Caelum pretender design

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
hmm... i wonder what a period is for?

A period tells people where a sentence ends.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that your message is only written once, but is read many times. This means that it's up to you to make your message easy to read so that other people aren't being inconvenienced.

[jarenko]

can you really wish for 'flame pythium'......

[Chazar]

I see that I noticed this thread a bit too late to discuss Caelum's pretender design, but since I love Caelum, here are my humble thoughts on the topic:

- Caelum's Mammoth toghether with Wingless and a Seraphine-Prophet casting Fanaticism are enough for early game expansion, hence a magic pretender and very strong scales is a must-have for me.

- Order=3,Sloth=-3,Cold=3. Apart from TempleGuards and Iclads, one does not need resources but one needs money for the mages - plenty of mages. One also better builts several Forts with all the money one has to get enough Iceclads/Stormguards and fly them together instead. Forts are also sensible to feed your troops, which are constantly starving if they move to far away. Hence I usually take growth 3 as well, but any positive growth is enough. I am not sure on the magic, but a postive scale is good if you have the points, so I usually distribute leftover-points equally between growth and magic, but I dont feel magic that necessary as others do here on this forum.

- Magic: I've decided that blood3,earth3,death3 on a Ghost King is pretty nice, but requires luck-1 to pay for (which I hate, because bad luck is bad for my morale). A fountain of blood is also pretty good, with blood3 and earth1: Why blood & earth? Simply to forge a blood-stone, which gives +1 earth (and earth gems), therefore giving you access to earth boots (earth+1), which in turn gives you access to dwarven hammers (if pretender does not have earth3 already) and, most important, staffs of elemental mastery. This gives you a high seraph with 4Air, 3Water, 4 Earth, who can cast nasty things like petrify and still has an armor, helmet & one misc available! Such a staff of elemental mastery is pretty nice on any other high seraph as well and I usually go for a high construction research anyway, since water bracelets are cheap and give all my high seraphs the capability to cast falling frost, which is pretty cute against most foes.

Having blood is nice as well, since even 3-4 sages with sanguine rods give you enough slaves to get an IceDevil or some StormDemons (via a Blood Seraph having a brazen skull for blood+1). If you use your fountain of blood for hunting (hey, your scales give enough gold anyway) on every other turn, you can easily get IceDevils pretty soon.


Comments?

[Chazar]

Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok, but otherwise its wasted, since the seraphs can forge enough items to cast all air/water globals already by themselves. Therefore I always avoid Air&Water on my pretender. I'd rather by a Wizards Tower if I have any spare points left!

[Kel]

Chazar said:
Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok

I use the pretender for combat.

- Kel

[Chazar]

Kel said:
I use the pretender for combat.

As I said, I agree with that purpose, but apart from combat...?

I do not like using Close-Combat-Pretenders, since having access to foreign magic to forge nice items like DwarvenHammers and StaffsofElementalMastery or to summon creatures like StormDemons or IceDevils is much more helpful than a single strong combatant. I guess this particularly is true for Caelum, which relies on magic! I mean, how do you get those items/summons if not by your pretender?

I found that except for Death, empowering is way out of question for Caelum, whose mages eat away the gems like vanilla ice on a hot day (even during Caelian midwinter !). Or do you think that one can get along without, summon more readily accessible creatures like those AirQueens? (Even with GaleGate up, I hardly have enough air gems for summoning left. I use them mainly for staffs of storms (every army and skirmish-squad should have one), bag of winds, combat-casting like wrathful sky and storm warriors,...)

[Boron]

Chazar said:

As I said, I agree with that purpose, but apart from combat...?

I do not like using Close-Combat-Pretenders, since having access to foreign magic to forge nice items like DwarvenHammers and StaffsofElementalMastery or to summon creatures like StormDemons or IceDevils is much more helpful than a single strong combatant. I guess this particularly is true for Caelum, which relies on magic! I mean, how do you get those items/summons if not by your pretender?

