I asked about getting all the spell books in a different post and got some great feedback and now I was hoping I might get some more help in building my sovereign. For example, which trats do you like, which stats do you bump up, which faction do you like?
Any and all thoughts or opinions on building my sovereign would be appreciated. Thanks in advance
"Organized" and "Adventurer" will make you very happy.
Since the sovereign is the only caster, I usually give him high int and wis (which I think corresponds to essence?). It seems like a waste to mix with melee attributes (str, dex, con), since you'll soon recruit a bunch of heroes that can't do anything but melee. Charisma is not that useful, either, since trained units are generally more powerful than recruited heroes. Just my current strategy anyway... I hope I have to change it soon with patched changes!
One thing to remember when you build your sov is to BUY SOME EQUIPMENT as soon as you can. All the premade ones have starting stuff (like a staff) which you will not unless you pay for it with your character building points. It took me forever to realize why my poor custom sov. was getting eaten with his 0 attack value.
Err, you can imbue every champion with your essence to make them spellcasters. Look for the "Imbue Champion" spell. And a Melee Sovereign is, at the moment, much more powerful than a casting Sovereign.
True, but make sure your essence is a multiple of 3, so you don't wind up with a useless 1 point of mana leftover on your sovereign.
I don't understand what you mean by multiple of 3, how can you tell you have it?
You can always increase your essence when leveling up, by advancing in the Magic (Kingdom) or Sorcery (Empire) tech tree and by building city improvements that increase max essence globally. You can easily build an army of casting champions if you want to. The problem right now is that a lot of spells are not really worthwhile and the magic system is broken.
I mean the Imbue spell costs 3 essence to cast (permanently deducts it from your essence attribute and gives it to another hero). If you start out with 10 essence, you can cast it three times on another hero(s), giving nine essence to that hero(s), leaving 1 for your sovereign. You can then add to it when you level up, which when I did it, brings you back up from 1 to 4 (I don't know why it added three, but it does). Repeat.
(Sorry to hijack this post) Are there many techs that raise essence globally? The only ones I've gotten to are ones that increase essence by a percentage (which of course is useless if all your units have zero essence).
That one you are talking about. Well, it's a repeatable tech, so if you really want to you can push it up to 50% or more, which is really beneficial. Then there are a few improvements you can build that increase essence, forgot their names though.
Drop STR to 5 leave DEX at 10, I up CHR to 14. CON to 15, WIS and INT to 15, pick the two disadvantages that occur when you are in a city, since you will never be in one anyway. After that...well Adventurer helps you out in early game, but you can't wear traveler boots so it's a bit of a wash once you research a little bit. Organized is hugely important, having it will give your kids a chance to spawn with it, which is gigantic since they put your sovereign to shame quite easily. I would up essence at every opportunity on your sov, give him the potions that help essence and imbue all the champs with 14 or more intelligence. This is because later in the game the melee champs are pretty useless. I would pick the champ with 18 strength and give every tome for attack and defense to that champ. This will allow you to have one melee champ that can stand up in the later game and actually hit things. I normally hunt for Rilis as she starts the game and is a very good fighter. By level 10 with a warhammer, leather armor and a warg mount, sov armor and shield she sports 65 attack and 63 defence, I never changed her dex, put a few levels into con and pumped STR.
Despite all of that, after a few levels a squad of warhammer knights will have over 100 attack, 100 health and 80 defense or something, so you can see how badly it goes for champs even in the early mid game. Look for beneficial abilities on the heroes (like Dominate), and marry yourself or your kids to them, and there is a good chance your kids or grandchildren will have those abilities. Your kids will regen health and mana in combat, which is the big reason they kick your sovs butt. So marry as early as you can and marry your sons to the daughters of kingdoms around you. I wish you could see their stats but I can't figure out how.
Pick Fire if you want some early spells to help out, maybe Air as well if you want some variation. After a few games I feel Fire and Earth are a good combo. Mostly the offensive spells are only good in auto combat (with some shards) and your primary spells will be healing and confusing the enemy in combat so you don't really need too much more than what you get researching the magic tree.
That may be true in the beginning but I have purchased NPC's that had lots of mana and the ability to cast all the spells that I had learned to that point. Check out the NPC's stats when you encounter them (press on their icon on the map and then press the big picture of them at the center bottom of the menu bar.) You can see that some of them already have high intelligence and if they have any essence, they too are channelers. I have used them to boost defense or offense or to run around improving cities with Brilliance, etc. NPC's are worth getting and if you have to save a bit to get a potential channeller, it may pan out for you in the end. The low value adventurers need to be looked at closely and rejected if they are not worth the gilders to buy.
One more thing - as soon as you can, find an NPC opposite sex mate for your sovereign, the higher rated, the better, and marry them ASAP. Make bambinos! Free channellers! Cool!
spellbook picks that I like
fire: earliest good summon for kingdom (Fire Giant), but requires 16 mana to cast
water: lord of ice. Has around 70 attack and decent hp. Quite useful for fighting creeps if you can research it fast enough (level 5)
I don't bother with int in the beginning. I find I can do just as much damage with str and a simple weapon without having to worry about mana regen. Just let them walk into range, then 1-hit kill them. And the majority of spells I cast are summons which int is useless for. Int only matters for my children, because they make great casters with the ability to regen mana in-combat.
As everyone mentioned, organized is an awesome talent.
I usually take insane and inefficient as well since they rarely affect me.
Some professions I choose for my sov.
Royalty: +1 prestige to all your cities
Thief: 20% extra gold from fights. I find that late game, a big chunk of my income can come from battles, so having an extra 20% is nice.
Right now I'm playing around with the intimidating and natural leader traits. It's fun being able to panic an entire army, giving you free attacks on them without worrying about any retaliation
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