Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.

[militarist]

Chrispedersen you are right, you don't get +, you only negate your -.In positive (and, probably,neutral) magical enemy dominion you don't have your drain effect as well(I don't know what's happening in negative enemy dominion, would be good to check). So, you just have 0 bonus which is still worth it, as it means you got 120 points for free. And it is still better then taking M1, which becomes very expencive (because taking M1 for 40, add 120 you've lost not taking drain = 160 ).

Actually my rule is if I have weak dominion , I'm always looking towards possibility to take Drain3. Drain 3 gives you 120 points, which is almost the price of having awake pretender instead of something between sleeping/imprisoned. But it's pretty beneficial in early game, and if you like early rushes, it's not bad at all. I think with very strong sacreds, like lanka you can also try drain 3 with sleeping pretender, to maximize your points and start research after the stage early expansion. Or even with imprisoned, if you can survive early game with no magic- just start researching in enemy dominion by usual mages.
If you got turmoil in this situation or just limited in $ by any other reason, you just can maximize hiring sacreds, ignoring standard for many 1 mage per turn rule. Your sacreds, blessed so heavily definitely will do much more than mages with early spells.

Hint: water nations , even with dominion 10, always have access to enemy dominion.

[chrispedersen]

Mil,

I agree with you generally. I love to play "pocket dominion" its one of the fun things about mictlan, arco, and a few other nations. I did this strategy very effectively in NAV.

You get no benefit in neutral dominion either.

However, you don't need to have triple blessed lanka in order to rock with lanka.
I do consider drain with lanka, just to increase the mr vs banish.

You'd have a hard time convincing me that an awake pretender is worth more than a higher dominion score and better scales.

Essentially your power curve is number of sacreds you can pump out times the power of those sacreds. In terms of point buys, going to a Dom9 is always cheaper than going to magic path 9.

[RadicalTurnip]

I agree that Niefel is usually a huge candidate for Order over Turmoil, but I was trying a niche strategy, and it was on a medium map against 5 people (so a fairly small map), which meant that I had the game won within a few years. If anybody would have been focused on researching or figuring out how to beat my bless, they would have had an easy time with it, but everyone happened to be in-fighting, so my 2 30-giant armies steamrolled all the castles, and my 7+ thugs raiding into enemy territory bought me most of the other provinces.

I guess this got a bit off-topic, but what I was trying to say is that no pretender build is the best 100% of the time, there are niche uses for everything, even things which seem counter-productive sometimes.

[chrispedersen]

No pretender choice will be the best for all situations - but some pretender choices are optimal or near optimal, and will allow you to both maximize your positives and have a shot at winning the game.

Sub-optimal designs, conversely will lower your chances.

[RadicalTurnip]

Unless of course you get deep into game theory and everyone is planning on playing against you. The the optimum choice is to pick a sub-optimal build that maximizes a different style of play.

But, that wasn't the case. I agree that certain pretender choices are sub-optimal (Sleeping pretender on LA Ermor?), and that a given pretender may be optimal or nearly optimal in many to most situations, but I don't think this is a game where one can play like in a vacuum, you have to look at your opponents and the situation.

I guess that's all pretty obvious stuff...I'm probably preaching to the choir, so to speak.