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Originally Posted by Micah
What is the recommendation by the last two posters of Dom 10 over D5 based on?
As far as I can tell the choice between dom 10 and D5 seems to depend if you want Death access or stronger Dom, and both are valid. From what I can tell it works out about the same in terms of combat effectiveness, at least before soul vortex is researched. (The D has a higher deviation on the morale rolls, which is bad, but also makes the combat shorter, which is especially good vs indies.)
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My perspective is mostly based on points:effectiveness payoff.
A pretender which doesn't get hit wins combats. Awe +7 is really hard for virtually all independents to hit, and you have air magic for air shield. Its also pretty cheap to get Dom10, and has other benefits (each point of your dominion in the province you attack is +1 to all stats!). (7+14+21+28+35+42 = 147)
Fear +0 isn't *that* much fear, and its really expensive. D1 is 80 points right up front, and its another 16+24+32+40 = 112 points to get to D5, for a total pricetage of 192. That's an extra scale you just lost, and you haven't even bought any more dominion yet. And as the above poster pointed out, you'll take more total hits vs. independents even with the shorter combats.
Basically, I can't justify buying another path with Virtue because its so expensive. And you get perfectly good combat buffs with astral (personal luck, body ethereal) - which you're going to want to make S4+ for protection from mind hunting anyway. You don't need the death to be an SC later (although its inarguable you'd be stronger with it), but A+S is a good combination for buffing as is. (And if you take A4 you can also do things like drop Fog Warriors with a booster or extra gem - a booster you can forge yourself).
Edit:
In non-CBM I'd just take Air, or more likely, wouldn't take Virtue at all.
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Originally Posted by amorphous
I do not advocate any extra production with Arcoscephale, but calling its units crap is going to far. In every era Arcoscephale has decent units beside tramplers. Certainly better than other than very special independents.
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They're crap for their high resource cost. Might as well get the free 120 points for Sl3 and buy the much more reasonable indies who may be less effective, but also don't require tons of resources to build. I mean, its not like your national troops are going to win you any midgame wars, and you have an indie expansion unit, so they fill no niche except chaff. Indies are perfectly acceptable as chaff.