Using your pretender early: How?

[BigJMoney]

I'm weird in that I like to go against the grain while playing games just to see what I can come up with. With Dominions, I'm always tempted to forgo bless strategies and go for having a pretender right out of the box. The trouble is, I've never played a game where this has done me any good. (Talking SP here.) My games seem to have a lot more momentum and are easier to win when I go with sleeping pretender and bless strategy.

So I'm wondering, who uses the early pretender and what/how do you do it? What is the advantage besides rainbow searching and thus gaining a lead in gem gathering? Or the extra ~12 research points right off the bat? I've tried a few builds that get my pretender into combat early on, but none of them have been very good. (Again, however, I go against the grain and avoid the most popular 3 combat pretenders to see what I can make of the others.)

I remember being tempted to offer that the blesses shouldn't work until your pretender is in the game, but I'm sure that will never happen, hehe.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[Cor]

I have had good luck with a Wyrm. I dont buy any paths, so if it dies I have not lost anything, and I take dominion 9 or 10 to give it the bonus stats and Awe. I play with the standard Indy strength. It can usually take provinces on the first turn by itself. Once you get a revigoration item your good to go against knights and the like.

Last game I did this with I was playing several difficult AI. My expansion was about twice as fast as the average. I think it also had to do with the order and producion scales allowed me to crank out good expansion forces.

[PvK]

I think bless seems to work so well especially to new players partly because it is very simple to use.

An equally simple awake pretender strategy is the supercombattant. It's even easier if a player with experience tells you some things which are known to work well, though it might be more fun and interesting (or frustrating, depending on your personal philosophy and tastes), to try your own ideas.

An important thing to remember though is that bad luck happens to everyone, so you can't rely on even the best SC not getting killed or (worse) crippled sometimes - be prepared to ressurrect them, heal them, and/or live without them.

But basically you design someone who can take provinces unaided, or nearly-unaided, without much or any research, and send them against provinces you're pretty sure they can beat, which can double your early expansion rate, since your army can be taking different provinces at the same time.

PvK

[Ewierl]

Generally, to make a pretender into a good SC, you need some way of dealing with chaff. Every attack is a slim chance that your high-protection cyclops will take an unlucky wound, so you need to have some ability to deal with large numbers. Later in the game, non-indie chaff can hold off a SC just by making them take so long they rout, another reason you need crowd control.

The easiest way to do so is with Awe, since any pretender can have it if you buy a starting dominion of 9-10. A number of pretenders have Fear, which isn't quite as good (though it works delightfully well in combination). A few pretenders do other fun things, with heat/cold/poison radiation or petrification. Trample is a dangerous option, because it can drag you down with fatigue in a tough battle.

Of course, you also need a reasonably tough chassis, in terms of hp. Recuperation or immortality go a long way towards not caring about afflictions, but you don't want to go down to a lucky crossbow bolt. Bare minimum is the Virtue/Gorgon range, 40ish, though I'd stay away from lance-wielding indies with them. Don't try this with a 15-hp ***** queen, something unlucky is bound to happen.

The bottom line: for bare minimum SC functionality, you need enough HP to survive a lucky hit, and you need some sort of crowd control ability.

[Manuk]

The enchantress and the daughter of the rivers make gems on their own. Maybe the lucky gods are meant to be awake. And of course brute gods like the wyrm or the bulls. Rainbow can be imprisioned to get more magic.

[MaxWilson]

What kind of games do you play? Big maps, small maps, strong indies? My expectation would be that in longer games, there just isn't any way to make the early turns of expansion (more gold) more valuable than the extra paths from taking dormant/imprisoned (better globals, better item forging, maybe even better path-boosters for your national mages), so the value of an SC lies in increasing your chances of surviving the early turns so that it can BECOME a longer game. I'm eager to see what suggestions the veterans have for what to do besides expansion, though.

-Max

[Evilhomer]

I disagree. The boost in expansion early game is very good even in longer games since the gold will basically transform into more forts, more mages, faster research and you will have more lands to search - more gems. The early game momentum will in short carry over to a strong endgame. Of course its not the only pretender path to take, but it's still a good one, even on a large map.

[jutetrea]

Personally I have more luck in SP with a strong rainbow, as many 4's as possible without killing scales. Then use the SC to bridge any gaps via summoning, construction - allowing access to pretty much all summons and items. Sitesearch early to build up gems, research heavily, start summoning path jumpers, i.e. naiads, hades, trolls, etc and have them continue the summoning/construction.

Depending on your chassis they can then continue researching/summons/construct or jump in with you're main army for either melee or spell help. As said earlier, careful on the low HPs.

edit: for example, my most recent game was with marignon - generally limited to fire, astral and weak E/A. Now I've got access to pretty much everything via naiads, revenants, lamia queens, spectres, hades, trolls, etc.

[Managarm]

I can think in a couple of additional, although very focused, ways of using an awaken Pretender....

1) A design with enough magic to drop a broken Global Enchantment ASAP. This design allows a head start in research and can also save tons of gems in empowerments/item construction for getting the required magic paths online.
Playing Abyssia a fair option will be an awaken Solar Disc with F8 for having a Second Sun shining and helping those nice heat dependant lava beings in their expansion. The downside is that 2nd Sun is an Evo8 spell and plenty research is required beforehand... It is also possible to go for F9 without severe penalties for Flaming Weapons.

2) A funky design supporting a Stalk'n'Slash strategy (AKA Hero Rushing in Warcraft III). I was thinking in an awaken Pretender with the Assassination ability for hunting down enemy commanders from the very beginning and crippling their early expansion. Unfortunately, the only natural born killer Pretender available is Mictlan's Lord Of The Night. It is also possible to keep him as a decent menace at all time constructing item upgrades in the Capital and using a stealthy scout as a courier.
Yeah, I know that this won't be a winning Pretender but at least sounds funny to me...

[OgreMkV]

I'm a total newbie and if there are major flaws to anything I say here, please let me know. But here's what I do...

So far, I've played mainly Pangea and Helheim (both Early) and I almost always start with a pretender awake and active. I almost always have one of the physically weaker, but magically more powerful pretenders. Say, the enchantress. I'll load up on magic (cost ten for a new path!). So it would be something like F4, A2, E2, N4, D4.

Plus they have huge research potential... like 23 or so a turn. I can usually get at two levels in two paths by turn two.

Finally, this particular setup is a great site hunter. Once I've got a few levels and a few additional research types, then I send the pretender out hunting. In a standard world he can find a huge number of sites in a short period of time. The gems can be used for conjuring big armies or turned into gold for other stuff.