Super-Casting Pretenders?

[Norfleet]

The primary drawback I find with "caster" pretenders is that their use is far more limited than straightforward SCs: An SC can kick *** for a good 50 rounds of combat. A caster can only cast 5 spells. Assuming that a few of them are devoted to buffs designed to keep him from becoming a road waffle, that leaves very little to actually bLasting the crap out of people. While the spellcasting unit AI is certainly better than any other game of this type, it's most decidedly NOT geared towards solo-unit commando operations, and thus cannot be counted on not to do anything completely inappropriate in this case.

[archaeolept]

Well, I just tried out a "super caster" phoenix pretender (F9A9), and he seemed quite decent. provided some artillery support in the early expansion, then retired back to base in order to get research under way (playing c'tis w/ drain 3).

then, after research gets kicked into high gear, he re-emerged as a kick-*** dominion defender - any incursion, and he could respond w/ extreme prejudice - sulpher cloud, fire cloud, orb lightning, etc...

Plus, by then w/ an eye of aiming he had a 30 precision

And the serpent dancers worked reasonably well w/ the blessings, though really the 75% lightning resistence is more of a multiplayer sort of thing.

[mivayan]

A 4-6 fire&air phoenix is fun to use with standard marignon since they start with the holy pyre spell which is fairly effective against most indies.

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Truper:
Try a Lord of the Desert Sun sometime if you want a fire caster with some accuracy. Eagle eyes does the job...

When I was testing this bad boy I used 9F and 2N for him in a game with 9 indies. In first 10 turns he had more then 300 kills. After 15 turns it went up to 500.

[ywl]

A Golden Naga is viable for Ulm. With the 120 extra points from drain +3. I can have 200 points for scale even with a Golden Naga of 6 Fire, 2 Water (for Quickness), 2 Nature and 2 Death.

The only trouble I have is "Fire Cloud". The caster casts it too often and damages my own advancing troop.

[ March 11, 2004, 16:02: Message edited by: ywl ]

[archaeolept]

well, that's the problem w/ not taking air

try nixing the death, reducing to nature 1 (for eagle eyes), taking one point of heat (though you certainly do pay for it in economic penalties, however the Naga gets penalties in any cold, so the heat at least acts as a ward...), and using the resultant points for the eminently useful Air4

[DLC]

quickness + earth power + strenght of gaia + aim + eagle eyes.