I think there's a reason to pick some of the utility incarnates as imprisoned: Windwalker, Obfuscate and Resilience of the Earth spring to mind most specifically. Not sure which nations would want to roll with them though. Imprisoned scales are maybe weaker in a vacuum, but that ignores the nations who have positive scales limits built in, especially Phaeacia and LA Marignon who each get two positive scales (and don't necessarily want a big bless like MA Pelagia, Ys or TNN). Undying/EB/Heroism seems like it might take the place of the 'all around good stuff' stat bless builds (the ones where you took 1-2 levels in attack/def/strength plus mweaps and some incidental resists). If you want 7+ candles, it's sometimes going to be cheaper to take an immobile over an equivalent rainbow. Respect to the Kailasa Bandar Artillery expansion. If you stack enough of them, you can even expand without a screen :P

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

Great point about nations that get built in scales didn't think about that if anything they're even in a better spot due to population being up. Agreed about undying eb heroism especially on nations with nature and sacred astral mages due to undying turbo communions. That is cheap enough for immobiles which I hadn't thought about and you're right that it does open some possibilities for high dom

@MogFlintlock

4 ай бұрын

@@topguides6991 Oh, also, regarding imprisoned scales, there a couple of titans (Jade Emperor, Titan of Forethought, Duiu of Farming and the Neter of the Moon) which give two different scales as well. There's also the bonus gem pretenders to consider as part of an imprisoned scales pretender.

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

@@MogFlintlock True true im quite a fan of irminsul for that very reason more growth + nature. What a world whe live in where the Duiu of farmin could be the meta

I liked the video with the main archetypes broken out like that

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

Thanks!

IMO premier nation for awake scales expander in EA is Mekone. Very resource hungry, no sacred troops at all, mages wouldn't mind a bless but doesn't need one, so fast tempo on 2nd fort + maybe drumming up some indy archer off blazing fast expansion can put a lot of pressure on someone before turn 15...and similarly most nations won't want to attack a nation with anti-raider monster and a pile of ~24 magic pierce damage weapons either. You need to go kill other nations for useful indy mages, but you're equipped to do that. Another nerf to dormant pretenders is that turn timer taking away spell buffs can easily get them killed if they find themselves in a tarpit...and there's more magic to tarpit than before! Blood bond is dangerous vs gifts, but nations like Kailasa can at least buff luck onto their blessed guys to ignore 75% of the direct hits. Priority tech if forced into fighting such a matchup. Stat bless can still be quite solid but you want a sacred for it and it should definitely be a rainbow spamming 2s, 3s, and 4s, not immobile chassis.

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

All great points. I hadn't considered mekone for an awake scales expander but you're right it's an ideal candidate. As for point buffing luck on kalasa. I wasn't the biggest fan in 5 in point buffing but will still do it. Point buffing mushusu as UR is some really fond memories. It just feels so bad in 6 to lose the mage turns now that they're more valuable but even so when you're right you're right. Point buffing luck seems goated vs big rocks

so you really like reinvig bless, -2 luck, and 1 order is the first thing i picked up on. i find +2 luck mandatory, and reinvig basically worthless as a bless since i never want blesses for mages, so im curious how you came to the opposite conclusion

@topguides6991

2 ай бұрын

Hmmm i'm not sure how +2 luck is mandatory with the hero arrival chances changes luck is less important than ever and after throwing tempature one scale luck is the best scale to throw for more bless points. Obviously there are some exceptions like if you play in the late age the gems become more useful or if you like playing with turmoil luck can become better than growth. If you have sacred mages revig is nice just to spash on them especcially if you dont have sacred troops you will be using the other kind of generic blesses are resists magic weapons and spirit sight and farcaster/precision and with the nerfs to resists I just like splashing revig. That said if you intend to use yoru sacred troops oveiously there are better blesses. But like im not using ea ulms sacrdeds and all their mages are sacreds so why not

@meowmeow9326

2 ай бұрын

@@topguides6991 i asked a discord server to see if it was just me really not liking to take misfortune, and along with other discussions i had about luck (most people seem to think the same, that +2 luck is really good), the events u get from misfortune 2 seem to be a lot worse than dom5, but this is based on only a few peoples anecdotal evidence as there doesnt seem to be any documented notes on this

@meowmeow9326

2 ай бұрын

​@@topguides6991 i asked discord about this, which made for decent discussion. i already knew a lot of people there preferred and believed luck 2 to be pretty valuable, but i asked specifically about changes between the games and their thoughts on misfortune 2. it seems we dont have actual logs [yet] of this so its all just players experience, but the consensus was that misfortune is significantly more... misfortunate in dom6 compared to 5, where in 5 it was typical to take 2 misfortune for almost free points. here is a compilation of the various players feedback id gotten: hero chance both ways is less, but the misfortune events are also significantly stronger, when getting troops invading/rebelling - double-triple more enemies attack. most people tended to agree that misfortune scales felt a lot worse in dom6. the best/worse events start at luck/mf 3, but getting closer to 3 in either direction is significant because of natural changes during the game (and at 4 things get really bad, like your land sinking into the sea (lol), and luck3+ starts getting super nice). its very common at luck 2, to get gems or 500-600 gold, and that gold early game is kinda a game changer, really frees you up to get extra strong. luck and misfortune also affects the changes, in a minor way, to events that change your scales, so getting mf2, youre gunna end up tanking your scales more over time, and vice versa every once in a while and you reaaaallly dont want mf3-4, not to mention other scales getting tanked. mf1 isnt too bad, and luck 1 is kinda nice. the discussion was fairly long but this was the gist of what everyone said (any redundancies here is because more than one person voiced the same thing, and here i was just kinda rattling off the opinions in the order they came in)

