POLL: Scales, Magic Paths, and Dominion

[SelfishGene]

I find it curious few chose the magic scale as the most powerful. Although i also voted for order, having +1 magic seems nearly essential to be competitive in most games because it totally changes the cost effectiveness of researchers. Take 3-Drain (-2 research), for example, and Tien Chi is virtually crippled, as it's non-capital mages are cheap, low MR point guys.

If i had to take 3-Drain with 3-Order, or vice versa, there's no doubt i'd choose the magic over the money. Of course, since you choose the scales, you can have your cake AND eat it, since you're the one who baked it! .

[Szumo]

Dominion result surpised me. It seem i'm the only one who selected 7, which is the absolute minimum i'll choose, and everyone else thinks you can take even lower :S

[Folket]

I have played in several games and been mighty with dominion 4.

[DrPraetorious]

For *most builds* Order is the most powerful scale, but there are other circumstances where Turmoil+Fortune (or even just Turmoil) is viable.

There is no single scale that is least important - it varies from nation to nation tremendously. I generally take a lot of Sloth, but that reflects my nation preferences, there are a lot of nations for which Productivity is very useful.

Water is the most powerful blessing for most sacreds, but there are notable exceptions that don't care or would rather have other blessings.

"Death Curse" is a joke, but I think +4 strength is usually better than the increased affliction chance and death weapons, on actual combat units. On spellcasters, totally different story.

Astral pwns u.

I think Blood on pretenders is greatly underrated, especially since the poll question allows us to include the minor blessing (+2 str, not at all shabby) in our consideration.

Dom 3 or 4 works fine against CPU but other players will tend to recognize your weakness and capitalize on it. It's a moot point since even on a dom1 chasis, dom 5 is not that expensive.

I generally use an Oracle, Cyclops, Prince of Death or Wyrm.

[Warhammer]

I think blood can be great on pretenders, but most nations cannot make great use of the blood. I typically have better uses than having my pretender blood hunt to empower people.

[Evil Dave]

How much dominion your pretender needs depends on how much everybody else has. I usually choose 6 because I like bless tactics, and 6 is an OK tradeoff between number of sacred units/province and the design cost of high dominion... but if I'm playing with people who often take 9 or 10 for awe on their pretenders, I'll choose more.

[Maraxus]

Well, if I should look at this as a test, I sored good. Almost only hit the top scores.

Interesting:

Which magic path is the least useful for a Pretender to take in general, under all circumstances, on average?

I don't think blood should be that high, because of the "on average" part.
Sure, you never need blood, if you are not going to do bloody thinks. However, if you are going to do into blood, thins skill imediately becomes top importance unless you want to spend hundrets of blood slaves into empowering one of your national casters.
I've choosen fire, because fire is what you either won't invest much into anyway, or what your national caster will be able to handle okay, allready.
In 7 out of 8 cases, fire will still be more useful for the pretender, but in the 8th case, blood will be more useful, ten times as strong.

[thejeff]

But blood is easy to empower in, since blood slaves are easy to get if you have good hunters. If you don't who needs blood on the pretender anyway. Now I might take blood if I was playing a blood nation that didn't get a particular combination on it's nationals. A water/blood pretender for Abyssia to summon Ice Devils for example. Of course, you could just take the water and empower in blood and use boosters your nationals can make.

You take fire on a pretender for the bless, not the magic. If I have national fire mages, but no death, I'll sometimes take a fire/death pretender for flaming skulls.

[Humakty]

A blood bless can be nice for the strength bonus, that some sacreds can put to good use.
Reading the results, I see my favored built seem nonsense to most people.
Two options for me :
-Consider all those people to be nuts.
-Change my building choice.
I wonder which one is the less painful.

[Velusion]

Szumo said:
Dominion result surpised me. It seem i'm the only one who selected 7, which is the absolute minimum i'll choose, and everyone else thinks you can take even lower :S

As someone who almost selected 3 (but settled on 4) I think it's possible (though rare) to create a competitive nation with a relatively low dominion under the right circumstances if you go for a good bless and lots of money bonuses to crank out lots of temples.

However, typically I never go below 5 though and usually stick with between 6-7.