I found that except for Death, empowering is way out of question for Caelum, whose mages eat away the gems like vanilla ice on a hot day (even during Caelian midwinter !). Or do you think that one can get along without, summon more readily accessible creatures like those AirQueens? (Even with GaleGate up, I hardly have enough air gems for summoning left. I use them mainly for staffs of storms (every army and skirmish-squad should have one), bag of winds, combat-casting like wrathful sky and storm warriors,...)

if you take e.g. a nataraja with f2,w2,e3,d3,a2 :
you do not intend to use her as a sc earlygame .
but if you have to defend you can use her as an earlygame sc in times of need .
she can sitesearch then earlygame , midgame she forges / summons and lategame you can equip her to a really frightening combattant .

d3 is imo a musthave for most nations , especially magically narrow nations .
then you can do 3 things :
summon spectres for magic flexibility
summon bane lords as thugs / small scs
forge a skull staff + the death+1 helmet : then you can summon wraith lords / demi lichs too

since d3 lets you cast soul vortex in combat it is useful there too .
Last but not least with death 5 ( with items ) you can armytravel via stygian path spell lategame .

oh btw my mentioned nataraja with dominion 6 costs "only" 420 points .
so you have 80 points left for scales + castle .

i like : order 3 , sloth 3 , cold 3 , growth 3 , magic 3 and misfortune 1 .

if you want another castle than a watchtower you can chose misfortune 2 for mauso and misfortune 3 for 40 admin castle .

you have exactly zero design points left so you feel "perfect" as a nice psychological sideeffect

i wish i had chosen this pretender in thufirs new game as caelum and not my lame vq

[Kel]

Chazar said:

As I said, I agree with that purpose, but apart from combat...?

I do not like using Close-Combat-Pretenders, since having access to foreign magic to forge nice items like DwarvenHammers and StaffsofElementalMastery or to summon creatures like StormDemons or IceDevils is much more helpful than a single strong combatant.

As a 3A (actually, mine might be 2A now, come to think of it) 2W 3E 3D pretender, it's not one or the other, the GK is beautiful for fulfilling multiple roles, that's specifically why I would use the GK and not, say, a Wyrm. If you are going to have 3E for hammer forging, why not have it be useful when you aren't hammer forging, by using it for Invulnerability ? How do you get the earth gems for forging hammers ? You use the same 3E to site search when it's convenient. I use the GK for all functions (except scouting, I guess )

You are 100% right that being able to cover the weaknesses in your summoning and forging is important when considering a pretender. However, the GK will be your first SC, by far, if you research alteration-3 and will give you a lot of early expansion, getting you to the point where you can make hammers or summon 'wicked fun things'(tm) that much faster.

Note 1: False horror is Alt-6, just one more level past Alt-5 for invulnerability so there is a research synergy, you aren't sidetracking your research by having a multi role pretender. Sometimes I go straight to alt-6 before sending seraphs out, sometimes I just go to alt-3 and switch back later on. Depends on game variables. If my national research took me down completely different paths (like Ctis does), I wouldn't use a GK.

Note 2: in my experience, an ethereal, chilled, air shielded, ironskinned, mistformed, mirrored, quickened (all available by Alt-3), fear producing pretender can be a lump of play-doh and pretty well take any normal indie province. Soul vortex is more of a bonus since it isn't as readily available, research wise. If you are fearful of losing him, keep him inside the highest dominion you can.

Like I said, I am not an expert and my ideas haven't been certified by any of the resident experts, that's just my take on it

- Kel

[Boron]

Chazar said:
Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok, but otherwise its wasted, since the seraphs can forge enough items to cast all air/water globals already by themselves. Therefore I always avoid Air&Water on my pretender. I'd rather by a Wizards Tower if I have any spare points left!

w2 is earlygame for expansion quickness .
you always can cast breath of winter which is good with caelums cold scale .

air 2 is for earlygame mistform + mirrorimage .
lategame you need it for magic travel ( cloud trapeze ) .