Broken Nations

[upstreamedge]

I think some of the nations are broken, and I want to know weather people agree with me or I just am bad at this game.

LE Ermor, Ashen Empire- I have found that there is no way to compete with the amount of troops, and points from the negative scales, and the power of those negative scales. Oh ya, and all the death gems.

LE R'yleh, Dreamscape- Vastness on turn 3, enough said

[Nerfix]

LA Ermor, well, people have managed to kill off Ermor before, they can do it again. In the past it mostly featured making sure AI is not up against it and ganging against it in multiplayer... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

LE R'lyeh is a beast, but I've never seen a Vastness by turn 3. Actually, I've had worse luck than usual with their void summonings as the gate keeps sucking my mages into it.

[Teraswaerto]

Banishment takes care of the Ermor hordes.

[Nerfix]

I'd say that EA Van and Hel need to be re-evaluated. As of now they are insanely powerful with everything from acces to Blade Wind (the ultimate combat spell in EA) to Air magic (and everyone knows how good it is) to troops that can sneak and are superb in combat.

[CogDissident]

Ashen eremor is easy, you just need to produce priests everywhere. If your fighting them, then every temple you have should be spitting out a priest every turn, because 1 priest can kill about 10 undead per round, even an 800 unit horde falls to 20 generic priests (which cost equal to a castle, 1000gp total) in 4 combat turns (well, maybe more like 6-8 because you'll start to miss after you kill the first 400). But you just put some units on hold+attack in front to keep the undead off your priests, and theres no way that they'll do anything. Killing 800 undead without losing anything significant is certainly a way to annihilate eremor easilly.

[Graeme Dice]

upstreamedge said:
LE R'yleh, Dreamscape- Vastness on turn 3, enough said



What's scary about a vastness? It can barely deal with triton independents when alone, so your own nations troops should have no problem.

[Nerfix]

Graeme Dice said:What's scary about a vastness? It can barely deal with triton independents when alone, so your own nations troops should have no problem.

It's a nice Mind Blast battery and Blood Vengeange is always giggly. But it's not good on melee.

[Peter Ebbesen]

upstreamedge said:
LE Ermor, Ashen Empire- I have found that there is no way to compete with the amount of troops, and points from the negative scales, and the power of those negative scales. Oh ya, and all the death gems.


Lesson one about fighting Ashen Empire: The REAL war has little to do with number of troops and everything to do with commanders.

So long as you focus on number of troops where Ashen Empire is concerned, you are worrying about the wrong thing and are setting yourself up for defeat if fighting a human controlled Ermor.

There are lots of ways to deal with the troops (drive-by-priesting for attrition, archery and high protection units shielding ranks of mages using the anti-undead spells or priests banishing for all they are worth, and later in the game you can use mass casualty battlefield spells) - the real war is killing off their commanders. As a rule of thumb, the loss of a single Dusk Elder or Arch Bishop hurts an Ermorian player more than the loss of a few thousand troops on all but the smallest of maps.

The only nations I consider close to broken are those with sacred units with high survivability, high overall stats, preferably two attacks, AND cheap production costs. Very few nations have the combination of all four, but those that do are absolute monsters with a F9W9 blessing strategy.

A few nations, mainly from the early age, come to mind as being in the "those sacred should cost way more gold and resources than they do currently" category, namely Vanheim, Helheim, and, to a lesser degree due to lesser survivability, Sauromatia. Their sacred units would still be good for high-bless strategies if their gold and resource costs were doubled.

[Nerfix]

Sauro's blessables suffer from the One attack that is #nostr syndrome, but they are admitedly nasty.

[DominionsFan]

Peter Ebbesen said:

upstreamedge said:
LE Ermor, Ashen Empire- I have found that there is no way to compete with the amount of troops, and points from the negative scales, and the power of those negative scales. Oh ya, and all the death gems.


Lesson one about fighting Ashen Empire: The REAL war has little to do with number of troops and everything to do with commanders.

So long as you focus on number of troops where Ashen Empire is concerned, you are worrying about the wrong thing and are setting yourself up for defeat if fighting a human controlled Ermor.

There are lots of ways to deal with the troops (drive-by-priesting for attrition, archery and high protection units shielding ranks of mages using the anti-undead spells or priests banishing for all they are worth, and later in the game you can use mass casualty battlefield spells) - the real war is killing off their commanders. As a rule of thumb, the loss of a single Dusk Elder or Arch Bishop hurts an Ermorian player more than the loss of a few thousand troops on all but the smallest of maps.

The only nations I consider close to broken are those with sacred units with high survivability, high overall stats, preferably two attacks, AND cheap production costs. Very few nations have the combination of all four, but those that do are absolute monsters with a F9W9 blessing strategy.

A few nations, mainly from the early age, come to mind as being in the "those sacred should cost way more gold and resources than they do currently" category, namely Vanheim, Helheim, and, to a lesser degree due to lesser survivability, Sauromatia. Their sacred units would still be good for high-bless strategies if their gold and resource costs were doubled.



mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds. Nifelheim is also very good, however their sacreds at least expensive.

AE Ermor is a special nation, and dont think that you can beat AE Ermor with a simple priest - banish tactic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Peter Ebbesen]

DominionsFan said:
mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds. Nifelheim is also very good, however their sacreds at least expensive.



