[Shangrila00]

So, massive necro, but I figure better than making my own thread, and this forum isn't exactly active anyway.

I've been looking over Gath, though only in SP so far, and reached some similar and some different conclusions from those here, perhaps because of CBM.

It strikes me that Gath is actually the strongest of the Jewish giants.

Your giants are admittedly the weakest, but they are also the cheapest, making them far more versatile. Ashdod for instance, especially with the CBM nerfing, has sacred giants that aren't useable without a massive E bless. Hinnom's sacred giants are even worse, with their unrest raising. In both cases, either you make the sacrifices to go full on bless giant rush, or you don't even bother, going scales/SCs instead. Gath, on the other hand, in addition to the above 2 options, also has the option of a minor bless and combined arms with your excellent humans plus sacred giants for their magic swords, or an offensive bless mainly for Se'irim.

You have the weakest magic and weakest SC chasis, but it's the LA where few have much better magic and nobody else has serious recruitable SCs at all. In exchange, on top of strong priests, you have the best magic diversity, 6 paths all at 2+, especially in CBM where the removal of SDRs means that nations like Hinnom with only access to B1s (outside massively unrest causing pop eaters) stop being serious blood nations.

On commanders, Gath, strangely for giants, actually has cost efficient researchers, more than one even. The sage is one of the most cost efficient researchers in the game, on par with the ridiculous Mictlan priest with magic scale, and buildable without a lab. However, upon consideration, I feel the sage is a trap. It's low research/high efficiency, which is synergistic with numerous forts and temples. Too bad you're Gath where unless you start in a swamp (and is completely screwed because of that), your forts are either crazy expensive or still expensive and also complete crap, and your temples are double priced. That's all made up for by their efficiency, except sages have absolutely no combat capability. The sibyl is better. It's still efficient, though not especially so, can be built without a temple, and has useful amounts of fortunetelling as a bonus. And if you ever need for them to fight, Gath suddenly becomes a communion nation on par with Arco. Your other mages as communion/sabbath/crystal masters can toss all the F/E/S/N/D spells you could want. Or, you could do reverse communion with POTS+LOTNS and spam Stellar Cascades. Or the same with POTS+Strength of Gaia from an Abba and toss nature spells. The variety there isn't great, but with precision boosted by eagle eye, tangle vines is surprisingly effective, at least in Growth 3 which you'd want anyway. Later, spamming panic on top of rain of blood can destroy entire armies combined with using astral Kohen Gadols sending lesser horrors to cut off retreat, and having hornblowers and naturally high morale troops means you aren't really afraid of it backfiring. Too bad storm of thorns is so late, or Gath might actually be the strongest communion nation in the game. As a further bonus, 5 sibyls equals a bag of wine, quite helpful with your gluttonous giants.

On scales, Turmoil Luck doesn't work, despite it's synergy with blood hunting. Gath is way too gold hungry during the setup phase, and pretty gold hungry afterwards as well. Plus, Gath isn't going to be challenging Mictlan anyway in blood, not with their most effective initial blood hunter being a 400g cap only SC chasis. Blood as a sideline, enough to blood sac as a replacement for building many temples, and some minor forging/summoning national demons is probably enough. Gath's heroes are also completely worthless, and fortunetelling on a mage that you'd recruit tons of regardless makes misfortune easier to accept.

Despite, or perhaps because of having H3 priests and blood sac, I think a high dom is necessary. With few temples, and limited blood income, you want maximum efficiency blood sac. If as all giant nations want, you get gift of health, high dom everywhere you need to fight is decisive, and it's also helpful for horror sending/army routing. Plus, while Gath isn't the best at outright domkill, it's always nice to have the option. So no lower than 8.

The Cyclops, Lord of Fertility, and Lord of Rebirth strikes me as the best pretenders. The Cyclops is obviously for the full E9+/N bless rush. The Lord of Fertility can very cheaply get a N8 bless, maybe with an E4, for use by SCs and Se'irim who get 5 hp regen, and being size 2, can be iron warriored in large numbers. Being a gem-gen, the Lord of Rebirth is a bit different in that it's really inefficient to take him imprisoned. A sleeping Lord of Rebirth can be taken with E4N6, dom 9, and +2 scales, like O3H3G3L-2M1. A reasonably better SC than your recruitables in dom, and helpfully jumpstarting your income in E/D/N. It's not enough of a bless for a real rush, but sacred giants are still useable as a supplement to humans. The lack of rush ability does hurt though, since the pretender can cast lamia queens to get water, fairy queens to get air, and gift of health, all of it eating nature, and it'd be really nice to start next to Pangaea and have the ability to immediately rob them of their gems.

Any thoughts on why the general feeling seems to be that Gath is weaker than the other giants?