Vampire Queen + Underrated Pretenders?

[MaxWilson]

Nation-specific: So what does Ulm do with the rainbow crone? As Ulm, my research is slow enough that I'm not seeing any particularly good uses for my gems, which (I presume) is what rainbow crones are for. I suppose she would have upped my research some, but buying a pretender for research seems like a waste.

Honestly, Ulm seems like kind of a brute-force nation. Not much going on but flooding the enemy with archers and sword maidens, since the mages are too weak to cast any good spells. A rainbow crone *could* cast good battle spells, but my VQ can just win those battles by herself anyway, and either one can only be in one place at a time, which leaves N2 spells like Wooden Warriors and the occasional E2 spell like--oh. I should have gotten Conj-3 to enable Blade Wind, shouldn't I?

-M.D.W.

[Edi]

EA Ulm doesn't need a rainbow crone for anything. LA Ulm, Black Forest, on the other hand does because it is so limited in its magic options and doesn't need a SC pretender for anything. For them, forger, site searcher, researcher.

EA Ulm's mages are plenty good as long as you get evocation 4 and 5 to get blade wind and magma eruption. You just need to mass them and keep forging earth boots for your mages. EA Ulm has all the elements and both nature and death available.

[TirAsleen]

fully agree with Edi here. no brainer he is kind a veteran here and makes a lot of stuff.

played dom1-dom3....and yes vampirequeen is in my very opinion one of the worst choice you can do. 175 points i would never, EVER waste. no pretender is worth so much design points....except he has high magic paths and dominion combined with good stats, but that would take away the fun of customization.

vampirqueen in dom2 for ermor(until patched) was a blast......i never like the change to remove her from ermor where she fits. also i do hate the fact that ermor has not all undead pretenders availible. bog mummy and draco lich are missing for example. only niefelheim and their other era themes have them, but honestly LA ermor should have them too. not much to do with LA ermor except designing a very good pretender anyways...as you can't really put the dominon positive scales to good use with luck as exception maybe. disturbing fact that luck also spawns zealots and militias though...

i suggest for LA ermor some special modifications, like luck not spawning free units and unluck not hurting them as much as other nations.(no gold penality event for example, it hurts a lot!)

i would like to hear what pretenders you consider underrated? in fact VQ is not underrated. she is just inefficent for the cost as is. try play a bog mummy or the argartha lich with soul vortex, body ethereal, quickness, luck scripted in each battle. or use draco lich who can cast soul vortex too, although in dragonform his death magic is reduced, so he needs a minimum of 5 death.

finally, what indie strenght are you playing with? i play with 7-8 usually as 5 is way too low.

[MaxWilson]

Quote: "i would like to hear what pretenders you consider underrated?"

I actually don't have an opinion yet on most pretenders. I had picked up on these boards that the Vampire Queen was considered to have been "overnerfed" since Dom2 (which I've never played), and so I was expecting her to not be any fun as an SC. I turned out to be pleasantly surprised. Mainly I was wondering whether there are other pretenders I'd be missing out on if I just stuck to the oft-mentioned ones on these boards like the Gorgon, Dragon, rainbow mage, master lich, etc.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

You say, "EA Ulm has all the elements." True, but it looks to me like Earth is the only one they can boost without using Empowerment, so Fire-1 Air-1 Water-2 is as far as it gets on the others. Is that right? Fire has some cool-looking spells like Phoenix Pyre, but they require F2-3, so to me Ulm looks like an Earth nation with enough mixins of other elements to use some specialized Earth spells like Magma Bolts. I guess next time I should put enough Fire on my pretender to forge the Skull of Death.

Anything else in Ulm's potential that I'm missing out on?

Thanks,
Max

[Edi]

EA Ulm can actually get all elements at lv 2 natively, though the only one they consistently get that way is earth. It still gets them a wide variety of useful stuff, both in forging and combat spells. They can boost water up to 4 with a E1W2 smith by forging water bracelet and then robe of the sea.

Shamans can get both death and fire as random so EA Ulm has the ability to forge skull of fire straight out of the box with a little luck. By the time you hit Construction 6, you should have one E1F1D1 shaman. If you want boosters in all the elemental paths, then your pretender should take care of the air and fire deficiency, in which case a phoenix will do nicely. If you also want astral, then some other pretender which can cover all three paths and you're set.

But this thread is getting seriously off topic with this EA Ulm stuff. We can start a new thread on that one and copy the posts from here. We should concentrate on the under-used pretenders.

[Shovah32]

Well the lord of war is basically the poor mans cyclops and I have still not seen him used. I dont think ive seen any green dragons used yet as the red/blue can get nice single blesses and useful skill boosts. The manticore also seems under-used, the wyrm generally being the magicless pretender of choice.

[Meglobob]

Shovah32 said:
Well the lord of war is basically the poor mans cyclops and I have still not seen him used. I dont think ive seen any green dragons used yet as the red/blue can get nice single blesses and useful skill boosts. The manticore also seems under-used, the wyrm generally being the magicless pretender of choice.

Well, in MP I have seen the lord of war, green dragon and manticore used once each to be exact. Of the 3 green dragon was most effective. I agree though they are not a popular choice well Wyrms, Blue dragons are very, very popular.

In MP should I want a tough pretender I always look to a wrym/blue dragon/cyclops first.

The underused in MP pretenders are really for fun or roleplaying in SP play I think...MP's just too competitive and ruthless.

[Archonsod]

Depends on the other players I guess

I've never saw the titan pretender types used much (Lady of Rivers, Lady of Fortune and the like).

[Gandalf Parker]

I have a tendency to automatically want to explore under-used anything. Especially in this game when they tend to offer some fantastic surprises. So under-used pretenders tend to be my favorites.