Ultimate Nation Balance Mega-Kawaii Answer-Question 105%!1!1

[Vicious Love]

Ugh. I've been starting too many topics recently, and this one seems kind of like an appeal to the obvious. Hesitated a few minutes, for fear of spam, then went ahead with it anyway. I'm living the dream, gentlefolk!

The purpose of this thread is simple enough: To take comprehensive census of players' opinions of game balance between the different Dom II nations/themes, debate the findings thoroughly, then pass our conclusions on to KO and JO and glare at them until they patch the game for us. Ingrates.

I realize there's been plenty of mention of various nations/themes being overpowered/underpowered on these Boards, but it seems to have all been in the form of off-topic remarks and fire-and-forget "Mictlan suxX0rz" threads. I'm hoping something as revolutionary as a poll(!) on the internet(!!) will give players( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif a chance to settle the balance debate once and for all, or at least until the next patch.

Speaking of which, my particular approach to game balancing and nerfing(Which you do not endorse by supporting this poll or purchasing this product and/or service. For external use only) is to change NOTHING about the game's present unit/spell/miscellaneous national perk mix. It may not be entirely balanced, but it has STYLE.
Ashen Empire Ermor is, in my opinion, virtually indestructible, because that's what the restless dead legions of Armageddon are like. They always win. Instead of nerfing them to get smaller legions or weaker individual troops, and thereby crampin' the aforementioned STYLE, the theme should be made more expensive. If you think it should be nerfed at all, I mean.

The point being, game balance is entirely a metagaming thing, and should be restricted to metagaming means. If a non-impossible-difficulty AI or non-scenario-based-handicapped/overpowered player chooses Ashen Empire, they'd have to weaken their pretender to afford it. By outrageous cosmic coincidence, Hoburgdorf would be the only faction with a Fire-9 Air-9 Earth-9 Nataraja on their side.
Ermor would still be Ermor, hoburgs would still be completely and utterly useless, but game balance would be preserved. Which isn't nearly as fun as three players teaming up against one Ermor player with a +200 point handicap, but that's an entirely different point.

Anyway, I've been abusing my own thread by going on about how to nerf, rather than whether to nerf. Signing off, and hanging my head in shame.

[Vicious Love]

Eeep! Halted, truncated, and interrupted! Had to rush through this, only posted the complaints I've read most frequently on these fora, plus one of the two new themes. Sorry, shall remedy it as soon as can get wid a computer. Either way, the discussion still stands.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:
Ashen Empire Ermor is, in my opinion, virtually indestructible, because that's what the restless dead legions of Armageddon are like. They always win. Instead of nerfing them to get smaller legions or weaker individual troops, and thereby crampin' the aforementioned STYLE<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, Ashen Empire Ermor is NOT virtually indestructible. In fact, Ermorian legions really suck it hard. Sure, they're totally expendable and sprout out of the ground in ever-increasing numbers, but run them into any real opposition, and it's quite likely you'll lose them all with less than handful of kills to show for it. A single SC can slay them by the hundreds at practically no risk to himself. Longdeads, soulless, and ghouls are dog doody. They ALREADY are individually weaker than normal units by far. I regularly lose a few hundred undead at once to a drive-by priesting of composed of cheap $50 priests. Stupid frickin' priests. Soul Gate Ermor trades off the really wimpy but absolutely enormous legions of the dead for somewhat less numerous, but more effective, ghost legions, that suffer from ubiquitous 0 protection and fold over and die to anything with magic weapons. In both cases, Ermor's national mages are somewhat narrow in focus, with only Dusk Elders having but a single random pick. This is made up for in part by a pretender that can afford to burn a lot of nation points on magics, but you can't be everywhere at once.

Take it from me, the board's resident Ermor fanatic: Ermor is not as impressive as everyone would have you believe. I like them anyway, though.

[Kristoffer O]

That was a strange poll. Most of the themes generally considered unbalanced were not available for voting and I found myself being a commie!

At the tenth of April (when I can inspect the strange results) the thread will probably be dead, buried and forgotten. Perhaps this is for the best http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Peter Ebbesen]

I definitely prefer Soul Gate over Ashen Empire. Slightly less micromanagement due to the reduced troop numbers, and the increased magic resistance on all troops means that enemy priests need to work much, much, harder on the banishments. It also makes Solar Brilliance less of a killer.

Even so, the casualty reports are staggering.

[Teraswaerto]

IMO, the only nation that seems "overpowered" is Pythium. Mictlan and Tien Chi are perhaps weaker than the average, but not by much. Some themes, like S&A and Carrion Woods, are quite weak though.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
I definitely prefer Soul Gate over Ashen Empire. Slightly less micromanagement due to the reduced troop numbers, and the increased magic resistance on all troops means that enemy priests need to work much, much, harder on the banishments. It also makes Solar Brilliance less of a killer.

Even so, the casualty reports are staggering. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A lot of the damage the Soul Gate undeads are not physical or negatable by MR. That kind of balance their advantages out.

Another ironical aspect of Ermor is even though you have a almighty pretender and a lot of gem incomes, you magical research is usually the slowest of the nations - even slower than the supposingly nonmagical Ulm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

[Tuna-Fish]

Vicious love, you have the best poll options yet on this board. But please edit it to show the results already, i wanna know how mnay commie friends I have http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by ywl:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
I definitely prefer Soul Gate over Ashen Empire. Slightly less micromanagement due to the reduced troop numbers, and the increased magic resistance on all troops means that enemy priests need to work much, much, harder on the banishments. It also makes Solar Brilliance less of a killer.