Sure they are good, but both Mictlan's and Tien Chi's troops lack the survivability of the 'heims which makes other strategies viable counters to them in the early game - unless you are playing blitzes on a small map (in which case you deserve what you get, since you've chosen the single best setup for blessing strategies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif), which is why I didn't include them in my "closest to broken" list. Mictlan's particularly, though you can produce hordes of them, are vulnerable to a well-balanced army backed up with a bit of magic.

Somebody primarily playing blitzes on small maps with no house rules restricting pretender design might evaluate them differently, but that's not so much a question of the strength of the nation in general nor an indication of a nation that is "broken" as it is a question of choosing a particular setup that strongly favours one strategy and the nations most suited for that strategy.



AE Ermor is a special nation, and dont think that you can beat AE Ermor with a simple priest - banish tactic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


I never claimed that was the case. I claimed, and I'll insist on it though you might reasonably differ, that a player who focuses on trying to match a human played Ermor's troops rather than focusing on Ermor's commanders is not going to beat any competently played Ermor.

[KissBlade]

DominionsFan said:


mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds.




You and I have a very different definition of "mass producing" something ... W5E's are capital ONLY, fragile and requires a duel bless to really make them effective. This is quite balanced IMO. Tien Chi gets summonable sacreds to somewhat add bulk to their troops but aside from Water Demons, I tend to have better uses for their gems.

[Nerfix]

W5E's are terribly fragile to missiles. Real glass cannons.

[Sandman]

Take a phoenix with F9A9 then. Cheaper than a F9W9, and still pretty good. Stack the warriors with hordes of composite bowmen and you can carve up enemy armies with ease.

[Nerfix]

I can see that working very well. Hmmm, that would also give them lightning immunity when blessed. Hmmmm....

[KissBlade]

Sandman said:
Take a phoenix with F9A9 then. Cheaper than a F9W9, and still pretty good. Stack the warriors with hordes of composite bowmen and you can carve up enemy armies with ease.



Nah you don't actually need to. To defend against archers, just deposit lots of archer decoys around the map. Also try to coordinate your attacks so that the bulk of them happen during spring. you get about double the hit points on your w5e's. Plus F9W9 is just way too good to pass up.

[DominionsFan]

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:


mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds.




You and I have a very different definition of "mass producing" something ... W5E's are capital ONLY, fragile and requires a duel bless to really make them effective. This is quite balanced IMO. Tien Chi gets summonable sacreds to somewhat add bulk to their troops but aside from Water Demons, I tend to have better uses for their gems.



On small map blitzes it doesnt matter if a sacred is capital only or not.
Besides you forget yet another important thing about tienchi, they have excellent mages also, not just cheap and good sacreds. Those mages can be deadly in a blitz game even, if you research the correct path with them.

[KissBlade]

DominionsFan said:

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:


mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds.




You and I have a very different definition of "mass producing" something ... W5E's are capital ONLY, fragile and requires a duel bless to really make them effective. This is quite balanced IMO. Tien Chi gets summonable sacreds to somewhat add bulk to their troops but aside from Water Demons, I tend to have better uses for their gems.



On small map blitzes it doesnt matter if a sacred is capital only or not.
Besides you forget yet another important thing about tienchi, they have excellent mages also, not just cheap and good sacreds. Those mages can be deadly in a blitz game even, if you research the correct path with them.



What does this have to do with "mass producing" a unit ...? In a blitz, you can produce an equal ratio of Vans vs. W5e's. If you could have an even amount which would you choose? If anything you can mass produce Vans even easier since all you need is a fort and a temple to get things rolling. I'm sure one of your neighbors can be persuaded to lend you use of their fort ...

[Theonlystd]

meh when i played as LE R'yleh, Dreamscape i never got anything better than a large otherness.


The free units they get are wrothless outisde of killing tritons and if the army is triton guards it can be quite diffucult o and i guess good "chaff" i think they call em..

All your commanders but you StarSpawn Mages going insane is a big pain..

[DominionsFan]

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:


mictlan, and tienchi are also very strong in the EA in blitz games. You can mass produce the cheap and good sacreds.




You and I have a very different definition of "mass producing" something ... W5E's are capital ONLY, fragile and requires a duel bless to really make them effective. This is quite balanced IMO. Tien Chi gets summonable sacreds to somewhat add bulk to their troops but aside from Water Demons, I tend to have better uses for their gems.



On small map blitzes it doesnt matter if a sacred is capital only or not.
Besides you forget yet another important thing about tienchi, they have excellent mages also, not just cheap and good sacreds. Those mages can be deadly in a blitz game even, if you research the correct path with them.



What does this have to do with "mass producing" a unit ...? In a blitz, you can produce an equal ratio of Vans vs. W5e's. If you could have an even amount which would you choose? If anything you can mass produce Vans even easier since all you need is a fort and a temple to get things rolling. I'm sure one of your neighbors can be persuaded to lend you use of their fort ...




It is pretty simple. Here is a situation. 5 FFA blitz. You are with Niefelheim, and 2 provinces away, there is Mitclan with an uber bless build. You think that you will survive turn 8-10? If Mictlan is rushing you are pretty much dead. The mictlan troops will totally outnumber the N giants, and will massacre them. Now you understand that what did I meant on "massing sacreds"?

