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[Karlito]

Scales scales scales. Productivity is important, but you'll want some order too, and you can take drain as well, since it won't hurt your main researchers. No need to worry about a bless, but you might want to take a pretender that gives you some magical diversity.

[Frumple]

I'd think prod on MA ulm would actually be... somewhat of a waste? More order would mean more of those resource producing critters (via gold) would mean more resources in the provinces you actually need resources in. And you want oodles (like, seriously, get castles, ooze smiths from your every pore -- this is one of MA Ulm's primary goals, from what I noticed) of priest (IB spam) and master (everything else) smiths anyway. More growth and luck would also mean that (plus all the nice stuff luck helps bring about). Growth would help a bit with your kinda' old main-line casters, too. Prod would give you stuff you can get anyway, y'know? All that gold means more spies, too~

Drain is probably a really good idea, though -- MA Ulm's MR is generally kinda' terrible, from what I saw, and some drain would help counteract that. Prooobably not drain 3, though -- iirc, that opens up some pretty terrible events.

Not sure I'd go so far as to take sloth, but neutral on the prod/sloth scale? Maybe. You do probably want a minor earth bless (everybody wants a minor earth bless, unless they have both no sacred casters and no access to astral for shrouds... maybe even then, since S1 indies are kinda' common) for reinvig on your IB spammers, but nothing beyond that. Seriously the only sacreds you have are the two casters and a H1 priest. Consequentially for that, you probably want your dom as low as you can stand, since you're not pumping out sacred troops (because you don't have any). Burning some for more order/growth/luck (i.e. gold) would probably help offset that with more temples, as well.

And yeah, some diversity would be nice. Your pretender being able to forge some combination of air/fire/astral (and the air/earth would give you elemental staves, eh wot) boosters would be a pretty big deal -- it'd let you get a lot more out of your native randoms.

E: Enough astral to boost your pretender up to gateway casting (S2, with coin then cap, assuming you've got that minor earth bless -- otherwise S3 and coin or cap. You probably would want the S3 anyway, for base mind hunt immunity) would also be a pretty good way to eek out some mobility for your armies.

[Shadowlord]

So, what kind of consequences are there from taking death scales? The pretender-designer claims that 3-death would only reduce population growth by 0.60%, along with decreasing supplies by 45%. I thought it was supposed to kill people, though. Does it have bad events? Would taking 1 luck counteract that, or only taking death 2, or is death something that should just be avoided?

I'm thinking that if I'm using primarily troops that don't need to eat, I don't particularly need supplies in my dominion, and therefore taking death scales can make invading my territory a more difficult prospect. Of course if that would kill off my population, that would present a problem.

[Frumple]

Base population growth is zero, iirc. That -.6% means it's killing off .6% of the population per turn. Over 50-100 turns...

E: As for the rest, death definitely has bad events, though I couldn't say which ones, heh. Light death also isn't that bad, nor is heavy if you expect to transition away from a gold economy at some point (though... not into blood, since that's pretty dependent on population levels). It just means you're definitively gambling that your early to mid game will let you make up for the income erosion inherent with taking death.

[Shadowlord]

Ooh.

[Elfeater]

Okay, got it, what kind of god should I use?

[Frumple]

Ooh.

... and from the multiplayer perspective, death, particular high death, is also a pretty strong declaration of intent -- a death nation can't really afford to not be aggressively expansionist. The only way they can really cope long term is to outpace the erosion of their income with new acquisitions. I'd imagine it would make diplomacy more difficult, as well as make you a more attractive target for alliances (because the sooner you die, the more they get out of your decaying provinces). More than just about anything, a death dominion makes you a very unattractive neighbor.

[E. Albright]

Drain is probably a really good idea, though -- MA Ulm's MR is generally kinda' terrible, from what I saw, and some drain would help counteract that. Prooobably not drain 3, though -- iirc, that opens up some pretty terrible events.

There's really only one meaningfully bad event I've seen with Drain-3 and positive Luck scales, and I've almost never seen it even then - it's just it's one which players hate so much that I think they get seriously loss-adverse and overstate its impact. I speak, of course, of the "Magic is fading" event, which is indeed seriously annoying - since it's percentage-based, you can lose tens or (with sufficiently bloated gem stockpiles) hundreds of gems - but it's manageable, and I honestly still see enough gem-granting events with Luck 3 and Drain 3 that I'm not convinced it's the woeful monstrosity it gets portrayed as.

[tompliss]

So, what kind of consequences are there from taking death scales ?

Don't forget about the old-age afflictions :
If a non-undead non-lifeless has old-age, it may get a new affliction every year, with a chance based on the death/growth scale in tis province.
With growth3, it has approx 10 times less chances of affliction than in death3, or something like that.

(and as with every scales, there are new events. Mainly pop-loss ones, with death)

[Il Palazzo]

If it ain't got stealth, then it'll assassinate a random unit from the army. Good luck targetting a commander this way.

...I'm not sure what you mean. If a unit w/o stealth is given a Black Heart, it'll behave exactly like a unit with stealth and a Black Heart (or a normal assassin) when both are in a besieged fort; i.e., both will assassinate besieging enemy commanders in a completely normal manner.

Or are you just talking about targeting a particular commander for assassination? The bit about stealth is what's confusing me.

I speak from experience in 4.06. While besieged, I put a black heart on a flame spirit, which then proceeded to assassinate skeletons and other assorted chaff from the besieging army.
I concluded, admittedly with a small sample size, that the lack of stealth on the spirit was the deciding factor in the poor choice of targets.
You're telling me I was wrong. Was that a bug, perhaps? We were playing the latest version.

[E. Albright]

I tested immediately before I posted that. A Gifted tarrasque and a wraith lord with Hearts both cheerfully rampaged through the besieging commanders and failed to find targets once all were dead. Just now checking with a flame spirit works just as well. This is in keeping with the conventional wisdom I've always heard on the subject, so if you were assassinating non-commanders, it sounds very much like a bug.

[Besserwisser]

The new patch is out. I'm partial to trying MA Xibalba out because I love me some toads. They've got some great magic diversity and I'm searching for a nice strategy.

[Frumple]

Oh gods. Giant doom parrot. That. That's amazing.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I'm currently looking at MA Nazca and wondering whether it's viable to suicide all of your mages and try to out undead Scelenaria. Your mummies do get a reanimation bonus after all, but 215~ gold for the living priests makes me kinda leery about the cost-efficiency of the entire thing. That plus the fact that you don't have good communion slaves for your uber mummies makes me leery about playing as that nation. Maybe using the living mages is the better idea with Nazca, and instead you just suicide the sun-kings. After all they can summon sacred ghost Caeliums after being mummified, so maybe spending 500 less gold would counteract the high upkeep... 4 sacred flying ghosts per mummy per turn could be very dangerous indeed if you had a good bless. Especially since you have H3 flying priests to lead them around and raid the heck out of enemy provinces.

EDIT: Best of all, the sacred ghost summoning is affected by the amulet of the dead. So you can summon even more insane amounts of them per turn while swallowing up the world. Heheheheh...

[Shadowlord]

Egads! Stealth zotz nerf*! Not in patch notes!

* They're cold-blooded now, and if the replay is accurate to how it would go in 4.14, I would have lost a battle and killed nobody in it (which I actually won with minimal losses).