Boot Camp - Finished - Soyweiser/Jotunheim wins!

[DragonRider]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Marignon is a pretty good substitute for Pythium. Not as strong, but you have decent astral and the same angelic summons available. I don't think they need an awake SC to expand so I'd save the points and go with the rainbow (a light bless, especially N4, would be nice).

The problem is that I don't really know what to do with a rainbow pretender. There's site searching, I guess, and of course casting rituals or forging items with the paths that your national mages can't use (i.e. pretty much all of them for Marignon), but I don't really know too much about which rituals are most worth casting. It's pretty clearly the best choice, though; the window of opportunity between getting Alteration 3 and pushing a Virtue/Titan/Lady of Love/whatever out the door and getting access to Harbingers who do the same job as well or better would be kind of narrow.

Really, my biggest weakness right now is that I don't think I site-search enough and I don't make enough use of the gems I do have, so I'm not sure if going for a rainbow pretender will force me to learn or just leave me with a pretender that I'm totally incapable of using correctly. If I can get past that, though, I think I'm leaning a bit more towards Marignon, if only because I can look at their troop lineup and have a reasonably clear idea of what I should be doing. Arcoscephale looks like more of a grab bag of random magic which, interesting as it is, would probably just confuse me at this point.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by DragonRider

The problem is that I don't really know what to do with a rainbow pretender. There's site searching, I guess, and of course casting rituals or forging items with the paths that your national mages can't use (i.e. pretty much all of them for Marignon), but I don't really know too much about which rituals are most worth casting. It's pretty clearly the best choice, though; the window of opportunity between getting Alteration 3 and pushing a Virtue/Titan/Lady of Love/whatever out the door and getting access to Harbingers who do the same job as well or better would be kind of narrow.

Really, my biggest weakness right now is that I don't think I site-search enough and I don't make enough use of the gems I do have, so I'm not sure if going for a rainbow pretender will force me to learn or just leave me with a pretender that I'm totally incapable of using correctly. If I can get past that, though, I think I'm leaning a bit more towards Marignon, if only because I can look at their troop lineup and have a reasonably clear idea of what I should be doing. Arcoscephale looks like more of a grab bag of random magic which, interesting as it is, would probably just confuse me at this point.

Ok, I see what you're saying. Well, I think you've got basic idea.

Here's what I think of with rainbows:

Site searching - Jump start your gem income, especially in paths your national mages can't. If you get lucky find useful indie mages or excellent magic sites (Conj. bonus, etc.).

Summoning - Summon mages that can take over the task of searching for paths your national/indie mages can't as well as provide magic diversity.

Forging - Especially forging boosters and unique items.

Spellcasting - One nice thing thing about rainbows is they are able to take advantage of what the game gives you. Not an earth nation but you've ended up with a very strong E income? Rainbow pretender can either cast Earth Blood Deep Well themselves or summon another mage and give them the boosters to do so.

Endgame magic - This isn't unique to rainbows but keep in mind what endgame spells you want to be able to cast, especially Wish, and make sure you have a plan to get there.

BTW, it's a good idea to have an endgame plan in mind. You can play the game like I do ("Haha! Check out my E9N6 Sidhe Lords! What? Endgame strategy? Uh ... I don't know... Hey, did I mention my cool raiders?!") or you can play like the better players and have an actual strategy in mind.

One last thing: unless you get lucky with indie mages I find many times rainbows have more to do than there's time for and you have to prioritize (especially when you hit Constr. 8 and are racing to forge items before someone else takes them). Whenever possible summon other mages that you can delegate tasks to - the rainbow opens doors and handles spells and forging that summons can't.

[DragonRider]

I think I'm just going to go ahead and commit to Marignon instead of Arcoscephale. I did a few test runs for the first year or two and it seemed to go well enough. Of course, that's just against the AI (I think Bandor Log wound up with a total of two territories in the most recent one, and I personally watched Caelum lose its army two or three times), but I have a general feel for things now.

I also learned some very important information. Like the fact that nine out of ten 60-year-old human fire mages will pretty much die of spontaneous combustion within a year and a half unless you take some growth scales, which narrows down my Pretender build quite a bit. Now it's just a matter of finalizing my paths and figuring out a research plan...