Dominions 5: 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 Arch-types

I use these arch-types 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.)  You want to consider good low level buff spells such as earth, air or nature magic.
2. The awake high bless (I separate this one from above.  This is typical a single path high level bless and provides an solid excellent expander.  You can use incarnate blesses with this method. You take a pretty hard hit on scales).
3. The bless chassis (Design is all about the bless you need.  Incarnate blesses added in Dominions 5 make this a more complex option than in previous game versions.)
4. The site searching rainbow. (basically 2 in every path)  This and the next two can take advantage of the bless feature that having all 4 elements or all 4 sorcery allows blesses with only level 3 in the paths.
5. The artifact forging rainbow.  It's similar to the site searching option but needs a few higher magic paths such as air 3 and astral 5 to allow forging.
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 global spells.)
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: Erytheia

I hope you follow my logic as I've worked through the example.  I've reduced it to two possibilities: awake research rainbow or imprisoned great scales.  Partly for fun I am choosing to imprison a rainbow with at least 3 in all magic paths to have a broad bless.  I went this way since Erytheia has a significant research advantage with inspiring on many magi.  As this game is now in the early stages, I'm going to postpone showing my exact pretender.  I will add it later.

Costs and Benefits

This design allows the bless to be available turn 1 since none of the low level blesses are incarnate.  I did a mix of bless that helps the sacred infantry and also magi or thugs.  That is a significant benefit.  Minor blesses are not as powerful in general as major blesses but when stacked can add significantly to the power of sacred troops.

The scales are very good.  Almost maximum.  That's a significant benefit with high gold income and production.  I expect recruitment to be limited by recruitment points.

The biggest cost is low dominion and few sacred troops.  Rainbow magi have expensive dominion candles.

And that sums up my methodology.  You can post any comments or discussion here or on the new discord for guides: Dominions Guides Discord  I am very happy to have constructive criticism.