@meowmeow9326

2 ай бұрын

@@topguides6991 i asked discord about this, which made for decent discussion. i already knew a lot of people there preferred and believed luck 2 to be pretty valuable, but i asked specifically about changes between the games and their thoughts on misfortune 2. it seems we dont have actual logs [yet] of this so its all just players experience, but the consensus was that misfortune is significantly more... misfortunate in dom6 compared to 5, where in 5 it was typical to take 2 misfortune for almost free points. here is a compilation of the various players feedback id gotten: hero chance both ways is less, but the misfortune events are also significantly stronger, when getting troops invading/rebelling - double-triple more enemies attack. most people tended to agree that misfortune scales felt a lot worse in dom6. the best/worse events start at luck/mf 3, but getting closer to 3 in either direction is significant because of natural changes during the game (and at 4 things get really bad, like your land sinking into the sea (lol), and luck3+ starts getting super nice). its very common at luck 2, to get gems or 500-600 gold, and that gold early game is kinda a game changer, really frees you up to get extra strong. luck and misfortune also affects the changes, in a minor way, to events that change your scales, so getting mf2, youre gunna end up tanking your scales more over time, and vice versa every once in a while and you reaaaallly dont want mf3-4, not to mention other scales getting tanked. mf1 isnt too bad, and luck 1 is kinda nice. the discussion was fairly long but this was the gist of what everyone said (any redundancies here is because more than one person voiced the same thing, and here i was just kinda rattling off the opinions in the order they came in)

Say it with me dude, "cavalry."

@topguides6991

3 ай бұрын

:( im sorry I'm practicing saying it now but its hard to break habit

35:00 my incarnate part of the bless is reforming flesh, I don't think that I'd have sacred Liches (or Tarts) before imprisoned gods come online and then I have a rainbow Demilich that can cast most globals (seriously, before even playing one of them, I've made one of those for every nation with lich worthy death magic priests, also usually includes mending bones, fire res, shock res and as much mr as possible, no mending bones for LA Agartha and storm fly for Formoria and possibly Helheim) ps. lets rename Tarts bless into Lich bless

@topguides6991

3 ай бұрын

Honestly I love the litch so I'm here for it I can see how it's not a waste to take that incarnate. Would definitely scale well

@raffelon9508

3 ай бұрын

@@topguides6991 allways ends up hellscales tough for the whole deal, so be warned, even with Formoria I have problems expanding, being slow works out in my max size PvE games, but would be very risky in multiplayer

MA tier list when market is empty

@topguides6991

3 ай бұрын

lol if youd like me to make one I will

@DavidZhoushutup

3 ай бұрын

Sounds good brother much appreciated

Why do you rate dormant site searchers so low overall? They give incredible value and let you have a bit of everything. You get some of the highest bless points total out of all pretenders so they can provide very solid bless. You can get something like 5x heroism + larger + blood surge which makes your sacred very worth it. They give you absolutely massive gem income boost, you're basically getting akashic knowledge worth 25S every other turn. Also you get ALL crosspath including the rare and coveted boosters and summons. You can trade the loads of gems you get and those rare booster items to get whatever you want from other players so the diversity a full rainbow gives you is worth a lot. You also get ok scales on them so your base economy is also covered. The only issue is people will covet your gem rich lands so you need to be decently powerful to be able to defend yourself. They're my favourite type of pretender and I think they're amazing in the hands of a good player that knows how to make use of all the crosspaths you get to maximize the value of your gems and use the big pool of bless points to get whatever their sacreds need.

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

I agree with you though a lot of time it feels like a middle ground between an awake researcher and rainbow that loses out a bit to much on both ends. You get 200 ish less points compared to an imprisoned rainbow which is about 5 scales. I think that's worth it if a nation has 4 or less paths otherwise I just think it's too much of an investment. But it's true it's valuable to trade with others and does offer a lot of versatility but I think most of the time an imprisoned rainbow is better. Though it may vary with age with EA a sight searcher always is the best and falling with ages

@MegaAnon

4 ай бұрын

You lose 5 scales vs traditional imprisoned rainbow to get 24 turns of pretender activity. Let's say you spend them all to search 12 provinces. In MA at 55 site frequency that's 2 sites per province expected so 24 sites. Let's count 1.5 gems per site for roughly 36 gems per turn. That's easily worth over 1k gold income per turn. 5 scales is like -15% income or so. You'd need income of like 4k before the penalty is more significant than the gems you get. You should actually get even more because you should be priority searching in terrain that has site frequency bonuses but you should also substract whatever sites you'd normally find with your normal site searching but I figure those should mostly even themselves out so the first estimate should be good. I think a lot of nations in MA would take this deal. In EA the value is even better and even more nations could really do well with this type of pretender.

@MogFlintlock

4 ай бұрын

@@MegaAnon You aren't getting the income from those sites up front though, you're getting it ramping up over 36 turns, weighted towards the tail end, whereas extra scales kick in quickly, if not immediately as you take the land. Because they kick in early, you have the power to take more land and/or defend it in early wars. Not to mention, that assumes your god is set to find every site and you wouldn't be site searching otherwise. If you're LA Marignon and you were going to site search every path to 2+ anyway, obviously a site searcher is nearly pointless. But then you run into a sort of paradox; if you're site searching for gems you don't have access to normally, that means your god's the only one who's going to be spending them for most of the game...which they can't do until they're done site searching. A dormant site searcher is very greedy and you need to be a pretty specific sort of nation to want one, I think.

@topguides6991

4 ай бұрын

@@MogFlintlockI couldn't say it better myself though I tend to like greedy builds. I would even go as far as to say on some nations it might be optimals like ea abyssia or Atlantis nations that lack diversity but are already strong early