Curious :Lategame questions. I never was so far :(

[Boron]

Thanks again Cohen .

Yeah thats why i said 8 nations because in this extreme setup i think few will play e.g. man / marignon etc. because they have little abilities to hoard anything .

It is now with 2.14 not as good as it was but my favourite equipment for a sc was : Boots of quickness , Blood thorn , Luck pendant , Burning pearl , copper plate , amulet of antimagic and starshine skullcap .
This way he lacks flying if he hasn't built in but since staff of storms is so omnipresent boots of flying are only good for strategic mobility .
If i would play jotunheim niefelheim or for ice devils because they have water magic they can cast quickness so they could get boots of flying anyways instead of boots of quickness .

Now with 2.14 luckily this setup isn't as good anymore because burning pearl gives only 50% fire resist this way .
So now you have to pay if you want +4 attack and 100% fire resist because burning pearl only gives now +4 attack and 50% resist .


But with this setup i said above i think Niefel jarls , ice devils and similiar were really quite good alround SCs . Only protection was not so high but the listed equipment is not too expensive .

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
Yeah thats why i said 8 nations because in this extreme setup i think few will play e.g. man / marignon etc. because they have little abilities to hoard anything.

Every nation has something that they can forge for long term investment fairly easily using only their national mages.

For example:
Abysia: Soul contracts, clams.
Atlantis: Clams.
Pythium: Clams.
Caelum: Clams.
Arcoscephale: Clams.
C'tis: Fever Fetishes, clams.
Ermor: Clams.
Jotunheim: Soul Contracts, clams.
Man: Clams, fever fetishes.
Marignon: Clams, fever fetishes.
Pangaea: Earth blood stones, soul contracts.
R'lyeh: Clams.
Ulm(Default): Soul contracts.
Ulm(Iron Faith): Soul Contracts, clams.
Ulm(Black Forest): Vampire Lords.
Vanheim: Clams, earth blood stones, soul contracts.
Mictlan: Clams, soul contracts.
Machaka: Fever Fetishes.
T'ien C'Hi: Clams, fever fetishes, earth blood stones.

Every nation has the ability to invest their gems. Some just take a bit more work than others.

This way he lacks flying if he hasn't built in but since staff of storms is so omnipresent boots of flying are only good for strategic mobility .

Strategic mobility is the major point of flying boots.

[Boron]

How can ulm default produce Soul contracts ? They require blood 5 !

You are correct if you say that each nation can hoard clams with either a random * + a water bracelet or by summoning spectres .
But nations like pythium don't require a rainbow pretender while e.g. man should have otherwise it finds only the air + nature sites . Thats what i meant nations that have little abilities . They have the abilities but normally 10-20 turns later than e.g. pythium/arco

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
How can ulm default produce Soul contracts ? They require blood 5!

Use scouts to hunt for blood in provinces with 5000 people. Empower a master smith to blood 3. Have him forge a brazen vessel and blood thorn while using a hammer. That's a total cost of 145 blood slaves to get started. Then they only cost 40 blood slaves each.

You are correct if you say that each nation can hoard clams with either a random * + a water bracelet or by summoning spectres .

Which they all can start by about the same time as a clam hoarding nation can get started.

But nations like pythium don't require a rainbow pretender while e.g. man should have otherwise it finds only the air + nature sites.

You must not be very effective at site searching if you only use your pretender to look for sites that your national mages don't have immediately. Take your mages that have their randoms in a path you want and have them site search.

[Cainehill]

Graeme Dice said:

You must not be very effective at site searching if you only use your pretender to look for sites that your national mages don't have immediately. Take your mages that have their randoms in a path you want and have them site search.

Not to mention that Man and Pangaea (as nature nations) can always summon Lamia Queens for some randoms. If you pick a nation that doesn't have randoms (Ulm or New Age Pangaea, for instance) then you would be well advised to craft a pretender accordingly : #1, magic paths that complement your nation's hard-coded magic, and #2, at least one of the following : death, nature, or astral. Any of those three give you the long term potential to find all magic sites.

(Editted quote block)

[Boron]

Yeah i said you can always use a rainbow . But hey this is expensive and the pretender can only search 1 province every 2 turns .

If you search with those 1 point randoms first it takes you a very long time to get them and second you find only lvl 1 sites this way . And your research is hurt if you search this way .


At least with my special no-rush setting i have in mind Pythium accashicing everything should have his gemincome earlier than other nations . And they could take rather good scales this way or a strong SC pretender .

[Cainehill]

No, you could use a sturdy half-rainbow. One with, say, 3 paths the nation doesn't get, each at least level 3. It travels with an army of conquest, meaning that it 'wastes' every other turn searching, but the other turn is conquering a province.

This also gives the benefit of being able to forge path-increasing items, so when you get a random in the appropriate area, you can forge something to take the mage to ?2, which lets it cast the site-searching spells. (Actually, a single random in Astral or Death covers those paths.)

And frankly, this line of instruction came about because you said, "Man only finds the air and nature sites".