Indep. Mages

[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).

[Meglobob]

Ewierl said:
I don't agree that construction on skulls/lanterns should be swapped.

Yes, 9rp > 6rp, but skulls are twice the cose. 9rp for 10 gems = 0.9 rp/gem, while 6rp for 5 gems = 1.2 rp/gem. Unless you have a fantastic supply of otherwise-unused gems, you're better off putting your resources into lanterns.

And as Amahazir has pointed out, an occasional horror mark is not particularly problematic for small mages with small items.

Errm...however skulls are constuction 4, 360 research points, lanterns construction 6, 1,040 research points. The skull mentor will zoom ahead of you for some considerable time in research.

Thats one of the many reasons death magic is so great!

[VedalkenBear]

For myself, I find the poptype mages more or less not worth the cost if I have the path on my national mages. That seems to be a consensus among the posters here.

However. There are certain indeps that are nothing less than amazing.

Ruby Amazons are great, because they give _anyone_ Blood Hunters, and not only that, sacred Blood hunters that compare favorably to national Blood hunters. For some Blood nations (e.g., ME Abysia), they are superior to any national summon.

In general, if I can build indep. mages (generally from sites, but I won't turn down poptypes) that have paths I don't, I will. Of course, I generally play on Luck-3, Magic-1 (and Growth), so I tend to get a lot of random gems from events. While painful, Empowerment is not out of the question to get them to a remote site-searching level.

[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.