10 Magic Strength Pretenders....

[Gandalf Parker]

En Forcer said:
Oh you are absolutely correct. It is not the most EFFICIENT use of design points.

BUT I wanted to pursue this path to research the FUN factor of having a totally overpowered pretender on the field and what the differences might be between the different paths. See what the bless effects were like.

So you are right. This is not the best way to go. I would even argue that having a 9 anything pretender is not a good idea or worth it.

But it is kinda fun...

I did a series of tests using maximum harsh scales to get maximum blessings. I was able to get all 4's plus a 9 or a couple 9's even. My final judgement was that it could be a viable strategy for the right person. Various nations have immunities (or even preference) for some harsh scales so that only about half of the scales were really affecting them. If you took really low dominion and cheap castles you might even manage to keep your main armies outside of the affect of your scales entirely. For a nation with really good sacred units it could be quite a power punch. Unfortunately it took more careful managment than I can do.

[Jim_Parker]

Gandalf Parker said:I did a series of tests using maximum harsh scales to get maximum blessings. I was able to get all 4's plus a 9 or a couple 9's even. My final judgement was that it could be a viable strategy for the right person. Various nations have immunities (or even preference) for some harsh scales so that only about half of the scales were really affecting them. If you took really low dominion and cheap castles you might even manage to keep your main armies outside of the affect of your scales entirely. For a nation with really good sacred units it could be quite a power punch. Unfortunately it took more careful managment than I can do.

Ermor under Ashen Empire or Soul Gate can pretty much be hammered on the harsh scales. I'd usually take turmoil, sloth, death and misfortune 3. The misfortune 3 sounds like a good idea (ie, you'll get more corpses through random events) but it's not that great because I find you get an awful lot of emigrations instead. That's ok though, as they'll be dying eventually.

I'm still pretty new to the game but I'm finding Ermor's Ashen Empire to be incredibly overpowered (at very difficult AI) using harsh scales, a 9 death magic Prince of Death and a 9 starting dominion.

[archaeolept]

Jim, the AI is well known to be unable to handle undead hordes such as Ashen Empire Ermor's. If you're playing SP, you really should eliminate it from your roster, either for you or even for the other AIs.

[Jim_Parker]

archaeolept said:
Jim, the AI is well known to be unable to handle undead hordes such as Ashen Empire Ermor's. If you're playing SP, you really should eliminate it from your roster, either for you or even for the other AIs.

Actually I've was playing it MP (well 2 of us and 15 AI on Orania map) at normal level and we both crushed the AI out of sight. We tried at difficult AI and continued to crush the AI so I took up Caelum instead (my friend made the quantum leap from Ulm to Tien Chi ).

Looking through the archive, it seems I've picked another monster as my new favourite race. Dammit....I'll give Machaka a go next then.

[archaeolept]

also, the AI's have much greater difficulty w/ high indy str. As such, and perhaps counter-intuitively, crushing the AI's is much easier the harder you think you set it (indy-str-wise, at least).

[Aku]

Yeah the game we had panther was going quite well and was a lot of fun but the game got bugged because of the damn patch. It made the game so buggy that it actually time warped the game back several turns. Everything was just messed up. It was a shame we had to kill that game =[.

[tka]

IIRC the value added in Magic Duel is indeed non open-ended 1d6.

[En Forcer]

Okay, so I field tested a Fire 10 Moloch to see how fun it was for Abysia.

Well, it wasn't as fun as I thought. Basically for the longest time all you have is fire flies and flare. These spells tend to be inaccurate and they are slow! It's a pain to sit through a battle watching all these flares and fire flies getting fired off and occasionally hitting.

snore.

Sure the Molock looks cool, and the anathamant dragon I made a prophet got some tabs on his cloak (no really the sprite changed!) everybody looked really good...and didn't get much done.

The blessing was decent but totally offense oriented. Any kind of real heavy defensive troops would take out lava warriors faster than I could make them. And crossbows really hurt me.

And I got some flagellants for a random event and I mixed them in with the other sacred troops. Bad idea. Poor bastards caught fire from their own allies half way to attacking the enemy. Oh well.

My next episode is field testing an Astral 10 Son of the Son for Arcosephale (Golden Age) to see what happens. The Son of the Son was the most cost effective chassis available that was mobile and could enter combat. He is called RA appropriately enough. I'm on turn 5 and have just gotten star fires. But he is the only guy casting. I don't have any other spell slingers yet. Just Philospers researching and bunches of troops.

[Lex]

to any newbies out there, hitting the "F" key during battles to fastforward is godsent!!! i spent my first few weeks without it, and at least HALF the time could have been save by speeding up battles..

[alexti]

Lex said:
to any newbies out there, hitting the "F" key during battles to fastforward is godsent!!! i spent my first few weeks without it, and at least HALF the time could have been save by speeding up battles..

Here, many have spent few months without it. Until Illwinter has implemented it