[JaydedOne]

I think LE R'lyeh is very good at what it does (irritate neighbors with Dominion, stock up on cheap units, offer most of the same advantages of ME R'lyeh) but the insanity on your own commanders can be very offputting and LE has a number of amphibious nations that, in my opinion, are -very- dangerous to R'lyeh if they decide they want to compete for the waters -- after all, I think a double-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan horde coming into the water is going to make life -extremely- ugly for R'lyeh even if they've recruited scads of dreaming fodder along the way. Let's also just say that I prefer the (amphibious!) sacreds those two nations can buy multiples of -every turn- a great deal more than I do the sacreds that R'lyeh MIGHT be able to spawn through the Gate every few turns if they're lucky.

I love R'lyeh. I'm a huge enthusiast and think the Dreamlands theme is fun. But calling it broken is, I think, overstating the case.

[KissBlade]

DominionsFan said:


It is pretty simple. Here is a situation. 5 FFA blitz. You are with Niefelheim, and 2 provinces away, there is Mitclan with an uber bless build. You think that you will survive turn 8-10? If Mictlan is rushing you are pretty much dead. The mictlan troops will totally outnumber the N giants, and will massacre them. Now you understand that what did I meant on "massing sacreds"?



I think you may be a little too sour from losing to qm on that note ... Qm is an excellent player and you are most likely dead if you're 2 provinces away from him anyway. I wager your build was not prepared for an uber bless which is what you lost to, not the "massed sacreds". I got attacked with 122 Vans, one game. THAT'S a massed Sacred army! XD If you are playing a small blitz against Mictlan or S&A, you should be prepared with an awakened fire res Thug/SC with your build. If not, you're pretty much asking for it. And should I point out, you can just as easily "mass" woodsmen as well to equal numbers if I recall ... You shouldn't single out Mictlan and S&A as the mass sacred kings, especially not S&A which was my point of contention. They really don't mass any more effectively than any other sacred nations. In fact, I find Mictlan's and S&A nations both pretty ideally balanced. Though the jags might still need a bit of tweaking ...

PS. Niefel is also a bit countered by the f9/w9 bless since they're prone to catching on fire.

[KissBlade]

JaydedOne said:
I think LE R'lyeh is very good at what it does (irritate neighbors with Dominion, stock up on cheap units, offer most of the same advantages of ME R'lyeh) but the insanity on your own commanders can be very offputting and LE has a number of amphibious nations that, in my opinion, are -very- dangerous to R'lyeh if they decide they want to compete for the waters -- after all, I think a double-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan horde coming into the water is going to make life -extremely- ugly for R'lyeh even if they've recruited scads of dreaming fodder along the way. Let's also just say that I prefer the (amphibious!) sacreds those two nations can buy multiples of -every turn- a great deal more than I do the sacreds that R'lyeh MIGHT be able to spawn through the Gate every few turns if they're lucky.

I love R'lyeh. I'm a huge enthusiast and think the Dreamlands theme is fun. But calling it broken is, I think, overstating the case.



LE Ryleh has one of the fastest expansions out of the gates, offensive dominion, and great mages. They're actually my favorite LE nation but they're a bit broken. (not too much) If Atlantis/Mictlan comes into waters dual blessed, mind blast the crap out of them. It'll make them think twice about their invasion and make most player want to go after easier prey. However, the main strength of Ryleh comes from the free troops and having almost unchallenged access in the oceans. The extras you get from void gate is just flavor in comparisant to their other advantages.

[JaydedOne]

*wink* I dunno about that mind-blasting response to the dual-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan crew if one of those blesses is, say, Astral for the MR. Pair that with Water perhaps to reach the other side of the battlefield before suffering much in the way of paralysis and you're talking a lot of dead lobos and illithid.

I also think it's difficult to gauge how broken R'lyeh is because, like Ermor, their Dominion creates a dogpile effect on the other players which means that the psychological sense of imbalance seems to correct, or even overcompensate for, any discrepancy therein.

I dunno. I think it'd be fun to try. Perhaps a blitz sometime if you're game, as I'm curious to see how R'lyeh holds up against an aggressive opponent, particularly since I love playing them so much myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[DominionsFan]

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:


It is pretty simple. Here is a situation. 5 FFA blitz. You are with Niefelheim, and 2 provinces away, there is Mitclan with an uber bless build. You think that you will survive turn 8-10? If Mictlan is rushing you are pretty much dead. The mictlan troops will totally outnumber the N giants, and will massacre them. Now you understand that what did I meant on "massing sacreds"?



I think you may be a little too sour from losing to qm on that note ... Qm is an excellent player and you are most likely dead if you're 2 provinces away from him anyway. I wager your build was not prepared for an uber bless which is what you lost to, not the "massed sacreds". I got attacked with 122 Vans, one game. THAT'S a massed Sacred army! XD If you are playing a small blitz against Mictlan or S&A, you should be prepared with an awakened fire res Thug/SC with your build. If not, you're pretty much asking for it. And should I point out, you can just as easily "mass" woodsmen as well to equal numbers if I recall ... You shouldn't single out Mictlan and S&A as the mass sacred kings, especially not S&A which was my point of contention. They really don't mass any more effectively than any other sacred nations. In fact, I find Mictlan's and S&A nations both pretty ideally balanced. Though the jags might still need a bit of tweaking ...

