So you're saying that you would trade a 50% chance of surviving the early game with a 10% chance of victory, for an 80% chance of surviving the early game, with a 5% chance of victory?
I really have to say, there isn't much in the game that will earn
less respect from me in the game, than someone running around with an awake PoD. Not that I disrespect those people, but it's like going out and buying yourself a Corvette on your 40th birthday. >.>
Generally in my experience - it's highly improbable to have your awake SC, with dom9-10 and self buffing ability - and also have good enough scales that you can support your conventional army expanding AND have mages for researching and eventual forging. Hell, I have tried out so many builds for 10-12 turns, and depending on quality of neighboring provinces, sometimes a really high scales build has trouble keeping up with mages.
With Cold3, a D5/E4 PoD with 10 dom has 53 design points left over. That's 1 scale.
So do you go Sloth3 to get Magic1 and Order 3? So your opponent knows, as potentially frightening as your pretender is, you have squat for troops. Yes, you can still claim that the awake PoD is still an effective deterrent. People know that even if they can take you, you can make it costly and painful for them, negating the benefit of performing the early rush. I would think that having large numbers of highly mobile and multi-purpose cavalry units, would be able to provide similar deterrent effect, especially if your research is doing well.
I'm not trying to claim that an awake pretender is never worth it - obviously people often win with them - I am just saying that if your primary incentive is to use it to dissuade people from rushing you out, it's more of a placebo effect in most cases, than anything else. I'd just rather get eliminated by an early rush several times in a row (how improbable would that be?) before finally getting a good solid start, than to spend 2 months playing a nation with gimped scales, clinging to the small shred of a chance that I might actually ultimately win the game.
I guess here is the crux of my argument:
Most of the highly experienced MP vets recommend an awake pretender for Bogarus.
Bogarus has not won a single MP game yet.
Therefore, it seems to me, that playing what looks like the longer odds of going for better scales or a more magically apt pretender, may be the missing link in their success.
I know I'm crazy, but that doesn't interfere with my ability to use the internets!
