Powerfull forms for pretender

[Dermenore]

I find it hard to justify giving my pretender a powerful form that costs a lot of points (like Titan or Dragon) and I wonder if I don't miss something. It also saddens me because these forms are cool.

Here is my reasoning: powerful form makes the Pretender stronger in combat. But that seems to me only useful in the very early game, when you expend against independent and don't have a lot of troops or very strong spells. After that, a pretender with at least 4 in a magic path will be more effective in battle at casting spells. Or early-game fights (with the basic setting of independent at 4 in strength) are not that hard. So it's better to take a tiny wizard to gain more points in Dominion scales, magic paths, and blessings. The Pretendant can still research spells or a magic site in the early game, then equip some magic items to increase its durability before casting spells in battle.

Did you find flaws in my reasoning? How do you use heavy points cost pretender form?

[stun]

Originally posted by Dermenore:

Here is my reasoning: powerful form makes the Pretender stronger in combat. But that seems to me only useful in the very early game, when you expend against independent and don't have a lot of troops or very strong spells. After that, a pretender with at least 4 in a magic path will be more effective in battle at casting spells.

Yes, but you use the extra territory from the start of the game to get an early lead and be ahead in production and research building more forts and therefore more mages earlier than other nations.
Also, your pretender is going to have more than 4 in a magic path. The most typical awake expander is something like a W2E6 hardskin wyrm or something like a thricehorned boar casting personal regen. This means that it can cast earthquake or the like in the midgame.
Other than that your logic is spot on. Titans are very rarely used in multiplayer (with specific exceptions for a few that are decent combatants early on) for these reasons.

[Draken]

For awaken expanders, there is a kind of snowball effect.
If you manage to expand twice as much as your neighbored thanks to a combat Pretender, it does set you up for a very good first war.

Second, with more research, better items and spells, some Titans can be able to beat whole enemy armies on their own as SC. Super Combatants. This can be a good offensive unit, or a defensive deterrent that helps convince other nations to go bother someone else.

Even later in the game when the enemies has counters to that, you can still add the SC to your armies where they can wreck havoc with army support.

This is not something you can usually do with the human Pretenders.

While not all Pretenders or Pretender types are equally strong, there is usually a use case for most of them.

[Bumc]

Your reasoning is sound in single player games.

AI seldom attacks you on sight turn 6 if they know they are stronger.
Humans often do, and having a big monster to hold off the rush could make or break your game.

Titans hold a weird middle ground where they can craft and cast globals reasonably well, but also can help expansion and/or be kitted in a mid game super commander.
Also they are much harder to kill with wish and remote spells, although that doesn't come up every game.

Whether you need any of the extra bulk titans and monsters provide over a puny human pretender depends on your nation and strategy, but its a valid option to consider regardless.

[Catowl]

>Did you find flaws in my reasoning?

Yes plenty. Catowl would recommend watching a video Lucid Tactics did recently about pretender chassis. Or you can reach out to Catowl on discord for some wisdom (catowl has... Some)

As to why pretender chassis other than a weakling mage get used:

1) other chassis start with more starting dominion and as such cost less to get really high dominion (say if you want to start with 8 or higher). Same with magic. Getting an 8th (for example) point of dominion (or magic) is much cheaper on a pretender that already starts with 3 points as opposed to starting with 1.

2) Some nations suck at early expansion and need that front loaded expander God to help them grab more land that can then be leveraged into more income, more gems, etc.

3) Even into mid or late game having a huge dragon can still be quite devastating. Sure it can't solo an enemy army that has proper mage support but it can still really really hurt.

A Titan chassis CAN actually solo some big armies if properly geared and/or your opponent doesn't know/have counters. This is due to them being able to wear more magic items than monster chassis.

Still, titans are probably some of the less picked chassis. The main picks are

Weak dom1 mages: for when you want more magic access, are going for a rainbow bless, or just want a cheap pretender

Dom 2 monsters: Usually to help expand early game or to keep enemies from rushing you and killing you before you get other defences up

Dom 4 immobiles: For when you want something cheap, don't care if it can walk around, and/or want high dominion and/or high magic in only 1 or 2 paths.

[Sombre]

Nothing wrong with your reasoning and it may be the case that the human shaped pretenders are ultimately best for you in the games you're playing.

