Re: Looking for a good PBEM setup. Post your favor
My own favourite design for a Pretender; it can work for virtually any nation, provided they come with the basic Pretender type.
Meet the Virtue! The Virtue is effectively one of the cheapest Pretenders, with a standard Dominion value of 4, and costs 50 points. She is also fully mobile (and flies), and comes with all the item slots. She does lack hitpoints, or a "saving throw" ability like Immortal, and so the trick will be to avoid being hit in the first place (Awe helps in this regard, especially against independents).
The Virtue lives and dies with her magic paths. In the standard game, she comes with Air 2, and nothing else; getting any other path costs 80 points. She will pay dearly for those new paths, but they will help her greatly. Let's look at all the paths:
- Fire is not the most useful path around, as it has few spells requiring a high level in the path, and few of its spells are useful in melee early on. Good Fire spells for expansion are Fire Darts (gets more and more dangerous for higher levels of Fire magic) and Fire Shield.
- In expansion, Air gives access to Mirror Image (greatly reduces the odds of taking a first hit), Mistform (greatly reduces the damage taken when you *are* hit), and offensive spells like Lightning Bolt and Shockwave. Air also gives access to Storms, Flying, and has some very nice summoning rituals (Call of the Wind is nice when you need some fodder, Air Queens are very nice).
- Water grants to Quickness and Breath of Winter, speeding up your Pretender and giving her a passive damage "weapon". It is by no means necessary however, especially as Water is the easiest path to raise.
- Earth gives to Ironskin/Invulnerability, good spells to raise your protection. A few points of Earth also ensures access to Dwarven Hammers/Boots of Earth, and allows the forging of Staves of Elemental Mastery with Air.
- Astral has many useful spells, and is one of the most versatile magic paths around. As such, it is often a good idea to have Astral magic. In expansion, Astral gives spells like Personal Luck (50% of avoiding any attack), Body Ethereal (75% of avoiding any attack, but can be easily countered by your fellow players), Astral Weapon and Astral Shield, among others. Astral has many other uses, such as powerful battle enchantments (Will of the Fates), teleporting spells, most items related to raising or lowering magic resistance, all around path boosters, among other things.
- Nature offers the Regeneration spell for expansion, but not much else beyond that. Nature is another path that can be useful, due to many rituals and life-safers items (regeneration heals the unit, and reduces the odds of getting an affliction).
- Death grants the Soul Vortex spell at Alteration 6, but nothing too useful early on. However, Death is another powerful path, with lots of rituals and items: Banelords and Wraith Swords are common uses of Death gems, for example. Death is also the easiest path to boost, if you can lay your hands on the Sceptre of Dark Regency (an artifact giving a +3 bonus to Death).
- Blood magic is useless for expansion, and difficult to use in battle. However, it offers some very good items, and rituals galore: Ice Devils are a favourite of Blood users, along with Blood Thorns (or Hell Swords) or Soul Contracts (gives you one devil every turn). Blood is easier to increase than most other paths though, as you will have an easier time finding blood slaves, so empowerment can be a solution.
A note on path levels and blessings: starting from level 4 in any given path onwards, you will gain additional blessings, varying depending on the path. Nature 4 will allow your holy troops to go berserk if they are hit, and so you will likely want to stay away from Nature if all your mages happen to be blessed. Otherwise, they could all decide to get into melee, and they will not retreat once they are engaged. Likewise, if you take any Astral at all, you will want to get lots of it: Magic Duel is a low-level spell that targets Astral mages, and the higher level mage has the best odds of winning. The catch is, Magic Duel does not seem to take into account magic boosts coming from items/spells, so you will want a very high level of Astral magic. Level 6 is the minimum I would settle for in Astral magic.
You should pick your paths depending on what you want to do, and on your nation: I usually go with the sorcery paths my nation lacks, Blood excepted. My Virtue setup could be along those lines: Air 5, Earth 3, Astral 6, Death 4. This Pretender is expensive to get, but can take provinces on her own, can do a good job at (re)searching, and has a wide array of magic at her disposal. She will often spend the early game taking provinces (and looking for sites once in a while), but should be kept well protected later on, until she is *really* needed on the battlefield.
A possible battle setup could be: Mistform, Air Shield (if appropriate), Body Ethereal, Invulnerability (or Ironskin), Mirror Image, Personal Luck (if Air Shield has not been taken), and Attack Rear. This results in a powerful melee fighter, good at trashing the independents, and able to do damage to other opponents. However, both Mistform and Body Ethereal are negated by magic weapons, so you should be careful when using her against other players (if you choose to do so).
Outside battle, she has access to many useful rituals, especially if she can get that Death artifact (bringing her to Death 7). What she will do with all those paths will depend on the gems you find: some ideas are Air Queens (powerful air mages and fighters, especially in a storm), Golems, the quest for other powerful artifacts, high-end Astral rituals (Wish, at Astral 9, in particular), Tartarian Titans... All of this means a lot of research however, so you should focus on that particular area of the game.
Now comes the fun part: the rest of the design. If you tried the design above, you will notice it costs a lot of design points. You will need to gain back some points with poor scales, but thankfully it can be done without much harm. Standard scales are as follow:
- Order 3: Gives you more gold, and reduces the odds of bad events happening.
- Some Sloth, or Sloth 3: If you are not planning on recruiting a *lot* of mundane units, you will probably want to take some Sloth.
- Heat/Cold: As per your nation preference, though you may want to go all the way to 3 for nations having a preference of 2 (Heat/Cold will be affected by climate).
- Death: I would stay away from Death if possible, as a Death scale tends to result in more common famines. It will slowly reduce your population, but the effects should only matter for games lasting a long time.
- Misfortune 2: You will still have *some* chance of getting a hero, and with your Order scale, bad events should be uncommon. They *may* still happen however, but even Luck 3 will not protect you from the odd lab burning on turn 2.
- Magic 2: Magic increases your magic research speed, and is a good thing to have. You should aim for Magic 2 or even Magic 3, but the effects of the Magic scale are less and less important as you increase it.
Dominion value should be as high as possible, somewhere between 6 and 8 for an average nation. It will ensure you are not killed because of a weak Dominion, and Dominion 6/7 should still be cheap enough.
Castle: The Watchtower is a common choice, as it is very cheap. It costs a mere 300 gold and no design point, and takes only two turns to build. Another usual choice is the Castle, at 80 design points and 450 gold: unlike the Watchtower, the Castle has decent stats, but you will pay for them. Other castles may be interesting depending on your nation, but their uses tend to be more specialised.
So, this setup would be:
A Virtue, with Air 5/Earth 3/Astral 6/Death 4, Watchtower
Scales: Order 3, Sloth 3, Heat/Cold 1 (or your nation preference, if it is not the standard), Death 3, Misfortune 2, Magic 2. Dominion value of 7.
I used that setup with Arcoscephale, and it seems to be working quite well, while being difficult to use at full efficiency (I am pretty sure I missed many possible uses of all these paths). Still, the basic idea behind this design should be helpful to you, especially the mix of raw power (in expansion at least, as items will be needed against the other players) and versatility.
This it not necessarily the most cost-effective Pretender around, but it should do well. Other interesting "hulls" for a similar design are the Ghost King or the Phoenix: the Ghost King can get new paths more easily than the Virtue and is stealthy, while the Phoenix is Immortal (it cannot be killed inside friendly Dominion).
I think I will add another design for Arcoscephale, this time on a different direction, and without as much rambling as that one.
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. Latter on add in commuinions of fire blasting astral mages.
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