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 ?

[blackwizards]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

If you use your awake pretender mainly to support your armies you wont expand significantly better than someone with better scales and as such earning more money from the home province alone to support troops. If you mean by "support for the first war" battles vs human opponents then a dormant pretender can do equally well, since from my experience most first wars vs players start when dormant pretenders are awake.

I was referring to the first war vs a human opponent, yes. I agree dormant pretenders are equally well-suited to support an army, the point I was trying to make was for monsters and titans (I assume by "SC" you mean those), not necessarily awake ones. You can of course support an army with any pretender, but it's either very risky (rainbow) or quite limited (immobile). So the fact SCs can be countered doesn't make monsters and titans bad in MP.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Whenever I hear people saying, that better scales only are of high benefit in the long run, I somewhat disagree.
Its exactly in the early game where every single gold coin can make the difference ,e.g. when to build the first fort or in recruiting that extra mage.
If you have better scales you have more income in your home province...and during the first year its exactly the home province that makes up a pretty decent percentage of the overall income.

While it's true that your home province has higher income with a pure scales build, taking an awake SC almost always results in both higher early game income (typically from turn 3-4 onwards) and less gold spent on troops. The latter is especially (but not only) true for nations with inefficient/overpriced troops that have high attrition (O-bakemono, I'm looking at you).

Again, I'm not saying awake is better per se, but the department of early income and quick construction of forts is precisely where, in my experience, awake SCs (even with bad scales) tend to outshine scales builds. Obviously, pure scales builds can have 12+ provinces after a year, but with an awake pretender you can easily have that after 6 months. Also, awake expanders can still have good (even if not pristine) scales if they forgo taking a big bless. Especially if your monster can safely expand turn 1 (earth snake...), you have the additional benefit of kickstarting your capital's troop recruitment because you get more ressources faster, which often helps early troop recruitment more than 1-2 extra productivity.

[protokevin]

Originally posted by Gopblin:

demilich is good if you need to make imprisoned rainbow because of Dom 3 and 20 pathcost. But for most nations, imprisoned monolith or another dom 4 is better

It annoys me how often I end up taking the monolith, it alway ends up being the one that suits my general playstyle best and I have to make a conscious decision to stop myself and try something else instead.

[licker34]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

If you use your awake pretender mainly to support your armies you wont expand significantly better than someone with better scales and as such earning more money from the home province alone to support troops.

As with all things, it depends. If your pretender greatly reduces the casualties you take, or allows you to tackle more difficult provinces you otherwise wouldn't deal with (say you play with indies above 6) then there is also a purely economical gain in not having to replace troops, and allowing your expansion to continue more rapidly, rather than waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

If you mean by "support for the first war" battles vs human opponents then a dormant pretender can do equally well, since from my experience most first wars vs players start when dormant pretenders are awake.

Ahh, but the point of an awake pretender rush is to occupy the enemy capitol before the dormant pretenders awaken. If you're not trying to do that, then you are not leveraging your advantage properly. Yes, that can be risky, yes that can back fire on you, but when it works, you have 2 capitol provinces and a free fort/lab. And you removed an opponent.

To suggest it's not a viable strategy is strange though, it's been tried and true throughout the history of the Dominions franchise.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Also, while I agree that pretenders can be extremely useful supporting armies in important battles, you first need to research the spells you want to cast.

Nah, again, this depends. A flying pretender gives you a huge boost in battle, the fact that the pretender blesses all your units helps, fear or awe or AoE attacks... There are alot of choices, and a lot of ways to leverage those choices. It's also likely that your research is at the same place as your enemies, because with their dormant/imprissoned pretender they weren't getting any actual research boost either, so you get to snipe them before they may have the magical counters they need to stop your SC.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Whenever I hear people saying, that better scales only are of high benefit in the long run, I somewhat disagree.
Its exactly in the early game where every single gold coin can make the difference ,e.g. when to build the first fort or in recruiting that extra mage.

More provinces simply gives you more money more quickly than better scales. Unless you are very unlucky with the provinces around you. You simply cannot expand as quickly without the SC as you can with one. You say you can get to 12 provinces by the end of year one, great, an SC build can get to 20, or can get to 12 AND have sieged an opponent out of the game. You will realize the benefits of scales thoughout the game though, but if you choose bad scales, you are usually choosing to expand or die from the beginning. Or, figure out a way to swap to the gem economy more quickly than others expect you to.

