Useless or redundant units?

[Zen]

Corwin said:
Not really.

Considering that most plaayers who take level 9 bless and double lvl 9 bless will choose dormant or imprisoned pretender, and considering that role of single SC in the mid-late game is much less in Dom3 than it was in Dom2, and finally considering that defence attribute in Dom3 in general got a very large nerf from Illwinter (esp. so for SCs), +1 def per water level for your pretender is certainly not a major factor when evaluating water bless.

Oh really? Well actually it's a huge factor if you want to go single bless. While double bless is a rusher's dream, you can't play that with every nation since they don't have usable sacreds.

Also the W9 Blue Dragon or Father of Winters is nearly as effective as the Cyclops after 2 Research (depending on your nation initial gem income) and can be crucial for some nations to hammer through HCav provinces quickly turn >5.

Maybe this is not something that you consider, but I consider initial expansion and Awakened Pretenders for early expansion for non sacred-heavy nations at least as important as double blessings with heavy sacred nations.