Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-130.225.247.34-20191209223735/@comment-130.225.247.34-20191211211308

Fulminato, there is nothing to stop you from whoring Qum AND refraining from investing in the chapter 1 mercs. I stand by my previous statement, that whoring Qum remains the statistically best choice, no matter the moral implications.

Lacking 15,000 Pron in the first investment round means you miss out on 2 of the very strong 10,000 investments (Bridge repair, site excavation, Stineford magic shop), assuming you put the first 70,000 towards Mine Processing, Bank membership and Premium Steel.

Those 15,000 snowball into roughly 50,000 more missed Pron when you reach the reunion. Which becomes even more after the 3AW, and so the difference keeps growing all the way into chapter 4.

A single unique item and a recruit for a minor quest isn't worth the several hundreds of thousands of Pron it will end up costing you in the long run.

Qum is very easy to max, even whored, and her RP's don't have much important influence, even during the Gathering. And she will likely be maxed early on in chapter 3, even if whored. At worst you will get 3 less points of Ginasta influence.

So unless the game has a final gut-punch prepared for being an asshole and whoring her, i still find it to be self-evident that it's the strongest choice. It's still a dick move of course, but Simon has manipulated and murdered his way to power as it is. Whoring out a sex-loving succubus he just met, and doesn't quite understand yet seems pretty low on the list of morally questionable choices he can make. (In my calculator file for chapter 0.47 with a whored Qum i could count every missing investment on my two hands. Those were: Extradimensional Defence, Wendis Tower Defense, Imp Offices, War Monument, Chalice States Warehouse, Gasm Falls Clean Up, Gasm Falls Ivalan Churches and a few misc. base decorations, adding up to a total missing 2,629,000 pron. I don't think it's possible to come any where near as close with Qum not whored, but i would like to be proven wrong. I'm a sucker for minmaxing, but whoring Qum still makes me feel like a dick)