Who uses an All-Paths Pretender?

[Thilock_Dominus]

Tried a couple of times with rainbow pretender, but it didn't fit very well for my play-style. I think to much time is wasted on upgrading the pretender's magic pathes IMO. I would use the time more effecient with my pretender.

Mostly I play with SC and when I play a magic prender I focus its magic path(es) instead.

Nothing wrong with Rainbow pretenders it just aren't my type


best regards
Thilock

[ August 03, 2004, 20:22: Message edited by: Thilock_Dominus ]

[Vynd]

When I use a Rainbow Pretender, which is not all that often, I usually do not bother with the paths that my national mages are already good at.

[magnate]

I've played a RB but didn't bother using gems to upgrade paths. Instead I made a ring of sorcery, ring of wizardry, an elemental staff and the horror robe thingy that also gives you +1 all paths. It was no more expensive or time-consuming than the upgrades and I could move 3 of the 4 items around ...

CC

[Boron]

Originally posted by Skolem:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alexi:
And I'm not a very patient fellow, so I won't wait a dozen turns for my Pretender to forge my armory.
But when the only one who can produce the items is your Pretender, that's means if you lose an army, it'll be quite a while before you can get re-equipped. And that's a big risk.

You don't use only your pretender for forging. Untill midgame you use him as a sitesearcher. Believes me the amount of Gems you will have has no comparison to any other strat. After this you can forge one or two magic boost to summon Mage with the path you don't have, with the time you will have a lot of Mage with a lot of different path combos and they will allow you to equip (in the mid-late game) 2 to 3 SC fully in one turn. It will be no problem because the amount of gem your pretender gives you is really amazing.

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with pythium rushing to accashic gives you the gems a bit later but no need for a rainbow . you can so faster expand and with standard settings of 40+% normally accashic is just fine

for ermor ae/sg i like a strong rainbow . either ghost king or frostfather because they need gems so bad .

but for every other race than ermor i either don't care tooo much about gems ( only the national thaumaturgy sitesearch spells i cast there ) or i have accashic or i have a semirainbow sc pretender .
2-3 in every path only you find lots of sites by searching but that's slow .
and you have to take a nonscpretender . forging ring of wizardy and the like is too expensive earlygame .
so while you have one of the highest gem incomes you have no access to highlevel summons while the others only have about 1/3 of your income but access to highlevel summons / items without empowering .
given that their pretender is already a sc + they can get more your additional gems you get are almost wasted .

furthermore clamhording can be nice too .
a rainbow needs at least 2 turns per province searched . midgame letting him search your outskirts is a really dangerous choice anyways

conclusion : rainbows are fun in sp but in mp they are probably not very competetive .

[Saxon]

Just a couple of points to add to the mix. In MP, if people have the graphs turned on, your increased gem income shows like a beacon. Someone with a SC pretender will come after you in a rush, as they know you have valuable income to loot and no tough god to defend it. The solution is to turn off the graphs, though that does take away a lot of information in other areas.

Also, some other threads have talked about the cost effectiveness of searching for the level three and four sites. If I remember correctly, most people argue that the high level sites are quite rare and do not provide that much extra income. As such, a level two search will get the large majority of the sites and the extra cost for the level three and four sites is not worth it. I think Sunray’s site ahs a listing of all magic sites and you can see the percentages of each kind. I am not sure, but I think that around 75% of sites are level one or two. You should run a search on this for more accurate details.

All of that said, in SP, I love having gems and have a lot of fun with this strategy. You can try out the various forged items and summonings that are limited in other strategies. I recommend it to someone who is just starting, as you can play with more of the toys and learn about them. Once you know how cool something is, like a wraith sword, you can go on to build a fancy strategy around it in your next game.