Water Blessing Borked?

[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 ]