There are advantages to helping with expansion or simply being much more durable (several late game remotes and battlefield spells can make a human mage impossible to use with any degree of safety in battles). The main thing here is you are probably undervaluing how much benefit you get from having an expander pretender - gold early is worth more than gold late and a deterrent before you're attacked is worth more than a deterrent after you're attacked.

[Catowl]

Originally posted by Sombre:

The main thing here is you are probably undervaluing how much benefit you get from having an expander pretender - gold early is worth more than gold late and a deterrent before you're attacked is worth more than a deterrent after you're attacked.

Yeh. Folks get to turn 30 and make the mistake of thinking something like "Oh boy, if only I was in this exact situation but my pretender was a multi-path mage that could open up access for me to 2 or 3 more paths".

Except they wouldn't be in that exact situation if that was the case. They'd be at half size (or possibly dead) because their awake expander wouldn't have existed to help them.

[Dermenore]

Thanks for your answers, it's very interesting. I didn't try to play with Dominion 2 monster pretendant which wasn't imprisoned or in slumber so I probably missed their usefulness in early expansion. I will try some games with them and a more aggressive early expansion. MA Man or Ulm are great in early if I correctly understand?

[Dermenore]

Originally posted by stun:

Originally posted by Dermenore:

Here is my reasoning: powerful form makes the Pretender stronger in combat. But that seems to me only useful in the very early game, when you expend against independent and don't have a lot of troops or very strong spells. After that, a pretender with at least 4 in a magic path will be more effective in battle at casting spells.

Yes, but you use the extra territory from the start of the game to get an early lead and be ahead in production and research building more forts and therefore more mages earlier than other nations.
Also, your pretender is going to have more than 4 in a magic path. The most typical awake expander is something like a W2E6 hardskin wyrm or something like a thricehorned boar casting personal regen. This means that it can cast earthquake or the like in the midgame.
Other than that your logic is spot on. Titans are very rarely used in multiplayer (with specific exceptions for a few that are decent combatants early on) for these reasons.

If I want to try titans, wich own are the exception? Or, what should I looking to spot them (hight attack/strenght? Powerfull gear already equiped?)?

[Catowl]

Originally posted by Dermenore:

Originally posted by stun:

Yes, but you use the extra territory from the start of the game to get an early lead and be ahead in production and research building more forts and therefore more mages earlier than other nations.
Also, your pretender is going to have more than 4 in a magic path. The most typical awake expander is something like a W2E6 hardskin wyrm or something like a thricehorned boar casting personal regen. This means that it can cast earthquake or the like in the midgame.
Other than that your logic is spot on. Titans are very rarely used in multiplayer (with specific exceptions for a few that are decent combatants early on) for these reasons.

If I want to try titans, wich own are the exception? Or, what should I looking to spot them (hight attack/strenght? Powerfull gear already equiped?)?

There are honestly not many titans that can help with early turns expansion (usually due to having low prot and as such dying easily).

One big (literally) option is the Great Mother (chubby lady with no clothes on). She is great due to her trample (letting her bulldoze large groups of enemies) and Regen (letting her live more as she does the above).

The main things you want to look for are (in roughly that order)
1) High prot (not only a handful of the titans have actually ok prot but hey, it IS important). Alternatively if your nation has earth income from the start and ability to easily pop out an earth mage, you can have them make a black plate armor for your pretender to wear. A bit clunky but hey... It can be done.

2) Fear (fear is strong, make battles last less time and thus makes your pretender more likely to live).

3) Regen. As almost all of them have 100+ HP regen is great to heal any damage that gets through. A combination of regen and high prot is what makes many monster pretenders nigh unkillable w/o magic.

4) Many attacks and/or AoE attacks. The more killy they are the less time they will spend getting stabbed by indies. Trample is an example of an AoE though most best AoE attacks are owned by monsters with their breath weapons... Though there's that Gorgon pretender that can petrify dudes but its kinda squishy...

One or two chassis also have invuln (which is like prot that's bypassed by magic weapons). From memory an angel chassis that Marignon has is one such example. It's also pretty good just don't run into barbarians or something.

