Question: Dragons in combat

[Admiral_Aorta]

The nature dragon's also worse from a bless perspective, since most of the time you're more likely to go for a high water or fire bless than a nature one.

[Fantomen]

The green dragon has the following pros also:

N4+ is a good minor blessing for many nations, especially those with old mages.

High nature increases the regeneration you get from personal regeneration and items, so a high N high dom green dragon can get insane regeneration going, which in turn reduces afflictions immensely. At that point I think the green dragon is by far the toughest dragon to kill in friendly dominion.

If you take a secondary path for the green dragon you can take E4, which would give you a light thug bless (N4E4), and with earth power, personal regen scaled by the nature path and the protection bonus from earth it will be very hard to kill even without awe. The other dragons could do the same but not with the same synergy.

I also find nature to be a very useful path to have on a pretender, mainly because of the nice globals and GoR.

[Immaculate]

Wow- did not realize that regen scaled with nature score.

[parone]

what about the carrion dragon? how does he match up?

[Fantomen]

I was uncertain of the details of regen scaling with Nature magic so I tested it.

The scaling of regen with nature magic skill seems to be 1 point of regeneration per level, regardless of hitpoints. So for example a Pan with N4 casting Personal regeneration will regenerate 7 Hp per turn (10% of 27 + 4 Nature skill)

This scaling works for the spell effect and blessing, not for items.

The Path bonus is only applied once per unit, so casting personal regeneration on top of a blessing does not double the bonus. So for example a N2 Warrior sorceress with N4 blessing will get regeneration 3 (1 from bless + 2 from Nature skill), but casting personal regeneration only increases this to 4.

This actually means that it's more significant for low HP thugs like Oreiads than it is for big dudes like the green dragon, but the green dragon still gets a significant boost from it. A Green dragon with N7 (9-2) fighting in friendly dominion with Personal regeneration and Ring of regeneration clocks 40-60 regen/turn depending on dom strength. Not easy to kill with pointy objects.

[Fantomen]

Also, the bonus is not applied to natural regeneration. So for example a ***** queen with N6 will need to cast PR to get her bonus, but when she casts it she will end up with a very high relative regen for her HP.

One possible use for this is to make "rainbow thugs" like the ***** queen and Freak lord viable. If you take relatively high Nature on them with some air you can turn them into a viable thug on the fly. For example the Freak lord with N6 gets 10 regen in neutral dominion. Also an argument to take Nature on a Vampire queen.

Strategically I'm not sure what the point is, I suppose they would site search mostly but be a viable backup thug in emergencies. Probably rarely worth it anyhow.

One more thing about the green dragon, which I find quite significant. It's mage form is stealthy, so it can sneak away from assassination spells into a neighboring province, then change shape and attack again, than sneak away etc. The carrion dragon has the same advantage too.

[Gandalf Parker]

What I like about Carrion Dragon and Pangaea is that Pangaea can field an entire stealth army. Mounted, infantry, mages, flyers, etc. You can use the flying scouts to find an opponent quickly in the game. Use the Carrion Dragons stealth mode to ignore the independents in between and march an army into the other guys capital. Then just change him on map command into a dragon. The next turn he and all of his followers will break stealth to attack.
SURPRISE

Disclaimer: all comments by this poster is to be considered referring to solo play unless specifically stated otherwise.

[parone]

gandy,ever try that in MP? i don't know if it'd work(you'd have an army on someone's cap, but nowhere to run/reinforce) but it'd be a ton of fun to try it

[Gandalf Parker]

Maybe it would work ONCE as a surprise. So it would be a maybe tactic for games where everyone thinks they know how things are going to run. But thats a really big maybe.

I think of it as more of a fun RPG thing to do in solo games.

[parone]

u r probably right.

but god it'd be fun to try it. especially against some uber vet who was going to annihilate me anyway.