Most Usefull Research Path...

[NTJedi]

Enchantment is far more versatile than Construction just scrolling across the list of each shows the variation. Construction is very important yet if given the option of only one it's Enchantment.

Enchantment provides critical game spells such as:
Global Spells:
1) Earth Blood Deep Well
2) Arcane Nexus
3) Thetis Blessing (attacking water nations)
4) Gift of Health <Priceless)
5) DISPELL -- Taking out enemy globals!

Critical Battlefield Buffs:
1) Strength of Giants
2) Flaming Arrows
3) Anti-Magic (entire army!)
4) Haste
5) Arrow Fend (major)
6) Mass Flight (major during storming castles)
7) Mass Regeneration
8) Long List of battlefield spells for resistances
9) Storm Warriors

Great Battlefield Spells:
1) Unraveling (magical units go Snap-Crackle-POP)
2) Raise Dead or Skeletons
3) Foul Vapors
4) Heat from Hell or Grip of Winter
5) Rigor Mortis
6) Mists of Deception (recently identified as being too powerful)
7) Demon Cleansing (double damage on demons)
8) Friendly Currents (underwater spell)

Important Teleporting Spells:
1) Cloud Trapeze
2) Ritual of Returning
3) Faery Trod

Good List of Summoning Spells:
1) Revive King / Create Revenant
2) Claymen (underwater optional)
3) Pale Riders (underwater optional)
4) Enliven Statues (underwater optional)
5) Reanimate Archers (one of the very few archer summonings)
6) Carrion Reanimation (major)
7) Lichcraft

Good Offensive and Defensive Spells:
1) Army of the Dead
2) Seeking Arrow
3) Most of the DOMES are here

Good Buffs helping SC's types to actually stay alive:
1) Breath of Winter
2) Resist Magic
3) Personal Regeneration
4) Astral Shield
5) Flight

Second Chance Spells:
1) Ritual of Rebirth
2) Twiceborn

[BigDisAwesome]

It'd be real interesting playing in a game where you can only research one path. Heck if you didn't want it to be "fair" at all you could just randomly assign the path. Things don't always have to be balanced to be fun.

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:
Global Spells:
1) Earth Blood Deep Well
2) Arcane Nexus
3) Thetis Blessing (attacking water nations)
4) Gift of Health <Priceless)
5) DISPELL -- Taking out enemy globals!

Without construction, getting casters for most of these is quite a trick. And arcane nexus is far less impressive when about all you can do is dispel.

Critical Battlefield Buffs:
1) Strength of Giants
2) Flaming Arrows
3) Anti-Magic (entire army!)
4) Haste
5) Arrow Fend (major)
6) Mass Flight (major during storming castles)
7) Mass Regeneration
8) Long List of battlefield spells for resistances
9) Storm Warriors

Haste is about as far from critical as you can get, I'm not sure I've ever seen a casting of it that even had a noticeable effect in battle, let alone being worth it. Resist spells and strength of giants are not exactly must have spells either. In fact, the only true 'critical' spell I see there is flaming arrows. And again, many of these are hard to very hard to reach without construction.

Great Battlefield Spells:
1) Unraveling (magical units go Snap-Crackle-POP)
2) Raise Dead or Skeletons
3) Foul Vapors
4) Heat from Hell or Grip of Winter
5) Rigor Mortis
6) Mists of Deception (recently identified as being too powerful)
7) Demon Cleansing (double damage on demons)
8) Friendly Currents (underwater spell)

Unraveling is not only special purpose but rather ineffective (causes decay, magic beings tend to have lots of MR and very long lifespans). Mists of deception is only too powerful as a bug, as intended it is pretty marginal. The only truly all around useful spell here is raise skeletons. Lots of high path-level requirements as well.

Important Teleporting Spells:
1) Cloud Trapeze
2) Ritual of Returning
3) Faery Trod

Fairy trod is quite high priced for something that only targets forest, and often doesn't even hit the _right_ forest. Ritual of returning is far less useful without teleport.

Good List of Summoning Spells:
1) Revive King / Create Revenant
2) Claymen (underwater optional)
3) Pale Riders (underwater optional)
4) Enliven Statues (underwater optional)
5) Reanimate Archers (one of the very few archer summonings)
6) Carrion Reanimation (major)
7) Lichcraft

Only liches and archers (both from the same path) really stand out as great summons. And liches much less than normal without being able to access other paths.

Good Offensive and Defensive Spells:
1) Army of the Dead
2) Seeking Arrow
3) Most of the DOMES are here

Seeking arrows are good, but limited, army of the dead is very hard to get casters for with only enchantment, and the domes are hard to get casters for _and_ rather limited in applications.

Good Buffs helping SC's types to actually stay alive:
1) Breath of Winter
2) Resist Magic
3) Personal Regeneration
4) Astral Shield
5) Flight

A SC with construction will still easily carve up almost anything you can build that has to run around naked.

