Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
I play a very fun high bless strat with arcosphale, and I really disagree that bless strats are prohibitively cost-intensive.
Not only are there more points to go around this time, but I don't think it's excessive to say that initialy money spent on sacred troops can be better than twice as good as the same money spent on standard troops... most nations with high bless strats can work it so they can advance without losing units, thus gaining high experience.
Not only do you have to spent less on troops to get an equivalently powerful force, the real kicker is that sacred units/commanders are half upkeep... which is quite a sizable income boost, long-term, probably more an impact on income than order scales. (if you are playing a nation lucky enough to be able to dump its money almost totally into sacred unit/commanders)
My main problem with the pre-eminance of bless strats, is how poorly the starting pretender magic paths are distributed in relation to this. The difference in getting a 9 bless with a pretender with 3 in a category, and one with 1 (or even 0) is 105 design points (or 168 + the extra magic path cost), but magic paths seem thrown around, somewhat at random for nations. The blesses also vary widely in quality, and none of this is reflected in the cost of the pretender.... an innate magic path seems to cost in design points, about what it would cost to buy the first level of it... for example frost father costs 55 with 2 paths and a minor ability, compared to archmage with 35 and 1 path... the extra magic seems to cost around 20... however if you are going bless strat, the difference between 2 starting magic paths, and none, is more than 150 points, depending on initial magic path costs...
I wish some nations had better options for bless strats, but I also wish the cost of innate magic paths for pretenders was rebalanced...
Most pretenders suck horribly given the new design system... for example the god of war vs the cyclops... cyclops is cheaper for bless strats, and stronger to boot. SC's are much less a factor in this version, and blesses much more-so, but the cost system doesn't reflect this. I almost always play with an imprisoned god, and high bless/scales... gives me lots of money, and troops capable of taking down any early-game SC. If you buy an SC-capable pretender, not only do you have to pay for their inflated initial costs, but you also forgo the points for imprisoned/dormancy, as you'll likely want to quicken your expansion by using your pretender.
If I play imprisoned frost father with w9 e9 n6 jotunheim, no pretender you buy will be able to stand up to even a handful of blessed giants early game. btw drain and cold scales pretty much pay for even this overkill of a blessing (I forget but I think it needs sloth too, but jotun is gold intensive, so it hardly matters)... while sc's may scale up well with research and items, the army of giants scales up with income... and the thugs also scale up with items.
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