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Tuna said:
For standard pythium, definately cyclops with earth-10. The great reinv bonus for commucants, couple with reinv from summon earth power and they rarely if ever die in battle. Also, the cyclops can easily cast Enliven statues with uber efficiency to provide chaff for the mages, do driveby shootings with earthquake x3, cast the great army of gold and army of lead to protect mages in battle, wipe out early indies with impunity once you forge him a water sword or two and things like that.
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Do you truly find the +1 reinvigoration bonus for mages and slightly reduced fatigue cost from most spells for the pretender worth the substantial 56 design points you spend going from earth 9 to earth 10? My gut instinct would be that there has got to be better uses around.
To take an example, earthquake, when including base encumbrance, goes from 52 (L9) to ~45 (L10 or L9+earthpower) to ~39 (L10+earthpower). Add in earth boots or other earth boosting armies and the difference between the fatigue from L9 or L10 grows even smaller.
For those 56 points you could get an entire scale with 16 points left over. Boosting e.g. the magic scale if not already at 3 will cause you to "save" more fatigue in almost all battles in your own dominion than the +1 extra reinvigoration would except for the very long battles, and it applies to the Cyclops and non-sacred mages as well. Alternatively, you could get an entirely new path (such as 1W for quickness) with 6 points left over.
Genuinely curious here. Given that the fatigue reduction grows proportionally less for each additional point, there really is no great difference between 9 and 10 for most spells. The only spells where it would make a major difference would be Armour of Lead/Gold, but as they are Level 9 spells you are unlikely to be using them until such time as you are boosting your earth stat by +2 to +4 from items/earthpower anyway - or even more if you give the cyclops a crystal matrix for major battles - Pythium is the master of communion, after all.