POLL: Scales, Magic Paths, and Dominion

[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.

[sum1lost]

I'm surprised that earth didn't get more votes as a strong blessing. Then again, I tend to use sacred caster/thugs.

[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.

[Ironhawk]

I'm amazed that people think Astral is the best 9-path to use on a Pretender. I admit that its exceptionally useful and powerful but the risk of your opponent getting a lucky Mind Duel victory, IMO, outweighs any of that value when comparing one path to another.

[Nikolai]

Dueling a S9 is a far shot. Impossible with less than S3, and not worth I think. Pythium, Rlyeh, maybe Arco? Who would waste S3s on a 10% chance?

I often take S4 or S5 with my god, and just use it to hilt early, then keep him/her hidden and casting. If I had native S9, I would not worry about duel AT ALL.

By the way, my friend says it is impossible with less than S4, and with S4, the best you can hope is murder/suicide. Is that true?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sunray's Virtual Library

# Magic Duel : each side gets to add his astral skill to a (not open ended) d6. Ties result in the death of both mages.
A +3 differential gives you a 1 to 6 odd. +5 gives you a 100% chance of killing the opponent but you still die about 3% of the time, and you have to be 6 levels higher to always win and never die.
Magic Duels use base astral levels, spells and items do not seem to have any influence.
There is no saving throw. This is an area effect spell (1 square), so you better disperse your astral mages. Mages without astral magic are unaffected.

4+d6 -> 5 to 10
9+d6 -> 10 to 15

[SelfishGene]

I should have but forgot to add a poll for the least powerful 9-path as far as casting/rituals/globals go. Many off the off-paths like Nature and Earth can summon large numbers of effecient troops if you have high magic in that particular path.

Generally though i'd say 9-Water or 9-Nature are the least useful 9 paths you could take as far as non-bless strategies go; except that, without some Water, you'll miss a way to easily enter the sea, and having that 9-Water is a great gurantee for an easy late game solution. 9-Nature is kind of less impressive but there are at least 3 great Nature globals. 9-Fire or 9-Air are less useful global spells, but even they have some pretty impressive if rare globals; and both are excellent at battle magic.