Caelum pretender design

[Truper]

The Caelum design currently living on my machine is a Ghost King - 3A 2W 3E 3D. Standard research alteration and stomp indies tactics. Later on his earth and death will be useful for forging/summons.

I also like using a Son of Neifel with, say, 3W 4B. This is if I want to turn Caelum into a blood nation, and get the ice devils.

Both these pretenders attempt to leverage Caelum's cold - ghosts, winter wolves and ice devils love it.

Neither of them is maxed out - I'm more fond of good scales and strong dominion than many players.

[Kel]

Hehe, I wasn't going to say anything as I don't necessarily think I am experienced with Caelum but that GK is the exact same one I have been using lately

- Kel

[Arryn]

It's interesting that you should pick a GK with 3A2W3E3D, as I've had good success with a very similar one (3A3W3E2D). Why do you prefer 2W3D over 3W2D? For the summons later on?

Does anyone play with a Sage (or other human) pretender?

How would you design a Nat? And does anyone prefer the Nat over the GK (and why)?

[archaeolept]

3D for soul vortex

i love GK's, but here we see another indication that they really are a bit underpriced. even upping initial path costs to 30 would work, I think.

Nat's have fatigue problems, so you need to use a slot to give them cold resistance right away.

[Truper]

Right. 3D for soul vortex, and to be within range of things like Harvester of Sorrows and Ghost Riders with 1 booster, or Wraith Lords with 2. If the GK's paths were changed to 30, (which probably is needed - Ghost Kings are very common), I'd probably drop the water, forgo breath of winter, and get quickness from boots.

Lately I've been thinking that nations really need access to death more than any other path - for wraith swords, if nothing else. Life-draining has become a topic of frequent discussion in my Dom2 circle, with a general consensus developing that its too powerful.

[Arryn]

Truper said:
Life-draining has become a topic of frequent discussion in my Dom2 circle, with a general consensus developing that its too powerful.

Too powerful because "everyone" is using it (ie: nerf-bait), or because it's "too cheap"? These are the two most-frequently cited opinions on the subject, from what I've seen. I'm curious as to your opinion and reason (especially since I know you're one of Zen's "disciples", as I am).

[Lex]

weird, I've always found that Caelum's starting troops die off too fast against indies.. I've found that keeping the starting troops on patrol, getting double income on my capital, and clearing indies with a Wyrm loaded with A3W2D3E3 works better. The income boost from using your inital troops to patrol lets you build a fortification on the second turn, which lets you start recruiting more seraphs sooner.

[Maltrease]

First turn buy 1 seraph and as many of the low resource (4) archers as you can afford.

Second turn. Equip seraph with air gem and script to wind guide. Take seraph and storm general maxed out with archers to indy province. SG has 21 archer in one unit, 1 archer in the other 4 units. The units with only one archer are spread across the front of the battlefield. Seraph has 6 archers in one unit, and 4 units with 1 archer. Again spread the single unit archers around the front of the battlefield.

The scattered archers does two things. First any missile file will target them, likely missing entirely, or killing 1. Second the ground units will zig zag around targeting your scattered archers before they advance towards your main force.

This gives your main wind guided archer force many turns to attack and hopefully route the enemy.

Anything with low armor or only a few HI is fair game.

Each turn you can bring another seraph with an air gem and another 10 archers. Once you have reached a critical mass you can have the storm general carry excess gems for wind guide. Then your mages can stay at home to research, site search, or form another conquering party.

The real key is researching Evo2. Once you have lighting then nearly any Indy province is available to you (including knights). Wind guide, combined with naturally high precision, and the precision bonus from lighting make almost every bolt hit. 4 seraphs and 50 archers (with as many scattered as possible) can take almost any province with a lost of 6 or 7 archers.

Once I hit Evo2 I generally go toward con2 for clams, and then conjuration to 5 or even 7 (for queens). It helps to avoid alteration so your seraphs stay focused on casting lighting instead of phantom warriors.

Anyways... this works well for me. And its fun to not depending on SC pretender for expansion. Or choosing the GK like most other nations end up doing.

[Cainehill]

I've rather enjoyed using a PoD with Caelum, adding on several magic paths on top of death - typically fire, earth, and some nature, to complement Caelum's national mages for site searching, forging, and summoning.

While not immune to cold, being undead means that it doesn't suffer increased fatigue from Caelum's cold weather, and it doesn't require use of boots for flight, meaning that it can keep up with all the flying mages and troops.

[Maltrease]

The Caelum build that I have had very good success with.

Oracle with Astral 4
Dominion 6 or 7
Cermonial Faith (take advantage of steathly preachers)
Order 3
Productivity 3
Cold 3
Growth 3
Magic 3

Castle - Castle.

Caelium's mages and begining troops are very capable of taking provenences by themselves. Usually from turn 2 on with this build. You get a ton of money (to buy all those cheap mages). And your income continues to improve as the game goes on thanks to growth.

The oracle can be used for Archiac record with the astrals you get from clamming your water gems. Later the oracle can forge sorcery rings so your arch seraphs can get to death 2, nature 2, where they can forge addional path boosters.

The oracle with equipment also has a good chance of catching a couple SC's with a mind hunt and forcing them to counter with higher MR items.

I have tried this build with Sloth 3 (for the extra 240 points). While Sloth would not be a problem in the late game it really slows the early expansion down, plus makes a significant dent in your income.

My current build (untested in MP) is to also take Misfortune 2 (and 1 less dominion I think). And give my oracle Astral 5, Earth 3. This allows the creation of golems, hammers, and crystal coins. It also give easier access to wish in the late game by using a sorc ring, wiz ring, crystal coin, and tome of high power.