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[Sean Mirrsen]

Mmm, yes.  I mean, the game is just about taking the role of a god attempting to compete with other gods to gain ultimate control of the universal pantheon.  Why should your god actually mean anything or be at all as useful/powerful as generic summons?

If they were gods, they would be gods. As it is, they're just pretenders.
Also, their power is kind of sewn into their pretender stats - the bless bonuses and province benefits. Those are the reasons that they are pretender gods, not any kind of personal power (even if they might actually have that personal power). So I think that ultimately makes sense. The different options must be balanced against each other, so that every one is a viable choice.

[Delta Foxtrot]

The nebulous fluff be damned, if there's a ton of super wizard type pretenders and fantastic monsters available as pretenders, I'd really like for them to be a viable option.

Because as it stands a significant chunk of the pretenders are simply bad. Why take a dom2 monster pretender when:
A) Dragon expands better at a similar price
B) Titan has equal/more diverse magic at a similar price
C) Titan has better slots at a similar price
D) Immobiles have better scales & dominion at vastly reduced prices

Something like Shedu, Sphinx or Urmalhlullu are simply not played in non-noob games because people who know how to play the game know how bad many of those pretenders are. It would be nice if they weren't so bad.

From what I've gleamed of the official forum, the goal is to make bad pretenders usable, not make good pretenders bad. But I'm not part of the dev process so at best I'm guessing.

[Kagus]

Shedu's the only one of those three that has a glimmer of usefulness to it, thanks to being a flying trampler.  However, it is also a flying trampler that costs an arm and a leg (literally, if we consider the slots, heh) and has only courtesy protection.  Plus it has natural astral magic paths, which at low levels is a liability, and you probably don't have the points leftover if you want non-shit scales and more than maybe 3S.

Speaking of slots, that's where dragons double-time...  By day they're the scaly, flying, fear 10, base-18-protection monsters with the slightly glitchy and incredibly destructive breath weapons...  By night, they're a human who has all the slots they need for boosters and/or a hammer to do whatever else might potentially be needed.

[chaoticag]

If they were gods, they would be gods. As it is, they're just pretenders.
Also, their power is kind of sewn into their pretender stats - the bless bonuses and province benefits. Those are the reasons that they are pretender gods, not any kind of personal power (even if they might actually have that personal power). So I think that ultimately makes sense. The different options must be balanced against each other, so that every one is a viable choice.

Well, they're pretender gods, not pretending to be gods. There's a difference. There might be many gods, but these gods in specific are pretenders to the position of Pantokrator. In this case, pretender gods are gods with a claim to the throne, in the same way that, say a King's brother might have a claim on that throne as well. Pretend meaning make believe is actually Victorian in terms of how old the use is, so I don't think it makes much sense here.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I always thought the pretender status was more of a nod to the fact that the people that follow them believe them to be the next god of gods whether the entity wants to be that or even has a will of its own in the first place (fetish and what not).

[Kagus]

I'm pretty sure the intent is that they're pretenders in the sense of "pretenders to the throne".  Squabbling more-or-less legitimate heirs.

Kinda explains the humies as well, as they're just human mages who feel they've grown powerful enough to make their own stand and compete with the more innately divine entities and vie for the celestial throne.

[EnigmaticHat]

Re: Pretender balance, am I the only one who thinks that non-awake pretenders shouldn't give bless bonuses until they become active?  Seems like the main trade off of non-awake is early weakness, and if the primary point of your pretender is its bless bonus... you aren't going to be that much weaker early on for not having them.

(this is coming from someone who really doesn't understand the game, mind you)

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Re: Pretender balance, am I the only one who thinks that non-awake pretenders shouldn't give bless bonuses until they become active?  Seems like the main trade off of non-awake is early weakness, and if the primary point of your pretender is its bless bonus... you aren't going to be that much weaker early on for not having them.

(this is coming from someone who really doesn't understand the game, mind you)

   The problem with your suggestion is that what you describe being a problem (from my understanding) is the trade off for getting a good bless. An awake pretender can do anything from getting more provinces to boost your research before others so you can do stuff like hurry towards artifacts and such. So yes making them not give bonus would "balance" stuff but you wouldn't be able to have a good bless and actually use it when it is most important.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Re: Pretender balance, am I the only one who thinks that non-awake pretenders shouldn't give bless bonuses until they become active?  Seems like the main trade off of non-awake is early weakness, and if the primary point of your pretender is its bless bonus... you aren't going to be that much weaker early on for not having them.

