nOObonian

Join Date 10/2006

Custom Sovereign builds

With the removal of organized, I’ve changed my custom build quite a bit. Wanted to discuss what everyone goes with. I ended up doing the following:

No weapons. Just buy a club at the first city, the goodie huts provide enough gold to cover the costs. Later can get spears and bow without too much hassel. (8 points for a staff just seems high).
Royalty. The added prestige helps the city growth, getting me to level 3 earlier and more gold. (god I hope they add taxes)
Adventurer. For the extra moves, with a mount (and maybe the boots and cape) I can cover a lot of ground, but have to go solo without organized. Going solo isn’t a problem till later in the game.
The biggest batch of points for me seems to be getting all the spell books. This way I can direct my spell research based on what shards are nearby at the beginning of the game. Only thing is all the spells are basically the same. (God it sucks picking fire, air, and earth, only to have two water shards 5 spaces away).
I get the technology and arcane bonus talents, just to get that going early game. I try to justify it by saying over the entire game length it's like a 20% bonus. I notice that I never actually check, just in case.
I generally don’t take the weaknesses as even those little reductions seem to have big impacts over the longer term. (Fewer children> who would pick that? My children usually turn out to be demi-gods regenerating mana and health in every battle. I basically put my sovereign and spouse away and let the kids wreak havoc upon the land).

Wanted to see what some other strategies are? Am I missing anything big?

elemental

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Currently I'm playing around with different builds for my sovereign trying to see what I like now that Organized is gone. These are some general guidelines I follow though any/all of them may change with my next build.

1. I always take royalty because I play kingdom and I like to get the +2 mana regen building asap. +3 essence per turn makes champions/sovereign actually viable as magical war machines.

2. I always take Insane and Inefficient because I never put my sovereign in a city. He's always collecting goody huts, doing quests, or killing wandering monsters if he's not involved in fighting the AI. There's no advantage to being in a city anyway except healing faster.

3. I do take ugly most of the time. Currently it seems broken as I still get 4 children anyway. Even if it worked I'd probably still take it because my children seem to always end up with 10 in almost every stat even though neither parent has 10 in any stat (usually 15+ love Rilis). Plus, by the time my kids grow up I wouldn't need them anyway the AI is already far weaker than me (play on ridiculous).

4. I don't take equipment because it can be purchased with gold which is a renewable resource.

5. I take Fire, Earth, Air, and Water spellbooks. Fire for the Fire Giant and powerful damage spells. Earth for the Stone Giant mainly. Water for the Ice Lord. Air is just in case I only get air shards. Enchantment can't be researched easily in the magic tech tree so I don't want to waste the points on it.

6. Skills I'm still iffy on. I like Hardy because again every little bit helps. Natural Tracker seems overpriced to me without organized, and I play men and so traveling boots/wayfarer's cloak gives me enough movement. +1 tech/arcane/gold seems petty after a very short time though I can see value in them. Diplomacy I'm seriously wondering if it even works. +2 food from green thumb (or whatever it's called) strikes me as incredibly useless, I'm guaranteed food at the start and I never have a problem with food anyway. The morale adjusting skills I've read are overpowered but I haven't ever used them I don't see much value when I kill everything before it hits me anyway. So I generally put all my spare points into stats after taking hardy and sometimes 1 other skill.

7. I reduce strength to 5 because my sovereign is primarily a caster anyway. Intelligence and Essence are 15. Constitution I generally put up to 15 as well now because, let's face it champions have crap HP and every little bit helps. If I have any remaining I will increase dexterity, otherwise I leave it at 10.

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LOL, here is my experimental build. And I am surprised just how well things are going! Took all Talents except the 3% one. Took Warlord to start off with sentinels to help me in the start.

Ugly F

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1: Never took any equipment, doesn't make sense to spend permanent points for temporary benefit. But then i am always playing large games, it might make sense on very small maps.

2, 3: Royalty and adventurer are mutually exclusive, you cant take both. I usually go with adventurer, because i believe royalty is broken (instead of adding one point of prestige, it doubles prestige), and because adventurer is still useful to my offsprings should they inherit it(same reason i usually take an adventurer husband/wife)

4: all spellbooks. Not only are they cheap, but picking them at start is the only way to get them currently, so not picking fire means no fireballs ever, etc.

5: meditative and brilliant are good choices IMHO, as they help big time at start, are still useful later, and even are useful if your kids inherit them(unlike, say, naturalist)

6: no weaknesses, i believe they are unbalanced as they don't really disadvantage you and only provide free points. Only exception is clumsy, i sometimes take it for an 'old wizard' type of sovereign.

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I don't buy all 4 spell books, just earth and fire (fire for the combat spells, earch for the terrain transformations). All other spellbooks are more or less just versions of the same spells. I raise both intelligence & wisdom to max, also constitution. I take the merchant and adventurer: +1 mp and +1 gold. On turn 1 I hire janusk and buy two sets of travelling boots for janusk & soverign, then send them both off 180 degrees in opposite directions. I make a beeline for fireball, fire giant, imbue champion & city spam with pioneer construction as first build .. works every time as of now.

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You're missing on ice giant if you skip water. It is much more powerful than fire or stone ones. 60-something attack makes it competitive even in the age of squads.

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Best sov in my exp is the pure caster.

Female- So I can hook up with J asap.

Race- Men. So I can buy boots.

Drop- str, cha, dex to 5. Up int and wis to 15. Con 14.

History- Royalty. By far the best option you can pick.

Spell books: Water for Icelord, fire for damage and firegaint. Earth is nice for the golem but it's overkill. Icelord kills all and is not dependent on mana.

Weakness: as stated above Insane and Inefficient are free points.

Talents: Brilliant, Meditative, Wealthy, Green Thumb, Hardy, Tracker.

Equipment: The +1 movment boots. Only way you can get them as Empire.

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Race-Random

Gender-Random

Strengths-random

Spell book-limit 1 selected at random

Job-random

talents-2 random

Weakness-1 random

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