That's not an argument for one over the other

Originally posted by Mardagg:

If you have better scales you have more income in your home province...and during the first year its exactly the home province that makes up a pretty decent percentage of the overall income.

Only true after turn 1. And if you have a rapid expansion you will grow by 2 provinces every turn while other nations can only grow by one. It's not really a question frankly, you have more income in the first year based off of the provinces you take, not based off of scale growth. Since your dominion won't be in effect anywhere other than your home for the first few turns anyway, you'll get 'normal' benefits from the newly acquired provinces until your scales start to hurt them.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

The good thing about Dominions is, that all 3 pretender types have its pros and cons :)

Indeed. And depending on what opening strategy you want to employ you need to choose wisely.

[Mardagg]

@ Licker34

I didnt suggest that an awake SC Pretender type isnt a viable strategy.
I just said, that for medium and especially Large maps, to me the benefits of dormant or imprisoned pretenders outshine awake pretenders...but this is, as I also mentionend, very playing style and nation dependant. I did also play MP games with SC pretender myself in the past,but like 90% of the time I end up with non awake.

If you go SC awake you actually HAVE to expand fast...and this quite a bit luck dependant...starting position and misfortune in battles being 2 problematic things right off the bat.

I also said 12+ provinves are possible without awake pretender.Not exactly 12.
I ve played games where I managed to get 16 or even more provinces end of year 1 without using pretender. Better scales means also better income for conquered provinces,once dominion starts to spread out.

It is only partly true, that upkeep might be higher if you have to rely on more troops...since usually nations being good at early expansion(and thus not needing pretender support) have decent sacred troops, which cost less upkeep. Also if you have the design points left to go for decent blessings, you wont need many sacred troops and can have already 3 or even more different armies going to conquer indie provinces by end of year 1.

Another thing to mention is the new bless system...from my, at this time admittedly limited, SP experience in Dom 5 I can already tell that going for tons of different non-incarnate blessings can be very, very effective. So there is no actual need to go for the high blessings...if you do so, that might be something to consider dormant instead of imprisoned though.

Also you should not forget:
If you plan to expand as fast as possible, you will also need several armies and this means also there is need for troop replacements. Its "just" that you got 1 more "army" to expand right from the start..besides that , many SC builds require you to wait some turns before you can start attacking.

@ Blackwizards

yeah, I meant typical Sc pretenders , like monsters.
I didn say they are bad in MP, all choices are viable imo.
I just say that dormant/imprisoned is a better choice in most circumstances :)

Less gold spent for new troops and upkeep is debateable, see above.
Also its not only the home province that generates more income with better scales...once the dominion starts spreading.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by blackwizards:

While it's true that your home province has higher income with a pure scales build, taking an awake SC almost always results in both higher early game income (typically from turn 3-4 onwards) and less gold spent on troops. The latter is especially (but not only) true for nations with inefficient/overpriced troops that have high attrition (O-bakemono, I'm looking at you).

Have you tried O-Bakemonos in Dom5? They're really not all that bad. Dai Bakemonos are obviously better--but on my first turn as Shinuyama I typically buy 2 Dai Bakemonos and 8 O-Bakemonos and mix it in with my (trash) starting army--and that expansion army often takes maybe 6-7 provinces before being worn down to uselessness. O-Bakemonos have decent body prot, high HP, an average attack, and a huge damage. As soon as they gain a star they become pretty good against indies.

Again, Dai Bakemonos are obviously better, and a main job of the O-Bakemonos is to clear enough resources that I can start pumping out a Dai Bakemono expansion party every two turns--but O-Bakemonos are resource-cheap and not that bad.

In Dom4 they were much weaker.

[blackwizards]

Originally posted by wilson.max:

Originally posted by blackwizards:

While it's true that your home province has higher income with a pure scales build, taking an awake SC almost always results in both higher early game income (typically from turn 3-4 onwards) and less gold spent on troops. The latter is especially (but not only) true for nations with inefficient/overpriced troops that have high attrition (O-bakemono, I'm looking at you).