Second Chance Spells:
1) Ritual of Rebirth
2) Twiceborn

These spells are far more fun that useful. I have yet to see them be any where near decisive.

There is also the problem, that taken together, paths apart from death are left with very limited or almost no options. Astral gems are almost only for dispel, fire has no good gem channel, air can pretty much only seeking arrow or teleport, nature has highly limited options without high level nature to start with, water needs earth/water for it's only real gem channel.

[NTJedi]

quantum_mechani said:
Without construction, getting casters for most of these is quite a trick. And arcane nexus is far less impressive when about all you can do is dispel.

Of course construction is great for HELPING other paths yet Enchantment stands better on its own. And Arcane Nexus is useful... you should check out a useful feature called ALCHEMY which allows you to trade gems for other gem types.

quantum_mechani said:Haste is about as far from critical as you can get, I'm not sure I've ever seen a casting of it that even had a noticeable effect in battle, let alone being worth it. Resist spells and strength of giants are not exactly must have spells either. In fact, the only true 'critical' spell I see there is flaming arrows. And again, many of these are hard to very hard to reach without construction.

Construction is good yet Enchantment stands better on its own which is why it's better in my opinion. If given only one choice it's hands down Enchantment since so many options are available. See you're arguing construction is better because it helps other spells. Depending on the front line enemy armies many of those battlefield buffs I mentioned are critical.

quantum_mechani said:Unraveling is not only special purpose but rather ineffective (causes decay, magic beings tend to have lots of MR and very long lifespans). Mists of deception is only too powerful as a bug, as intended it is pretty marginal. The only truly all around useful spell here is raise skeletons. Lots of high path-level requirements as well.

Most of the spells I've listed have been useful for many of my multiplayer games. The point of listing these battlefield spells is because on the battlefield Enchantment provides more options compared to Construction. Construction helps other spells which makes it very good but Enchantment is strong enough to stand on its own.

quantum_mechani said:
Fairy trod is quite high priced for something that only targets forest, and often doesn't even hit the _right_ forest. Ritual of returning is far less useful without teleport.

The point here is that Enchantment has spells for traveling 30 provinces across the map and Construction has only two unique items.(one which horror marks and the other only works as the gateway spell)

quantum_mechani said:Only liches and archers (both from the same path) really stand out as great summons. And liches much less than normal without being able to access other paths.

Enliven Statues is also really useful especially for a Earth9 Pretender. Enliven Statues are great for protecting the front line of the battlefield with very high protection, amphibous and huge shields they provide time for spellcasters. Both Enchantment and Construction have good summoning spells.

quantum_mechani said:
Seeking arrows are good, but limited, army of the dead is very hard to get casters for with only enchantment, and the domes are hard to get casters for _and_ rather limited in applications.

I find most of the spells listed as useful. More options is better. Same as previously mentioned... the point is Enchantment has these spells available where as Construction does not have these spells.

quantum_mechani said:A SC with construction will still easily carve up almost anything you can build that has to run around naked.

A SC with unique artifacts can be very powerful, yet Construction by itself doesn't allow for many SC options. You have the Golems yet with Dominions_3 I have found it quite easy to take down most SCs especially when they rely purely on items to survive.

quantum_mechani said:
These spells are far more fun that useful. I have yet to see them be any where near decisive.

Of course these second chance spells are not useful for most games. Yet again my point is the more options the greater the value.

[jutetrea]

Someone could crank out a mod with say 7 identical ulms (maybe EA TC? or some other multipath nation), each using 1 path. Would still come down to player skill but would give a better idea as to feasibility.

Wonder if it would be rainbow pretenders or specifically built pretenders for those few specific spells.

Probably a couple 9's as well if the pretender choice/school/bless worked out.

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:
Of course construction is great for HELPING other paths yet Enchantment stands better on its own. And Arcane Nexus is useful... you should check out a useful feature called ALCHEMY which allows you to trade gems for other gem types.

It's true that construction is huge aid to other paths, but that isn't per se why it is better. Construction is self sufficient, enchantment is the one that needs support of other paths to reach all of it's options.

On arcane nexus, even if you manage to get to the huge astral requirement without using construction, when forced to alchimize it starts to not look too much better than clams.

Construction is good yet Enchantment stands better on its own which is why it's better in my opinion. If given only one choice it's hands down Enchantment since so many options are available. See you're arguing construction is better because it helps other spells. Depending on the front line enemy armies many of those battlefield buffs I mentioned are critical.

I would not agree that on average it stands better on it's own. For a death nation, perhaps it's a close call between the two, for pretty much anyone else your options are far more limited by enchantment. Again, my argument is not that construction helps other schools so it's the best school, it's that other schools have difficulty accessing many options without construction, and construction provides good outlets for every gem type, which probably only conjuration can also claim.

