Caelum questions, both themes.

Originally posted by Liadran:
Hurricane is a good spell for hurting enemy economy, but the problem is that it's just one spell. So it just takes Air gems. Death and Earth both can inflict similar results, which covers 3 different gems. That's why you have more gems in overall to use. Also in the situation when that one gem is not to be found well you still have 2 other choices to go with.

You have to search with these other gems, and I find with base Caelum, if you are using hurricane a bit; it's because you have nothing better you can forge/summon. The same could be said with the other two gem types.

About research High Seraph has 8 research points. Two Harab Seraphs have 10 research points together (and cost only 5 gold more). If you take positive magic scale (quite usual with Caelum) you get double the benefit. Also experience counts for double. With Magic scale +3 (and no experience) High Seraph has 11 points and 2 Harab Seraphs have 16 research points. A difference of 2-5 (without experience) is quite an important difference as it's only for 175 to 180 gold. Multiply that with other reserachers and the difference is very huge. (Base Caelum with Seraphs can do the same with 200 gold) But as said they're later use is not that good as with High Seraphs (being the best mages in game).

This doesn't kick in until you have 2+ Fortresses, and with the cost of High Seraphs, more than likely you are recruiting 2 a turn of those as much as you would with Harab Seraphs (unless you are buying alot of mammoths). I never said that the research wasn't slightly better than base Caelum, but as I stated before the scope less of a variable, especially considering how I play Caelum.

In this thread it was said before that Raptors have a more narrow choices for valiable pretender. It's very important to make sure that you have a pretender that has at least 2 in earth. Othervise you are giving up much strenght in earth. That can also be made with base Caelum, but in average you have 3 mages having an earth pick when you have 24 mages. And you can't count on getting those when you need them. And Ironskin is for not much use in initial expansion (also as you said Alt3 is too high early), Alt2 is enough and that you can get very quickly when you prepare your armies (and possibly your pretender). You don't need the armor for your mages early, hurting them is more important.

So if you are saying there are less choices and you 'have' to take a pretender with Earth 2, you are using the Pretender to do the majority of the work with your "Earth" which base Caelum can do just as easily. I'd say a good % of base caelum games start with a Natarajah with 3 Earth. So that 1 Earth isn't all it's cracked up to be. Base Caelum with Alt 2, is about twice as effective as RotR with Alt 2. As you should note.

I wouldn't go with a Dominion of 5 or lower. At least 6 must be taken (depends on pretender choice). The problem is that you don't have Seraphim pushing your cold dominion and can't have Heart of Winter. Scales of +3 don't come that fast and that's why your borders propably don't have it. Even with a very high dominion it's hard to manage.

I haven't found it to be so. Like I said though that is entirely a playstyle issue. The significant gold impact of a lower dominion may be why some of your other arguments don't seem that much of an issue.

I'm not saying that Air 3 is not effective. It's awesomely effective in all it's variability. Lightning Strike is almost as good without 50% res or with it. And having mages ready everywhere with air gems is not good. Never ever try to do that with any race, not a good idea. I'm saying that troop placements, unit choices and etc... are easier to make against a certain overused threat than a variable threat. Relying too much on one thing has the problem of guessability and with it defences. Mostly the effect of this comes in huge battles, which are quite an important decisive factor in many wars. That little edge just might be enough.

That's true, but that's true of Every nation/theme in the game, so I don't see why Lightning or Caelum is singled out.

I like RotR very much, but propably I like the base Caelum more. It's true that many minor (and major) points have been taken away, but there are replacements. You just have to look for them. Raptors are definitely much harder to play than base Caelum and needs lot's of thinking. But the strengts are there. Where does they lose their versatility in your opinion Zen?

They lose the High Seraph = Water.
They lose the Seraphim = All things associated with a Base 3Holy Priest. This is especially significant with nations with temperature preference or units without ways to compensate for morale (I.E. Nature magic, Standards).
They lose the Temple Guard = The one recruitable unit of Caelum that isn't fragile. Work well with Water Magic.

They gain Harab Elder, Harab Seraph = Death Magic.
Death magic is not extremely versatile, but it can be very strong. The same can be said for Blood Magic.

The gain the Raven Guard = Non-Cold Protection based flying troop. I have had tremendous success with using Storm Guards and Iceclads in normal to heat temperatures. So these, while nice, don't offer me much as my thinking has been to adapted to using the Cold and so having a unit that doesn't lose protection in a normal/heat enviroment doesn't offer a solution to the fact that High Seraphs were the portion that gave the punch to an army. If I'm not using a heavy Cold Dominion I don't get as much gold, which means I can recruit less Raven Guard, which evens out more or less to the higher resource, but less gold Iceclads. In my experience 25 Raven Guard with 3 Harab Elders are less effective as 25 Iceclads with 3 High Seraphs in a normal enviroment even though the RotR costs more.

[ March 06, 2004, 20:04: Message edited by: Zen ]