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Calistas said:
Hi all, my copy is in the mail and I've been playing the demo a lot!
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Addiction be damned!
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But what I'm not getting is matching pretenders to empires. What kind of strategies are there? Match your empire's powers? Chose different ones? When to go for blood (and why?!).. that sort of thing.
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These are big questions. And they are the types of things that are hard to answer.
Match a Pretender to your Empire (Same Paths as your mages)
This is a good strategy for Nations that either have weaker mages (Ulm springs immediately to mind, Jotunheim is another example) that would be best suited to using their Gem Income. The only problem with this, is you can't handicap your nation or your national armies by doing this (leaving them without support from other magical paths). A good example of a nation that can do reasonable with this is Atlantis or Arcosephale because their mages having randoms they can use to get those other paths of magic.
Example of using a Pretender with a Nation's Strengths: Use a Cyclops with Ulm. Give your Cyclops a few more levels of Earth (up to 6) and he will be able to cast all the neato super-hyper cool Earth spells as early in the game as can be done. You will probably have the first Earth Blood Deep Well in the game, solidifying your power in Earth. Or you might have the only longstanding Forge of Ancients, early enough in the game to really take advantage of it. Things of this nature.
Choose a Pretender's Magic to fill in the weaknesses of the nation. This way you can use your Nation's Strengths and fill in the gaps of their national armies/limitations. Any nation can do this, and it is the most prefered way to utilize your Pretender at least with consideration to it when deciding how you are going to use your Pretender's Paths.
Example: Use a Frost Father with Ulm. With heavy picks in Nature, Death and Air. Then using your Frost Father to search out your provinces in Nature, Death, Air. Using Ulm's forge bonus to make hammers, and pass them around to mages that you get from other paths. Using Nature to summon Ivy Kings or Couatles (for Nature/Astral), Death for Undead to complement your armies and give you the capability to use Life Drain, etc.
When to go for blood and why.
There are a few reasons to go for blood
1.) Unique Summons
2.) Upkeepless, elite magical troops
3.) Forging
Everyone but Ermor/Carrion Woods can possibly go for blood and this is mostly accomplished by using mages with Randoms (Sages for example). Then creating an Economy to support any (or maybe all) of those three. Blood is universal in it doesn't require anything but blood mages to start because of the uniqueness of Blood Hunting.
Blood is a little more advanced and filled with micromanagement traps that take a little time to get under control.