Pretenders: Rainbow vs SC

[Finalgenesis]

Originally Posted by rdonj

In my opinion those are more useful for competitive MP games, where provinces are at a minimum and rush deterrent may be more valuable than long term diversity and power, especially if that SC allows you to make a quick land grab on an opponent's territory.

I think I can see this, a SC pretender on Turn 12 when EA Mictlan or Niflehiem is breathing on me be the difference between win or defeat in MP.

For the non-SC pretender, one huge bonus I just couldn't get over is the gem income from site search. Even when using awake rainbow vs sleepy rainbow I tend to amass a lot more misc. gems, which fuels my summon / forging mid-game in a big way. Its like a free 90% akashic record (minus holy and whatever path you skipped) every other turn starting on Turn 1. awake rainbow can have 8-9 sites for you inside of a year by T1 minimum, or if you Really need certain spells to do early research boost.

assuming you get 8 sites and each generate 1 gem to be conservative in Yr1. that can give you a bonus 96 gems from T12-T24, not counting those you get in T1-T12. The income over say 4 years snowballs like crazy just from your Y1 site find alone. Granted at some point your pretender stays home to craft and summon things only it can do, but those 1yr+ of free acashic record is huge. Even when it's home it tend to have a backlog of key summons / craft to occupy it until the end of days.

That doesn't even include the times when I found rare sites that give me -20% conj / Thau / free castles / other amazing bonuses that changed the game for me.

I won't even go into the crafting goodness they do for me, as they are sometimes my sole crafter of critical gear before it is also the one to summon others to do it for her (eg. dwarf hammer until i summon troll, boots of flight.... which I usually can't get anyone else to craft for me until very late in the game with fairy queen, cross-path forge like vine bracelet / crystal coin.etc)

Trading all that for a single SC which I can summon up multiple lesser versions of late game just pains me But I can see this in MP where a SC early game helps deter and expand.