Early Arcoscephale - Ephebophilia incarnate

[Alpine Joe]

I have a couple problems with this build:

1. dormant pretender: The pretender you have is pretty expensive and not really affordable awake. But you have sloth scales so without an awake pretender expansion is going to be really rough. And what if you run into an aggressive neighbor before your pretender pops out? EA Arco is a common rush target and EA is full of big nasty dual blessed sacreds looking for a tasty target just like you. Sure, sometimes you get lucky, but you cant really count on that. You really have nothing capable of withstanding say, a dual -blessed jag/sun warrior rush until your pretender arrives. Hell, a few skinshifters can annihilate you in the fall or winter, since you'll have nothing that can stop them.

2. You have national healers. Why not get an awake SC pretender who can be healed by them? The virtue or wyrm are the best choices here because, well, why not use healing if you have it. The POD gives you access to death magic, but conjuration isn't a big school for arco. You are much better off leveraging your huge research to construction and outfitting golems instead.

I'm sort of a noob so i'd love to hear the reasons the above is stupid.

[analytic_kernel]

Originally Posted by Alpine Joe

I have a couple problems with this build:

1. dormant pretender: The pretender you have is pretty expensive and not really affordable awake. But you have sloth scales so without an awake pretender expansion is going to be really rough.

I find that a handful or two of chariots can plow over most indies without breaking a sweat - and I play with indies set to 9. (Elephants and heavy cav can be a bit problematic without some additional troops to keep them occupied while the chariots flank and take out the softer troops behind them. But, other than that, it is pretty smooth sailing.) You might have to wait a couple of turns to get expansion going (with Sloth 3), but every few turns thereafter you can start another expansion vector. I haven't done any MP games yet, which makes me a bit of a noob as well, so I don't know how that stacks up against other people's expansion rates. But, it definitely outpaces any AI I've played against yet.