What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Abysia)

[DrPraetorious]

You have to balance the benefits of the bless with the benefits of the corresponding magic path.

A4 on your pretender is stone-cold awesome to have - it lets you forge air boost items - 1/4 of those mage guys have A1 - boost that to A2 with an item and they can cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend. Schweet. The 30% air shield is sheer gravy.

A really effective bless strategy don't just take advantage of the blessing - it ALSO benefits from the magic paths themselves. This is what makes the difference between bless-rushers who merely make their immediate neighbours miserable, and bless rushers who actually win, IMO, in MP.

[Tyrant]

As usual, DrP is spot on.

[Managarm]

I really like the Air Shield idea for Marignon, it's a great addition for the Flagellants and very handy for dodging friendly Fire Arrows too.

Unfortunately it's not easy to build an efficient Pretender supporting both F9 and A5-6 plus good order/production/dominion for recruiting a fair number of Knights Of The Chalice and Flagellants per turn.

The most optimal Pretender build I got supporting this idea, from my humble point of view, is an Imprisoned Baphomet with F9A5S2, Dominion 6, Order & Production 3, Drain 2 and neutral scales for Heat/Luck/Growth.
Death scales are not recommended since our best mages/priests are old and prone to disease.

I found Baphomet surprisingly good for any build requiring F9 and dominion!! Even better than Phoenix who already has A1F1 and no additional paths required!

[MaxWilson]

Any particular reason for going Order-3 Luck-0 instead of Order-3 Misfortune-3? The latter seems to be fairly popular because Order-3 cancels out most of Misfortune-3, leaving only a 39% increased probability of negative events (which is very much worth 120 points and which I haven't found to be noticeable in my limited experience). Unless you just hate random events so much that you want them all to disappear...

You could spend the extra points on Growth-3, if you like.

-Max

[Managarm]

Well, in fact I'm not very lucky in real life so I didn't want to spread this misfortune to my computer gaming too...

Honestly I have much less experience than thou and I haven't tried this Order/Misfortune setup yet.
Taking into account your comments, yes, the risk is quite low and there's plenty of investment opportunities with those extra 120 points (increasing A6, Dom 7 and Growth 1, for instance).

Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

[DrPraetorious]

Based on my studies, I strongly recommend Order-3/Misfortune-2.

Misfortune-2 does seem to be a relatively minor penalty - but Misfortune-3 does *not*, you get a lot more of the really bad events than with Misfortune-2. So (if you have order-3), misfortune-2 seems to be worth it for 80 points, but misfortune-3 for 40 on top of that is not a good buy.

[MaxWilson]

Dr. P,

Can you quantify what you mean by "a lot more... bad events"? Even subjectively? Twice as many barbarian attacks? Two vampire count attacks within 10 turns? I love Order-3 but I hate paying points for it, and I haven't felt like luck was a major factor in any of my handful of games so far. Bad luck hasn't even really been an irritant, actually. Large maps, generally 180+ provinces and 4-8 AIs, and I always take Growth scales. (There was one quick little test game where I took Turmoil-3, Death-3, Misfortune-3 and had half my population killed off on turn two. That's the only event I've ever had that I'd feel it was worth spending points to avoid.)

-Max

[DrPraetorious]

I believe that you get about twice as many of the "very bad" events with misfortune-3 as with misfortune-2 - but that's just a guess, the thing I was checking was total money.

For whatever reason - lost income, killed population, unrest from barbarian invasions - you make less money on average (a few %, I did enough samples to get to statistical significance) as misfortune-3/order-3 than you do as misfortune-2/order-3/death-1, at least over the medium haul.

I just ran it again to make sure I had the magnitude right:
setting, pop after 10, money after 10,notes
o3d1m2, 29540, 3740
o3d1m2, 29670, 4585, militia
o3d1m2, 28090, 3892
o3d1m2, 29110, 4129

o3m3, 25780, 4164, no lab
o3m3, 24430, 4077, +death gems
o3m3, 29560, 3686, militia
o3m3, 29410, 4073

That's 345 gold less you get on average - or ~8%, which is a bit larger than the value I got before.

I did a larger sample at one point and got about the same result (but statistically significant, 95% confidence interval of 1-11%, IIRC, but can't find my notes). This isn't a perfect methodology (it was better before, had same armies for everyone) - once I have the kinks worked out I'll post something more comprehensive. I only used nations with temperate preference.

This is from setting your initial army on patrol and hosting for 10 turns with autotax. Without the patrollers the effect is presumably more pronounced, since most of the money lost to misfortune is from increased unrest.

This also ignores the semi-logarithmic effect of fortune/misfortune. The number of events you get doesn't scale linearly with empire size. On very large maps, misfortune-3 is therefore more worth it.

Anyway, the risk of losing your temple with misfortune-3 seems to be significant; with misfortune-2, negligible. If you're a high-roller and inclined to take risks, obviously misfortune 3 would be more appealing on that basis as well.