Hey Amorphous - I haven't been precise and polished this - I said it was a rough guide - so you may not be missing anything. I'll address a few of your comments directly.
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Originally Posted by Amorphous
The pretender costs too many points. If you exchange one of the non-earth magic paths with fire, it does work, but then your reasoning about elemental staffs seems rather strange. And however you choose to spend your points, the forge lord will always have at least one level of fire as he starts with it.
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Yes; the build will work with fire, and if you switch to non fire, you have to make a point cost adjustment. I tried to point out the pros and cons of each. Generally I think the non-fire build E/A preferable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amorphous
Also, the pretender part of your strategy changes a lot in vanilla. The 50 additional points the forge lord costs here is not so much the problem as that it uses double the amount of gems for forging in comparison to the cbm forge lord. That difference is rather significant.
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I don't believe this makes a significant difference. The Forge Lord is still a viable pretender in vanilla; the role he will fill is still a viable roll.
Sure, you have a lower forge bonus. However, other pretenders are also, less effective *and* item costs are higher. And the bread and butter items you will be forging - dwarven hammers, firebrands, etc - you will still be forging at a significant competitive advantage.
I don't believe there is any differnce here that throws the strategy off kilter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amorphous
400 resources seems much too high with sloth 1 - I practically never get that much. Some number-crunching tells me that my not getting it is very far from a fluke. With sloth 1, Ermor's capital province generates 68 resources and consequently needs to collect another 332 resources from neighbouring provinces with its 60 admin great city. This translates to needing surrounding provinces with a total of roughly 550 resources. That is a lot. A very good start with 6 neighbours would require the average province to have about 92 resources (46 visible on the map).
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I tried 4 SP starts with average setting, on Asia with Twists Map. My starts were always similiar - starting in a mountain location. Each time I had more than 400 resources after conquering neighbors.
I suspect however that you are right. Adjust build as necessary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amorphous
I have trouble following some of your reasoning, here.
If we are talking about a rush around turn 6 or 7, you will not have researched more than 1 level of magic and to get even that, you have to forgo recruiting more than maybe 2 pontifex. It is also questionable that you will know what you are facing this early. Neither will you have many mages casting whatever it is you have researched.
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With fixed starts, you will know who your neighbors are before you encounter them on the map. Even with random maps, you can get an idea. For example in a four man game- if mictlan and xheim are playing and you can't get diplomatic commitments from either of them, then you need to plan on being rushed.
If you expect to be rushed, you don't recruit *any* pontifexes. And you have to do a solid analysis on when and how to build castles. A choke point castle in the path of a bless rush is gold.
A 3/4 turn construction in forests or swamp costs 800 and will mature turn 6/7. And with alchemy/taxes, and cheap expansion via glads is easily feasible.
I don't usually build more than 2 Pontifexes, anyway. Hire independent commanders and then make judicious use of the retreat order.
1a2
bC3
4e5
So for example, if you have an army of retiaris with a barbarian independent, you can attack with the retiaris, and order your pontifex to retreat. The barbarian will allow the retiaris to take the province - the pontifex will retreat to C because you've attacked a,b,e in that order for example.. giving him nowhere else BUT the capital to retreat to.
Early game is the closest to MP as you can get. At some point of course you are going to meet your neighbors, at which point bets are off. However, sp I have no problem getting 16+ provinces the first year.