PS. Niefel is also a bit countered by the f9/w9 bless since they're prone to catching on fire.




Like I've said it was a 5 FFA not a 1v1. Mictlan's early rush is just almost impossible to beat without a specific build. You won't make a specific build against XY nation/player in an FFA game. I know that QM is an excellent player, but this has nothing to do with the fact, that Mictlan can field much more sacreds than most of other nations. Since their sacreds are good and cheap, with a proper bless they are rolling. In a couple of turns you can have a small army from those sacreds. So if you have 30 sacreds with nation X, and like 10 with nation Y, in the same time, we can talk about massing if you ask me.

Just for the record, I've also used rush tactic against many players in the blitzes with certain nations, and needless to say that they couldn't do anything. This all happens because of the imbalances of sacreds/blessings.

[KissBlade]

JaydedOne said:
*wink* I dunno about that mind-blasting response to the dual-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan crew if one of those blesses is, say, Astral for the MR. Pair that with Water perhaps to reach the other side of the battlefield before suffering much in the way of paralysis and you're talking a lot of dead lobos and illithid.

I also think it's difficult to gauge how broken R'lyeh is because, like Ermor, their Dominion creates a dogpile effect on the other players which means that the psychological sense of imbalance seems to correct, or even overcompensate for, any discrepancy therein.

I dunno. I think it'd be fun to try. Perhaps a blitz sometime if you're game, as I'm curious to see how R'lyeh holds up against an aggressive opponent, particularly since I love playing them so much myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I'd love to pick LE Ryleh in a blitz if it wasn't constantly banned. =)

[KissBlade]

DominionsFan said:

Like I've said it was a 5 FFA not a 1v1. Mictlan's early rush is just almost impossible to beat without a specific build. You won't make a specific build against XY nation/player in an FFA game. I know that QM is an excellent player, but this has nothing to do with the fact, that Mictlan can field much more sacreds than most of other nations. Since their sacreds are good and cheap, with a proper bless they are rolling. In a couple of turns you can have a small army from those sacreds. So if you have 30 sacreds with nation X, and like 10 with nation Y, in the same time, we can talk about massing if you ask me.

Just for the record, I've also used rush tactic against many players in the blitzes with certain nations, and needless to say that they couldn't do anything. This all happens because of the imbalances of sacreds/blessings.



Agreed. There are imbalances in uber blesses in current blitz settings. However, I do not think Mictlan is one of the culprits in this situation. Van/Helheim holds the current imba bless medal currently IMO. Catch me in the channel sometimes if you can and I'll duel your rush tactic. The key to defeating /most/ rush tactics in blitzes is to be prepared for them. Obviously if you're running around with a human pretender and focused on a building up strat you'll get stomped against an uber bless. I remember my first encounter with an uber bless I thought it was imba as well but I stomped it pretty thoroughly after I changed my strat/build. IMO, currently the BIGGEST problem is Order gives you too much gold. Every uber bless can just take order 3 and sack every other scale without any significant disadvantage.

[JaydedOne]

KissBlade said:

I'd love to pick LE Ryleh in a blitz if it wasn't constantly banned. =)



I'll play you with them one-on-one sometime. If you wipe me up, it'll just teach me why everyone else bans 'em. ;-)

[KissBlade]

JaydedOne said:

KissBlade said:

I'd love to pick LE Ryleh in a blitz if it wasn't constantly banned. =)



I'll play you with them one-on-one sometime. If you wipe me up, it'll just teach me why everyone else bans 'em. ;-)



Sounds good to me =). Just name the time and place!

[DominionsFan]

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:

Like I've said it was a 5 FFA not a 1v1. Mictlan's early rush is just almost impossible to beat without a specific build. You won't make a specific build against XY nation/player in an FFA game. I know that QM is an excellent player, but this has nothing to do with the fact, that Mictlan can field much more sacreds than most of other nations. Since their sacreds are good and cheap, with a proper bless they are rolling. In a couple of turns you can have a small army from those sacreds. So if you have 30 sacreds with nation X, and like 10 with nation Y, in the same time, we can talk about massing if you ask me.

Just for the record, I've also used rush tactic against many players in the blitzes with certain nations, and needless to say that they couldn't do anything. This all happens because of the imbalances of sacreds/blessings.



Agreed. There are imbalances in uber blesses in current blitz settings. However, I do not think Mictlan is one of the culprits in this situation. Van/Helheim holds the current imba bless medal currently IMO. Catch me in the channel sometimes if you can and I'll duel your rush tactic. The key to defeating /most/ rush tactics in blitzes is to be prepared for them. Obviously if you're running around with a human pretender and focused on a building up strat you'll get stomped against an uber bless. I remember my first encounter with an uber bless I thought it was imba as well but I stomped it pretty thoroughly after I changed my strat/build. IMO, currently the BIGGEST problem is Order gives you too much gold. Every uber bless can just take order 3 and sack every other scale without any significant disadvantage.