Have you tried O-Bakemonos in Dom5? They're really not all that bad. Dai Bakemonos are obviously better--but on my first turn as Shinuyama I typically buy 2 Dai Bakemonos and 8 O-Bakemonos and mix it in with my (trash) starting army--and that expansion army often takes maybe 6-7 provinces before being worn down to uselessness. O-Bakemonos have decent body prot, high HP, an average attack, and a huge damage. As soon as they gain a star they become pretty good against indies.

Again, Dai Bakemonos are obviously better, and a main job of the O-Bakemonos is to clear enough resources that I can start pumping out a Dai Bakemono expansion party every two turns--but O-Bakemonos are resource-cheap and not that bad.

In Dom4 they were much weaker.

Yeah, I'm actually doing exactly the same thing (or similar, depending on sloth). I agree they got better. Not sure I'd call them not bad anymore, but I noticed the improvement, too! Since their worst trait is low attack (for a unit costing 25 gold nonsacred), I wonder whether they are worth deploying over Dai Bakemono or Bakemono Warriors as soon as Darkness is available. I always use the unaging bless for my Sorcerers (huge shoutout to the guy pointing this out for me), so MM14 seems appealing.

[licker34]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

@ Licker34

I didnt suggest that an awake SC Pretender type isnt a viable strategy.
I just said, that for medium and especially Large maps, to me the benefits of dormant or imprisoned pretenders outshine awake pretenders...but this is, as I also mentionend, very playing style and nation dependant. I did also play MP games with SC pretender myself in the past,but like 90% of the time I end up with non awake.

If you go SC awake you actually HAVE to expand fast...and this quite a bit luck dependant...starting position and misfortune in battles being 2 problematic things right off the bat.

I hope you don't find me argumentative, I find this discussion interesting, and I think we both agree that there is a large amount of 'it depends' which should drive any decision.

That said, yes, if you go awake SC (as opposed to rainbow for fast searching) you are planning on expanding quickly, and, likely, rushing someone and taking their capitol before turn 12-18 depending on map size. On a larger map this is likely a weaker strategy. On smaller, or more crowded maps, it's a very viable strategy, though there is the potential to flame out, but if you don't go awake, you run the risk of getting blitzed down too, even if you survive, you likely are at a major disadvantage having spent those development resources fighting a war.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

I also said 12+ provinves are possible without awake pretender.Not exactly 12.
I ve played games where I managed to get 16 or even more provinces end of year 1 without using pretender. Better scales means also better income for conquered provinces,once dominion starts to spread out.

12 is just a benchmark, but the point is that with an awake SC you will have more than someone who didn't have one. (everything is luck dependent anyway). You have 2 expansion forces from turn 2 on, maybe you even gamble on turn 1 and sneak out that extra province, though that's probably not worth the risk of landing your pretender somewhere particularly nasty to their build.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

It is only partly true, that upkeep might be higher if you have to rely on more troops...since usually nations being good at early expansion(and thus not needing pretender support) have decent sacred troops, which cost less upkeep. Also if you have the design points left to go for decent blessings, you wont need many sacred troops and can have already 3 or even more different armies going to conquer indie provinces by end of year 1.

Whether that is completely true or not is irrelevant since if you start with the awake SC you can have the same number of conquering armies plus one. You may not have a wide set of blesses, but you can in most builds get incarnate blesses in 2 paths immediately, and especially death 5 is very important for keeping your sacred (and pretender, and prophet) alive/unwounded. This will not work for every nation, or work as well. It is not a valid design for anyone, but for more rushy nations it's probably a better choice than trying to play for a mid/late game you are not suited for anyway. At least not without being required to take additional paths on your pretender to cover some weakness. At that point you are usually forced into a dormant or imprisoned build, but, again, it's all nation dependent.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Another thing to mention is the new bless system...from my, at this time admittedly limited, SP experience in Dom 5 I can already tell that going for tons of different non-incarnate blessings can be very, very effective. So there is no actual need to go for the high blessings...if you do so, that might be something to consider dormant instead of imprisoned though.

I think you might be surprised at what the incarnate blessings can do. Sure, it seems nice to just stack a bunch of 1 or 2 cost blessings everywhere, but a lot of those blessings are completely worthless in certain scenarios. Especially early game before magic starts to take over. Stygian Flesh in particular is just so good for crushing indies, but if you wait for year 2 to use it... it loses a lot of value, and more opponents can start to counter it if you plan on a late bless strat. Of course you might not take it in that case, but having it keeping your sacreds alive that much longer and not taking afflictions means the general attrition you suffer requires fewer top offs of fresh troops to keep your forces going.

