Re: The Virtue
You probably should have asked this in the BKaP:V thread, if only to make it easier for prosperity to find. Anyway...
Evaluating a Pretender build without clarifying which nation its suppose to assist is difficult. An awake pretender is a little different, as the assumption is the Pretender will be battling indies with out support from troops or national mages. Furthermore, I rarely play CBM and dislike the changes they made to the Virtue. Sure, having 2 paths is definitely a boost, but it sort of forces builds to focus on Astral. Simply reducing the additional path cost to 50 from 80 would be a much better "fix," but thats neither he nor there.
Anyway, if she's sleeping, she's not fighting indies and hopefully when she awakes your nation will be in better shape to equip her or cast some buffs. So, I'd drop the Dom down to 7 or 8. Earth magic... its pretty potent, especially in combination with Air (best SC buffs in the game and Elemental Staff) and Astral (ton of valuable forging takes place with Astral and Earth). It's an expensive addition, but probably worth while depending on nation. It also improves protection making Dom10 even more unnecessary.
Astral is probably fine at S4 and opens the door to Ring forging, but certainly still vulnerable to Magic Duel and keeps Wish out of reach without empowering. Going S6 fixes both and adds a little extra MR for sacreds that might be handy depending on nation.
Sloth means your nation is going to have trouble expanding... depending on troop types. Really, this is going to be very nation dependent, but I typically think Production doesn't get the respect it deserves.
Now on to temp scales. I don't know who told you go neutral or go 3, but they were lying. Everyone loves order-3 and its 7% per tick income bonus. Yet, temp scales are a 5% per tick penalty. The difference between 5 and 7 is there, but not game changing. In general, I suggest players only pick non-neutral temp scales if the only other place to pick up points is Order. Obviously, the needs of any build is complex. And, some nations have preferred temperatures which players should absolutely take advantage of.
Luck/Misfortune is typically the cheapest place to pick up points. Yeah, it will help your endgame when combined with magic scales creating gem generating random events. But thats a luxury.
Magic once against depends on nation, but any nation planning on recruiting a lot of cheap, low path mages will want as much magic as possible (at least 1, which you have), and avoid drain like the plague. If you're playing a nation with very expensive mages with a lot of paths, then Drain become more of an option.
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