EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[Alpine Joe]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Oh yeah, I love me some forge lord. I find when I play one though at a certain point its hard to justify using him for anything other than forging rings of wizardry (for 17S I think?) and crystal shields, which makes the opportunity cost of sticking other paths on him high. For dropping big combat spells crystal shields are often better than elemental staffs for you (cheaper, leaves a hand free). Even once you've got a good stock of RoW yourself you can usually trade them for a massive profit - even alchemizing. Just my experience using the forge lord...I have a hard time really leveraging extra paths.

Oooh, I've also been burned too often to take strong death + strong misfortune. Completely unscientific and antectdotal, but it seems like in my testing d3/m3 cripples you in year one around 25% of the time. D2/M2 is probably not that far off.

I should clarify that the D in this case represents Drain. I have also had tragic experiences with death (3 half-pop plague events on turns 2,3, and 5 in my cap, with luck 3! in mists of time) and pretty much never take it anymore, especially not with misfortune. Also with mystics being such a good recruit-anywhere, I wouldn't want to tank the income hit from death. Drain is okay with arco as you still have good research and can set up a neutral research province.

Air on the FL is optional of course, but lets him cast air shield early (vital for soloing early indies), and is also really useful for affording the multiple staves of storms I find i need all over the place in the endgame.

SoEM also let you get access to any elemental ritual. Even with RoW and earth boots, you still need SoEM to cast earth attack, for example, a ritual I am probably too addicted too. Also the gem gen globals which you can opportunistically grab. Lastly, A/F combo lets you forge the magic lamp, and the Djinn is great to have access to as Arco (this is just personal preference, I love the Djinn!)