Indep. Mages

[Methel]

Sofar It seems to me the indeps are pretty much a waste of money unless you need them to branch into a new path. There are a few exceptions, but the most common seems to be the shamans of the animal spirits. Do you guys use these for researchers early on?

[Wish]

nope. you wanna use sages if you can get one of the two sites that lets you build them. Some of the academies are good too.... but mostly indy mages are for branching into neglected paths.

[Micah]

Abysia's research capacity is actually so incredibly bad that the X tribe shaman are cost-effective researchers. They're not at all useful in battle, but they won't die off from old age, and the gold to research point ratio is about the same as the anathemants. Plus you don't have to build a fort to make them.

For most nations though they're only worthwhile if you need nature magic (or astral, in the case of the lizard shammies. The lizards are even worse researchers than the tribals though, for the cost, assuming some magic scale)

[MaxWilson]

It depends partly on your magic dominion, and on whether you have access to air/fire/death magic on your national mages. For a nation like Marverni, with no A/F/D and thus no research-boosters possible, I can see indie mages as being cost-effective, especially with Magic-1 or better. As Helheim I'll make a few Academy wizards, but not a ton, because while they're most cost-effective at researching they're not usually as good at being battle-mages as my Svartalfs. I'm still branching out into other nations, but as Agartha I doubt I'd use regular indie mages for researching because earth readers are so cheap, but I'd jump all over Academy mages if I found them.

-Max

[Sombre]

I play with indies off, so unless you find a site which enables the more interesting ones, you don't get any at all. It helps increase national differences, which I appreciate.

[MaxWilson]

Is that the same as just setting indie strength to zero? Or is there a mod that prevents you from building indies once you conquer their provinces? I should try that...

-Max

[PvK]

How on earth can people agree there are about a dozen good uses for independent mages which they can list off the tops of their heads, and then conclude that they are "a waste"?

Just a rhetorical question. Seems to be the curse of the Dominions forums that people will constantly be incorrectly declaring things "useless" etc.

[Wish]

i think the curse is that they disagree - the result, of course, of the highly variable way of playing and perfecting strategies in the game.

[Hellboy]

PvK said:
How on earth can people agree there are about a dozen good uses for independent mages which they can list off the tops of their heads, and then conclude that they are "a waste"?

Just a rhetorical question. Seems to be the curse of the Dominions forums that people will constantly be incorrectly declaring things "useless" etc.

Despite the question being rhetorical, I'll answer anyhow. I think those coming up with the lists were poking fun at the OP (good naturedly, of course).

[mivayan]

Hellboy said:

Despite the question being rhetorical, I'll answer anyhow. I think those coming up with the lists were poking fun at the OP (good naturedly, of course).

Yeah. Some sarcasm was used.

Looked to me everyone agreed they are useless if your nationals can do the same paths... but otherwise they rock.