I also agree that van/hel are the best uber bless nations in EA. The problem is that you can prepare yourself against uber bless builds in a duel of course, but it is impossible to tell that what will player XY gonna use in a team or FFA game. So if you choose to start with an "anti bless" build there, it might be a bad choice overall, hence you will skip some otherwise very effective blitz builds.

[KissBlade]

DominionsFan said:

I also agree that van/hel are the best uber bless nations in EA. The problem is that you can prepare yourself against uber bless builds in a duel of course, but it is impossible to tell that what will player XY gonna use in a team or FFA game. So if you choose to start with an "anti bless" build there, it might be a bad choice overall, hence you will skip some otherwise very effective blitz builds.



Not really, general experience from blitzes have shown me that you need to factor in some sort of counter against uber blesses whether it be a thug pretender to counter raid, expanding in the right direction while leaving a good buffer of heavy cavs in the way or rushing up to some battle magic. Very effective blitz builds are those that focuses upon early expansion and a strong early mid game development through battlemages and archer/xbow flocks and tough screens. Most strategies aren't impossible to predict, 9/10 of every blitz player who picks a bless worthy nation is going to dual bless. When I see Mictlan in a lineup, I ALWAYS try to prepare for a f9 at the very least. If I see niefelheim, I'll always try to counter regen. If I encounter a good Helheim/Vanheim player, well ... I'll spam GANG VAN! =)

[DominionsFan]

KissBlade said:

DominionsFan said:

I also agree that van/hel are the best uber bless nations in EA. The problem is that you can prepare yourself against uber bless builds in a duel of course, but it is impossible to tell that what will player XY gonna use in a team or FFA game. So if you choose to start with an "anti bless" build there, it might be a bad choice overall, hence you will skip some otherwise very effective blitz builds.



Not really, general experience from blitzes have shown me that you need to factor in some sort of counter against uber blesses whether it be a thug pretender to counter raid, expanding in the right direction while leaving a good buffer of heavy cavs in the way or rushing up to some battle magic. Very effective blitz builds are those that focuses upon early expansion and a strong early mid game development through battlemages and archer/xbow flocks and tough screens. Most strategies aren't impossible to predict, 9/10 of every blitz player who picks a bless worthy nation is going to dual bless. When I see Mictlan in a lineup, I ALWAYS try to prepare for a f9 at the very least. If I see niefelheim, I'll always try to counter regen. If I encounter a good Helheim/Vanheim player, well ... I'll spam GANG VAN! =)



Hehe yeah, you have a good point there, "sadly?" almost everyone will use a dual bless at least in a blitz now. Well they are effective so no wonder.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Shovah32]

I agree, most builds can fit some sort of anti bless rush into their strategy but it dosnt always work, another reason van/hel have such good bless rushes is that they can raid en mass very well, with good stealth and glamour they can make your capitol the first province they hit (this could be with 50+ f9w9 sacreds you never knew existed), keeping only a few sacreds with a big screen of underpriced glamoured units for defence (hel has an advantage here since flying sacreds lets them keep less back with the same response time).

If the enemy see's you building up defences along your border he can sneak past and hit everything else, if you start building defences from the inside out then he can simply take your outer provinces and get more income to make even more sacreds. Finally, if you build both at the same time either you wont have enough defences anywhere and will be open for attack or else you will have enough defence to last a while but will be lacking in some other area (such as research).

[KissBlade]

Shovah32 said:
I agree, most builds can fit some sort of anti bless rush into their strategy but it dosnt always work, another reason van/hel have such good bless rushes is that they can raid en mass very well, with good stealth and glamour they can make your capitol the first province they hit (this could be with 50+ f9w9 sacreds you never knew existed), keeping only a few sacreds with a big screen of underpriced glamoured units for defence (hel has an advantage here since flying sacreds lets them keep less back with the same response time).

If the enemy see's you building up defences along your border he can sneak past and hit everything else, if you start building defences from the inside out then he can simply take your outer provinces and get more income to make even more sacreds. Finally, if you build both at the same time either you wont have enough defences anywhere and will be open for attack or else you will have enough defence to last a while but will be lacking in some other area (such as research).



You CANNOT defend against a dedicated dual blessed Helheim/Vanheim, you MUST be aggressive. Make alliances, bribe other players, whatever it takes, you have to make sure Hel/Vanheim is pressured on all fronts. Keep a lot of lame commanders with some heavy infantries on hand to keep retaking raided forces while sending raiding forces into his lands. Sailing and flying can make this especially tough and you may even need to clobber indies on the way but the only way you can stop a good van is by countering him.

[Shovah32]

Being aggressive without diplomacy (i know you mentioned it but its not always possible, especially in very early game when people cant find eachother) or your own bless is almost suicide if the van/hel player knows where you are. They will see your rapid expansion (possibly towards them if your very aggressive) as a threat and try to put you down quickly, i guess it could work fairly well with certain pretenders (your little friend the VQ could do very well with fire magic, immortality+fireshield is a fun combo), particularly those with fire resistance but 1v1 a dual bless will almost certainly out aggresion you (although if you think otherwise i will reconsider as i know you have more multiplayer experience with both dom2 and 3 than myself)

[Quietly]

I find it ironic this thread complains about what jotunheim would do vs such an enemy... I (and many others) play jotunheim with a very strong bless strategy, and I'd be very suprised if hel/van could beat my giants early... I'd like someone who plays a good hel/van bless rush to pm me or find me on irc and play a couple small 1on1s to see which nations/blesses really edge out the beginning game, and how much so.

