When you are sitting, just sit...

[archaeolept]

ehhh, skulls aren't enough :O

you should have magic 2 w/ the jots. giants can deal w/ a bit of death - just get some wineskins going ASAP. Also, w/ a bless strat, you can go w/ a mausoleum and sloth 3, since you're just buying commanders and woodsmen.

so, order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 2, misfortune 2 magic 2
dominion 7 mausoleum, seems to work.

its pretty minimal for supply, but if you're careful you can do it.

[Cainehill]

archaeolept said:
ehhh, skulls aren't enough :O

you should have magic 2 w/ the jots. giants can deal w/ a bit of death - just get some wineskins going ASAP. Also, w/ a bless strat, you can go w/ a mausoleum and sloth 3, since you're just buying commanders and woodsmen.

If the woodsmen weren't capitol only, or if Jotuns could easily manage gateways, that'd be good, but... Actually, even with gateways, I haven't found it possible to buy enough woodsmen to fuel a long-term advance.

[archaeolept]

well, when i go for a jot bless-strat, as soon as i expand a bit, my secondary castle spam is pushing out a fair number of Jotun herse. Herse are perhaps the best sacred unit in the game woodsmen are good early is all. but even at those settings, if you're careful w/ your forces, you can accumulate quite a few woodsmen too. Of course, they still might not be able to deal w/ a real SC, but that's always a problem.

[rylen]

I'm still struggling to get 9N, 9S Niffle Giants.

Rylen

[Cainehill]

rylen said:
What are immobile pretenders good for? I've been thinking about them lately. And I remember reading about giving one "twiceborn" and getting them back once they're killed as mobile beings. But how do you get good use out of them until then?

I tried some immobiles now and again, but without Zen's pretender mod most simply weren't viable (or at least, certainly not attractive) for MP games.

A few exceptions: R'lyeh's Void Lurker: very cheap magic paths (15 points) made for a very good rainbow mage, very good for research and for forging. With a bit of research, capable of teleporting into provinces and winning all by its lonesome, including land provinces with an amulet to let it breath on land. Very good HPs and ethereal, and post twiceborn, usable for site searching and whatnot.

Marignon's Baphomet: great for a dual Fire/Astral bless, plus pretty good basic dominion. With built in etherealness and fireshield, I took several provinces with one with little more than teleport researched.

Abysian/Machakan Divine Glyph: Just like the Baphomet - less innate fire magic and no fire shield, but has Awe to help take independents all by itself.

Those were pretty much the only immobiles I ever found viable, and I'm not sure I'd have recommended them for a competitive MP game, but fun to try with.

On the other paw, with Zen's mod most if not all the immobiles become reasonably viable and more or less appealing - a lot have built in gem incomes, one (the Glyph) is now immortal, etc.

[Vicious Love]

rylen said:
Humans are good for rainbows...

Absolutely.

or cheapness ...

Hardly. A human without paths still costs more than, say, a Manticore, and is even less useful. To say nothing of a Nataraja. And Wyrms don't cost much more than some human chasses.
'course, I prefer the sacred fountain over any low-grade thug pretender. It may not be mobile(Without wasting a pearl or two), but the high base dominion is always useful, and one can never get too much astral. Particularly with a non-astral nation.

Big guys and monsters are good for early expansion ...
Dragons are good for bless strategies ...

Eh. Plenty of other chasses out there that can pull off a single-path bless, and many of them have other uses which dragons lack.