Caelum questions, both themes.

[Norfleet]

If using a Nataraja SC, be warned that the Nataraja is not immune to the effects of your cold-3 dominion and will suffer large fatigue penalties when fighting in it, unless given a cold resistance item. Combined with his already mediocre base encumberance of 3, your own cold 3 dominion will quickly put him face down in the dirt without cold resist.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
If using a Nataraja SC, be warned that the Nataraja is not immune to the effects of your cold-3 dominion and will suffer large fatigue penalties when fighting in it, unless given a cold resistance item. Combined with his already mediocre base encumberance of 3, your own cold 3 dominion will quickly put him face down in the dirt without cold resist.

Good tip, thank you. Luckily I can get a Ring of Frost cranked out with my first mage.

[ March 02, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Zen:
There are lots of ways to go with Caelum, due to their variety of strengths.

With only summons availiable to make into decent combatants, one common way is to focus on blood (since ID's make such great combatants).

Since Caelum is one of the few nations with access to a Natarajah, they are a common SC (especially since you already have Air and Water items covered for forging).

An important factor for using Caelum is getting a Wizard's Tower, if you plan on using alot of Iceclads (why wouldn't you?). So you can throw up towers quick and effectively every few provinces in order to churn them out. They gather easy and are easy to reinforce.

Great, Zen - thanks for the advice. Now off to the testing board...

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Zen:
With only summons availiable to make into decent combatants, one common way is to focus on blood (since ID's make such great combatants).

Zen, do you tend to go Blood with the Return of the Raptors theme as well, or just with base Caelum? The differences in theme are very subtle (but significant), and I would think that RotR would go more with battlefield summons (because of the Harab Seraphs' Death/Earth levels) than with ritual summons. But I'm not sure, since I'm still learning soooo much about this game on a daily basis (only had the full Version since mid-February)...how do you usually build an RotR pretender?

By the way, I again want to thank everybody who has posted in this thread so far...I started a little "test scenario" based on this information at lunchtime and was very impressed with the difference! Kudos to you all for helping out a newbie like me, who can stare something in the face and still not realize exactly what's going on.

[ March 02, 2004, 23:01: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
Zen, do you tend to go Blood with the Return of the Raptors theme as well, or just with base Caelum? The differences in theme are very subtle (but significant), and I would think that RotR would go more with battlefield summons (because of the Harab Seraphs' Death/Earth levels) than with ritual summons.

To be quite honest, I dislike the RotR theme instensely. Other than losing the very powerful High Seraph, what you gain in the Harab Elder is little. You lose Seraphine but the Harab Elder isn't even standard able to cast Sermon of Courage. You have good forging paths, and can cast Summon Valkaries (with a Storm and Storm Power, or an item) but you don't have any sort of random pick so you're very locked into what you can do. You have access to alot of economically killing spells (blight and Hurricane) but they just don't feel good to me because of their heavy priest power loss.

The Raven Guard are good (especially if you plan on fighting outside your dominion, and cold) but I still rely on standard wingless/mammoth armies (now that temple guard are gone) and rely even more on indy HI and others with a little protection for land armies.

The basic strategy of having multiple raiding parties still stays the same; but you lose alot of magical power.

The pretender is even more important in RotR than in base Caelum, because of this. And I rely moreso on summons (especially mindless/high morale) than caleum has to, and this can leave you overall, weaker than base Caelum.

It doesn't change the playstyle of Caelum much, which in my opinion, makes for a less attractive theme since it doesn't change how you think about the nation.

For a Pretender I would look at either a VQ or a Son of Neifel for Blood type of situations, or something that would use Bane Lords, so something that can make Jade Armor and maybe astral.

[ March 03, 2004, 04:09: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Chazar]

Umh, I'm pretty new to the game, but I really like Caelum (but not the awful Raptor Theme), but I still state my stratgey for Caleum here, since I would appreciate comments whether my thoughts are right or wrong:

- Caelum fights well in the cold, so having a very high dominion strength (8-9) and using your pretender and prophet on the front lines to spread it seems reasonable to me.

- If your dominion strength is high anyway, then use your scales as well as the effect of the scales depend on the dominion strength as well: Order 2, Prod 2, Cold -3, Growth 2, Luck 1, Magic -1. Maybe Prod or Growth 3. No theme.

- I choose the 60-point Castle. Caelum troops are quick, so a strong fortification allows me to bring in helping troops from the outside in case of sieges, without lossing the accopanying temple/lab. (But I have to think about that wizard tower again...good point!)

- This leaves no design points for magic, and since I need a strong front-line pretender I decided to take the Blue Dragon with no additional magic. (I agree that cold resistance is a must have for the caelum pretender!)

True, this renders blessing useless, but my sneaky preachers serve other purposes anyway and I dont like those temple guards anyway. I'd rather build more mammoths and wingless if I want a non flying army.

In addition, the mages of caelum are indeed really nice, so they must take care for item creation and spells. My Dragon's Breath and his fly ability allow a fast start and I rely on my good scales to produce more troops to compensate the lack of a useful spell casting pretender in mid or end game, so I really put my pretender in the front line in the beginning. Once he is crippled with afflictions, he just "takes care of the reinforcements", ie. sits just behind my front line to spread his dominion.

I dont know whether those extra-heros appear always or whether it depends on my luck scale set to 1, but so far I always obtained that raptor-seraphine skilled in Death-Magic which complements my magic neatly.

- If there is no underwater nation in play, I usually try to send a water 3 mage or my pretender with a mammoth to an oceanic province as early as possible. Building aquatic troops goes slowly, but its neat to build temples at your enemies coastline...

- I prioritize research in construction in order to produce owl quills (you have +3 air gems from the start) to compensate my drain scale. If I have that Death-Magic heroine and she found a death gem site so far, I will even go for that cool research boosting skull. Otherwise I go for Alteration (Mistform/GhostWolves are good to conquer underwater) or Evocation.

- I disagree with the "heart of winter"-dominon. I think those 50 points are more worth on growth, production or even order, since you can spread with sneaky preachers anyway.

I'm usually not sure who I am going to turn into my prophet. A mage who accompanies my front line troops? A seraphine for stealth? I think that having a prophet-strom general in raiding party is a bad idea, as my raiding parties usually wont return home...

I dont like building non-caelum troops. As long as I manage to fight in the cold, I feel fine. Why hire other archers? Money is rarely a problem, and caelum archers require only 4 resources and are quite effective, so I dont want to build other archers. Protecting my archers is done with thos spire horn warriors. Depending on my scouts, I use them either to stand fast and protect my archers (via guard commander, who is set on hold or fire if he has a bow already), or, if the enemy has mages or plenty of archers himself on "hold and attack archers/rear" as said before in this thread. I always adjust my army setup before each battle.


So far I have only battled against normal AI's, but i intend to start a game with local friends soon. What do you think, how will they beat me up?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Chazar:
- If your dominion strength is high anyway, then use your scales as well as the effect of the scales depend on the dominion strength as well: Order 2, Prod 2, Cold -3, Growth 2, Luck 1, Magic -1. Maybe Prod or Growth 3. No theme.

A drain scale is a bad idea with Caelum. Mages are their strength, and they don't have access to communion.

I'm usually not sure who I am going to turn into my prophet. A mage who accompanies my front line troops? A seraphine for stealth? I think that having a prophet-strom general in raiding party is a bad idea, as my raiding parties usually wont return home...

There's no reason to make a mage your prophet, since they can only cast one spell at a time anyways.