[Cainehill]

I wonder if part of the problem is that there's still a bug with the fire bless? With Dom2 it seemed that a F9 bless _always_ went through defense and also mirror images, as things like F9 blessed centaurs tore through W9 blessed Vans. IIRC, theory was that it was like lifedrain, where side effects took effect even if the attack didn't hit.

[DominionsFan]

Quietly said:
I find it ironic this thread complains about what jotunheim would do vs such an enemy... I (and many others) play jotunheim with a very strong bless strategy, and I'd be very suprised if hel/van could beat my giants early... I'd like someone who plays a good hel/van bless rush to pm me or find me on irc and play a couple small 1on1s to see which nations/blesses really edge out the beginning game, and how much so.




What is your name on IRC? Drop me a message on IRC when you will be online.

[Corwin]

Nerfix said:
I'd say that EA Van and Hel need to be re-evaluated. As of now they are insanely powerful with everything from acces to Blade Wind (the ultimate combat spell in EA) to Air magic (and everyone knows how good it is) to troops that can sneak and are superb in combat.



EA Van troops are not that good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops are kindof weak and costly for their stats.

[Corwin]

KissBlade said:

Sandman said:
Take a phoenix with F9A9 then. Cheaper than a F9W9, and still pretty good. Stack the warriors with hordes of composite bowmen and you can carve up enemy armies with ease.



Nah you don't actually need to. To defend against archers, just deposit lots of archer decoys around the map. Also try to coordinate your attacks so that the bulk of them happen during spring. you get about double the hit points on your w5e's. Plus F9W9 is just way too good to pass up.



Isn't it 1.5 more hitpoints? (18 vs normal 12)

[Nerfix]

Corwin said:

Nerfix said:
I'd say that EA Van and Hel need to be re-evaluated. As of now they are insanely powerful with everything from acces to Blade Wind (the ultimate combat spell in EA) to Air magic (and everyone knows how good it is) to troops that can sneak and are superb in combat.



EA Van troops are not so good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops is kindof weak and costly.

What are you talking about? EA Van sure as heck has Van troops. They get that purple clad infantry and the sacred Vanheres. Sure they aren't the mounted terror of later ages but can own stuff just as well.

[Endoperez]

Corwin said:
EA Van troops are not so good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops is kindof weak and costly.



What do you mean by "no Van soldiers"? They have Huskarl and Hirdmen for 25 and 30 gp, with full Vanir traits from Stealth and Glamour to elite skills and great magic resistance. The Vanheres have Berserk +5, giving them both protection and insane damage potential with their two attacks (at 12 and 11 before berserk) and above-average strength.

[Corwin]

Nerfix said:

Corwin said:

Nerfix said:
I'd say that EA Van and Hel need to be re-evaluated. As of now they are insanely powerful with everything from acces to Blade Wind (the ultimate combat spell in EA) to Air magic (and everyone knows how good it is) to troops that can sneak and are superb in combat.



EA Van troops are not so good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops is kindof weak and costly.



What are you talking about? EA Van sure as heck has Van troops. They get that purple clad infantry and the sacred Vanheres. Sure they aren't the mounted terror of later ages but can own stuff just as well.



You said it yourself - they don't have mounted sacred troops of late Van or Helheim, the kind of troops that make these nations so powerful. I didn't mean that EA Vanheim is weak, but as far as qualtity of sacred troops go, you have to agree that vanhere soldiers are not even close to mounted van/hel sacred troops. And their survivability is much lower due to none-blessed def 12.

[Cainehill]

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:

Corwin said:
EA Van troops are not so good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops is kindof weak and costly.



What do you mean by "no Van soldiers"? They have Huskarl and Hirdmen for 25 and 30 gp, with full Vanir traits from Stealth and Glamour to elite skills and great magic resistance. The Vanheres have Berserk +5, giving them both protection and insane damage potential with their two attacks (at 12 and 11 before berserk) and above-average strength.



As I said, I was comparing them to the mounted sacred troops of their same nation in leter era, or to the sacred troops of the sister nation Helheim. Comparable to these sacred mounted troops vanheres are much more fragile in melee, with their bereserker and all. IMHO suriviability for sacred troops (unless they are none-capital and/or dirt-cheap) is more important than damage potential. And you forget to mention that Berserker 5 also means that they are very clumsy in combat - most of the hits will connect, and thier armor is not that high to be able to protect them against troops with decent melee weapons.

[Endoperez]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.



The two "clones of Vanheim" have VERY different national troops from both each other and from the MA Van we knew as base Vanheim in DomII. Whole nation of stealthy glamour units, instead of just one, sacred, mounted Vanir plays very differently than the old Vanheim.
Vanheim and Helheim aren't copies of each other, either. Helheim has cavalry, Valkyries and flying commanders for the latter but no Sailing, as well as different magic.


I also disagree about your notion of less variety. Vanheim with Midgård and Helheim themes is just three nations, with only one of them in play at once, against EA Helheim or Vanheim, MA Vanheim or LA Midgård.

