Heretic

[Uhm hoi]

My personal opinion (and remembering the original difficulties). NM definitely feels easier than MS.

I think often people underestimate their opponent wpa. I have often investigated claims of spells being broken and invariably i have found the estimated opponent wpa is way off.

So why not save yourself the admin time and add a way for players to spy it directly?

[Blue Mass]

Heretic can be the most powerful personality this age if used correctly. But sadly I don't think any one this coming age will use Heretic correctly. I wasn't planning on using Heretic but I may use it just for ****s and giggles. I've been reading a lot of the posts from this thread and other threads, and people seem to think next age will be a hybrid age. They are mistaken. The changes gives themselves to a play-style that favors one-role type provinces. @Palem it is not a hybrid personality. I may play this but if I do it will ruin it for the rest of you because they may get rid of it. I was going to give it at least an age before I played it.

Add on: I'll just tell you all. Because I really don't want to play a growing province. Heretic is meant to be played as a grower. With tpa and wpa good enough where the province below him or her in size can't op the province in order to weaken the province. All you do is have mills, banks, arms, guilds, farms, towers, some homes. And you just out grow everyone the whole age. You cast dice, and explore that's it. Pretty simple. You can make a few good land grabs too, oop, if you're a halfer heretic.

[Bart of Sparta]

I agree that hyrbids aren't particularly strong. Best warring set-up is fae + heavy attackers (Orc/tact probs best). But yea, do you want to let 17 of your players have a boring age just logging in to make their hits ^^ ?

[jwuzi]

WHY DON'T PEOPLE REALIZE HERETIC IS FREE ESPIONAGE?!

UD / Heretic pls

[Bishop]

So why not save yourself the admin time and add a way for players to spy it directly?

Because magic is not thievery.

[FATstrat]

It's really not a TM personality though. It's a hybrid personality. I'm currently planning on playing one next age.

Yeh I shouldn't have said T/M, I just mean halfers really. Halfers don't struggle to keep decent tpa. Elfs are the only real hybrids I can see taking heretic. Orcs and avians could definitely use it to be an A/t/m but it would require an all round kd strategy.

[Cry0]

If you are poorly prepared maybe Heretic is good for you then, but it is at the cost of a real personality bonus.

Halfling is one of the worst races for heretic. Training half price theives is easy, and with decent TDs not only do you lose less thieves, you also fail less, so the effect is two fold. Good t/ms have managed their thief/wiz losses without heretic for so long, it really does seem like a personality for first-timers.

The worst?

It is one of the only two that synergize with the benefits.

50% tpa from halfer + 0 theif losses from heretic = no need to run 15%+ TDs on a A/T

That is 15% land you can dump into barracks or training grounds to help boost your offensive abilities.

Any other race/personality would need to still run TD to get the TPA boost to effectively op people, making the 0 thief losses a overlapping benefit.

Halfer is the only one that can use that personality perk without overlap. I would argue they are the best from that stand point.

The wiz losses, nightmare, rune refunds are all negligible for a/t, it is all about thief losses which is a huge benefit IMO especially if you plan to be in long wars with extended hostile where you really make use of the ability to NS (nightstrike) enemy offenses into the floor before going to war.

[Cry0]

Add on: I'll just tell you all. Because I really don't want to play a growing province. Heretic is meant to be played as a grower. With tpa and wpa good enough where the province below him or her in size can't op the province in order to weaken the province. All you do is have mills, banks, arms, guilds, farms, towers, some homes. And you just out grow everyone the whole age. You cast dice, and explore that's it. Pretty simple. You can make a few good land grabs too, oop, if you're a halfer heretic.

Not really sure why you see heretic is beneficial for a growth/bank prov.

The limiting factor in dicing is going to be mana, not rune production. I'd rather be a sage to benefit from the free science.

[Tadpole]

I think often people underestimate their opponent wpa. I have often investigated claims of spells being broken and invariably i have found the estimated opponent wpa is way off.

