Dominions 4: Pretender Design and Analysis Step 4

The Wrap Up

Now you have gone over in great detail the nation you plan to use.  To put it all together, put on that thinking cap, and make a wicked cool pretender.  Or at least a useful one.

The Pretender Archtypes

I use these archtypes to guide my pretender design.  You can clearly hybridize but you may weaken the functionality.

1. The awake expander (Design to fight from turn 1 or 2. A variation is to need one or two forged trinkets and roll out turn 3 or 4.)
2. The awake high bless (I separate this one from above.  I have used it to great effect with dragons for Water 9, Fire 9 or Nature 9 bless and an excellent expander.  You take a pretty hard hit on scales).
3. The bless chassis (Design is all about the bless you need and it is commonly imprisoned for the best scales.)
4. The site searching rainbow (basically 2 in every path)
5. The artifact forging rainbow (The Magic Booster guide explains this one quite well)
6. The research rainbow (This is normally the great sage and awake.)
7. The key spell pretender (Design for something like early Burden of Time or other game changing globals.)
8. The all scales pretender. (Take the cheapest chassis available, splash on a bit of cheap magic, and buy the best scales.)
9. The diversity pretender.  (I tend to consider this one very close to the all scales.  The plan is to fill missing magic paths from your nation and is best used with a plan to summon more magi of those paths.)

The Pretender Plan: Bandar Log

From early in this discussion, I have moved towards a plan to go with a major bless.  I felt that given the very high gold and resource settings of 200% gold, 200% resources, and 75% magic I could afford to trash my scales for an amazing major bless.  Tiger Riders have one major weakness.  Their shields are only bucklers making them vulnerable to massed archers.  There are a few ways to mitigate the problem such as using archer screens in front.  However, there are also some bless solutions.  Tigers move only moderately fast for cavalry at 15 action points.  So they can take some time to close with archers.  Regeneration from Nature 9 bless can help a lot.  Air shield is an option but precision boost from major air bless does nothing for the tigers and isn't terribly helpful for astral magi since most astral spells are precision 100.  This leaves Astral 9 as an option to manage attrition from archers.  Astral 9 is not the strongest bless but an astral 9 pretender opens up amazing options in late game.

Let's look at pretender chassis for N9 or S9 bless.  Also, if I go with a dual 9 bless, earth is the best second option for all my units.  Bandar has a choice of a lot of chassis with astral and a cross path.  But very early in my look at chassis I got very excited by the Nataraja.  It's always fun in late game to have a 4 armed pretender and well it's just plain cool.  I know that I am sort of failing to apply the analysis fully, but sometimes I get fired up by a cool chassis.  And can I possibly make a triple 9 bless fly?  F9E9S9 is just such a monster of a bless I went for it.  I had to trash my scales pretty badly.

Here is my design.  It follows the plan I listed but I went a little over the top.

Imprisoned Nataraja 100 points base.
Dominion 7
Turmoil 3
Sloth 3
Cold 1
Death 2
Luck 3
Drain 3

Fire 9
Earth 9
Astral 9

The Sacrifices

1. My scales are awful.  If the game goes on a long time, I'll be very hard pressed to remain competitive.  However, one compensation is I can summon sacred troops and with 75% gems I should have a lot of gems.
2. I am betting a lot of good luck.  And that means I need to push my dominion as hard as possible but that's tough with crappy priests and a gold shortage for temples.
3. My research will be poor.  I'll have to focus research very carefully.

The Power

My sacreds are truly beasts.  And as it played, I scared the willies out of most of my opponents who wisely chose not to test them.  However, I did not have a great game.  It wasn't about my design.  My diplomacy failed.  I allied with Ashdod early and it made good sense at the time but Ashdod disintegrated under attack from two opponents and the geography was such that I could do nothing to help.  Unlike Kailasa and Patala, Bandar Log has a very difficult time entering the water and that would have been my only realistic way to help my ally.  It was still a very fun game and with the unique chassis of the Nataraja and 3 very good blesses that work together I would try triple 9 Bandar Log again.