EDIT: EA Vanheim DOES have cavaly, but it isn't sacred. Other poster's comment confused me.

[Morkilus]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.



This makes no sense to me. You complain about loss themes and the coexistence of two themes in the same sentence? EA Vanheim doesn't really have an analog, but I'd rather have a new vanheim PLUS the old Helheim theme than not. I'd rather have both Iron Faith and Black Forest rather than the current mishmash. It's not like there is a nation that didn't get made because of Vanheim; we are getting another EA nation in an upcoming patch, and who knows what else.

[Nerfix]

Have you actually played EA Vanheim? I've killed Ermorian forces THREE TIMES larger than my forces of F9 blessed Vanheres and three Van commanders - two of them shooting lightning bolts and third of them was on melee.

Glamour guarantees they won't get often hit anyway, high def or low def.

Of course Helheim, the mounted terror of Early Age is even stronger.

[Truper]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.



Nonsense. In Dom2 there were 17 playable nations. Of these, 13 had themes, to a total of 23 themes, making for a grand total of 40 different nations. Dom 3 has 49 playable nations. In addition, given the changes to the random magic system, and the lesser powers of indy mages, the nations of Dom3 actually play differently throughout the game, rather than rapidly becoming quite similar to each other. Furthermore, how adding a scad of new spells, summonables and magic items to the game results in less variety is mysterious.

[Corwin]

Nerfix said:
Have you actually played EA Vanheim? I've killed Ermorian forces THREE TIMES larger than my forces of F9 blessed Vanheres and three Van commanders - two of them shooting lightning bolts and third of them was on melee.

Glamour guarantees they won't get often hit anyway, high def or low def.

Of course Helheim, the mounted terror of Early Age is even stronger.



One more time, I've been comparing vanheres, who are the only sacred troops(troops, NOT commanders!) EA Vanhem has, to the mounted sacred troops of sister nation Helheim, which you keep calling poetic names "mounted horror" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif OR to the similar Van troops of ME Vanheim, OR to the same troops of Midgard. The helheim mounted troops are almost exactly the same as Vans btw, the difference at stats is very neglectable.

Let me repeat myself - I never said that EA Vanheim sacred suck. But I do say that comparable to Vans or their Helheim analog, they are significantly worse, and clearly not in the same league.

Your example of fighing Ermor with Venhers and Van commanders shooting lighting balls is clearly irrelivent for comparing EA Vanghheim sacred troops to those of MA/LA Vanheim and Helheim.

[Endoperez]

Corwin said:
EA Van troops are not that good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops are kindof weak and costly for their stats.



They can deal with triple numbers, easily. In fact, even the non-sacred units might be able to deal with twice or thrice their numbers without many losses. Between Glamour, Shield and mediocre protection, arrows will only rarely effect them.

Whether or not EA Vanheim's sacred units are weaker than those of other Vanir nations is irrelevant, because MA/LA Vanir are EXTREMELY good, and even if the normal Vanir are weaker, they can be VERY good.

Also, for some reason you only seem to regard the nation's sacred units when considering their worth. EA Vanheim against MA Vanheim could turn very nasty, because the latter wouldn't know a thing about the former's armies before battle. Also, while in later ages only the sacred troops can go stealth-raiding, in EA they can use somewhat cheaper Huskarls and Hirdmens for it as well.

[mivayan]

Cainehill said:

I wonder if part of the problem is that there's still a bug with the fire bless? With Dom2 it seemed that a F9 bless _always_ went through defense and also mirror images, as things like F9 blessed centaurs tore through W9 blessed Vans. IIRC, theory was that it was like lifedrain, where side effects took effect even if the attack didn't hit.


Flaming arrows doesn't do much against vans in dom3. Which may or may not be relevant.

[Manuk]

I have a partial solution for early blessed troop's rush.

The actual limit to the number of sacred troops to recruit is equal to the max dominion level.
If instead you could recruit equal to the actual dominion strenght in that province you can recruit only 1 sacred unit the first turn, and dependant of the dominion growth you can increase the speed of recruit.

That way bless will be equal in power but not so blitzy.

[Maltrease]

Nice idea Manuk.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:

Corwin said:
EA Van troops are not that good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops are kindof weak and costly for their stats.



They can deal with triple numbers, easily. In fact, even the non-sacred units might be able to deal with twice or thrice their numbers without many losses. Between Glamour, Shield and mediocre protection, arrows will only rarely effect them.

Whether or not EA Vanheim's sacred units are weaker than those of other Vanir nations is irrelevant, because MA/LA Vanir are EXTREMELY good, and even if the normal Vanir are weaker, they can be VERY good.

Also, for some reason you only seem to regard the nation's sacred units when considering their worth. EA Vanheim against MA Vanheim could turn very nasty, because the latter wouldn't know a thing about the former's armies before battle. Also, while in later ages only the sacred troops can go stealth-raiding, in EA they can use somewhat cheaper Huskarls and Hirdmens for it as well.



You have some valid points there, I agree. But I was just surprised that people keep telling how both EA Vanheim and Helheim are overpowered with F9/W9 bless, when in fact Helheim's sacred troops are significantly more powerful (and different) than EA Vanheim, as both you and Nerfix agree. That's why I concentrated on sacred troops in my post, and not on non-sacred troops, since Huskarls/Hirdmans that you mentioned are clearly not affected by bless or lack of it.