Originally posted by Mardagg:

Also you should not forget:
If you plan to expand as fast as possible, you will also need several armies and this means also there is need for troop replacements. Its "just" that you got 1 more "army" to expand right from the start..besides that , many SC builds require you to wait some turns before you can start attacking.

How are you precluded from having several armies though? The need for troop replacement, if using sacreds, is lessened due to more powerful blesses available. The early income boost you lose by not taking order/productivity/growth doesn't really affect you that quickly because you are still expanding faster than people who did take those. Being at 5 provinces on turn 4 compared to being at 3 provinces is a significant advantage. Being at 7 vs 4... Eventually it will catch up to you, but for the purposes of early rapid expansion, and even blitzing a neighbor, you are more than able to pay for everything you need. edit... also, you get to use the full effect of your capitol admin that much sooner by clearing all those neighbor provinces faster

You can (and probably should) also leverage it with T3L3 because if you get an early chunk of gold or early boosts to PD you have that much more of an advantage in your early game. The drips of gems and free labs and items also helps. Sure, you still get bad events, but you don't really care as much about most of them anyway.

Maybe it's too much of a gamblers strategy for you, and that's fine, I don't really like gambling with my expansion either, but, having forced myself to try the rapid growth and early blitz strats i always stayed away from in earlier versions of Dominions, I have to say, I find it quite interesting in Dom5. I don't know if it's more or less viable, because I never really tried it that much before, but in my SP 2 year tests I frequently find myself further ahead in the awake SC starts than the dormant/better scales starts. The mid/end game isn't even shafted that badly, though you usually do have to go high death on the pretender (depending on nation) to make sure you do have some late game options.

I don't know that it's as good for blood nations though, as bad scales makes blood hunting seem like it should be less effective as the game progresses.

It's mostly about if your nation can afford to take death or drain scales frankly.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by blackwizards:

Yeah, I'm actually doing exactly the same thing (or similar, depending on sloth). I agree they got better. Not sure I'd call them not bad anymore, but I noticed the improvement, too! Since their worst trait is low attack (for a unit costing 25 gold nonsacred), I wonder whether they are worth deploying over Dai Bakemono or Bakemono Warriors as soon as Darkness is available. I always use the unaging bless for my Sorcerers (huge shoutout to the guy pointing this out for me), so MM14 seems appealing.

You can somewhat obviate their low-ish attack by mixing them in with regular Bakemono-sho. I think that's why my starting army does so well--the regular little bakemonos bring down enemy defense through harassment penalty, making the O-Bakemonos more effective so they gain stars quickly.

Dai Bakemono mapmove hasn't been an issue for me (especially now that multimove reduces the micro), but then I tend to rely a lot on thugs for my highly-mobile operations. A Twiceborned wight with mapmove 30ish might as well be flying. I suppose if you're not using thugs you could try O-Bakemonos in that role, but I'm pretty skeptical. They aren't at all gold-efficient.

[blackwizards]

Originally posted by licker34:

I don't know that it's as good for blood nations though, as bad scales makes blood hunting seem like it should be less effective as the game progresses.

It's mostly about if your nation can afford to take death or drain scales frankly.

I agree with almost all your other points, but with this, I don't know. Most of the time, I don't take bad scales on an expander since, well, a nation with good sacreds typically doesn't need an expander to begin with - without a big bless, being awake still allows for good scales. Also, I'd almost never take death, it was terrible in Dominions 4 and it's mostly gotten worse in 5 (higher income loss). I prefer taking temperature, turmoil, sloth, drain or even misfortune (although I really dislike it since barbarians got super strong), depending on the nation.

That said, you make a good point about awake pretenders' synergy with incarnate blesses - stygian flesh specifically. One nation I like using this on is Bandar Log since they like a bless but still need help early on. It's one of the few nations I'll actually somewhat trash my scales to have both a bless and be awake. FYI, this is my favourite Bandar Build:

Awake Dom6 Destroyer of Worlds, A5D5B4
Wind Walker, Stygian Flesh, Blood Surge
Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 3, Growth 2, Magic 2

Scales aren't beautiful (but not terrible either IMO, the only things I really miss are that 1 extra point in growth and magic, respectively) and the bless isn't huge, so let me explain.

