Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.

[WingedDog]

Originally Posted by militarist

I like T3S3L3D3 for some bless nations.

You get A LOT of points, and you can have awake sorceress , with research 30-40 from first turn (idea is taken from Baal'z helheim guide), and perfect sitesearcher later, with any kinds of bless you need. dominion usually will be low, so if you have a neigbour with high Dom , you should kill him faster then he domkilled you. But with yuor advantage in points and early research you are usually stronger then anyone around in early game.

Could you give some more details please? Particulary about the nations, bless and ingame experience. The idea is interesting, but I can't tie some things together in my head:

1) Why sorceress? Great sage is cheaper and has a larger research bonus (if that's what this all is about).

2) You'll have really little money and resources, so your sacreds should be really cheap and naked, so Mictlans and MA Ermor are first nations coming to my mind.

3) It's really expensive to get domstr of a rainbow pretender above 6, which means no more then 6 cheap sacreds per turn. Will it be enough to get required critical mass fast enough for a rush?

4) Rainbow pretenders are good for taking multiple minor blesses, but getting a heavy bless with such a pretender is really expensive. With all the points from the negative scales you offer you can have either minor bless in many magic pathes or heavy bless in one path and minor blesses in couple of others (if I'm not mistaken, don't have access to the game right now to check). Will this bless be that effective so small ammount of cheap sacreds could roll over your closest neighbor fast enough and without heavy losses in the early game?

5) Wouldn't your dominion start to drag you down in midgame and later on? Researcher pretender is a good thing but Drain-3 would really slow down your research comparing to others at some point, and heavy turmoil and sloth would make hiring mages more difficult. I know money may come as a good event, but again they may not.

Don't get me wrong, I do not try to mock you, or play know-all. I really find the idea interesting, and want to learn more about particular ingame experience, and, perhaps, use it in my future games.

[RadicalTurnip]

Perhaps he's looking to bless his commanders. This could make sense with Niefelheim (I've done a fairly successful run with T3 S3 C3 Death3 L3 Drain2 dormant pretender with a somewhat low dominion (I think it was 4).

The key was that my 500-a-pop giants could take on pretty much any indie province (we were playing with Indies set to 9). Sure I didn't get one every turn, but every 3rd turn was fine, and that would have been more if I didn't build some researchers early. For research (eventually) I build Skull Mentors (2-a-turn for...a very long time) from all the death sites my expansion netted me (after killing a neighbor), while I researched up the Alteration tree so my giants could quicken themselves (I didn't take a water bless).

I wouldn't recommend my exact strategy, even though I ended up winning through some tricky use of a few giants up front guarding hoards of indy necromancers that I got lucky to find, each with a shroud and a skull staff (E10 bless), so they could summon skeletons for a long time. And spamming Wolven Winter. At least 5 a turn, everywhere I was getting ready to attack or feared being attacked that was outside my dominion.