Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
At a GC of 100, the gray man would cost nearly *twice* the upkeep of a Pegasus Rider, and nearly twice the resources, for a position that has less resources and money to begin with. Originally I priced the Grey Man at 80/61 (compare to the Knight of Avalon - he has a lot more powers, but being undead is a big drawback), but found I never used them.
In evaluating the cost of the Gray Man, keep the economics of the position in mind:
Your capital does get +20 resources, but is only admin 10, which is an income-hit equivalent to 2 levels of turmoil in the early game, and a big resource hit once you've taken even a few provinces.
Once you have some provinces to start blood-hunting, you can summon extremely elite units at very competitive prices - but most of them cost upkeep, and blood-hunting hurts your income.
Those circle masters *are* an excellent deal at 100 gold a pop - so you're going to want to build a lot of castles to churn them out in quantity. These castles don't give you the option on Gray Men, and chances are they make more resources than your capital (since they've got a higher admin even if built on a mountain.)
I've been sitting here playing the position and I have to say that the false knights are very competitive troops when doing early expansion - possibly even overpowered. They make a lot of attacks, EA independents don't hit that hard, and with their modest equipment and unbarded mounts thay're available in very large numbers.
Sure, they die, but that's okay, you don't want to keep paying upkeep on them anyway.
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If you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering *****-shaped obelisk on Mars. --Randall Munroe
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