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[E. Albright]

It's worth noting that Transformation doesn't ALWAYS remove upkeep - worst-case scenario upkeep-wise it turns you into a 270g Forest Troll Seithberender (which is obviously only worst-case as far as upkeep goes) or a 250g Hydra (which does kinda suck slot-wise, but gives you +1N half the time and is a hydra in any case), but most of the other costs are in the 0-20 range. The bigger risk is being turned into a Feebleminded bug or foulspawn...

[Cruxador]

The three pretender design archetypes* (awake expander, bless, rainbow) all serve different needs. You don't need an awake expander if your troops are OP. You don't want a bless if your sacreds suck or you have a different strategy in mind. (Scales would be a sub-type, like you have to tank almost all of them to get a triple bless, if you even can)

A scales build is definitely a more prominent type than rainbow.

Rainbows are good if you have specific plans to use specific spells or items and you need someone with paths your national mages don't have, or if you just want to keep your options open as far as making boosters for some of the paths.

This isn't unique to rainbows, bless pretenders unlock a lot of big magic with bless builds too, and generally it's something you want to consider for any build; you can often get something useful for relatively cheap on top of achieving another goal.

Casting transformation creates a up-keep free unit, right?

Yes, this is useful for pans especially.

[Shadowlord]

It depends on how you look at it, I suppose. I say "I don't want a bless or an awake pretender this time" and that means, for me, an imprisoned rainbow with strong scales. My bless chassis pretenders (like the standard N9Ex) tend to have good scales as well, but not amazing ones. I haven't been able to bring myself to try a double or triple bless yet because of the terrible terrible scales they demand in sacrifice. So for me they're subsidiary, customized for each nation (as with everything).

But I can see how you could come at it from the other direction, first asking: What scales would suit this nation best? I'm not sure that that's what you're saying, though.

P.S. You definitely don't usually need 9 in a path to unlock the big magic,  and boosters will let you cast it at an even lower base path level. So while you're right that you unlock a lot with bless build, you can still make a rainbow that takes two paths to 6 along with others to 2, and unlock more than the bless build (obvious tradeoffs are obvious of course).

[ThtblovesDF]

It's worth noting that Transformation doesn't ALWAYS remove upkeep - worst-case scenario upkeep-wise it turns you into a 270g Forest Troll Seithberender (which is obviously only worst-case as far as upkeep goes) or a 250g Hydra (which does kinda suck slot-wise, but gives you +1N half the time and is a hydra in any case), but most of the other costs are in the 0-20 range. The bigger risk is being turned into a Feebleminded bug or foulspawn...

Ah thanks for the stats and thanks for the answers guys.

As for pretender, I go for... whats cool&flavorfull : /

[cider]

I'm very much a noob to this game, and wonder if there are some general (as in, works for many nations) strategies to employ when facing large numbers of heavily armored units? Especially ways that doesn't include late game spells.

[AlStar]

I'm very much a noob to this game, and wonder if there are some general (as in, works for many nations) strategies to employ when facing large numbers of heavily armored units? Especially ways that doesn't include late game spells.

Depending on just how large the groups are, lightning spells (thunder would be ideal - since otherwise you're looking at using chain lighting, which means your mages will be awfully close to the front lines) are good against heavy armor. Alternatively, if you can hit them with enough fireballs, you can hope to fatigue them out. Astral has its fatigue-causing spell, although that's fairly high up the tree.

Any spell that immobilizes should work - maws of the earth (or its low-level equivalent) can work, and I think the nature binding spell might do the same thing (not 100% on that though - it may just make them waste turns getting out without lowering defense.)

Edit: Also, acid works wonders if you've got water/fire mages. And there are the 'break armor' spells, which I believe are earth spells. Weight of stones, if the troops you're facing have low MR.

Edit^2: If you've got death mages, you can try to spam skeletons. Enough of them and the heavy armor troops will fatigue themselves out.

[Cruxador]

If there was an easy and universally accessible way to defeat a massive investment in troops, troops would be worthless. You can try spamming armor removers though, especially if you have earth magic. Fatiguing out would also be a good option if you have access to appropriate spells for that.

[Shadowlord]

Anything that's armor piercing only uses half the protection value of what it hits, and anything that's armor negating ignores protection entirely.

(That link goes to the mod inspector and does a search for spells which contain the armor negating property anywhere in them. Some of the things returned by that search have an armor negating effect but not armor piercing damage - it searches all the effects on each spell)

If you can recruit crossbowmen, they're more effective at hurting heavily armored troops than other archers, since crossbows are armor piercing.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'm very much a noob to this game, and wonder if there are some general (as in, works for many nations) strategies to employ when facing large numbers of heavily armored units? Especially ways that doesn't include late game spells.

Midgame spells!

AlStar named some spells, but which particular spells you're likely to use vary nation to nation.

Crossbows are armour piercing (effective armour is halved), but getting those outside late age is unlikely. On the strategic end, massing armoured troops can be difficult and they're often MM1. You could possibly simply outmanoeuvre them and avoid direct confrontation in favour of raiding the hell out of them. Again the effectiveness of this varies based on a particular nation v nation matchup.

I find it difficult to give general advice in Dominions. Abysia vs Arco plays different from Abysia vs Pan, and even Abysia vs Arco (early game) plays different from Abysia vs Arco (late game).

[Shadowlord]

If he's lucky enough to be playing MA Marignon, MA Ulm, or MA T'ien Ch'i, he'll have 'em. Otherwise, in MA, it's possible for indie provinces to have crossbowmen. They're not exactly common, but they do exist.

I don't think I've seen them in the early age.

[cider]

Thanks for the tips guys, I should be able to work something out. 

[AlStar]

Aside from getting an astral mage in the province or overloading the province with surplus commanders, is there any good way to deal with mental attack spam?

[USEC_OFFICER]

Kill or incapacitate the mages targeting you. So... Unless you have plenty of assassins or some non-Mind Hunt way to reliably gank commanders the answer is no. Without Astral you don't really have a good way to deal with Mind Hunts.

[Shadowlord]

You may have a province with indie astral mages in it, if you haven't checked them. (Or maybe you have checked and you already know that you don't)

http://dom4archive.kermodebear.org/www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/mind-hunt.html has some other suggestions, like boosting the MR of the units being mind hunted.

[AlStar]

You may have a province with indie astral mages in it, if you haven't checked them. (Or maybe you have checked and you already know that you don't)

Astral indies are rare enough that finding them is something that I take very seriously and exploit ASAP.

Actually, I try to do that for just about any non-shaman indies I find. Only exception I've run into so far is finding a Temple of the Solar Bull - Heliodromus are 90g, which gets you 1F 1F/N 10%F mages ... which would be great, except that they're also heretic 2 and poor researching. While any 2F or 3F results would be easy to put to good use on the front lines, I'm unwilling to deal with the nearly 50% of 1F1N poor researching heretics I'd also end up with.

But okay, back to the mind hunt - it looks like I'm doing all I can for the moment - just got to throw as many commanders in there as possible and hope that my important commanders don't get unlucky.