Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favorite

[Arralen]

Spending 240 points = 6(!) scales on making a Virtue a semi-rainbow pretender is ridiculous.

This can only work with low indies (<7) and >12 prov/player, with easy expansion and no early threat, and easy research.

With stronger indies, you'll run into lots of provinces which the Virtue cannot take alone or with just a handful of crappy units. And with a low number of provinces per player, every prov you cannot get (and have to go around) makes you loose momentum in comparison to the other players.

[Graeme Dice]

Arralen said:
With stronger indies, you'll run into lots of provinces which the Virtue cannot take alone or with just a handful of crappy units.

Stronger indies mostly increases the numbers of troops you will face, not their quality. Once a virtue has mistform and mirror image (with sufficient air magic) most indies won't hurt her. Once you've also researched shockwave, there are few indies that she won't conquer very quickly. I will quite happily take on knight and longbowman provinces at indies 9 with an A9 virtue. She'd be scripted as: mirror image, mistform, attack, shockwave, shockwave, cast spells.

[Zen]

I'd probably go Air Shield, Mirror Image, Mistform, Attack, Shockwave, Cast Spells.

But Graeme's advice is good.

[Graeme Dice]

Air shield is good except when your enemy doesn't have archers and you've reasearched alteration 5. Then it gets you routed and killed when you cast a single false horror.

[Zen]

Graeme Dice said:
I will quite happily take on knight and longbowman provinces at indies 9 with an A9 virtue. She'd be scripted as: mirror image, mistform, attack, shockwave, shockwave, cast spells.

Assumption archers: Positive.

[Alneyan]

What they said. Even a Virtue going in melee with her buffs can work very well, though Air spells alone are unlikely to be sufficient (the only point is to get experience faster, I believe).

On the contrary, the better the independents, and the harder the research, the better the Virtue does: if independents are on level 3, then any small army will take them down, making fighting Pretenders useless in expansion. And the Virtue absolutely loves the Knights.

[PDF]

Well, I surely don't play at the highest competitive level, in our games (std research, indies 6-8, usually 20+ provinces/player) having "correct" scales are more the norm.
Additionnaly, from my experience, I've a difficult time using a non-immortal pretender (or very sturdy but suboptimal ones like Dragons) alone for initial expansion : you don't have any items, and not the necessary buffs (Alt3) before at least turn 5 (120 RP total, counting a 20 RP pretender + 1 additional 5 RP mage/turn), so you've a serious risk of having your pretender get afflictions (pray it's not Feeblemind !) or even being killed by a lucky Barb or Knight blow...
If you play a virtue how can you manage any non-militia indy force before you get Orb Lightning ?

[Kuritza_Dru]

I've just recently tried a Virtue, and was really satisfied with how she fared against the indies 6. She had Air 6, Water 1, Earth 3. Scripted to 'quickness, mirror image, air shield, stone skin, attack archers.' In a few turns it was iron skin instead of a stoneskin and mistform. Then I researched construction 4 and made her lucky & ethereal. Most of the time she wasn't hit a single time during combat.

[Alneyan]

Mistform+Mirror Image+Air Shield (if appropriate) is the standard defensive setup, and it works very well. Rainbow Virtues will add two more buffs, usually Ethereal and Luck, or the Earth protection spells. Then you can jump in melee, as the Virtue packs a lot of punch: that Flambeau is nasty. Alteration 2 is all you need to take most provinces, but risks are higher, and so I tend to concentrate on medium provinces until Alteration 3 kicks in.

The other way is to go in melee and cast Shockwaves (the AI will do that automatically when faced with swarms). This results in very quick routs, considering that Shockwave deals massive damage in a wide area, but I think you get less experience when playing as a spellslinger.

The melee setup also has the advantage of making it possible to smack down some enemy Pretenders, like the Vampire Queen or the Ghost King... but any of the three will be slaughtered when attacking anything flying and not casting any buff (well, the Vampire Queen will survive if she is in friendly Dominion). If those Pretenders are defending, it might still work out.

There is always a risk of getting into heavy trouble, mainly because of random spellcasters, but Immortality is not a guarantee of being 100% safe. If the Pretender finds itself in a province outside friendly Dominion (because the province was in friendly Dominion on the last turn, for example), that Pretender is at risk, Immortality or not. A Teleporting enemy commander is all it takes to kill your Immortal. It's not *that* likely to happen, but neither is getting Feebleminded by the independents.