He can safely expand under his dominion from turn 3 (research skeletal body with pretender, forge enchanted ringmail with yogi) and his bless makes your all-sacred expansion forces swift and powerful. Heavenly Strike and Stygian Flesh greatly help your Prophet, too (as you pointed out). After expansion, he is invaluable as a sitesearcher (3 non native paths), army support (drop mist/storm/arrow fend to protect your troops from evocations and magic arrows) and highly mobile SC. Your summoned sacreds will love his bless. Blood feast if you got wounded while expanding. By midgame, he will forge staffs of storms (amazing with 100 prec astral spells) and also break you into death as well as blood and air (Dakini). I have yet to play him to the very lategame, but Vampire Lords as well as Tartarians - along with Bandars generally strong astral game - seem to be realistic options depending on gem/slave income.

Originally posted by wilson.max:

Dai Bakemono mapmove hasn't been an issue for me (especially now that multimove reduces the micro), but then I tend to rely a lot on thugs for my highly-mobile operations. A Twiceborned wight with mapmove 30ish might as well be flying. I suppose if you're not using thugs you could try O-Bakemonos in that role, but I'm pretty skeptical. They aren't at all gold-efficient.

I was using wight mage and vanilla sorcerer thugs, with mixed success so far. May I ask what bless (if any) and equipment you are using with your thugs? I was using vine shield, frostbrand and whatever the W1 bless thingy is called (so I can have one more buff in my script). Lion pelt for armor, with the occassional shademail for raiding thrown in. They do alright most of the time, but they don't seem to really take off before soul vortex and/or phoenix pyre.

Originally posted by wilson.max:

You can somewhat obviate their low-ish attack by mixing them in with regular Bakemono-sho. I think that's why my starting army does so well--the regular little bakemonos bring down enemy defense through harassment penalty, making the O-Bakemonos more effective so they gain stars quickly.

Good point about the harrassment from bakemono-sho. Do you even combine them in 1 Squad? I never tried that since I was afraid this would spoil the O-bakemonos morale and make them rout. Do you use bakemono-sho in your expansion parties (other than starting army) too? The disciplined ones with yaris don't seem *too* bad.

[Catowl]

My best nation is Nazca (love em) and I can manage 15-18 provinces in year 1 pretty concistently. If I went awake, my late game potential would be lower. But the main reason I never go awake is because most nations I play can get a decent number of provinces without one. Sure having an awake helps you expand faster, and probably get the most provinces out of anyone. But then you get ganged up on because you are in the lead, and die.

[Swirler]

Generally speaking what state you have your god in depends on the weakest part of your nation (which comes with practice)


Awake
You have an early game focus, or really really need to help your early game expansion by taking lots of provinces early. At the expense of better scales. Can be risky if you don't know the ins and outs of the combat mechanics to help your pretender solo expand early on. Typical for nations that rely on death scales or nations with poor sacred units.

Also great for getting magic sites and magic items rolling out earlier and hopefully you will have an edge over your opponents with a few more provinces under your belt to overcome your weaker scales.
You can easily lose the game early on if your pretender gets hit with a curse or some affliction though. Very risky and you're racing against time when the dormant gods who will almost always have better magic available than you.

Dormant
You have a mid game focus. Generally you want to dip a little into some kind of bless and rely on your sacreds to carry you in the early game. Probably the most common type of pretender.
Your pretender doesn't need to be particularly strong in combat but in general having a mobile one is useful to help boost your armies.

The "safe" option. Perhaps your sacred units are just strong enough or your army has a decent fighting chance without requiring an awake pretender to carry you. Although you will still feel the sting of having to pick nicer bless options or better scales.

Imprisoned
You have a late game focus. You're confident you have either a really carefully planned bless strategy with some great scales to carry your nation for a long time. Or you're just that damn good at the game.
You're almost always taking an immobile god with some great magic paths to get some really good late game summons/items rolling out.
Quite a gamble to take but some nations do just have the staying power early to make this work. It's possible the extra boost to scales is also good for getting some extra economy rolling in. Perhaps your nation commanders are good enough to carry the main part of the fighting and magic for you.

