Magic Scale

[Cainehill]

Yvelina said:
I was talking about drain being suicide... now, if you are saying that Magic 3 is not worth the 40 design points over Magic 2, that may be perfectly reasonable. When I decided on magic 3, I mostly did it by comparing the loss of research to the loss of gold from death/sloth, and decided that magic 3 made sense. It is also the difference between getting to Alt2 in two turns, and having to take one more turn before sending my pretender on a rampage.

I've taken Drain 1 with Vanheim and done very VERY well, when the game ended from lack of interest (4 AIs, including the Caelum Norfleet had started) I think I may have been the only one holding my own or advancing against the AI'd nations.

I went with the assumption that Helheim can afford ... Skull Mentors, is it? Good death income, earth income, and dwarven hammer capable mages.

No doubt it wasn't optimal (nor was having Astral 3 or 4 on my Ghost King pretender), but as an experimental whimsy, it worked quite well. First through the use of skull mentors (yes, there are much better usages of death gems, especially at conjuration/summoning 6 and 9), and also by conquering past my dominion and setting researchers outside the area of drain - easy enough for any Vanheim theme to manage.

[Agrajag]

Turin said:
but you mostly need only conjuration and construction anyway.

Unless you are playing a single-player game, and I must mention this as a single-player man.
There are plenty of great spells for Ermor all around the research table.
Utterdark, Well of Misery, Burden of Time are great globals for Ermor, also, Nether darts is pretty damn good for default Ermor.
Also, I've found its a nice idea to have some Earth magic on your Ermor (none default) pretender, it can give you good forging, a steady supply of earth gems (to convert into money, if you have to), a spell that creates a tower in one of your provinces (fortifications are hard to build as pennyless Ermor), Inulenrability for your pretender and nice globals like the mechanical militia.

[Turin]

Well,
well of misery is conjuration. The other two globals won´t work that well in multiplayer as you mentioned.
You don´t really need a lot of strategy to win vs the ai nations with ermor .

wizards tower is a waste of gems in most circumstances. you could just alchemize 45 of the 50 earth gems required and build your ermorion castle.