(this is coming from someone who really doesn't understand the game, mind you)

   The problem with your suggestion is that what you describe being a problem (from my understanding) is the trade off for getting a good bless. An awake pretender can do anything from getting more provinces to boost your research before others so you can do stuff like hurry towards artifacts and such. So yes making them not give bonus would "balance" stuff but you wouldn't be able to have a good bless and actually use it when it is most important.

I'm not sure if you're actually for or against the suggestion, because I can't seem to correlate his suggestion and your description.

He's saying that pretenders that aren't awake (as in, still Dormant or Imprisoned), shouldn't have a bless bonus until they become awake. The ability of awake pretenders to act out sooner is mitigated by the relatively smaller point pool they get, which means a lesser bonus.

You're saying that... awake pretenders can act out sooner, and... something. Do you mean that having a good bless and not being able to use it until your pretender is active is a bad thing in this case? Because that's kind of the point of the suggestion.

Awake pretenders get to act out early but are limited in strength, dormant and imprisoned ones have to rely on their followers alone at the beginning but bring much more power to bear when they awake. Seems reasonable.

[Kagus]

He was just explaining why dormancy/imprisonment is specifically meant to be the balancing point for a good bless, and that the functionality is there for a reason.  He's against the suggestion.


Anybody else remember when there were no special bless effects?  Everybody got a morale and I think attack bonus.  That was it.  There really wasn't much of any reason to take high paths in any magic school, unless you really wanted to have a LOT of claymen or something.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Kagus is correct in what I meant. Not being able to use your pretender is the trade off for being able to get multiple major blesses or many high scales.

[E. Albright]

Kagus: Yes, I remember the glorious days of Dom1 when all blesses were equal. I kinda miss Dom2's buying of different fort styles, if we're waxing nostalgic here.

--

I can kinda see the point of limiting or eliminating bless effects when the pretender is dormant or imprisoned (a lot of the talk when Dom4 came out was how much more it was pushing bless strategies, and while there's less noise of that now, you still hear it), but for consistency, you'd almost have to take it away again if the pretender dies. Which would discourage actually using the things outside the lab.

[Frumple]

I'd probably say about the most I'd be comfortable seeing is counting the bless as one path less if the pretender isn't active. So N9 would be N8, etc. More than that sounds... excessive, and seriously incintivises being cautious with the pretender more than I'd personally be happy seeing. Don't want the game to make them more passive than they can already end up... be nice if they did something to make them less passive, honestly. Maybe let them do magic-y stuff without a lab, possibly at a path malus, so they're more encouraged to wander around. Possibly even act as a mobile lab, to really make things interesting.

Actually, bless-no-work/work-less-when-inactive + mobile-lab-now could make for some bloody interesting choices. Something both to incentivize caution and reward activity.

[PrimusRibbus]

Re: Pretender balance, am I the only one who thinks that non-awake pretenders shouldn't give bless bonuses until they become active?  Seems like the main trade off of non-awake is early weakness, and if the primary point of your pretender is its bless bonus... you aren't going to be that much weaker early on for not having them.

(this is coming from someone who really doesn't understand the game, mind you)

Major bless tends to be a fairly risky strategy for many nations. You're often limited to one or two viable pretenders, sacrificing early expansion potential, throwing your ideal scales out the window, and have more points of failure than other nation models (squishy initial priests, relying on specific mid-high research summonables, etc). For some nations their major blessed prophet and handful of blessable capitol recruits are basically their only option to take out indies in the first year or two.

Now granted, that's not a big deal with the slower pace of a single player game. However awake SC pretenders in multiplayer are already nightmarish when used correctly, and bad early expansion has decided many a Dom4 game within 10 turns.

[chaoticag]

From a crunching the numbers perspective, awake pretenders guarantee a stronger economy through their expansion. You have two lands by turn 2, then your army expands out and you get 4 by turn three, as you work on another army to go further out. And the earlier you establish an income the faster it comes in. By no means is it flashy, but getting down that second fort a few turns earlier is a big deal, as well as a better choice of magic sites hopefully. Adding a bless on top of that, well, makes it a clear cut choice to go for really.