Still quite a dangerous option to take, although this does make it easier for picking your scales and bless options because you can generally afford just about everything you could ever want. Ironically you're "soft locked" out of the better bless options for sacred units, but you will probably still rely on the other bless options all the same.

You're still walking a similar tightrope the awake gods take except you're relying more on your skill and ingenuity to carry your nation over raw combat power early. Early game defeats will hurt you more though, so you better know what you're doing.

[licker34]

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

A very good summation...

You're still walking a similar tightrope the awake gods take except you're relying more on your skill and ingenuity to carry your nation over raw combat power early. Early game defeats will hurt you more though, so you better know what you're doing.

This is sort of where it's important to understand the differences between SP and MP.

Most, if not all, of the advice given is assuming MP against opponents of a similar or better skill than you.

Everything is a tightrope, but one you have (usually) some understanding of before you try to walk it. Is it a small cramped map? Maybe you better worry about the early game more. Is it a large empty map? Early game not nearly as critical.

Are the indies set at 5? 1? 9? Are events common? What is the gem site frequency?

And many other questions which can help to shape the plan you are making. There is no 'perfect pretender build' for a nation. All of the possible variables in game creation matter in shaping the best decision.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by blackwizards:

Originally posted by wilson.max:

Dai Bakemono mapmove hasn't been an issue for me (especially now that multimove reduces the micro), but then I tend to rely a lot on thugs for my highly-mobile operations. A Twiceborned wight with mapmove 30ish might as well be flying. I suppose if you're not using thugs you could try O-Bakemonos in that role, but I'm pretty skeptical. They aren't at all gold-efficient.

I was using wight mage and vanilla sorcerer thugs, with mixed success so far. May I ask what bless (if any) and equipment you are using with your thugs? I was using vine shield, frostbrand and whatever the W1 bless thingy is called (so I can have one more buff in my script). Lion pelt for armor, with the occassional shademail for raiding thrown in. They do alright most of the time, but they don't seem to really take off before soul vortex and/or phoenix pyre.

I haven't played pure Shinuyama since the beta--I mostly like disciples games--but for pure Shinuyama I took a monolith with Ethereal, Regen, and Reinvig 6. I'm not sure how expensive that would be under the current rules.

The game I've been playing for the past week or so has a pretender from MA Marignon, with Shinuyama as disciple. From memory, I believe it's an Imprisoned Dom6 Baphomet with F6E6S8D4N7B4, Fire Shield + Minor Fire Resistance + Reinvig 3 + Ethereal + Undying 8 + Regen + Blood Surge, Turmoil-3 Sloth-3 Heat-3 Growth-1 Misfortune-3 Magic-3. (The bad scales don't hurt as much as you'd expect, they just slow expansion somewhat, to ~9 provinces and ~13 provinces by late winter 0 for Marignon/Shinuyama respectively, IIRC[1]. Call it a 30% penalty to expansion speed. Giving up Growth-3 to get Undying-4 was a hard decision for me thematically, but in practice the advantages to expansion, to warfighting, and to pretender options are more than worth it. E.g. I can now Twiceborn my Baphomet and bring him into battle without fear of losing blessings or globals, even if he "dies" somehow, and can also break Marignon into Death magic if desired.)

[1] Compare with 24 provinces by late winter with a scales + awake pretender build on an ideal map--I just don't value the extra potential 12 provinces that much. It's more area to defend, and it comes at the expense of my late game options. In MP I _might_ feel differently about prioritizing early expansion, but honestly I think I mind losing in the early game less than dead-ending in the later game.

Equipment for Bakemonos and Twiceborn thugs varies. Typically at least Boots of the Messenger, frequently Armor of Knights and a Flame Helmet too. Sometimes a brand, frequently holy water. Vine Shield is overkill/unneeded, but sometimes I toss items on thugs just to clear up space in my lab, since Shinuyama is so crazy good at site searching and I always have tons of gems.