[stun]

Originally posted by Dermenore:

If I want to try titans, wich own are the exception? Or, what should I looking to spot them (hight attack/strenght? Powerfull gear already equiped?)?

Titans who already have equipment,
Titans who spawn powerful troops every battle,
Titans with intrinsically useful abilities for expansion like fear or awe or recuperation,
Titans who provide some sort of permanent advantage (mostly inspiring researcher)

You want multiple of these generally. The classic examples of good titans are
-Great mother (regen, good paths for an expander, trample)
-Great archon (has equipment and good paths, inspiring researcher is useful all game)
-Teteo Inan (summons sacreds every battle, has gear, fear, good paths)
-Annunaki of Love and War (flying, awe, good paths, some mediocre battle summons)
-Neteret of Many Names (not an expansion titan: she picks paths for 20 points and has inspiring researcher 2 so you can take her for niche strategies where you want very high research, particularly for weird strats in modded games)
-Telkhine God-King. Special mention for this guy: in addition to being a fear titan with good paths and a pathboost, he more importantly autocasts foul vapors every fight on turn 0. Standing him behind ghosts against indies or players who couldn't possibly have found poison resistance yet is the national earlygame of EA Therodos.
Most titans you take for early fighting are going to have earth (iron skin) or nature (personal regeneration). I've seen strategies using keeper of the bridge and lord of the wild and one of the snakebutt water titans, but I haven't done them myself.

[Big Dog]

The stronger forms are strong later in the game too. A high path mage that is hard to kill too can cast a battlefield wipe, then still be an SC. Your Earth snake might just bite people in the start, but later he can spam earthquake and delete armies. A Titan with high fire magic can use the battlefield wide firestorm enchantment, and be super difficult to kill with Phoenix pyre, armor, and reinvig items.

Your human sized mage pretender trying to do the same thing will die to the enemy's battlefield wipe spells long before one of the stronger forms does. In dominions having higher HP is always better than lower HP.

[Flashman]

If you are really familiar with your chassis and what spells it casts and what sort of battles it can win, you could use awake expander pretender in multiplayer no problems. Sure the cost is high but sometimes its so simple that you just want to expand reliably, turn after turn. It can not only make and generate income but it can mean your early troops build up is more durable, since they won't take the full brunt of the enemy fighting and your losses can be less. There is always the unlucky misjudgement here and there or a bad unlucky roll that can ruin your awake expander to dying or bad wounds but in the end, Dominions MP is about fastly taking area, building up capability to hold and raid area, and make good decisions and timing for wars. Awake expander can considerably "make room" for your nation to grow and prepare for those tough, decisive wars. Surely sometimes other strategies triumph but IMHO this kind of straight forward "resource based" thinking is usually quite sound in Dom games.

[Dermenore]

Thanks again for your answer, I am glad to have elements to try a different game.

What your thought about the Titan or War and Wisdom (I do like Athena)? I see she have gear, fear and eart path but she lack nature, AOE damage or other special abilities. So, mid tiers?

Originally posted by Catowl:

Originally posted by Dermenore:

[...]

One or two chassis also have invuln (which is like prot that's bypassed by magic weapons). From memory an angel chassis that Marignon has is one such example. It's also pretty good just don't run into barbarians or something.

Yes, it's the Virtue. I use it a lot in my previous games. It's good to know she is efficient. After, I am under the impression that Marignon is better with low cost Pretendant that can buy a lot of blessig, because their sacred knights can be recruited outside of the capital and are then easier to mass. Altought, I don't know if their roster is considerated good enought to survive early alone. But EA Ermor and MA Phytium can acess it too (but without cost reduction).

[timlagor]

Is an Awake Expander simply beeline-stomping an opponent Capital something that happens in MP?

Clearly it could happen but does anyone ever try (or succeed if they do)?

[1337Dude]

IMO expander builds and strategies are more effective in smaller games.

Imagine a 1v1 game and you'd probably understand why an expander build would be more effective.

Now imagine a 12 player game. Is the Expander going to be able to confidently secure that early lead which will carry them to the end? Probably not.

The issue I see, is that players who have "Imprisoned" pretenders will usually also have a strong bless that doesn't require the god to be alive, and this is usually enough to help them survive an expander rush. If the expander isn't able to take full advantage of their early game expansion, then the expander basically already lost.