Quote:
Zath said:
...PvK:
I am afraid that what you perceive as narrow is to me just getting to the point. Hidden in Snow is a poor spell for solely troop summons, and a poor spell for solely mage summons. Bundling two poor functions together in this case does not produce a good spell, because the effort put into this spell could be better spent in its specialized counterparts instead for greater overall gain.
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To reduce a spell like Hidden in Snow to one point (as in "just getting to the point") is what I mean by a narrow perspective. I'm not saying it would be wrong to choose that perspective, but I see others that seem equally valid, and are more compelling to me.
I don't see how "the effort put into this spell could be better spent in its specialized counterparts instead for greater overall gain", unless you choose to weigh the pessimistic result more than the optimistic result. Either perspective is valid, but it's a choice, not an absolute value.
So Hidden in Snow casts 55 Water gems and requires W3D1, and gives 0-2 mages with W0-3, D0-3, E0-3, and some number of unique pretty good undead warriors and often a commander/thug.
Your suggestion if I understand it is instead of casting Streams from Hades a few times (possibly once, average twice, _if_ your goal is to get E2+:
Cast Streams From Hades for 40 Water gems with a W_4_D1 mage, to get exactly one W3D3 mage.
Somehow, as a nation without Earth magic, get 80 Earth gems to empower someone to E2.
And to get the same effect, also:
Cast other spells to get something you consider better than the unfrozen warriors and commanders.
Cast other spells or hire other mages to get more mages to match the ones that didn't have E2 that you would likely have got from casting Streams From Hades.
So versus an average of 110 water gems by a W3D1 mage for a bunch of troops, commanders, and mages with mixed WDE magic, you spend 40 water gems, 80 earth gems (that you probably don't have), and whatever other mage-time and gems it takes to get whatever makes up for the other undead and mages you won't get.
Seems to me you are spending considerably more because you focus on the pessimistic possibility that you'll not get the mages you think you want. Which is a valid perspective, but not necessarily more valid than the optimistic perspective that you could get several likely multi-path mages plus troops and commanders for less investment, D3 rather than D2, that even extra D2 mages are nothing to sneeze at, etc.
PvK