Quote:
Spacepain said:
I was reading an old thread that essentially proclaimed Vans and mini SC human commanders as the second coming.... Without CB and pre-patch Vans cost 70 gold, so are they still worth pursuing in bulk for an army?
Also, the human commander mini SC topic was only lightly touched on. Myself being a noob, would anybody point out what things I\\\'d plop on them early game to make them SCs? I\\\'ve experimented with various items, but everything is rather \\"eh.\\" I feel like there is some vital principal behind building SCs I\\\'m missing.
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Hmm. I think I'm one of the main human pretender (if that's what you mean) as SC players, falling a distant second or third to the famous and infamous Norfleet. Both of us had taken human pretenders in human (or human and immobile only) games, and risen to the top of the Hall of Fame, under various patches and incarnations of the Balance mods (which you _really_ should try to get your friends to use - it's brain dead simple).
You either get your pretender setup as incredible artillery (possibly the easier option unmodded / unpatched) or as a go-it-herself bad *** devourer of armies. Both have many potential paths, artillery more so than others....
I'm not sure what Norfleet used, but am fairly certain it wasn't anything like what I did - he went more for artillery.
Frankly - I can't give too many details, because it's been over a year since the ... MP community hasn't used the CB (conceptual balance) mods. But one of my tests involved trying a freaklord (generally considered one of the worst pretenders) without the CB mod. Wasn't nearly as potent for a variety of reasons - but I did find I was capable of taking out 1/2 the independent provinces (with indies 6-7) after 3 or 4 turns research. Easier if I had a nation that either had etherealness or BoW as a national spell.
Part of that was "Trample" - but BoW and FS also let you kill all indies that get close to you, as long as you have good enough defenses (regen, ethereal, luck, mistform, mirror image, armor or defense, etc) to survive them swinging at you.
But seriously - get your friends to patch, to use at least an ... old Conceptual Balance mod (the pretender version (modding only pretenders) has had essentially 0 complaints in a year and a half or more). Without at least the CB pretender mod - only 4 or 6 (counting nation specific pretenders) have a chance against players of equal skill, barring huge anomalies in luck (finding the A2E2 mage citadel, etc).
It's easy enough - and if your friends are local, you could load the mod on their computer, and it's automatically loaded / used if the host game has it set. Presuming that'd be you hosting, since your friends don't sound technical enough to do so.