Very much agreed! People are notoriously bad at making number guesstimations, heh.

My NM experience (and I'd guess Sampuans as well) is based of wiz calcs though. And while I'm sure x3.5 WPA could be enough for a good 70% or so success rate on perfect rnw - you can't build a kd strategy around that. You'd need more for those starting out of optimal rnw range, and you need more once the target drops out of rnw range (as they do while suffering NMs). Even with careful NM distribution along nw lines I've experienced half-failed NM waves when wpa levels have been shy of 4, trending down towards 3-3.5. I've only ever given it a shot when its been absolutely crucial.

[Blue Mass]

@Cry0 If you want to start dicing you need lots of towers. The more you have the sooner you can cast. And dice is not a cheap spell. Only one or two war spells cost more than it. I am no disagreeing more mana will help. You will only have 24 hours before oop. You need to already being in full force casting and exploring none stop and all the while training defense. Elf lends its self to this combo. You can build up enough towers that you'll have enough runes to cast dice on the first day they are up and running. By the 17th hour using this tactic one should already had casted dic many times. Do you see what I am saying. Simple strategy yet very effective. I would say around 68% raw towers with around 22% guilds. With the elf bonus to towers it should be just enough.

[Cry0]

@Cry0 If you want to start dicing you need lots of towers. The more you have the sooner you can cast. And dice is not a cheap spell. Only one or two war spells cost more than it. I am no disagreeing more mana will help. You will only have 24 hours before oop. You need to already being in full force casting and exploring none stop and all the while training defense. Elf lends its self to this combo. You can build up enough towers that you'll have enough runes to cast dice on the first day they are up and running. By the 17th hour using this tactic one should already had casted dic many times. Do you see what I am saying. Simple strategy yet very effective. I would say around 68% raw towers with around 22% guilds. With the elf bonus to towers it should be just enough.

Ah, oop rush yeah.

However, I am not sure it would give you a boost that would sustain throughout the age. Especially since later in age you would be able to get plenty of rune aid if needed.

Of course, I never played growth kd so talking from 0 experience on this.

[noobium]

dicing isn't that expensive. kinda superfluous with cheap explorable acres, though i guess it scales okay for cows...

there is virtually no point in dicing so much oop. use the pool if you're putting up explorers, otherwise just hit for acres.
it's not worth a whole lot to just explore or dice 100 pool acres... better to explore 400 in one lump sum on the provs that can benefit. you could dice on top of that exploration, but there isn't much for dicing a 400a prov. elf can do it pretty easy.

i haven't cowed but i'd imagine mills are useful for cutting down the initial soldier investment, since soldiers are in short supply oop...

[Caelum]

It's amazing to me how many people don't realize how op heretic is.

One poster finally got part of it right. It is in fact, free espionage.

[noobium]

OP? Idk. Low-risk opping - particularly thievery - is pretty strong but it's still a roll of the dice, while other personality bonuses are more consistent. 20-50% success on thievery, even if it's at basically no risk, is still only 20-50%... and 80-90% success doesn't benefit much from the heretic bonus.

Nightmares makes it a definite choice tho, but lacking a military bonus can make oow rough.

I wouldn't want to nor would I allow a Heretic kingdom to fight on terms favorable to them... dunno why people agree to the arranged war meta in the first place, but arranged war is really favorable for nm casters.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

My personal opinion (and remembering the original difficulties). NM definitely feels easier than MS.

I think often people underestimate their opponent wpa. I have often investigated claims of spells being broken and invariably i have found the estimated opponent wpa is way off.

we calc opponent wpa with munkbot, and i do pen&paper calcs too if i have time.. as i said though, i dont have hard proof with numerical data to make a claim, just a personal observation.. i remember a list with difficulty bars on it from the old times, i think nightmare was the one of the two with full bars there, along with ll..

edit: i actually googled it and found - http://www.utopiatemple.com/utopiagu...l/39/magic.htm - i remember wrong apparently, ll & ms have full bars, but nightmare is VERY close up there too..