Water Blessing Borked?

[Tuna-Fish]

You do get extra actions, but only 50% of quickness, that is 2 actions every second turn. Order your prophet to cast 5x fanaticism and some non-holy (or non-blessed) mage cast 5x some other spell, and you can easily see the effect: fana/fana/other/fana/other/fana/fana/other...

[Huzurdaddi]

well, don't forget that water 9 already comes w/ a +4 bonus to defense,

No chance of me forgetting that! That's what I was banking on! +5 defence from 10 water, +3 more from the quickness. Woot. With just the +5 alone some troops become real death machines. But add in another +3? Crazy!

As well, the water-9 50% quickness is a great blessing for your sacred mages,

Good point. I was only thinking about what would benifit from the bonus to defence. The haste is a nice effect on mages ( and not bad on the normal troops as well ).

Still even with this the race I was playing was not QUITE as good as pythium. The early game was just as good but not really much better. And their late game was, of course, much worse. And to top if off I had to cripple my pretender.

Still all and all the next best combo I have found.

[love crime]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:

Now if Illwinter added a new pretender who had like water 2 or ( shudder ) water 3 right off the bat and was availiable to all nations, and did not cost too much ( hell I would not even mind if it was immobile ) that would be *great*. I would probabaly use this strategy, a lot.

Blue dragon has 2 water, is available to most every nation, only costs 50, and is a strong early expander to boot...


BTW, am I alone in not understanding the cost rational for pretenders? I mean, compare said blue dragon, with frost mage. Frost mage has so few hp that not only can he not be used in battles, but he is an assassination liability, he has a weaker dominion, is a weaker water mage, and COSTS 5 MORE DESIGN POINTS?

I mean, sure he has 10 point cost reqs for ease of rainbow maging... but I really don't understand any of those rainbow mages, at least not at their costs.

What is the purpose of giving a pretender a little from each path of magic, if he can't even fight?

I mean, outside of combat, you need to have gems to get any use out of the magic (from rituals or construction)... So if you are getting a few magic points in paths your nation already doesn't have... how are you going to find the gems to get any use out of your magic paths? The pretender will find them himself? (what a waste of time...) And if you already have mages that can search for magic sites, then why does your pretender need a few points in such many paths, since the mages can use the gems themselves.

Don't get me wrong, a rainbow mage out searching all the provinces could jumpstart your gem income, but I don't see how that justifies the relatively high costs of selecting them as your pretender.

[Endoperez]

Well, the prices of Rainbow Pretenders were conciderably downgraded from Dominions: PPP... They are much more useable now. And after some research and site-searching your only problem is that he has to do something with those gems, and he is all alone on many of those magics... But after some elemental staffs, earth boots, burning skulls etc. you have a very flexible nation! They really shine in the end game, in which you SUMMON your super-combatants.

[Tricon]

Originally posted by love crime:

BTW, am I alone in not understanding the cost rational for pretenders? I mean, compare said blue dragon, with frost mage. Frost mage has so few hp that not only can he not be used in battles, but he is an assassination liability, he has a weaker dominion, is a weaker water mage, and COSTS 5 MORE DESIGN POINTS?

I mean, sure he has 10 point cost reqs for ease of rainbow maging... but I really don't understand any of those rainbow mages, at least not at their costs.

What is the purpose of giving a pretender a little from each path of magic, if he can't even fight?

I mean, outside of combat, you need to have gems to get any use out of the magic (from rituals or construction)... So if you are getting a few magic points in paths your nation already doesn't have... how are you going to find the gems to get any use out of your magic paths? The pretender will find them himself? (what a waste of time...) And if you already have mages that can search for magic sites, then why does your pretender need a few points in such many paths, since the mages can use the gems themselves.

Don't get me wrong, a rainbow mage out searching all the provinces could jumpstart your gem income, but I don't see how that justifies the relatively high costs of selecting them as your pretender.

-strange that I should ever defend Rb pretending- but RB pretenders are pretty powerful --- in the long run (well actually most during mid-game).

