Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[Reverend Zombie]

DrPraetorious said:
My preference would still be to add some useful anti-van spells at lower levels, rather than nerfing vans. Given that folklore is chock full anti-faery magic procedures - as many as there are to use against demons - I think there should be some in-game, and that requires a "Fae" designator. These could be national spells or not, I give some examples below but I'm hardly a folklorist.




How about making them magical beings? That's already in the game. Not sure if the Mbeing counters are low enough in the research tree, however.

[Graeme Dice]

Kristoffer O said:
There will probably be some kind of change, but initially rather minor, like the oni cost change.



I think that a gold or resource cost change is probably all that is necessary.

[Epaminondas]

Graeme Dice said:

Kristoffer O said:
There will probably be some kind of change, but initially rather minor, like the oni cost change.



I think that a gold or resource cost change is probably all that is necessary.



I agree with you.

[Epaminondas]

Corwin said:
Why don't we all cool down a bit?

Gandalf has been very valuable member of Dom community for as long as I remember, which goes back to Dom2 beta days. (when I was actively lurking on this forum) Yes, sometimes he takes position that I personally think is incorrect, which sometimes may correspond with original dev visions. Like in this case of Helheim/Vanheim issue. But this is understandable, since he was part of this vision and had certain influence on it. However calling all his posts worthless is totally uncalled for - he contributed a lot to the Dom community.




I don't want to endless clarify and restate my position because 1) it is tiresome, and 2) it detracts from the thread.

But the continued misrepresentation of what I said by Gandalf's fanboys leaves me no choice.

Please note that I did not say "all his posts" are "worthless." I endeavor to be precise in my language, even on game forums.

What I did say instead is that Gandalf's posts are "worthless" when it comes to "threads of this nature": that is, threads where national or unit imbalances or comparisons are discussed.

Again, as a long-time lurker, I appreciate that Gandalf has made many invaluable contributions to this community, and I have even learned much from some of his posts. Moreover, he seems to be one of the nicer guys on this forum: witness the equanimity with which he takes some of these sharp criticisms in stride.

Nonetheless, all that cannot immunize you from criticism if you say something utterly devoid of persuasive force.

[Gandalf Parker]

Your position is fine. And Im not very good at specific comparions where people break it down into specific numbers.

I only wade in when a thread starts to paint such a bleak picture that it might scare off newbies reading here, or worse someone who has yet to purchase the game. I think its misleading to call such catastrophic results when it affects only a portion of the player base. In this case it appears to be MP on small blitz maps with no victory conditions.

[alexti]

Kristoffer O said:
Vanir are not fae, they are gods. They invented iron forging and eat salted pork. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


How about adding couple of spells:
1) N2 Ench (let's say 2): "Arrows to poisoned salted pork chops"? Affects all friendly troops. All fired missiles become poisoned salted pork chops and deal no damage. If eaten considered a weak poison.
2) Another Ench-2: "Hunger" (battlefield), AOE, "all affected units suddenly becomes hungry".

[BigJMoney]

Increasing Vanir price will probably do the trick by making them harder to amass from the start. I still prefer the thematic repurcussions of taking away their sacred, but I can understand if that doesn't change.

The question is, do you increase gold cost, resources cost, or both?

=$=

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure if Kristoffer just raises resource costs. I think he has kindof a formula for that based on the armor and weapons. So probably gold is the thing that can be most flexible.

[calmon]

My solution would cost some coding time:

Gold/Resources don't change, but each sacred glamour unit costs 1 additional Air Gem to build up.

You've something to invest at the start and can't build up as much units. Later you can spend your air gems for a bigger sacred glamour army.

That would give Vanheim/Helheim something special and if you don't play a bless tactic you can use your other non-sacred glamour units (without gem costs).

2-3 Air gems/turn should be provided to vanheim/helheim in each era.

[Teraswaerto]

It seems that mounted Vans don't have the barding resource cost that most mounted units have. Helhirdings are lightly armored, protection 11. It's kind of strange that units that do have barding receive no benefit from it.

[HoneyBadger]

Since Kristoffer's watching and everyone's arguing and complaining already, so there's plenty of angry people to tell me why I'm wrong. I wonder if I should post my ideas for a revamped magic system here?

one-stop-shopping, as it were http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Tyrant]

Er, no, this thread has a topic and that's not it.

