Caelum pretender design

[Ivan Pedroso]

In Denmark (at least when I attended high-school) German was a mandatory subject, and back then I would second Boron's opinion on the grammar. Capitalizing nouns is a hassle (removed from the Danish language quite some time ago), not to mention all the other complicated rules.

I hated these complications when I was younger, but now I must admit that I enjoy weird language rules and I detest bad grammar (in official/important texts, but not in everyday communications – what Category this forum falls into is a matter of personal opinion. I’m basically a lurker and as such I check my spelling vigorously). I even dislike American spelling with the missing "u" in "color" and the like. I think this might be an age thing.

(The interested can do a simple google search on “capitalization in german”)

[jarenko]

can you really wish for 'flame pythium'......

[Pickles]

Ivan Pedroso said:
I even dislike American spelling with the missing "u" in "color" and the like. I think this might be an age thing.

Me too but that is probably more because I am English & also am wary of American "cultural imperialism".
It is exasperating to see people too lazy to type or punctuate or even write whole words out "r u my m8" grrr.

Still language changes & sooner or later some of these abominations will be standard...

Pickles

[Chazar]

I see that I noticed this thread a bit too late to discuss Caelum's pretender design, but since I love Caelum, here are my humble thoughts on the topic:

- Caelum's Mammoth toghether with Wingless and a Seraphine-Prophet casting Fanaticism are enough for early game expansion, hence a magic pretender and very strong scales is a must-have for me.

- Order=3,Sloth=-3,Cold=3. Apart from TempleGuards and Iclads, one does not need resources but one needs money for the mages - plenty of mages. One also better builts several Forts with all the money one has to get enough Iceclads/Stormguards and fly them together instead. Forts are also sensible to feed your troops, which are constantly starving if they move to far away. Hence I usually take growth 3 as well, but any positive growth is enough. I am not sure on the magic, but a postive scale is good if you have the points, so I usually distribute leftover-points equally between growth and magic, but I dont feel magic that necessary as others do here on this forum.

- Magic: I've decided that blood3,earth3,death3 on a Ghost King is pretty nice, but requires luck-1 to pay for (which I hate, because bad luck is bad for my morale). A fountain of blood is also pretty good, with blood3 and earth1: Why blood & earth? Simply to forge a blood-stone, which gives +1 earth (and earth gems), therefore giving you access to earth boots (earth+1), which in turn gives you access to dwarven hammers (if pretender does not have earth3 already) and, most important, staffs of elemental mastery. This gives you a high seraph with 4Air, 3Water, 4 Earth, who can cast nasty things like petrify and still has an armor, helmet & one misc available! Such a staff of elemental mastery is pretty nice on any other high seraph as well and I usually go for a high construction research anyway, since water bracelets are cheap and give all my high seraphs the capability to cast falling frost, which is pretty cute against most foes.

Having blood is nice as well, since even 3-4 sages with sanguine rods give you enough slaves to get an IceDevil or some StormDemons (via a Blood Seraph having a brazen skull for blood+1). If you use your fountain of blood for hunting (hey, your scales give enough gold anyway) on every other turn, you can easily get IceDevils pretty soon.


Comments?

[Chazar]

Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok, but otherwise its wasted, since the seraphs can forge enough items to cast all air/water globals already by themselves. Therefore I always avoid Air&Water on my pretender. I'd rather by a Wizards Tower if I have any spare points left!

[Kel]

Chazar said:
Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok

I use the pretender for combat.

- Kel

[Boron]

Chazar said:
Oh, one question to those who suggested Air&Water on the pretender: What for?

I mean, if you use your pretender for combat, ok, but otherwise its wasted, since the seraphs can forge enough items to cast all air/water globals already by themselves. Therefore I always avoid Air&Water on my pretender. I'd rather by a Wizards Tower if I have any spare points left!

w2 is earlygame for expansion quickness .
you always can cast breath of winter which is good with caelums cold scale .

air 2 is for earlygame mistform + mirrorimage .
lategame you need it for magic travel ( cloud trapeze ) .

