Bringing Back the Super Combatant

[Twan]

Actually most listed pretenders can be good SCs with dominion 9/10 up to mid game, except against death nations. Pretenders causing fear and trampling like Dagon are especially good (it's a good example of a pretender not really needing a buff, just give him a high dom and high water or earth, add a reinvigoration item and some cons 2/4 protective gear and he will trample entire armies without a scratch).

The now weak pretenders are more the various titans without natural protection, fear, trampling, etc... By the time you fully equip them with sufficiently good items armies with mages can kill any SC. Recuperation is not the big issue at this point, as nature magic is the most common any nation can usually forge a ring of regeneration.

The big weakness of SCs (as well as big pretenders in general and prophetized thugs) after early game is more ennemy dominion. Once medium magic levels are researched, SCs will always take some dammage or be targeted by anti-sc spells, and it becomes risky to use them out of relatively friendly dominion (say not under -3). But if you are attacking you can't know where the ennemy dominion is low (first turn your SC invade a province with low ennemy dominion near one of your dominion, second turn... he can't continue further without big risk as you can't see the dominions). It makes SCs very predictible, as the ennemy knows which provinces dominions you may see, and in this short list he can be quasi sure you won't attack the ones with high dominion. Finally pretenders/battle prophets become not far to be useless in attack mostly because of that. I think the best change to make them more usable after early game would be to let see dominions of all provinces neighboring one of yours or where you have a scout (in addition to dominions of all provinces neighboring your dominion). -but of course it's out of the moddable bonuses topic-.