It's pretty easy to make a rb pretender that has 2 in all magic paths. Keep him safe (bodyguards!) fromm assassination. And yes you do need to go site hunting with the pretender (at first). You'll find about 80% of all sites (don't have the numbers here at work), missing out on the juicy ones... but that can't be helped for now. You'll soon get a steady gem income. After your empire has grown a bit, you can also search via spell (most require 2 in any given path). Get to forging. Forge magic boosters and equip, again most paths require 2, so that's not a problem (where is that usefull magic booster guide when you need one...grumble, it exists , look at some websites, either arryns or cherrys or some of the others)With some of the paths pumped to 3 you have access to magic boosting eqipment to 4(nevermind if you cannot eqipp it all, just leave them in the lab and use as needed). Of course it is not "that" expensive to magically enhance the one or other particularly usefull path to three anyway - in midgame it should be done to the one or two main paths that you want to use. OK, now, you got a pretender with magic paths ranging from 3 to 5, pretty usefull as most spells are readily availlable to you now. Of course none of the real biggies on which to base an entire strategy around, but in exchange you've become very flexible. And Rainbowing serves two other big purposes, too. First you can always sell your fire and earth gems, which is a GREAT way to boost your income. Second, you'll be able to summon a host of usefull creatures to do your fighting and negate your armys weakneses.

I'm not fond of rb'ing myself, but I faced some tough rb pretenders, and have gained a healthy respect for rb strategies.

[ April 19, 2004, 21:20: Message edited by: Tricon ]

[Huzurdaddi]

I'm not fond of rb'ing myself, but I faced some tough rb pretenders, and have gained a healthy respect for rb strategies.

RB-ing (IMO) takes off around turn 25 or so when your pretender has somehow managed to get the following going:

1) A bunch of magical sites pumping a weird skew of gems usually of not much use to anyone
2) Forged/Acquired items to boost himself/herself to astral 4, death 1
3) Research Conjuration 6

All 3 of these things just seem to naturally fall into place between turn 25 and 35 depending upon independent strength and other factors ( I personally like indepedent strength 9).

Now what you do is you use alcehmy to convert all of those weird gems into astral gems and then cast summon ether gate like mad. It's not the best summon in the game. There are plenty of counters. They are not invincible. But they are dang tough and it's still pretty early in the game so most of the stuff that can whoop them does not exist yet. They are slow though ( strategic move 1?). But when they get to the province you want to smash they do a fine job.

This is really what I use RB mages for. The rest is gravy. Yes I could forge tons of items which are really, really, good. But really I find that the ether warriors pretty much clean house for a good 20 turns or so.

Oh and I think that RBs are better when the site frequency is higher. An RB with the site fequency set to 60 or 70 is almost decent. It's no substitute for a good VQ though, IMO.

Blue dragon has 2 water

Thanks for the tip! There was no little icon so I did not think that the dragon had any magic. My mistake. Works like a charm. Saves me a bundle and makes my strategy work much better.

[Gateway103]

It didn't have the icon because in dragon form, the pretender loses 2 level of magic. This is something to keep in mind of, if you want to use him as an early land grabber, or just in battle in general.

-Gateway103

[love crime]

Ah, just to clarify: I don't think rb pretenders are useless, I just find their design costs perplexing. Crone costs 25 design points, and once you've spent 10 buying 1 water, she is, for all intents and purposes, the same as the cost 55 frost father, but for 20 fewer points. The frost father has some slight combat advantages on her (..chil...cold immunity) but considering neither are combat worthy, it seems like just meaningless flavor.

I guess frost father has slighty cheaper incremental costs in raising water magic..? but again, he is a rainbow pretender, so it seems quite suspect that one would raise water very high, and still spend the points required to rainbow him (and if you aren't full on rainbowing him, then you may as well buy a pretender that can actually fight... often for cheaper points)

[Taqwus]

The crone, if memory serves, cannot wear armor. Granted, she has something like four misc slots, but still -- elemental immunities, good prot, etherealness, missile protection, magic resistance, luck will be hard to balance.
A lot of effects could be gained from casting spells, but that'll take up slots in your script and in addition may not occur fast enough if the opponent has accurate long-range attacks or can fly. These spells also can't protect against Seeking Arrow, Fires from Afar, etc -- for those you need gear or dome spells.

[Vynd]

I agree that the Frost Father seems rather unattractive. The only good reason I've thought of to take him as opposed to any of the other Rainbow Mage candidates is if you're playing a cold based nation and want the inherent cold resistance. It'd be a pity if you set some Niefel Giants to bodyguard your Arch Mage and then watched their chill effect kill him.

[ April 20, 2004, 16:53: Message edited by: Vynd ]