Awaken, Dormant or Imprisioned.

[Noble Ten]

What do people tend to do when choosing these three.

I only play singleplayer, but I kinda curious how people choose in a singleplayer game.. Is it worth going dormant for the extra points, Or even imprisioned ?

[Catowl]

Personally I almost never go for awake, but that's because I never play nations that have trouble expanding early on.

Dormant is nice for when you want to go bless and it's an incarnate bless. This makes your bless go up basically in time for your 1st war.

Imprisoned is good for scales Strat where you don't care about when your pretender is awake, or only need him for late game crafting. Or for when you go for a tonn of non-incarnatr blesses, and thus again dont care when he is up.

[wilson.max]

It depends on map size. I like to play on large maps (e.g. 300 provinces, 20 Impossible AIs vs. 1 human pretender + 1 human disciple), and I enjoy the challenge of an early game with an Imprisoned pretender, and I prefer long-term power over short-term joy, so I almost always go Imprisoned in SP.

[franktrollman]

For Multiplayer, Awake, Dormant, and Imprisoned all have solid uses. For Single Player I pretty much only care how beautiful my empire is, and hitting "next turn" a couple of times isn't a big deal. So unless I'm doing something with an awake expansion god or specificaly testing a proposed multiplayer build, I pretty much always take Imprisoned.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

It depends on your nation and strategy. A giant nation might benefit from a dormant pretender that would allow them to expand with their national troops unitl the end of year one, when they can start bringing out sacred troops that will allow them to defeat someone in an early way, before they're able to research effective counters. An imprisoned bless would work quite well with a variety of minor blesses, or a major focus on scales.

[Gopblin]

With the minor bless system, it's actually pretty easy to benefit your sacreds and have an imprisoned god. Reinvig can be stacked on sacreds, defense skill too, MR, and resists against whatever you're likely to face. And with +350 points, it still gives you way better scales than an incarnate god would. IMO Imprisoned is almost always the far superior option in SP, however in MP it's obviously different with the early rushes.

[Kref]

Well, you should search for guides starting from dominions 3, there are quite plenty and quite interesting. Choosing the pretender shoud be according to your race and strategies (they are calculated as a complex, nation-pretender-strategy).

Things that are being considered while taking pretender:
1) How much points this pretender would leave for nation scales (for example, to give more production dominion to enhance armored troop production).
2) Is it possible to use this pretender for early expansion on indie provincies, maybe after a few turns of research of supporting spells? Trampling Great Bull is better then the crone in this aspect, for example.
3) Maybe this pretender can boost early research which would give this particular nation particular options earlier
4) Of course, it is really a point 1 not 4 for many nations, how dangerous would be national sacred units (or/and commanders and/or sacred summons)? In dominions 5 it is even more complex because, for example, you can choose an imprisoned god which would make his sacreds very dangerous when he would broke free, but you should have an idea how would you survive till this time
5) Can this pretender make magic site searching (maximum required for site to be found knowledge of its path is 4 and most need 1-2), especially early on and especially in the paths where this nation can not search with its mages
6) Some nations benefit greatly from sertain global spells which require great knowledge of some path, so to be cast soon enough this strategies require the pretender to have a good knowledge of the path. For example Abyssia may want second sun in the skies, Agartha may want eternal darkness even more, some long-living nations may want burden of time and so on.
7) Sometimes the possibility of sertain summons and crafting of certain artefacts by pretender is considered
8) The effectiveness in mid-game and even end-game battles is sometimes considered by pretender especially on small maps

Probably I missed something.

Of cause this is all considered in the aspect of time in which you are going to use it. So as you pretender can not simultaneously attack indies, research, and search for sites, then if you choosed strategy which require intense early research by pretende then you do not need your pretender to be a skilled combatant at the beginning of the game.

[mimizukari]

personally I hit r. whatever happens, happens. keeps it fresh. imprisoned has a loooot of extra points/bless effects/etc

[Catowl]

Originally posted by Yuiko:

personally I hit r. whatever happens, happens. keeps it fresh. imprisoned has a loooot of extra points/bless effects/etc

Works for solo games, awful for MP. Only works for solo because most everything works for solo

[mimizukari]

Originally posted by Renen:

Originally posted by Yuiko:

personally I hit r. whatever happens, happens. keeps it fresh. imprisoned has a loooot of extra points/bless effects/etc

Works for solo games, awful for MP. Only works for solo because most everything works for solo

I like a challenge. ;), sure, huge disadvantage, but tons of fun trying to overcome my weaknesses.

[Kref]

Originally posted by Renen:

Originally posted by Yuiko:

personally I hit r. whatever happens, happens. keeps it fresh. imprisoned has a loooot of extra points/bless effects/etc

Works for solo games, awful for MP. Only works for solo because most everything works for solo

Fully agree. Imprisoned heavy blesser may loose now before brokening free, due to some lazy rush from awake or sleeping pretender. Generally to the time when sleeping gods would be awaken, the nations would have borders with each other, and those imprisoned blessers may loose all or most of their territory before heavy bless of theirs would be possible. People use spies and when they see that your sacreds do not get benefits for now, they would use it.

[Catowl]

Originally posted by Yuiko:

Originally posted by Renen:

Works for solo games, awful for MP. Only works for solo because most everything works for solo

I like a challenge. ;), sure, huge disadvantage, but tons of fun trying to overcome my weaknesses.

In a MP game with competent opponents though that's a guaranteed loss. Because all things being equal, if you're MA Ulm and your random pretender has sloth scales, you're done for.

[Lou the Lou]

I always play imprisoned, to make my pretender and/or scales as powerful as possible. Then again, I only ever play on huge maps with all nations enabled, so I never have to worry too much about how the early game turns out. I mean, it can still turn out badly if I do poorly early on, but I don't need my pretender out and kicking butt to succeed.

[Sombre]

I'd strongly recommend imprisoned for a new player because they simply don't have the knowledge to make the most of their pretender without a bunch of preparation.

Personally I almost always take awake for roleplaying reasons, even if I don't immediately have things for the pretender to do efficiently. I'm OK with them sitting on a throne eating grapes or leading armies as a general or touring around the kingdom feasting on cattle.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

My current prefeert build is:
Dimilich(130 points for 3 dominion, immortal, can lead a large undead army, high research, 3 death magic)
10 Death magic.
10 undead leadership bless.
-3 unrest 3 food 3 luck 3 research.
Imprisiond.
This build will leave me with 1 point and an insane income(The amount of stuff you get randomly is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and that is not taking into account taxes and magic gems).

[Catowl]

And what undead are you leading? I mean why do you need your sacreds to have such high undead leadership?