The Virtue

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Micah

What is the recommendation by the last two posters of Dom 10 over D5 based on?

As far as I can tell the choice between dom 10 and D5 seems to depend if you want Death access or stronger Dom, and both are valid. From what I can tell it works out about the same in terms of combat effectiveness, at least before soul vortex is researched. (The D has a higher deviation on the morale rolls, which is bad, but also makes the combat shorter, which is especially good vs indies.)

At least my recommendation is based on my direct experience with the Virtue both with dom 10 and no death and with dom < 9 and D5.

A D5 Virtue without extra dominion is hit more often by indies than one with dom 10. (This is allowing for the fact that fights tend to be shorter with fear.) Without equipment or a couple of levels of magic researched she cannot afford that.

If you use her asleep and can give her appropriate equipment when she wakes up, this might change, but then she is not nearly as useful for expansion into independent provinces as lot of those will be gone.

It is also a matter of costs. D5 costs 45 points more than dom 10, and while I can often do quite well without death on the pretender I consider dom 4 rather risky.

As a general rule I would recommend to go for a sleeping Virtue if you want D5 on her. If you can find the points to have her awake with dom 10 and D5, I am all for it of course. As the game and research moves on, a Virtue with a number of death levels will be more powerful than one without, dom 10 or not, but the initial cost is much higher.

In CBM there is also the problem of the astral levels. If you want to use her as a SC, you need to add quite a few levels here, or she is unusable against anyone with reasonable access to astral mages some time into the game. This increases her cost even more.

If death access in general is the reason you want death on the Virtue, you could consider simply going with another pretender.