Newbish question

[dirtywick]

GrudgeBringer said:

I don't think I really understand why Dom 10 is such a major factor if it is only an aura that surrounds HIM (pretender) and his ability to raise Dom where he goes as he can only be in one place at a time.

Your dominion does more than that. It can also be spread through having a priest unit preach, and through building temples. Dominion 10 is good because a high dominion is hard to remove through preaching or by building temples; you can actually spread your dominion into enemy lands. It's hardly necessary to start with it that high unless you're using a dominion reliant strategy, as building temples increases your max dominion. If you build enough temples you can get 10 dominion later.

Your continued survival in the game requires you to have some dominion somewhere. It doesn't matter how many provinces you control or how big your armies are, if your dominion is eroded through temples and preaching then you lose the game.

Of course, that's extremely difficult to do. Usually it happens if you have a strong dominion and you've conquored a lot of the enemy and their pretender and prophet are dead, then you can push your dominion over theirs and conquor the rest at your leisure. But there are some nations that excel at stealth preaching and lowering dominion and raising their own quickly.

When you look at the map, you'll see either white candles, black candles, or no candles. The white candles represent your dominion, the black an enemies, and no candles is no dominion. You can count the candles to figure out how much of your dominion is in a particular province, or how much of the enemies. Having your dominion in an enemy's lands also gives you a little information about the province, like what troops are there. Your dominion represents your scales. At full dominion you get full scales, at partial dominion you get partial scales.

The other effect dominion has is directly on your troops. I think fighting in friendly dominion gives a morale boost, and in enemy dominion a penalty. It also severely effects your pretender's and prophet's stats.

So a 10 dominion start isn't important unless you're trying to push your dominion onto your enemies. A moderate dominion is more reasonable.

I just can't seem to understand WHY that just isn't the way to do it...Best scales, good blesses, money/production/luck and a strong magic on my pretender when he awakens (on like turn 35 or something).

Could someone PLEASE take the time to explain why I am reading about an awake pretender when there are just NOT enough points to make a strong nation (in MY flawed estimation.

Well, the first thing to say here is your pretender is often your best unit period. Maybe if you took a wyrm with no magic or something that wouldn't be the case, but even then late game summons are all that will come close, if at all.

I play TW games too, so it's like having a 10 star general, except the power difference is even more vast. Like a queen in chess, except it can shoot fire and spit acid at the pawns.

Your pretender can do a lot of things; conquer provinces on it's own, cast the most powerful spells, forge the best equipment, it depends on what form you choose and what magic you give it.

So if you've got it imprisoned, you're going a pretty long time without your best unit. Giving it all that high magic isn't much use until it's in play.

The other thing is the best scales and high magic in certain paths are dependant on what you're researching and what nation you're playing. So you really need to evaluate that when designing your pretender, because it is your best unit and you want to play to it's strengths, and also play your scales to your nations strengths, and then find a middle ground.

For instance, Kailasa doesn't have many high resource troops, so taking production 3 just because it's a "good" scale is a waste of a lot of points, you simply won't use the resources, so take sloth instead. But the mages are expensive gold wise, so you want some order for gold. Order reduces the chances of random events, so you could tip your scale towards misfortune. That's one good scale and two bad scales, see what I'm saying?

Then you have a lot of points to both keep the pretender awake and get some magic on it, because Kailasa could really use a good bless and early expansion help.

Once you get to mid-game and see what worked and what didn't, what you need immediately, and refine your strategy and plan for mid-game and late game in pretender design once you've got a handle on how things work.