SUBTERFUGE Forums

what are your thoughts on getting a hypnotist first specialist

Hi,

Sounds like a good idea:
Capturing enemy specialists is sometimes not such a big benefit. At the same time people start gifting them away if you are about to finish them, so in that case others are getting them much easier. This means that capturing specialists is sometimes not even such a big benefit unless you have a hypnotist nearby.

I also had the idea of some optional setting where everyone gets the same hires.

/tombolala

I love it. You get early king and if you play it right it'll be a huge advantage.

If I'm going for a King play style, I like to see a hypnotist as second hire. That way I can use the benefits of my first hire while attacking someone, possibly hypnotize their captured specialists, and then promote to a king on my third or fourth hire. I think the loss of shields the kings causes is actually a serious issue in the first few days when you don't have many drillers, but after day 3 it isn't nearly as big an issue. Also, if you have a king already, getting another one should normally be a priority.

Depends very heavily on how your diplomacy is shaping up.

If you have multiple people you dont trust too much and share a border with them, I'd not recommend King.

If you quickly form a strong trust with all on your border except your 1 target, King can be great.

Personally I'd sit on that hire as long as possible before deciding whether to hire it. And if I did hire the hypnotist, I'd still keep it for later use - promoting just before a critical attack or defense. In my experience, Shields are more beneficial than kings at the start. And once you king up, it's almost like building a mine on the first day - you become a potential threat and target.

to be honest I find that even the hypnotist WITHOUT the ability to be promoted is still very OP. I mean, its mostly because people don't realise how many specialists you capture in one game. It has the potential to save you a LOT of specialist hires, putting you far ahead of everyone else, which can make you suddenly insanely OP.

Once I had this play where I swapped a double agent for a hypnotist, smuggled it to another outpost which was being attacked. And got like 3 of the specialists there because they came in separate subs, with the second sub taking over the outpost. I managed to evacuate those hypnotised specialists before the second sub came and took over the outpost. Once I also managed to take over like 10 enemy specialists because he had resigned and couldn't do anything to stop me from hypnotising all his specialists he had at the one outpost...

Yeah the hypnotist can be pretty powerful. I'm currently in a game where, mostly through luck and other people not knowing what they were doing, I managed to hypnotize 9 hires worth of specialists by day 3. I now have 3 kings and thanks to stacked tinkerers my cap was over a thousand by day 5. OP? Yeah probably. Awesome? Definitely.

v3xt wrote:Yeah the hypnotist can be pretty powerful. I'm currently in a game where, mostly through luck and other people not knowing what they were doing, I managed to hypnotize 9 hires worth of specialists by day 3. I now have 3 kings and thanks to stacked tinkerers my cap was over a thousand by day 5. OP? Yeah probably. Awesome? Definitely.

This is just another example of how many captured specialists there actually are in one game.
If you have a hypnotist you're pretty powerful too. I've often made agreements with people simply because they don't have a hypnotist but they want a few captured specialist from one of their outposts. I offer them those specialists but also ask for a specialist to keep for myself as the cost of borrowing my hypnotist

I've never successfully shared captured specialists with a hypnotist. It either involves them not returning my hypnotist, or not returning the outpost the specialists were at (in cases where they had the hypnotist).