[NTJedi]

Manuk said:
I have a partial solution for early blessed troop's rush.

The actual limit to the number of sacred troops to recruit is equal to the max dominion level.
If instead you could recruit equal to the actual dominion strenght in that province you can recruit only 1 sacred unit the first turn, and dependant of the dominion growth you can increase the speed of recruit.

That way bless will be equal in power but not so blitzy.



Another idea is organizing a game where no pretenders can have any magic path above 6... this way the blessing bonus is not so extreme.

OR

Another idea is where each player will be creating a pretender for one of their random opponents. All pretenders being created must not have more than 9pts left over. The host then randomly assigns each player a pretender, but no player can have the pretender they created. Any negative scale must have an equal positive scale and any magic path given to the pretender must be at least 4.

[Shovah32]

I agree they are different, helheims are faster and alot harder to hit but vans, point for point are more damaging. Try a f9d9 van, for the gold cost they get the same number of attacks as helheims sacreds but they also have beserk AND d9, the bane of SC's. They would also be god-like vrs niefelheim (their size 2 lets them easily gang up on giants, the f9 destroys niefel giants and the d9 destroys jarls with fire resistance ect). You could also go f9, dormant pretender and decent scales with van, still having very good troops and also being able to mass produce your great, underpriced infantry.

[Gandalf Parker]

Part of the "heims" discussion seems based on people who are trying to play them the same. Its part of the problem with many of these discussions.

A "tank commander" style of player will love Ulm, maybe Jotunheim, and Abyssia, possibly Pythium. And they will hate nations like Pangaea and Caelum. They will declare some nations to be broken or vastly in need of more armored troops.

A "researcher" would hate Ulm and love Arcos. A Stealth player would hate Arcos. Personally I play alot of "stealth" or "defensive". Usually I would do alot more breakdown of the styles but today isnt a prime day for me but I think the point is still valid. If you arent playing a nation in a way to make the best uses of what it HAS then you cant declare it broke.
You can only declare that it doesnt play like your favorite nation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
IMHO

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Personally I play alot of "stealth" or "defensive".



Most games I play are multiplayer... but it sure would be nice if the AI opponents knew how to make stealthy attacks with the stealthy nations.

[dirtywick]

NTJedi said:

Gandalf Parker said:
Personally I play alot of "stealth" or "defensive".



Most games I play are multiplayer... but it sure would be nice if the AI opponents knew how to make stealthy attacks with the stealthy nations.



I've seen them do it, but not often. I think it's because they tend to mix in non-stealthy troops which prevents them from doing it, but if they just happen to have only stealthy troops, like AI with early game Kailasa, you'll see them sneak to a weak PD province and attack.

[Cainehill]

Truper said:

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.



Nonsense. In Dom2 there were 17 playable nations. Of these, 13 had themes, to a total of 23 themes, making for a grand total of 40 different nations. Dom 3 has 49 playable nations. In addition, given the changes to the random magic system, and the lesser powers of indy mages, the nations of Dom3 actually play differently throughout the game, rather than rapidly becoming quite similar to each other. Furthermore, how adding a scad of new spells, summonables and magic items to the game results in less variety is mysterious.



Dom3 has at most 21 nations that can be chosen to play in any one game, unless someone mods or does a special map file. Dom2, there were 17 nations, with only some having _special_ themes, giving as you say, a total of 40 nations that could be chosen in _any one_ game.

One benefit of those special themes was that when you were playing against, say, Pangaea, you didn't know right away which of three very different Pangaea's it might be. (Instead, we have global enchantments to recreate a few of the themes, which has its own serious drawbacks and flaws.)

Even without those special themes : a number of the themes available to _ANY_ nation made significant changes to how that nation might play. For instance, the way any nation with sacred troops might go underwater with their sacreds via Water Cult. Or try to specialize in constructed units with Golem Cult.

Other themes simply gave minor tweaks that made subtle differences while helping to keep from wasting more than 25 points in pretender design. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Since we no longer have castle choice (which used to give 20 point increments), _and_ we no longer have themes.... And a lot of us had commented on our desire to see some themes for Machaka, or to be able to combine non-special themes (Water Cult, Golem Cult, etc) with special themes.

Instead, we lost themes. We even lost Last of the Tuatha, and Machaka (which many people enjoyed, and were waiting patiently for a special theme or two for) is _ONLY PLAYABLE NOW IN ONE ERA_!!!!

As far as adding scads of other things - _please_ don't put "scads of new ... magic items" in one sentence? We certainly didn't get scads of new magic items.

Instead, we got aging. Feh.

[Cainehill]

mivayan said:

Cainehill said:

I wonder if part of the problem is that there's still a bug with the fire bless? With Dom2 it seemed that a F9 bless _always_ went through defense and also mirror images, as things like F9 blessed centaurs tore through W9 blessed Vans. IIRC, theory was that it was like lifedrain, where side effects took effect even if the attack didn't hit.


Flaming arrows doesn't do much against vans in dom3. Which may or may not be relevant.



Flaming arrows isn't at all the same thing as the F9 bless.