Most of the spells I've listed have been useful for many of my multiplayer games. The point of listing these battlefield spells is because on the battlefield Enchantment provides more options compared to Construction. Construction helps other spells which makes it very good but Enchantment is strong enough to stand on its own.

There is no argument that enchantment has more battlefield spells, and many of them have niches. But again, none of these effects are critical, and construction has it's own options of similar power (in fact, skelly spamming can be done expensively but with more staying power using construction to forge skullfaces and reinvig items).

Now, personally I would say that the enchantment version of skelly spamming is probably on the whole better, but construction has many such tricks, that are available to most nations eventually. Where as to make good use of the enchantment version you must be playing one of a specific set of nations, or get lucky with indies. This I would say is the general comparison between construction and any other school: other schools can often do a specific thing better, but construction lets any nation have a lot of options.

The point here is that Enchantment has spells for traveling 30 provinces across the map and Construction has only two unique items.(one which horror marks and the other only works as the gateway spell)

Actually the gatestone works as astral travel (technically speaking it's bugged at the moment so you need to research thoum to make it work, but as it's an establish bug with IW, lets assume it working as intended). Between having access to those uniques and those three spells, I'd easily choose the items. Fairy trod (generally) and ritual of returning can't be used to stomp enemy armies before they move, and you are going to have a hard time finding a good chassis to use cloud trapeze for the purpose in enchantment. I should also note that through armor of virtue you can lay ritual of returning on a great many commanders.

Enliven Statues is also really useful especially for a Earth9 Pretender. Enliven Statues are great for protecting the front line of the battlefield with very high protection, amphibous and huge shields they provide time for spellcasters. Both Enchantment and Construction have good summoning spells.

They do both have good summoning spells, but construction also has many other useful gem channels for any path. I'll also note that through hammers and the forge it has a the capacity to bring giant discounts on most these additional gem uses. And further, construction can take advantage of blood, something no other school but blood can do., further increasing it's usable gem income.

I find most of the spells listed as useful. More options is better. Same as previously mentioned... the point is Enchantment has these spells available where as Construction does not have these spells.

There are lots of useful spells in lots of schools, but I don't think you can claim enchantment has more raw options than construction.

A SC with unique artifacts can be very powerful, yet Construction by itself doesn't allow for many SC options. You have the Golems yet with Dominions_3 I have found it quite easy to take down most SCs especially when they rely purely on items to survive.

Those options that allow you to take down SC easily do not lie in enchantment. Construction has more chassis option than it would first appear; golems, the djinn, mummies from amon hotep, werewolves, and anything national. Granted many of these are fairly poor chassis, but many schools (like enchantment) lack good ways to deal even with them.

Of course these second chance spells are not useful for most games. Yet again my point is the more options the greater the value.

Construction doesn't exactly lack them either, it has the Ankh. Again we come to which has more options, so I'll just say one more time, I think you are overlooking a great many options available to construction, and overestimating the number of enchantment options you can access in any given game.

[Micah]

Why hasn't weapons of sharpness come up in favor of construction? It lets a block of any half-decent national unit cut up most SCs in a couple of rounds. (Petrification and high awe/blood vengeance being the main exceptions, with possible trouble coming from phoenix pyre causing the chaff to all die from the explosions. Forcing every SC to have luck/eth to stand a chance really cuts into their gems, since wraith crowns ain't cheap)

[PyroStock]

For longer games you could allow the first two levels of all paths, to let players have access to many must have spells. I can't imagine a game on a big map without the site searching spells

Although tempting, if I was Blood I would rather have the other path nations suffer with needing higher path requirements and time to hinder their gem income and limit their access to good sites.

Huzurdaddi said:

LOL! What is he going to do with all of those gems? Dispell people to death?

My last comment was more in jest, hence the wink at the end. But depending on the size of the map and number of players Nexus can prove quite nice even after Alchemy, especially if other players dismiss it and use their gems as usual.

To rephrase your question back at you, if you have the pearls for Arcane Nexus (& extra to keep it from being dispelled/removed) and choose not to cast it then what are you going to spend all those pearls on instead... you plan to dispell people to death? If so, I know of an enchantment spell that will get you more pearls. All hail Lord of Dispelling Enemies to Death!

[Lord_Bob]

MA Ermor with UBER Scales, maybe a bless, and Thaumaturgy for the win.

Communioned Soul Slaying Horror Marking will rapidly persuade the SC builders of the error of their ways.

Spinx-Imprisoned, Dominion-9 Astral-9
Order-3,Prod.-3,Growth-3, Cold-1, Luck-1, Drain-2

[Atreidi]

So after 65 votes HALF of the people in the forum think Construction is the best path... mmm... I believe you :S