Most Usefull Research Path...

[Huzurdaddi]

PyroStock said:
Besides you have to go kill that Enchantment Nation before they get Arcane Nexus up.

LOL! What is he going to do with all of those gems? Dispell people to death?

It would make for an interesting game, but I think that everyone would simply go with construction. OTOH blood and making a pretender that could cast Astral Corruption is a decent play considering no one could dispell it.

[DrPraetorious]

That depends on what you want to accomplish.

Since what you want to accomplish is: killing all those that oppose you, the most useful path, for most nations, is evocation.

Obviously there are exceptions - some nations prefer to kill with thaumaturgy, for example. And, yeah, construction does provide an acceptable mass-death quotient, and it helps you to unzip it and let loose on the smoldering corpses of your enemies, once that state has been effected. But oh, evocation - nothing compares to you.

[Cor2]

I don't suppose there is anyway to set up a test game where each nation gets only one research path. It would have to be an honor system I guess.

[llamabeast]

Well it'd be an honor system, but it'd mostly be pretty obvious if you cheated.

Anyway, everyone around here is pretty honorable, so that would work fine I think.

[Meglobob]

You would probably after sign up with your nation plus the single reseach path. Like:-

Pangaea - construction
Caelum - evocation

Might make for a fairly quick, fun game. It would of course be very, very obvious if a player broke the rules.

[Humakty]

For longer games you could allow the first two levels of all paths, to let players have access to many must have spells. I can't imagine a game on a big map without the site searching spells

[Sandman]

Construction really is the backbone of the game. Items open up far more possibilities than the other paths.

Enchantment is probably the next best, with the superb globals and good summons and buffs.

[NTJedi]

Enchantment is far more versatile than Construction just scrolling across the list of each shows the variation. Construction is very important yet if given the option of only one it's Enchantment.

Enchantment provides critical game spells such as:
Global Spells:
1) Earth Blood Deep Well
2) Arcane Nexus
3) Thetis Blessing (attacking water nations)
4) Gift of Health <Priceless)
5) DISPELL -- Taking out enemy globals!

Critical Battlefield Buffs:
1) Strength of Giants
2) Flaming Arrows
3) Anti-Magic (entire army!)
4) Haste
5) Arrow Fend (major)
6) Mass Flight (major during storming castles)
7) Mass Regeneration
8) Long List of battlefield spells for resistances
9) Storm Warriors

Great Battlefield Spells:
1) Unraveling (magical units go Snap-Crackle-POP)
2) Raise Dead or Skeletons
3) Foul Vapors
4) Heat from Hell or Grip of Winter
5) Rigor Mortis
6) Mists of Deception (recently identified as being too powerful)
7) Demon Cleansing (double damage on demons)
8) Friendly Currents (underwater spell)

Important Teleporting Spells:
1) Cloud Trapeze
2) Ritual of Returning
3) Faery Trod

Good List of Summoning Spells:
1) Revive King / Create Revenant
2) Claymen (underwater optional)
3) Pale Riders (underwater optional)
4) Enliven Statues (underwater optional)
5) Reanimate Archers (one of the very few archer summonings)
6) Carrion Reanimation (major)
7) Lichcraft

Good Offensive and Defensive Spells:
1) Army of the Dead
2) Seeking Arrow
3) Most of the DOMES are here

Good Buffs helping SC's types to actually stay alive:
1) Breath of Winter
2) Resist Magic
3) Personal Regeneration
4) Astral Shield
5) Flight

Second Chance Spells:
1) Ritual of Rebirth
2) Twiceborn

[BigDisAwesome]

It'd be real interesting playing in a game where you can only research one path. Heck if you didn't want it to be "fair" at all you could just randomly assign the path. Things don't always have to be balanced to be fun.

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:
Global Spells:
1) Earth Blood Deep Well
2) Arcane Nexus
3) Thetis Blessing (attacking water nations)
4) Gift of Health <Priceless)
5) DISPELL -- Taking out enemy globals!

Without construction, getting casters for most of these is quite a trick. And arcane nexus is far less impressive when about all you can do is dispel.

Critical Battlefield Buffs:
1) Strength of Giants
2) Flaming Arrows
3) Anti-Magic (entire army!)
4) Haste
5) Arrow Fend (major)
6) Mass Flight (major during storming castles)
7) Mass Regeneration
8) Long List of battlefield spells for resistances
9) Storm Warriors

Haste is about as far from critical as you can get, I'm not sure I've ever seen a casting of it that even had a noticeable effect in battle, let alone being worth it. Resist spells and strength of giants are not exactly must have spells either. In fact, the only true 'critical' spell I see there is flaming arrows. And again, many of these are hard to very hard to reach without construction.

Great Battlefield Spells:
1) Unraveling (magical units go Snap-Crackle-POP)
2) Raise Dead or Skeletons
3) Foul Vapors
4) Heat from Hell or Grip of Winter
5) Rigor Mortis
6) Mists of Deception (recently identified as being too powerful)
7) Demon Cleansing (double damage on demons)
8) Friendly Currents (underwater spell)

Unraveling is not only special purpose but rather ineffective (causes decay, magic beings tend to have lots of MR and very long lifespans). Mists of deception is only too powerful as a bug, as intended it is pretty marginal. The only truly all around useful spell here is raise skeletons. Lots of high path-level requirements as well.

Important Teleporting Spells:
1) Cloud Trapeze
2) Ritual of Returning
3) Faery Trod

Fairy trod is quite high priced for something that only targets forest, and often doesn't even hit the _right_ forest. Ritual of returning is far less useful without teleport.

Good List of Summoning Spells:
1) Revive King / Create Revenant
2) Claymen (underwater optional)
3) Pale Riders (underwater optional)
4) Enliven Statues (underwater optional)
5) Reanimate Archers (one of the very few archer summonings)
6) Carrion Reanimation (major)
7) Lichcraft

Only liches and archers (both from the same path) really stand out as great summons. And liches much less than normal without being able to access other paths.

Good Offensive and Defensive Spells:
1) Army of the Dead
2) Seeking Arrow
3) Most of the DOMES are here

Seeking arrows are good, but limited, army of the dead is very hard to get casters for with only enchantment, and the domes are hard to get casters for _and_ rather limited in applications.

Good Buffs helping SC's types to actually stay alive:
1) Breath of Winter
2) Resist Magic
3) Personal Regeneration
4) Astral Shield
5) Flight

A SC with construction will still easily carve up almost anything you can build that has to run around naked.

Second Chance Spells:
1) Ritual of Rebirth
2) Twiceborn

These spells are far more fun that useful. I have yet to see them be any where near decisive.

There is also the problem, that taken together, paths apart from death are left with very limited or almost no options. Astral gems are almost only for dispel, fire has no good gem channel, air can pretty much only seeking arrow or teleport, nature has highly limited options without high level nature to start with, water needs earth/water for it's only real gem channel.