Pretenders useless?

[thejeff]

Is Wrathful Skies as effective as it was in Dom2?

I don't usually play Air nations, but the only time I tried it in Dom3, it only damaged a handful of units a round and they quickly reached and slaughtered my mage.

I'll have to play with it again.

[HoneyBadger]

Kiss Blade, a Pretender is kind of like the Queen of Blades in StarCraft 2, or the Xel'Naga, except you actually get to see what your Pretender looks like, unless you're playing a Judeo-Christian-Islamic Nation

[Ironhawk]

thejeff said:
Is Wrathful Skies as effective as it was in Dom2?

I don't usually play Air nations, but the only time I tried it in Dom3, it only damaged a handful of units a round and they quickly reached and slaughtered my mage.

Oh, was it nerfed? Are you sure you cast Storm? Of course its always best to put your Wrather in a back corner so it takes a long time for the enemy to reach him, as well.

[Turin]

I have found a scales oracle to be pretty optimal for SP too, because using an early expansion pretender usually results in lots of provinces early, but low troopcount so all the AI´s gang up on you.

[thejeff]

He was well in the back. I think I had storm, but I'm not 100% sure.

I'll play with it again. Should be able to pull it off in my Chelms game...

[krpeters]

Thank you all for the responses... I've learned a lot!

Firstly, from what you're saying, the small game/AI is a big part of it. It sounds like early magic is much more effective against intelligent humans than against giant AI hordes. It's hard to outwit someone who has no wit to begin with

Secondly, my playing style favors mass armies... although I think this is a response to the mass armies the AI likes to hit me with. When you suddenly see 600 troops show up on your doorstep, a pretender or a group of mages will probably get eaten up and spat out... at least, again, in the early game. Meanwhile, my War Minotaurs will happily stomp them flat.

Maybe it's time I tried multiplayer games... where's a good link to get started with that?

[Teraswaerto]

Dom 3 Multiplayer and AARs is a good place to start.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah. Look for a newbie game and join that for some base level experience. And then play with some of the advanced players for an educational thrashing

[thejeff]

I finally got around to trying Wrathful Skies again and was again disappointed. It doesn't seem to be an army killer any more.

This time I had a Staff of Storms, so it should have been at full effect. It seemed to only be hitting 10-15 units a round, and since it was a Jotun army, not even killing all of them. There were only 3 rounds of wrath before they reached my poor exhausted mage and killed him with one blow.

Only killed 10 troops and probably some PD.

Has anyone actually made this work in Dom3? It seemed much more effective in Dom2.

[alexti]

krpeters said:
Thank you all for the responses... I've learned a lot!

Firstly, from what you're saying, the small game/AI is a big part of it. It sounds like early magic is much more effective against intelligent humans than against giant AI hordes. It's hard to outwit someone who has no wit to begin with

Early magic is pretty effective vs AI. It's actually easy to outwit AI

krpeters said:
Secondly, my playing style favors mass armies... although I think this is a response to the mass armies the AI likes to hit me with. When you suddenly see 600 troops show up on your doorstep, a pretender or a group of mages will probably get eaten up and spat out... at least, again, in the early game. Meanwhile, my War Minotaurs will happily stomp them flat.

I foresee 400 dead and 200 fled troops and one much more experienced pretender

Against AI you don't *need* to use any sophisticated strategies, but using them is more fun