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Originally Posted by Baalz
I have to disagree with you on the indie research angle though. You have to consider the opportunity cost. You're switching from drain-2 to magic-3, which costs 200 design points and makes your thugs more vulnerable to counters in your own dominion. Not sure where you intend to get those design points from, but that's a huge opportunity cost right off the bat. You suggest sacred shamans, so you're putting up 5 labs plus temples - were you putting up castles to, or hoping nobody raids you, pops your temples and kills all your researchers? So 4500-9000 gold before you start paying for the mages themselves depending on your tolerance for risk. So, on top of the straight gold opportunity cost there's the time opportunity cost of gathering that gold, building the infrastructure, and recruiting the mages.
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The design points could come from taking an imprisoned pretender instead of an awake one (and you have 50 points left over for higher Dominion or whatnot). I agree that this is the exact opposite of the approach you suggest in your guide. On a crowded map going for long-term gain (Magic-3 instead of awake pretender) is likely to be painful for exactly the reasons you suggest. On a larger map with less early conflict, +3 RP per researcher is a better deal than an extra 29 RP per turn. It's not like Magic and skull mentors are mutually exclusive, after all, and Magic also helps your thugs by reducing their early fatigue from Soul Vortex. (It also makes Soul Vortex kill more chaff and suck in more healing/reinvig.)
You don't have to build forts to protect your temples, just set the researchers to retreat, unless there's enough of them that you *want* them supporting the PD (which they can't do from inside a fort). So yeah, 4500 setup cost (5 labs, 5 temples for indies) vs. 5100 (3 labs, 3 temples, 3 forts for Vanjarls) although the indies have obvious disadvantages too. Note that I'm not even necessarily suggesting that you have to build the indies, just that it becomes an attractive option which you rule out by taking Drain in favor of an awake pretender.
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a lot of catchup to do to my suggested strategy which, if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one.
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Not as much catchup as you'd think, since you can still have just as many death gems stockpiled. You'll take longer to hit Const-4, but once you do you're in an even better position. (You're generating 62 RP from those same 4 skull mentors and 3 mages.)
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It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best.
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This I just don't buy--it's not that hard to catch up on research if you have gems stockpiled and a good economy, and aren't busy fighting a war, and Helheim isn't a likely rush target. I used to play heavily in favor of skull mentors, making Const-4 a top priority for every nation, but sometimes it really hurts to blow 140 death gems for a mere 180 RP per turn, and once your economy is cranking 180 RP is a drop in the bucket. It comes down to this: I may be wrong, I frequently am, but to me it looks like taking Drain-2 in order to have an awake pretender is a poor tradeoff for Helheim.
-Max
Edit: just to re-emphasize, Baalz is more likely to be right than I am about anything involving MP, because I only play SP. Maybe Helheim really does need the early research to stave off attackers.