Balance on small maps

[alexti]

Twan said:
I've proposed it as a design option not changing too much the game, not as a way to force everybody (even on big maps) to take awake gods or gods without blesses for 36 turns, like it would be the case with normal imprisonment giving less than 100 points.

With blessed strategy dormant/imprisoned is essentially free design points. I think that the idea of dormant/imprisoned was to allow more interesting strategies by permitting pretenders with various magic ability (for later game casting, acccess to magic paths, forging and summoning, or uber SC) at the cost of slower research and expansion in the beginning. In Dom2 rainbow pretenders were pretty weak - dormant/imprisoned are certainly make them more attractive. Bless strategies were already powerful in Dom2 and current dormant/imprisoned status just give them huge boost.

For example, I see no good reason not to play bless strategy with dormant pretender with many nations on any map (not necessarily uber F9W9, but one high bless or few minor blesses, depending on the nations and what magic paths need to be covered).

[WraithLord]

The more I think about this the more I come to like the idea of tying bless potency to the pretenders arrival. Doesn't necessarily have to be all or nothing (no bless until pretender arrives) rather a few steps of increasing bless potency reaching full potency upon arrival.