[FrankTrollman]

I never much liked the CB series. It went the right direction on some things and the wrong direction on others. Ultimately it was just another thing to learn in an already incredibly complicated game.

That being said, it is an absolute certainty that someone will take it upon themselves to write wide-ranging mods that nerf things that they feel are too powerful and boost things they feel are too weak. Heck, lots of people will do so. For Dominions 2, I made one myself.

And while I'm sure that various servers will establish one or another of these mods as the standard, I am equally certain that the wider Dominions community will never do so. That's what happened with Dominons 2, and with Mods even easier to make and apply in Dominions 3 this is going to happen even more so.

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But as for the original question, I don't think a "middle ground" pretender means what you think it means. The costs for getting great power in any path are dependent upon the degree to which you exceed your pretender'sstarting paths. That cost is geometric, increasing your starting path by 2 costs 24 points, increasing it by 4 costs 80 point. If you want a path at 9 it costs 362 points if you're buying it cold turkey (with a pathcost of 10) and only 168 points if you're buying it from a running start of 3.

The difference in cost for getting Earth 9 on a Cyclops and a Frostfather is more than the difference in cost between the cheapest and most expensive starting god chasis!

So the "extremes" of pretenderness are not the ones that start Size 6 and the ones that start Size 2, that scarecely matters in the scheme of things. The extremes are the ones that pay you points if your plan is to have a pile of several low-end magics (the low pathcost pretenders which coincidentally are weak physically by and large), and the ones that pay you points for being an extremely focused god. There are also high dominion gods like the Nataraja that pay you points for having a high dominion (since that's likewise a geometric scale).

The middle ground pretenders are the ones like the Earth Mother and the Great Olhm. Ones which have a couple of starting paths and maybe some combat toughness or starting Dominion. These gods are a good deal if your plan is to take enough picks to cast late-game spells and build booster items in a couple of paths and maybe have a decent secondary thug and/or have a presentable dominion score.

The middle ground already exists. Pretenders like the Draikana don't make massive paths cheaply, but they make decent enough pretenders if you don't expect to have 9s anywhere. A Cyclops pays less points to raise his magic up to Earth 9/ Water 9 than a Great lhm does. But the Great Olhm is far and away cheaper if your plan is to have Earth 4/Water 4.

-Frank