[Boron]

Arryn said:
Graeme, don't bother trying to educate Tauren & Boron, it's a waste of time. I solved my problem with their Posts by using the ignore user functionality of the new forum software. Cleans things up rather nicely. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon45.gif[/img]

lol .
first it is a habit from cs + starcraft . if you type there with right capitalization and punctuation it is pointless anyways .

second english is not my native language but afaik only the word at the beginning of a sentence is written in capitalization in english and nothing else .
no big deal if i leave that out .

third in german orthography sucks . in every chat in german nobody cares about capitalization at all and in most Boards not too .


finally imo in 10-20 years it will be even included in a new reform to write everything without capitalization .
would be a rather good thing .



for a 50 year old person you behave really childish arryn .
to flame me and laugh at me only because i do no capitalization .
oh well there is a figure of speech : old people start becoming childs again .
perhaps you do this earlier than most other

but as it is i think it is more because i dared to say dominions is imbalanced .

so now you + cainehill use just the sligthest chance to flame me and try to make me look bad .
well just continue it just decreases your reputation more than mine

[Chazar]

Kel said:
I use the pretender for combat.

As I said, I agree with that purpose, but apart from combat...?

I do not like using Close-Combat-Pretenders, since having access to foreign magic to forge nice items like DwarvenHammers and StaffsofElementalMastery or to summon creatures like StormDemons or IceDevils is much more helpful than a single strong combatant. I guess this particularly is true for Caelum, which relies on magic! I mean, how do you get those items/summons if not by your pretender?

I found that except for Death, empowering is way out of question for Caelum, whose mages eat away the gems like vanilla ice on a hot day (even during Caelian midwinter !). Or do you think that one can get along without, summon more readily accessible creatures like those AirQueens? (Even with GaleGate up, I hardly have enough air gems for summoning left. I use them mainly for staffs of storms (every army and skirmish-squad should have one), bag of winds, combat-casting like wrathful sky and storm warriors,...)

[Boron]

Chazar said:

As I said, I agree with that purpose, but apart from combat...?

I do not like using Close-Combat-Pretenders, since having access to foreign magic to forge nice items like DwarvenHammers and StaffsofElementalMastery or to summon creatures like StormDemons or IceDevils is much more helpful than a single strong combatant. I guess this particularly is true for Caelum, which relies on magic! I mean, how do you get those items/summons if not by your pretender?

I found that except for Death, empowering is way out of question for Caelum, whose mages eat away the gems like vanilla ice on a hot day (even during Caelian midwinter !). Or do you think that one can get along without, summon more readily accessible creatures like those AirQueens? (Even with GaleGate up, I hardly have enough air gems for summoning left. I use them mainly for staffs of storms (every army and skirmish-squad should have one), bag of winds, combat-casting like wrathful sky and storm warriors,...)

if you take e.g. a nataraja with f2,w2,e3,d3,a2 :
you do not intend to use her as a sc earlygame .
but if you have to defend you can use her as an earlygame sc in times of need .
she can sitesearch then earlygame , midgame she forges / summons and lategame you can equip her to a really frightening combattant .

d3 is imo a musthave for most nations , especially magically narrow nations .
then you can do 3 things :
summon spectres for magic flexibility
summon bane lords as thugs / small scs
forge a skull staff + the death+1 helmet : then you can summon wraith lords / demi lichs too

since d3 lets you cast soul vortex in combat it is useful there too .
Last but not least with death 5 ( with items ) you can armytravel via stygian path spell lategame .

oh btw my mentioned nataraja with dominion 6 costs "only" 420 points .
so you have 80 points left for scales + castle .

i like : order 3 , sloth 3 , cold 3 , growth 3 , magic 3 and misfortune 1 .

if you want another castle than a watchtower you can chose misfortune 2 for mauso and misfortune 3 for 40 admin castle .

you have exactly zero design points left so you feel "perfect" as a nice psychological sideeffect

i wish i had chosen this pretender in thufirs new game as caelum and not my lame vq