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======Basics of Higher Level Pretender Design - By Cybertron2======

Very simply put – to get to turn 50, one must first get past turn 10. 
Now at low ELO – when you can finagle diplomacy, expand quickly with a skill advantage, and where there are ample opportunities both defensively and offensively – this is not especially important – compared to good, fundamental, technical play.

But at higher ELO you do have to cross that threshold. Someone whose build is powerful lategame will likely be weaker earlygame. That will not go un-noticed. So players are encouraged to build towards the earlygame. If one doesn’t – the players who did are incentivized to attack them – both because of their early advantage, and their later disadvantage.

Lets use an extreme example to point this out. Most players realize a full imprisoned incarnate bless is a bad idea. Turn 36 is pretty late in the game, and you want to be stronger before that. But ‘WHY’ is it a bad idea specifically. Simply put – other players are stronger earlier, and you paint a big target on your head for a long time. 

The same principle tends to apply to scales. If someone has an unstoppable army of really powerful sacreds, and you have a very much stoppable army of scales troops - well you're an obvious target for that army of sacreds. So even though you may have 'more' troops - you end up with lower early game power.

Now how does a build focus on the earlier parts of the game? Traditionally – this is done by sacrificing scales for a better pretender and more bless points.  

//Even assuming all things are equal - a build without a lategame has to make different gameplay decisions to one that has one. Lets say we have 3 nations of equal power early and midgame, but player 3 will always win lategame. Players 1 and 2 are incentivized to attack player 3. So even in a setting of 'equal power' - generally frontloaded players should have an advantage in early diplomacy. But generally we don't have 'equal power' - and you can make your earlygame stronger by sacrificing some of that lategame scaling - which has a compounding effect.//

====Rainbow Blesses====
We’ll start by looking at rainbow blesses as those are the least complicated from a logical point of view. If you could take full scales and a small bless – you could take less scales and a bigger rainbow bless. In high level play – you’ll see a lot of quite big blesses. The reason is simple – the extra bit of combat power is worth more than the little bit of income a scale will provide. That question is asked over and over – and often it’s best to just buff some units to the stars. Conversely – if you don’t and someone else does – their units will be stronger (all things being equal). 

A rainbow bless tends to give a bunch of stats to make an already efficient sacred - more efficient. If your high defense cavalry was hard to hit before, it will be almost unhittable now. If your unit was chipping through armor - every str is +1 damage flat on hit. Essentially - since the sacred is the most efficient thing the capital can often produce - in the earlygame when players have few forts - having your sacreds (which consume most of recruitment) have considerably better stats tends to be more impactful than a few more troops. Now there are scaling and lategame choices - resists and magic penetration etc, but the broad point I want to illustrate is the nation focusing on their sacreds will generally be stronger early by making its best unit it was already producing - more efficient. 

There's a second variant of this on a mage rainbow bless. There's a few varaitions on this, but broadly - this doesn't directly improve combat power much (besides maybe 1 penetration) but has lots of ancillary benefits - more HP on communion slaves, better resists vs enemy magic, farcaster making new spells viable etc. This can struggle in higher level play however - as it wholly relies no not dying early - the bless really only kicks into high gear in the mid to late game. Now at this point it's very strong - but attentive players will realize the relative weakness early and the very good reason to not let it scale into the midgame/lategame. This is typically best on nations that both have a mage that wants it lategame, but also has a strong earlygame. MA pythium is a good example.

Finally there's the 'resist rainbow' which is a bit of a lategame catchall. These don't seem to have performed especially well in dominions 6. The idea is that your sacreds aren't as strong as they could be - but it's much harder to actually find answers for them, as their resists and reinvig etc help negate more common solutions
==== Expanders ====
Some scales nations improve their earlygame by taking an expander. A nation with a weaker earlygame (e.g. berytos) can compensate with a pretender – or a nation with a powerful but limited toolset (Jotunheim) gets an improved start – and another effective tool (typically a dracolich). Similarly - some nations can't expand well until they hit a critical 'threshold' of resources by taking their cap circle. An expander makes their position considerably better.

Expanders tend to be better MA and LA when indies are harder and nations are less cap/sacred focused. As a rule of thumb, MA and LA nations tend to do quite well with expanders. 

====Incarnates====

Some nations do it with big incarnates, either awake or dormant. Now at high ELO this isn’t just some random ‘good incarnate’ – it’s usually picked to the nation and if 2 or more are picked – they tend to synergize. 

**Some Examples **
  * Fireshield/Fateweaving
  * Invulnerability/Fear
  * Hardskin/10FR+10SR

It’s also worth noting that most units have few attacks – and at least in the Lucids Tournament Finals (2026), there was a tendency for the blesses to have large defensive elements – not just weapon blesses. Most of the time this is best awake – since wars at high elo start before turn 12 (since players are wary of incarnates), but sometimes players can get away going dormant if their earlygame and diplomacy is good enough. 

====Discussion====

So at higher ELO there’s a general (but not total) shift away from scales on most nations that have any sort of significant bless – with the remainder of nations generally going for expanders. Exactly how far down the rabbit hole depends on the nation and player – but the tendency towards sacrificing scales for earlygame sacred power is worth noting. Some scales are more easily sacrificed than others. Misfortune won’t affect your unit production, nor will temperature. There are ‘thresholds’ for unit production on Order/Chaos and Production/Sloth that tend to be tested out. Magic/Drain is a divisive point – but for that first war – magic scales don’t help produce more units. 
So as a result, there’s a tendency to sacrifice misfortune, temperature, at least some production/order scales, and often even drain at higher ELO to really push that bless.

The final thing I’ll add is blesses do not get better at a linear rate. Hardskin + resists is considerably harder to deal with than hardskin alone or resists alone. It’s the combination that often makes them so effective. So that also encourages players to lean more into the bless than they might otherwise.
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