Using your pretender early: How?

[Ewierl]

Generally, to make a pretender into a good SC, you need some way of dealing with chaff. Every attack is a slim chance that your high-protection cyclops will take an unlucky wound, so you need to have some ability to deal with large numbers. Later in the game, non-indie chaff can hold off a SC just by making them take so long they rout, another reason you need crowd control.

The easiest way to do so is with Awe, since any pretender can have it if you buy a starting dominion of 9-10. A number of pretenders have Fear, which isn't quite as good (though it works delightfully well in combination). A few pretenders do other fun things, with heat/cold/poison radiation or petrification. Trample is a dangerous option, because it can drag you down with fatigue in a tough battle.

Of course, you also need a reasonably tough chassis, in terms of hp. Recuperation or immortality go a long way towards not caring about afflictions, but you don't want to go down to a lucky crossbow bolt. Bare minimum is the Virtue/Gorgon range, 40ish, though I'd stay away from lance-wielding indies with them. Don't try this with a 15-hp ***** queen, something unlucky is bound to happen.

The bottom line: for bare minimum SC functionality, you need enough HP to survive a lucky hit, and you need some sort of crowd control ability.

[Manuk]

The enchantress and the daughter of the rivers make gems on their own. Maybe the lucky gods are meant to be awake. And of course brute gods like the wyrm or the bulls. Rainbow can be imprisioned to get more magic.

[MaxWilson]

What kind of games do you play? Big maps, small maps, strong indies? My expectation would be that in longer games, there just isn't any way to make the early turns of expansion (more gold) more valuable than the extra paths from taking dormant/imprisoned (better globals, better item forging, maybe even better path-boosters for your national mages), so the value of an SC lies in increasing your chances of surviving the early turns so that it can BECOME a longer game. I'm eager to see what suggestions the veterans have for what to do besides expansion, though.

-Max

[Evilhomer]

I disagree. The boost in expansion early game is very good even in longer games since the gold will basically transform into more forts, more mages, faster research and you will have more lands to search - more gems. The early game momentum will in short carry over to a strong endgame. Of course its not the only pretender path to take, but it's still a good one, even on a large map.

[jutetrea]

Personally I have more luck in SP with a strong rainbow, as many 4's as possible without killing scales. Then use the SC to bridge any gaps via summoning, construction - allowing access to pretty much all summons and items. Sitesearch early to build up gems, research heavily, start summoning path jumpers, i.e. naiads, hades, trolls, etc and have them continue the summoning/construction.

Depending on your chassis they can then continue researching/summons/construct or jump in with you're main army for either melee or spell help. As said earlier, careful on the low HPs.

edit: for example, my most recent game was with marignon - generally limited to fire, astral and weak E/A. Now I've got access to pretty much everything via naiads, revenants, lamia queens, spectres, hades, trolls, etc.