Pretender concept: Messianic Figurehead

[JimMorrison]

He's starting to look pretty interesting, I'm curious to hear how your next tests go!

He's definitely very thuggish now, without quite crossing the line to SC. You could probably raise knights for 2 turns, then go off into the country and start putting down those uncouth rebels in style.

[Poopsi]

A good thing you told me to tone the guy up. I was fearing that if I added all those things it might come around as unbeatable, but after testing it, I think it´s more balanced than I thought. Maybe still leaning on weak.
To put it into situation, I put him in a late age Ulm game. (This was a matter of practicality, as since I would need to beef up national magicians to get summons going, I´d need lots of gems, and the cheapest "gem" around are blood slaves).
I had him build up a l0-l5 cavalry force, which in battle he would lead from a side of the map down onto the enemy commanders. Heavy infantry would stay at the middle of the map, around an Ulm Commander using a skull talisman over and over, and behind them would be the crossbowmen. This combat set performed amazingly well against independents, as the heavy infantry usually cut through the lesser troops, down to the commanders, and induced mass routs, with little casualties.
Later, I beefed up all formations, throwing in more heavy infantry, more cavalry to the pretender´s cavalry force, and some more archers divisions, plus a wizard (a black priest with Earth l). It's perfomance wasn´t exactly overwhelming, but it kept some big enemy armies from bypassing my frontiers. Plus, I *did* achieve some significative victories against... Vanheim, I think (through I stopped short of their capital). And for some reason, Arcocesphale had it´s Cyclops pretender lovemaking around in a border province, with one some poxy militias as bodyguard, and got killed.
However, that´s when the good times ended. While I was performing cyclopicide, the not-çuite done in Vanheimians came down at me, slaughtered some blood harvesters, and besieged my capital, all in call cutting through two 30+ defense provinces, which usually prove enough to keep back raiding parties (BTW: at this time I had already beefed up a gypsy sorceress to blood 3 death 3, which allowed me to summon my first vampire lord.). My army was able to defeat the besiegers... with losses. I rebeefed him up, so that he had a bigger army, again. I also threw in that vampire count with a bunch of blood slaves so that he could cast imps at the enemy. While I was doing this, Man had invaded the west, and had a not-huge-but-not-disregardable army. In the following engagement, I won, but suffered staggering losses (as in, only five knights survived, about one third of the heavy infantry, and NONE of the archers. Plus a black priest and a good archer hero got killed. I have re-refitted the army again (drawing on the troops which were going to go to the second army, which I need to take care of the Eastern Front). Battling it up without summons is more challenging than it seemed at first, cavalry far less overwhelming than I thought, and building up decent wizards for summons is costly (not that much with blood magic, but it still reçuires several hunters, and to get the blood magic levels which the good stuff reçuires you still need to economize your slaves)

[Aezeal]

I'd say a battlewide buffspell as onebattle spell might be nice. Early on with smaller armies it's not that strong (don't use army of lead or gold or that sort of way powerfull spells) with big armies it will be increasingly stronger as the game progresses.

[JimMorrison]

So he performed pretty well in combat though? And didn't die in all of that? That's a pretty good sign. Hopefully he would generally avoid his own death, but rout when the army reaches 75% losses.

He may still be missing that one thing that makes him an integral and compelling part of your strategy. As it is, he's more of just a really nice hero (oh, ironic) than an actual pretender.

A #onebattlespell may be a good option. Not sure what you would use that would be thematic, useful, and balanced. Since he's meant to be magicless, Antimagic could be an interesting buff for him to apply. And that's definitely one that doesn't do a lot early on, but later in the game would make him an incredible tool for your armies (at least in MP, not quite as much against the AI).

[Poopsi]

hm, I was reading the VOTD thread in the forum and was thinking that he WOULD need some kind of extra buff. Otherwise kill ratio will build and eventually he´ll get offed by a VOTD