Help Jules design his pretender god!

[Jules]

Introducing....

Ugoff the Great Sage (thank you, Burger King! )
Level 2 Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral and Nature
Dominion strength: 6
Order: 3
Productivity: 3
Growth: 1
Misfortune: 1
Drain: 3
Fortress type: Castle

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Jules
Aren't you stuck with the levels you purchase at the beginning?

You can further enhance a spell line, but it costs a large amount of gems to do so. Especially if you don't already have any points in it. You can do this for any commander, too.

[Sandman]

How come? How about Ceremonial Faith then? That's available for only one order scale.

Since Iron Faith black priests are not drain immune, it's very risky to take drain-3 for Iron Faith. This means that Iron Faith, for all intents and purposes, costs 80 points more than regular Ulm.

Just skip on themes. You generally don't need them.

How come only level 2? Aren't you stuck with the levels you purchase at the beginning? It seems to me that's limiting the spells you'll be able to research. Or am I then supposed to rely upon the magical items forged by my smiths, which will be powerful?

You can power up your casters (including the pretender) in a variety of methods; spending gems on empowerment or forging empowering items (earth boots are a must for Ulm). On the battlefield you can use communions and cast empowering spells.

You can research any spell; it's casting it that's the hard part. I will admit that a rainbow mage won't able to cast the really badass spells later on in the game without some serious buffing; you'll just have to try and win beforehand.

It's not the power of items that Ulm's smiths can forge, but their efficiency; items forged by a smith cost 25% less in gems. Add to this dwarven hammers, which Ulm can easily get, and you can churn out items for half price.

Items which make your mages more powerful are generally a better bet than swords and stuff.

Ulm is probably the best bet to learn the game from; solid troops, priests and blessing strategies are irrelevant, generous scales and a single, focused mage type.

[Jules]

Will drain affect my pretender?

Can there be more than one magic site in a province? Or should I wait until I capture a few provinces before setting my pretender to search? I'd have him do research in the meantime.

How about army design philosophy? Stay away from the knights and stick to infantry? Guardians to garrison the castles?

And anything else you can suggest that might be helpful.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally posted by Jules
Will drain affect my pretender?

Can there be more than one magic site in a province? Or should I wait until I capture a few provinces before setting my pretender to search? I'd have him do research in the meantime.

How about army design philosophy? Stay away from the knights and stick to infantry? Guardians to garrison the castles?

And anything else you can suggest that might be helpful.

Drain will effect your pretender, but except in the first few turns, he should have better things to do than research anyway.

There can be up to four sites in a province; the most magic you need to find a particular site is also four.

When I play Ulm, I like to use most my gold to produce as many smiths as possible, while using my resources on the most resource intensive infantry. Infact, as a guideline for any nation, the troops that use the least gold and the most resources are generally a good choice.

[Sandman]

I, on the other hand, think that regular Ulm infantry is just fine. Particularly the shielded ones - they seem to have more durability. Black Plate stuff has a high armour rating, sure, but they're slower, have weaker defence and get tired more quickly. Guardians I have never been particularly fond of.

Ulmian arbalests have their uses, but they have a nasty habit of hurting your own troops, since they fire armour-piercing shots. It might be worth developing a source of independent archers; their arrows will have no effect on your heavy units, but will hurt anything with a low armour rating.

Black Knights are undoubtably good, but they're too expensive in my view for the early game. Their speed is not so much of an advantage when you're killing independents. Later on, it may become crucial to have a quick-moving force of knights to dispatch to trouble-spots in your empire, flank enemy armies and exterminate routed troops.

One piece of advice which I think is important is 'always keep your upkeep in mind'. Normal units cost 1/15 of their hire cost every turn in upkeep, whilst sacred units cost 1/30. Pretenders, prophets, heroes and mercenaries have no upkeep cost, as far as I'm aware. Province defence, fortresses and temples are free as well. So plan your spending with that in mind.

[General Ludd]

Bump to see if anyone else who wants to play a PBEM game...


2 player Dominions doesn't sound so fun, but maybe I'll give it a go if there's no one else who's interested, quantum_mechani.

[Sandman]

I'll play, I suppose.

[quantum_mechani]

Well, we could make a three player game, but those tend to stalemate.

Another option is joining a PBEM I was already starting, which has another three players. It has a few special rules, but ones that I think would be advatanageous for those who have not done MP Dominions before.

The rules:

1) No magic on the pretender beyond what it starts with.

2) No positive magic scale.

3) No 300 gold castles.

Because of the unique set-up of the game, certain nations would be ovepowered if used. Of the remaining nations, only Desert Tombs C'tis and default Ulm are still open.

If anyone is interested (in a new three player or joining the other one) post here, and I will PM you the address to send your pretender files to.

[General Ludd]

I might be interested in that game... the Desert Tombs C'tis sounds like fun.


Not being able to put any points toward magic in either the dominion or the pretender is a bit strange though, I'm not even sure what I can put the other points towards.


What other nations are in the game?

[General Ludd]

Oh, and what are the settings?

What are the other players like - roleplayers, powergamers?

Fill me in.

[Sandman]

I'd be interested in playing as default Ulm.

When you say "no magic on the pretender beyond what it starts with", do you mean empowering after the game starts, or adding any magic to it during the design phase?

[quantum_mechani]

Empowering during the game is fine, just don't spend any points on the magic paths for the pretender.

The game experiment in limiting magic in order to give more conventional tactics a chance, since most dominions games have them totally out-classed by around turn 30.

The settings:

Research: Very difficult
Magic sites: 10
Richness: Poor
Independants: 7
Map: Cirlani (you may need to download it from Illwinter)

The other players are Broken Empire Ermor, New Era Pangaea, Serpent Cult Pythium, and Barbarian Kings T'ien Ch'i.

[General Ludd]

Sounds good to me... I'll make my pretender and such tommorow. Who do I send it to - you?

And is there a date for when it'll start, or anythign else I should know?

[quantum_mechani]

Already PMed the E-mail address, I will start as soon as I have the pretenders.