Quote:
Originally Posted by Yskonyn
For the sake of argument here's the link to the guide I found fascinating; Why Caelum should go for Blood magic
Another thing I notice, is that you are talking about 3 to 4 levels of each magic path.
Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken? |
Another thing I notice, is that you are talking about 3 to 4 levels of each magic path.
Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken?[/quote]
When picking a pretender for site searching people either take the minimum so they can forge boosters and remote site search with spells, like forging earth boots for Caelum for example. Or go as high as 3-4 levels for manual site searching and more powerful boosters and late game options.
I don't remember the exact numbers so I won't speculate but the odds to find a site manually increase with each level and a level 4 mage is guaranteed to find anything. It also helps that level 4 has boosters you couldn't get with lower levels with some paths, like the Winged Helmet for air, Flaming helmet for fire, etc.
Like Wendigo said you can empower to gain additional levels but the price increases drastically for each level. Initial empowerment is 50 into any magic path, including slaves, which is why blood empowerment is easiest and most common. Than it increases by 15 every additional level starting with level 2 which cost 30 I believe.
So starting a blood economy would require several hundreds slaves which isn't a lot for a non blood nation (nations like Mictlan or Lanka can easily pull in as much as 300 slaves per turn), but is very pricey when you're looking to get with a pretender.
Also, worth mentioning, any unit can blood hunt but there is only a 5% chance with non blood commanders to hunt successfully. So I guess you can always build 100 scouts and try to blood hunt.
Now back to magic paths, one of the reason why diversity is very important is the more diverse a nation is the higher level magic it can get, and the higher level magic you can get the more powerful the monster are you can summon, not to mention battle magic.
For example having S4/B4/A4 insures you'll be able to forge Robe of the Magi, Ring of Wizardry and Ring of Sorcery, all of which can increase you base paths drastically. Those boosters can be used on other mages to get additional high level boosts, Sceptre of Dark Regency, the Forbidden Light and so on, which insures you can cast and forge pretty mcuh anything.
So there is a very important trade off when choosing a pretender. Do you want an awake super combating pretender to expand well and orient on early game, hoping to compensate your lack of magic or diversity by successful early wars and plunder you'd gain by it, or do you want to cover all paths and magic at the risk of being a target of one of those who is focusing on early expansion?
Of course there are cross between nations but every nations has to make a trade off somewhere, scales for a bless, awake SC pretender for scales and diversity, scales for diversity... etc.
Caelum like any nation has a choice there. The good thing with Caelum is that you can kick the crap out of any nation that can't deal with archers, like Mictlan, or anyone who can't counter air magic (lightning evocation). But those who can will probably kick the crap out of you. So you can chose a pretender to compensate for your weakness here. Take a Prince of Death or maybe a Vamp Queen if you want blood.
A word of adivce from me; Caleum troops are generally not good. Melee troops in any case, so don't rely they'll be able to deal with anything other than archers and your archers won't be able to deal with anything other than lightly armored troops. You have temple guards but they are painfully slow for Caelum and you have Mamoths who are easily counterable with almost any magic researched. Though temple guards and mammoths are good when combined since the temple guards with their high morale keep the mammoths from routing and killing your troops.