Machaka and a W9 bless

[rdonj]

The thing with blood stones is that in multiplayer, people will try to win by out gem-economying you, and since earth gems are so useful having lots of blood stones around would really help out in that area. If you did nothing with blood other than make the stones it would probably be worth it.

I think a Divine Glyph wouldn't be too bad of a choice. You can make an imprisoned 9w/4f/4s divine glyph with pretty good scales and 8 dominion, go dormant with 6 and a bit lower scales, or improve your magic a bit and get a slightly stronger bless.

And for the record, I don't know that an awake cyclops is going to have that much luck against quickened black hunters. Not only are lances incredibly useful against the cyclops, but they also spit webs lowering defense to 0 and have death poison, which will work on the cyclops no matter how much armor he has.

[Rytek]

Some chaff in front of the Cyclops takes care of the lances. A ring of poison resistance, easily made or traded for negates the poison. The Cyclops may not kill a bunch due to not getting to go due to the webs. But those spiders do pathetic damage and wont hurt the Cyclops either. Add in a few troops with the Cyclops and yeah, its going to stop the rush.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by rdonj

The thing with blood stones is that in multiplayer, people will try to win by out gem-economying you, and since earth gems are so useful having lots of blood stones around would really help out in that area. If you did nothing with blood other than make the stones it would probably be worth it.

That's sort of where I was going with it. You could take the Blood as far as you wanted, but the main purpose would be pumping out Stones - the rest is luck and determination.


Regarding the Cyclops..... I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the spiders have nice defense skill, no? They'll be hard to hit, and 3 AN attacks per round should devour the Cyclops if you have a dozen or so of them on him. Obviously he'll want to outmaneuver you with chaff, but you can bring some as well, indies if nothing else, since you can actually recruit a few - lacking Sloth and all.


Personally I love Growth. One MP game I'm in right now, I captured a capital with 45k people, it's making ~750g/month right now, which is hot. Having the money to just pour Hoplites at your enemies, greatly increases the late game value of your mages, providing them a strong screen that can become incredibly tough once buffed up. But I also love Magic. We obviously have different playstyles.