spring and autumn suggestions

djtool · #1 June 21st, 2004, 03:16 PM

I think i'm going to devote some time to playing around with this nation/dominion. I'm wondering how y'all feel about what dominion scales to go with.

I guess my main area of interest are luck and magic. having a turmoil of 1...will it be worth 120 points to devote to luck? will 80 suffice? 40?

and for magic would is it practical to pump up this scale?

Or perhaps I should go with their bases and use those points for magic.

As far as magic goes how critical is it to load up your fire/earth/astral to supplement your income?

thx in advace.

tinkthank · #2 June 21st, 2004, 03:48 PM

I'm no expert, but I like this theme quite a lot.
I do invest in magic scales, since the access to 75-gold sacred MotD are just wonderful with magic; an owl quill never hurts either, of course.

I also tend to go with 2-3 luck, since this is often nice for income, and gets me my heros quickly. My "strategy" requires attaining a death-2 mage before too late, and if I dont find any of those harab seraphs or onyx amazons, the grumpy guy with the crutch does quite nicely.

I also tend to go low-point castle, for more scales or whatever you want on your pretender; lots of forts is nice for lots of mages; I go mageocracy anyhow, with flying CMs this seems to me to be the way to go. Archers are only 9 resources, and I like them, so I am not so resource worried.

But as to my choice of scales, that really depends on my enemies. If I am up against Ermor, I might just take a point of growth and productivity anyhow, just to counteract any dominion of his -- plus the extra cash helps, even a little.

I am sure the experts here will disagree or say something different, but I have fun with this.

Boron · #3 June 21st, 2004, 06:12 PM

i am no expert too but i like tien chi spring + autumn
i would try a strong pretender and go growth 3 but turmoil / sloth 3 + watchtower as castle .
the fire demons are excellent only drawback you can only summon 1 / mage and have a low fire gem income . i would try them mainly as magic power .
if you are lucky and find fire sites early you can summon a nice second army of the fire demons at around turn 10 . i would try a combat pretender and research construction 2 as first and then start forging clams . then conjuration 5 for accashic record . so in the beginning you are weak but if you survive you are one of the best magic races of all . i just love the flying wizards

i think luck 3 is a good idea because your heroes are good and finding some fire gems or 1500 gold luck event are really nice too

only problem ihmo are the quite weak troops of spring + autumn tien chi .
so you are a bit forced to take a SC pretender if you play with strong indies .

SelfishGene · #4 June 21st, 2004, 09:27 PM

I prefer BK and vanila Tien Chi, since im rather indifferent to magic if i can help it. Personally i love vanilla over the others (contrary to most of the forum-goers here) because Imperial archers and crossbows are my favorite ranged troops in the game.

BK has the 20-15 lance/composite bow cavalry; hard to say no to that.

S&A? Lots and lots of lvl 1 magic paths. And crappy base Tien Chi troops.

Vanilla Tien Chi is probably my favorite theme overall in Dominions 2.

Vicious Love · #5 June 22nd, 2004, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tinkthank:
But as to my choice of scales, that really depends on my enemies. If I am up against Ermor, I might just take a point of growth and productivity anyhow, just to counteract any dominion of his -- plus the extra cash helps, even a little.

AE and SG Ermor's killer dominions are WAY more lethal than a death-3 scale, and independent of scales, to boot. If Ermor has dominion in your lands, you're screwed, even without the scales changing. And a supply bonus won't help you invade Ermor's lands, even if you can push your dominion into them.
Much, much safer to invest in ceremonial faith or a higher base dominion.

Duncanish · #6 June 22nd, 2004, 02:58 AM

I'm another of the people who likes S&A over the base theme. It's very (very!) nifty and flavourful. Sure it gets rid of the 'good' infantry from TC, but it doesn't really matter. Most of the time when I play base TC I just use Imperial archers and those footmen with a falchion/shield combo, so getting rid of all those excess infantry didn't bother me much. Plus, you gain the two Demons which, in my opinion, are better than the Celestial Servants/Soldiers of base TC. When I play S&A, I like to take magic-3 and luck-3, for a boost to my already uber mages and a better chance to get my heroes out. And S&A does have good heroes. A 1-Air 2-Nature mage with immortality and the Heal command. That one guy with the "Annoying Fly Whisk" who's damn fun. Load him with an army of Heavenly Fire demons and watch the fun. ^^; Then there's the old diseased guy, but I never cared for him much. I usually keep him in some secluded area researching or using Death rituals.

rabelais · #7 June 22nd, 2004, 04:44 AM

T1/P3/g3/temp0/luck3/magic1 nata (no magic or e4) with citadel/or less if e4 always worked well for me.

If you want another option Earth mother isn't a bad pretender, given S+A's path distribution

Some would argue nuking the productivity for more +magic, but you are always having an income crunch with s+a, and you don't play it in low site% games, so the income boost is more important than the gems/research vis-a-vis short term boosts. Plus it gets you more archers for early expansion.

Rabe