies to take provinces they would otherwise suffer great losses attacking, or you can come up with clever items to put on your national commanders that let them tip the balance of battle in their favor.

Or, you can always design and implement a game that does as you wish. But frankly, a game without the mighty magics and potent godlings probably wouldn't appeal to nearly as wide an audience.

Lastly : Write to Illwinter and ask them to put in some switches that put limits on the game - limitting research to level 2, 3, 4, etc, that force all people to use a human or an immobile pretender, etc. Fairly simple for them to do, albeit not very much fun either, but you can always ask.