[alexti]

Saber Cherry said:

I've heard a lot of people claim this and never found it to be true. Quite the opposite. SCs are cheap and easily replacable (Bane Lord, Tartarian, etc)

Bane Lords are relatively easily replaceable. If you equip them with wraith sword, boots of quickness and luck pendant only (still 35 gems and they're not particularly strong). non-Commander tartarians are somewhat easy to replace (if you have research and if you have enough death mages with death boosters), but only GoR-ed Tartarians can be used as SC, and that's quite costly, especially 20 nature for GoR.

Saber Cherry said:
if you have the magic levels to create them. National armies require huge investments (esp. in resources and supply items), and I find effective anti-SC techniques are always harder to make than SCs.

It is not particularly hard to deal with a particular SC, but it is hard to deal with any SC. So as long as you know what SC you'll meet you should be ok.

Saber Cherry said:
As for rushing - of course you have to rush, to get the best (unique or limited) SCs, and double-rush if you want to make them invincible with unique artifacts too.

There isn't many artifacts that are good for SCs. Couple of shields and few swords and that's about it.

Saber Cherry said:
Otherwise you're left summoning weak fallen angels because all of the ice devils and arch devils are taken.

Devils commanders are pretty good, cheap and they come with the imps and at desired location. I often prefer them to Ice/Arch-Devils. If you plam to use them for raiding they work just as well as great devils and considering that you generate that devil by casting HfH on enemy's province gaining gold and gem income, the devils comes essentially free.

Saber Cherry said:
Where do the cheap and easily replacable national armies come from?

Here are some:
- couple of seithkonur with half a dozen of giants (this one is somewhat expensive, but they usually retreat as soon as things start look dangerous, so you rarely lose them)
- 2-3 death hags with few vaetir (very cheap and stealthy, somewhat difficult to replace, because you're getting hags with other picks as well, but blood hags are useful for hunting and astral hags good to complement big combined armies and meanwhile you can put them on research).
- 1-2 seraphs and 4-5 archers (cheap, mobile and efficient) Similar armies will work for any other air nation (though not as cheap and not as mobile)
- 1-2 sauromancers and few light infantrymen (or falchioneers)
- indy commander, feathered warrior and few dozen of Mictlan slaves
- Pan with something (something may vary). This is an extremely deadly combination, because due to stealth they are hard to destroy and the enemy never knows if he's going to meet no resistance or encounter couple of extra MR-penetrating Pans. So while the enemy deals from the swarms, Pans can subvert everything valuable at their leisure.
- Pythium has plenty Theurg-based variations, which can vary air/astral scripts.

Generally, the idea is to buy 3-5 armies per turn (depends on the map size) and attack everywhere.


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Saber Cherry said:
I've never seen or built one, except when I play Ashen Ermor. Every MP game I've played (not many) was dominated by SCs as soon as they were researched. I like to play single player because AIs don't use SCs, and the game is more fun and strategically + tactically interesting if I have to use real armies instead of just moving my SCs around without even bothering to check what's in the target provinces, because the outcome is assured.

There's some truth in this. If you're using your SC solo, there isn't much point to check what's in the provinces you're moving to, because:
- if there's something strong there it will move out as likely as not
- if there isn't anything strong there, it may come (or not come) there trying to guess your movement.
In any case, if the opponent won't guess you'll get a province and if the opponent will guess you'll get one dead SC (unless opponent is Pangaea, in which case the opponent will get one fully equipped and experienced SC ).

Saber Cherry said:
So I don't use SCs in my single player games anymore because it feels like cheating.

That's true, because AI doesn't know how to deal with SC. But it doesn't apply to human opponents.

Saber Cherry said:
If making each SC took resources similar to a huge national army, that would be OK. But they simply don't, and have huge advantages in mobility, supply usage, and upkeep on top of that.

Well, building *huge* national army is generally a bad idea. As a minimum, you'll have something left open because your mages won't have all necessary paths. If you invest in a huge army you need to make sure to cover all obvious weaknesses, so it won't get defeated by something trivial, so normally you'd have some combination of nationals, summons indies and SCs in your huge army. Do you have any national army in mind, which wouldn't be decimated by much cheaper force without any SCs? (only Jotunheim and Machaka might be able to field something reasonably sturdy)

So the idea is to buy many cheap national armies. They won't have supply problem, their number will compensate for lack of mobility and upkeep won't be too high.