Poll: Most useful path of magic?

[Saber Cherry]

If unique blood summons (Ice Devils, Arch Devils, greater demons) were unlimited, or you could keep the horrors you summon, I would vote Blood. But Death summons are just too good and too cheap, and it even has excellent evocations and artillery spells.

Water is certainly the weak path. The underwater-only spells and summons are not all that good, and water magic aboveground is even less useful, aside from the Falling Frost which very few units can cast. The best unlimited summon, Sea Trolls, cost huge amounts of upkeep - which renders them undesirable. Water mages that cannot cast Falling Frost just pick their noses or cast Breath of Winter and kill all your other commanders.

Frostbrands, Swords of Swiftness, and Boots of Quickness are nice but not irreplacable. The Boots are fairly useless unless you have a zero-encumbrance (i.e., Death summon) unit anyway, IMO.

[Huzurdaddi]

In the base game the best path is probably Air. It has all of the tricks: excellent buffs, magical movement, awesome combat magics, and decent summons ( the queens ).

Death is also excellent as it has some very powerful spells which are very low research level ( skelly spam! ).

[RibbonBlue]

I cant decide, death or air.

[Vicious Love]

I voted astral, but I might just have well have voted death. Either air or blood would be a very, very close third. The qualitative gap between the top 4 and bottom 4(particularly fire) is a bit more clear-cut.

[ioticus]

Vicious Love said:
I voted astral, but I might just have well have voted death. Either air or blood would be a very, very close third. The qualitative gap between the top 4 and bottom 4(particularly fire) is a bit more clear-cut.

Why Astral? Just curious.

[Oversway]

Water mages that cannot cast Falling Frost just pick their noses or cast Breath of Winter and kill all your other commanders.

They forge clams, hate it or love it.

Frozen heart is a decent spell for less than w3 once you get to high research levels.

Really water isn't all that bad. I don't think its much worse than fire, in fact.

I think I'll go astral too. Gives you access to other paths (air and fire from summons, plus path boosters). Good buffs (luck, body ethereal, astral weapons), good offense spells (lots of armor negating). Plus wish if you are playing unmodded game. It is even better in combination with other paths (for example, death=nether darts, water=clams,abominations) but overall its the most useful.

[Manuk]

ioticus said:

Why Astral? Just curious.

1) if you clamhoard you spend 1-1 not 2-1.
2) battle mages with clams will do powerful spells requiring gem-burning endlessly.(others have to be supplied).
3) High level astral are the best around.
4)Achasic Record

low level astral is less than average (no summons-have personal luck and body ethereal and amulet of luck but not much more.)

[FrankTrollman]

I voted Earth. It gives you money, even in the post-apocolyptic universe that Ermor is attempting to afflict on the world. It saves you gems on forging in any of several ways. It raises the protection of those who have it, and the blessing is absolutley vital for sacred mages.

It protects the user from the assassination spells designed to actually kill immortal pretenders. Earth is great to have for your character, it's great to have for your economy, and it even has one of the better Assassin spells under its belt (Earth Attack).

There just isn't any way that Earth isn't totally awesome.

---

Water is good though. Isn't it odd that the people who complain about the uselessness of Water also complain about the overpowered nature of the Clam strategy? Spending Water Gems is something which is trivial to do as fast as you get them for any Water Power as soon as you get Construction 2 until the end of time.

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

Vicious Love said:
I voted astral, but I might just have well have voted death. Either air or blood would be a very, very close third. The qualitative gap between the top 4 and bottom 4(particularly fire) is a bit more clear-cut.

I strongly disagree! Fire is an excellent path.

1) Excellent evocations.
2) Good summons, esp. with Blood... unfortunately KOEFs and ADs are limited, but they are still excellent. In a "fixed" game where Soul Contracts are weakened, fire is more powerful as it is required for Devils. Fire Snakes are also pretty good.
3) Best gems (15 gold each!) which makes fire mages a good investment for searching alone.
4) Excellent buffs and items (Fire Shield or Charcoal Shield on SCs or thugs are practically worth planning to get the path if you use SCs; Flaming Arrows alone is worth taking Fire as Tien Chi or Man, and considering it as Caelum). Fire has not many good buffs or items but the ones mentioned are good enough to make up for it.
5) Best set of spells/items that are AP, AOE, and/or anti-undead. Holy Pyre is all three, for example, and thus very useful in the early to mid game.
6) Additional effect (burning), like cold, as oppossed to Air and Earth which have no special effect.
7) Lastly - Artillery! Fire has fearsome artillery spells and even early-game artillery.

OTOH Air does not have any artillery spells.

[Agrajag]

Saber Cherry said:
6) Additional effect (burning), like cold, as oppossed to Air and Earth which have no special effect.

I thought that some of the air spells also caused a lot of fatigue, or am I confused?