What do you recommend for Ashen Empire Scales and Domain ?

[Norfleet]

Always go all out with the Turmoil-3 and Sloth-3. Your income is nonexistent anyway. Just make up the difference by cranking taxes to 200. They'll all die anyway. Free +240.

Cold-3 or Heat-3 are both valid options: If you're playing in multiplayer, consider whether the bulk of the other human players favor heat or cold, and which one will make them suffer more: When fighting Caelum or Jotunheim, go with Heat. When fighting normal or miasma C'tis, Abyssia, or Machaka, go with Cold. Otherwise, go with Cold, it helps your undead cold auras. Other than the few cold aura equipped, however, the undead are more or less entirely indifferent to the heat or cold....so pick one for the free +120.

Death-3. Ashen Empire requires only Death-2, but in for a penny, in for a pound. +40 more points free.

Luck can go either way, or neither way: If you have the points to spare after taking the magic you want, luck 3 doesn't hurt: A wodge of gems here and there. On the other hand, misfortune won't kill you either: "Oh, no, I just lost 1/4th of my zero population! Whatever will I do?"

Magic can go either way or neither way: Drain nets you a free +120 and slightly impedes the efforts of enemy priests to banish your undead by increasing their MR. Hurts your research rather hard. Magic helps your researchers, which are subpar as it is, but makes your undead slightly more banishable. It'll also improve the quality of random events you get if you take Luck. Which way you go is entirely dependent on your point supply. If you can spare it, go for it.

[PvK]

Hmm, has anyone checked how much more gold you can get if you don't max out death, turmoil, and sloth? Seems like Ermor is gold-poor and does have some good uses for gold (temples, for one). I guess the theory is you can get so much extra pretender magic for it, that that's better?

PvK

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm, has anyone checked how much more gold you can get if you don't max out death, turmoil, and sloth? Seems like Ermor is gold-poor and does have some good uses for gold (temples, for one). I guess the theory is you can get so much extra pretender magic for it, that that's better?

Ashen Empire dominion kills population really fast even if you took growth scale, so any any scales that depend on population to be useful are pretty much wasted.

[mivayan]

One fun random event is the one where an foreign visiting prince (or something) dies and leaves 1500 gold and a magic item. Luck can pay for a lot of temples if you are lucky

I think that particular even is only available to people with high luck and death scales.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Always pick max Turmoil, Sloth, Cold, Death.

Magic +1 gives you decent research, and avoid the MR penalty you get with Magic +2/+3.

Luck, pick 0, and push that up to +3 if you have spare design points after buying the essentials.

Dominion 8+.

Castle, depends. I often go with the smaller one, but the 60-points citadel is a tough nut to crack with 100's of ghouls to defend it. Add a BVC to one of your leaders here and storming your citadels will be a very painful experience to most other nations.

[Taqwus]

With castles, bear in mind that the Citadel is significantly more expensive gold-wise, if memory serves. Gold may well be in short supply unless the map's filled with high-valued fire and earth sites, or you outrace your own dominion and pillage like crazy -- which might be an argument against picking a very high dominion, as your neighboring pop might die well before you get a chance to exploit them.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Ashen Empire dominion kills population really fast even if you took growth scale, so any any scales that depend on population to be useful are pretty much wasted.

Ashen Empire requires a minimum of Death-2. You couldn't take Growth if you wanted, and with Death scale, in for a penny, in for a pound. A single point of Death scale kills everyone, so you may as well get the points for all of it.