Man - Pretender template request

[Amerasu]

Oops, my mistake Yossar! I don't know why I'm hung up on Productivity today.

So, for the Blue Dragon, I have 9 Water, 1 Order (it will sink in eventually, I hope) , 1 Magic, 1 Luck, 6 Dominion. With that build, the Watchtower is the only choice. Would you cut back on Order to get the Mausoleum or keep Order and live with the Watchtower?

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by SelfishGene:
Sloth is acceptable because you don't really need to make any non-Cidhe melee units. Longbowmen cost only 6 resources, and are a perfect compliment to Air-9 blessed Daoine Cidhe that already are hard to hit with glamour. Anyway basic human troops are crap - why make more of a bad thing?

Knights aren't crap - in fact they're quite useful - and they're fairly resource-costly as well. I guess it boils down to personal taste/style - later in the game, when Man's sacred troops aren't as effective as they are early on, it's awfully nice to supplement them with some heavy, heavy cav. So while I don't always take extra Prod, the lowest I'll go is balanced scales. I don't ever take Sloth for Tuatha.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Amerasu:
So, for the Blue Dragon, I have 9 Water, 1 Order (it will sink in eventually, I hope) , 1 Magic, 1 Luck, 6 Dominion. With that build, the Watchtower is the only choice. Would you cut back on Order to get the Mausoleum or keep Order and live with the Watchtower?

How many points do you have left over if you drop down to Dominion 5? If you can do that and afford the Mausoleum, I'd go for it. You'll just have to remember that with a lower dominion you'll need to be a little more aggressive and push outside of your own dominion just a little bit more.

[SelfishGene]

Originally posted by Amerasu:
Therefore, I do have one more question pertaining to the Blue Dragon build. If I take him to Water 9, Magic 1, Luck 1, Productivity 1 and Dominion 6, I only have 1 point left. Do you sacrifice Productivity to get the Mausoleum or keep Productivity and go with the Watchtower? Or do you tweak him a little differently.

Well overall the build isn't bad but you may want to consider something.

Forts 'gather' resources from neighboring provinces, while the Productivity scale increases your gross total. See the problem? Your paying to increasing production, than choosing the absolute worst fort possible to use that production.

Personally, with that Pretender in mind, (and unless you had some sort of other strategy in mind that needed cheap forts) i would chunk the Productivity, bump the Dominion down to 5, and purchase the 60 pt. Fortress instead. But thats just me .

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by SelfishGene:
Well overall the build isn't bad but you may want to consider something.

Forts 'gather' resources from neighboring provinces, while the Productivity scale increases your gross total. See the problem? Your paying to increasing production, than choosing the absolute worst fort possible to use that production.

He already said a couple of Posts ago that he meant Order 1, not Prod 1.

[st.patrik]

I gotta disagree with the idea of giving your Man pretender a lot of Air. Frankly I think it's a waste of points when you can forge yourself a Staff of Storms or research to Arrow Fend pretty easily.

I also think Water 9 is nice but not the best idea. Now if you could take Water 9 *and* Air 9 that would be pretty nice, but either one on their own is, IMHO, not the best blessing you can get.

[BTW I am thinking Last of Tuatha here, not so much regular Man]

The great weakness of the Daoine Sidhe is that they fight with spears, which have a very hard time getting through thick armour. IMHO that is the biggest need for a bless effect - greater strength.

However, Blood isn't a great match for Man, so I usually go for Nature (berserk gives +str). That way if the Sidhe are hit they become more dangerous, rather than simply getting killed rather quickly.

Regular Man is a different story - those greatswords have no problem cutting through thick armour just as they are.

[Amerasu]

Thanks again for all the responses!

st.patrik, I am curious how you would build your Man pretender. I realize there are many different permutations, but for a newbie how would you set up your recommended, basic Man pretender?

-How high would you take Nature and do you take a second school?
-How much Dominion?
-How would you balance your scales?

Again, I am asking this from the perspective of a complete newbie, but I really want to dive into the game with some proven pretender builds to get the game flow. I'll experiment with pretender builds when I'm more comfortable with the game itself.

Thanks for anything you can share.

[ March 29, 2004, 16:20: Message edited by: Amerasu ]

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
However, Blood isn't a great match for Man, so I usually go for Nature (berserk gives +str). That way if the Sidhe are hit they become more dangerous, rather than simply getting killed rather quickly.

Do you usually choose the Divine Serpent, then?

[ywl]

Other than using bless effect, there is another approach for (mainly) regular Man, which is to use a cheap physical pretender, e.g. Wyrm or a Green Dragon supported by "Personal Regeneration". The pretender can lead a lot of Longbows when it soaks up the damage. Your expansion will be super-fast. With better resource and larger territory, you can afford a crone every turn.

One thing noticeable of Nature path is its good summonned mages. Lamia Queen allows you expanding into Death and Astral. Couatls are very good astral mages. There are also some very common nature sites that give your elemental mages. So, even with a magically poor pretender, your diversity in late game would still be quite impressive. The Warden will not have any good bless effects neither but they are still very good stealthy heavy infantry.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
I gotta disagree with the idea of giving your Man pretender a lot of Air. Frankly I think it's a waste of points when you can forge yourself a Staff of Storms or research to Arrow Fend pretty easily.

I also think Water 9 is nice but not the best idea. Now if you could take Water 9 *and* Air 9 that would be pretty nice, but either one on their own is, IMHO, not the best blessing you can get.

[BTW I am thinking Last of Tuatha here, not so much regular Man]

The great weakness of the Daoine Sidhe is that they fight with spears, which have a very hard time getting through thick armour. IMHO that is the biggest need for a bless effect - greater strength.

However, Blood isn't a great match for Man, so I usually go for Nature (berserk gives +str). That way if the Sidhe are hit they become more dangerous, rather than simply getting killed rather quickly.

Regular Man is a different story - those greatswords have no problem cutting through thick armour just as they are.

I agree, Air just isn't worth it. You Sidhe commanders can cast Air Shield and Resist Lightning. Storms and Arrow Fend can effectively shut missiles down, but even without them IMHO missiles just aren't that much of a threat, and are easily distracted.

I'm not sure I agree that blood or nature blessings are better than water however. I'm curious, have you tried these approaches out, or are you hypothesizing?

[ March 29, 2004, 22:14: Message edited by: Jasper ]