Even so, the casualty reports are staggering. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A lot of the damage the Soul Gate undeads are not physical or negatable by MR. That kind of balance their advantages out.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh, certainly, I was not arguing that Soul Gate was better, only noting that I preferred it for the above-mentioned reasons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ywl]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by ywl:
Oh, certainly, I was not arguing that Soul Gate was better, only noting that I preferred it for the above-mentioned reasons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I did not suggest you argue that way. It's just my comment on their differences. Soul Gate is cooler. Ethereal undeads also look (and smell) nicer than the zombies and skeletons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . And Ermor has some need of taking the magic scale, if so, may as well taking Soul Gate.

[Vicious Love]

April 10th?! Guess I musta had my finger on the mousewheel without noticing. Again, sorry about the incomplete options, I ended up having about 2 metric minutes to make the actual poll, and those were a hasty, panicked 2 minutes, to boot.
Anyway, AA Ermor not overpowered? Good, good. Debatealicious. My side of the debate is biased and inexperienced, any other takers? All I got is:
A) AA Ermor can afford the best Pretenders
B) The killer Dominion provides a splendiferous defense against non-nature armies and can rather easily do irrevocable economic damage to which the AA itself is immune
C) Utterdark and Burden of Time are practically game winners for AA/Soul Gate Ermor, while the Broken Empire, Desert Tombs C'tis, and pretty much all death nations save Carrion Woods Pangaea gain relatively little.
D) Fishy power!

I'm hardly convinced of these claims myself, they're what you might call first impressions, but complaints have been made by others, so let's hear them out.
On that note, anyone think CW Pangaea and Mictlan AREN'T underpowered? Also, 'ello 'ello 'ello, what's all this about Pythium?

Feel the burn, people. I'll just see if I can edit the poll end date, why don't I? If I'm lucky, I might just get my computer running within the week, and be able to keep tabs on this without sneaking into people's houses and stealing their 'net time.

[Vicious Love]

Which reminds me: Desert Tombs. How do y'all feel about Desert Tombs?

*passes out*

Someone's been to SA too often.

I don't think Mictlan is underpowered at all. But you only really have 2 options to play them. Blessing or Blood.

Carrion Woods on the other hand I feel needs to be changed. They have heavy morale problems if you try to go living/dead. If you go pure dead, then you are slow to start. They have no randoms availiable so they can't even use some of the possible good combinations with their picks (Foul Vapors for example). Manikins and Carrion Beasts are slower to make and more vulnerable than normal undead.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:
A) AA Ermor can afford the best Pretenders<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True. And you're going to need it, because hiring living units at the beginning of the game is hard, and your starting legionnaires are woefully inadequate to overcome most independent resistance, and it will be awhile before you can amass enough units. That means a pretender-led push.

B) The killer Dominion provides a splendiferous defense against non-nature armies and can rather easily do irrevocable economic damage to which the AA itself is immune<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not entirely true. AE itself is not inherently immune to the economic damage that your killer dominion causes: If you don't keep up your own expansion, your dominion will have profitlessly killed all of the people you needed to pillage. Also, you DO get income from the people while they're alive, albeit not for long.

C) Utterdark and Burden of Time are practically game winners for AA/Soul Gate Ermor, while the Broken Empire, Desert Tombs C'tis, and pretty much all death nations save Carrion Woods Pangaea gain relatively little.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">BoT is surprisingly hard for Ermor to cast: You're gulping down Death Gems at a furious rate just to maintain parity in research, and probably cannot afford the gems needed to ram up a BoT such that it will not be dispelled. In SP, for instance, it's often Tien Chi or Jotunheim which casts it, not Ermor! If you're hoarding death gems in quantities that would ALLOW you to ram a 300+ point GE up, you're also probably behind in research by a lot

Utterdark is L9 and not on the horizon in the near immediate future, and will likely suffer from the same death-gem-crampage that BoT does.

[Taqwus]

Ermor also still needs gold for those labs, temples and castles (unless it wants to be casting the Wizard Tower ritual, and that's not all that cheap if memory serves), yet will rapidly lack the taxpayers.

The sacred units are also either expensive (Wailing Ladies cost 15 death gems each and there's no multiple-Lady summons even if you could afford it; Soul Gate can get them free, but this seems VERY rare) or not that great (KoTUS, which are fragile and never heal, and can only be gained through auto-reanimation by Ashen Empire at a fortress).

The mages aren't that versatile either; until Conj 6 or so is available (spectres) it's basically Dusk Elder only for a random, and a single point at that, for 20 death gems -- two turn's worth (at normal richness) of gem income from the Unholy Sepulchre.

Death eventually has some great spells (Tartarian Gate comes to mind, albeit for best effect GoR is needed and that requires Nature-4 plus 20 gems; Ghost Riders is also a good backfield temple-smashing spell; Well of Misery might be second only to Astral Nexus in gem-producing spells) but still, it takes work and a Solar Brilliance or use of the Ark or Wrathful Skies could really ruin the day of even a rather large undead horde.

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Zen:
Someone's been to SA too often.

I don't think Mictlan is underpowered at all. But you only really have 2 options to play them. Blessing or Blood. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's only one option really: Blessing and Blood. Without Blessing you're toast early, and without Blood you wont hold up past the mid-game.