I agree that the Bakemono thugs don't really take off until you get either a regen/ethereal bless or Soul Vortex, and thinking back I think I pretty much always have Soul Vortex up first. (Typically I race for Const-3, Ench-3, Conj-3, Const-4, Alt-6, Evoc-3, Ench-5. The point is to bring your Dai Bakemono troop buffs online ASAP for the early game, and then get thug support.) If my bless came up before Soul Vortex I'd happily exploit it, but it's kind of a waste to use expensive mostly-unblessed Bakemono Sorcerers for that role when I could instead use Shuten-dojis, assuming I have Alt-5 researched. For a mere 490 gold and six gems I can have an Ironskinned, Quickened, Earth Might'ed shrouded Shuten-doji with a Frost Brand and Prot 25ish and 26 effective HP plus life drain (goes well with Blood Surge BTW) backed up by an Prot 24ish Bakemono Sorcerer spamming fireballs and skelly spam and whatnot. The Shuten-doji's sleep aura helps protect both commanders during the buff sequence, and the Shuten-doji helps drive attackers off the Bakemono Sorcerer so the sorcerer can start casting big evocations (Flame Eruption and Magma Eruption when you get them). It's so beautiful to see, and it doesn't even require D3 on the Bakemono Sorcerer--you can do this with literally ANY Bakemono Sorcerer. And you can scale it up to 4x Shuten-doji without any extra Bakemono Sorcerer cost and only one more fort turn, although in practice that seems to be overkill.

(At one point I was using 3x Shtuen-doji with shrouds and no brands, but then I discovered that Frost Brands no longer suppress the Shuten-doji's life-draining attack, and since that time one Shuten-doji with a Frost Brand and Shroud seems sufficient, thus saving me 200 gold and 3 gems.)

Originally posted by blackwizards:

Originally posted by wilson.max:

You can somewhat obviate their low-ish attack by mixing them in with regular Bakemono-sho. I think that's why my starting army does so well--the regular little bakemonos bring down enemy defense through harassment penalty, making the O-Bakemonos more effective so they gain stars quickly.

Good point about the harrassment from bakemono-sho. Do you even combine them in 1 Squad? I never tried that since I was afraid this would spoil the O-bakemonos morale and make them rout. Do you use bakemono-sho in your expansion parties (other than starting army) too? The disciplined ones with yaris don't seem *too* bad.

Sometimes I combine everything in one squad, including the archers, but lately I have left the archers separate to guard against flank attacks. (They really don't do much damage with their arrows, but they are someone for my Bakemono General to hide behind while he kills flankers with his sword.)

I briefly investigated the Bakemono Warriors after I noticed they got a small stat bump relative to Dom5, but sadly they are still worse than Dai Bakemonos on a gold basis and a resource basis. I don't use Bakemono-sho in expansion parties at all unless I am forced to by geography or similar (e.g. recruit archers to kill barbarians)--I just rely on Dai Bakemonos, one expansion party every two or three turns, depending on cap resources.

[licker34]

Originally posted by wilson.max:

[ In MP I _might_ feel differently about prioritizing early expansion, but honestly I think I mind losing in the early game less than dead-ending in the later game.

I think if you're stuck on 12 provinces while your neighbors have run out of provinces, you won't mind losing more often than you'll get to play with late game goodies :)

Diplomacy can go a long way, but I don't think we can consider diplomacy in a pretender build ;)

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by licker34:

Originally posted by wilson.max:

[ In MP I _might_ feel differently about prioritizing early expansion, but honestly I think I mind losing in the early game less than dead-ending in the later game.

I think if you're stuck on 12 provinces while your neighbors have run out of provinces, you won't mind losing more often than you'll get to play with late game goodies :)

Diplomacy can go a long way, but I don't think we can consider diplomacy in a pretender build ;)

Clearly that depends on the nature of your opposition, but I'm pretty comfortable with my ability to fight a defensive war on the strength of buffed Dai Bakemonos. Remember that the defender will always have a couple more turns of recruitment than the attacker because of travel time; and Dai Bakemonos are good enough, even unbuffed, to be one of the few nations that can fight off something like an awake E7N7 White Bull (Fortitude/Regen). Actually they butcher the White Bull pretty easily. Might be amusing to get invaded by someone who thinks you'll easy meat; kill their pretender and their main army and then bite off a few provinces for revenge, while every turn that passes brings me closer to the fullness of my power.

But I'm primarily a SP player, and in fact I haven't ever had the chance to play Shinuyama in MP, let alone Marignon/Shinuyama disciples. Perhaps I would lose--but at least it would be quick one way or the other!