[Warhammer]

After reading the entire thread, I think this is best/most easily solved by increasing the upkeep or the initial cost of the sacreds. Once you get in the realm of changing unit stats such as strength, armor, etc., you change the balance between nations too much. Tweaking the cost of the units preserves the uniqueness of the units, and allows for a more moderate tweak. It might take a couple of tries to settle on the exact costs, but it is the easiest way to handle it.

[HoneyBadger]

I think this thread has by now 7 or 8 different topics, but it was a joke anyway so it really doesn't matter.

[DrPraetorious]

The cavalry in this weight range don't generally pay for barding - none of the amazons do, for example, including the onyx maiden who has almost entirely the same equipment (she costs 1 RP less since she doesn't have a javelin.)

Beyond that, given the speed of the Fey horses, it seems pretty obvious they are not wearing barding. It'd be nice if there was some way for enemy units to exploit a lack of barding on your horses.

maybe - when a mounted unit is repelled by a reach weapon, it has to resist a big pile of stun damage using the barding? Then the barding would need to be specified and have a rating, this is getting off topic anyway.

Now, if it were needful to raise the resource cost of Vans (which I don't think it is, but for the sake of argument), we could just have them wear light-weight, magical barding, which seems common enough in Vanheim, and would presumably have the same resource cost as whatever barding slightly heavier cavalry usually get.

[upstreamedge]

Nether Bolts works well against van for me....

Also Eye of the void...

[HoneyBadger]

I'd like to advance the idea that, just because their aren't currently tactics to use against the Van, Helheim, that most people can agree are acceptible, doesn't mean that they have to be Nerfed, it could just mean that more tactical/strategic options should and could be added that would focus on Van and Helheim's weaknesses without making them objectively any weaker.
Beat them the same way you'd beat any real-world unbarded calvalry-whether they were invisible or not-with field fortifications or phalanx. Unfortunately, we don't have a way yet to create fieldworks or field artillery or even simple ditches or stake-rows, but you can still use lots and lots of cheap units with long sticks, and eventually they'll get through the glamour. A scriptable "form phalanx" command with slow or no movement and a strong advantage against calvalry would be a start, that or a "set pikes" function which did the same thing, would be good. Magic would serve to ensure that phalanx-formations didn't dominate battlefields, but at the same time, they'd be an effective, obvious, and realistic choice against quite a few high-powered units, Van and Helheim included.

Another idea along this line is to have "landmine" type spells. I mentioned this earlier in another post, but basically it would be spells that remain placid-or even undetectable-until units contact them, at which point they go off, doing whatever effect they do. It's another fairly obvious use of, this time, battlefield magic, and it would make sense that wizards and whatnot would develope spells that would support an army while allowing the weak wizard to get well away from the conflict and danger, atleast as far as behind some bodyguards. To keep this type of magic from getting out of control, it could automatically vanish if the casting wizard is struck by arrow, spell, melee, whatever. In the meantime it would be great at breaking up charges and unaffected by Van glamour.

A third way to stop Van is if the glamour wasn't effective against blind or darkvision foes.

A fourth way is to give archers the command "target mounts". This would enable archers to concentrate on a target's trusty steed, which is a lot easier to hit than a Van, glamour or no glamour. You could also have them use British infantry tactics, with crossbowmen shooting standing, with a row of crossbow kneeling and firing and a third row behind them reloading/waiting to fire, with a command such as "Missle Volley". Put a couple rows of stakes in front of them (I'd really like to see units have the "Defend Position" command) and Van would have bad days all over the place. It wouldn't even be unfair to Helheim, because Valkyries could still fly over the defenders.

It would be nice if units gained more advanced tactical options, such as "Defend Position" and "Target Mounts" as they and their leader gained experience. Does anyone know if units in hills or woods recieve a defense bonus? If not, that'd be a great ability to add to the game. I know some units suffer from being in a swamp, but it seems like more experienced, elite forces would know to defend themselves well, and fight better, by taking advantage of their surroundings. Naturally, magic could only add to the potential for defending positions.

[NTJedi]

HoneyBadger said:
I'd like to advance the idea that, just because their aren't currently tactics to use against the Van, Helheim, that most people can agree are acceptible, doesn't mean that they have to be Nerfed, it could just mean that more tactical/strategic options should and could be added that would focus on Van and Helheim's weaknesses without making them objectively any weaker.



I completely agree

[Meglobob]

NTJedi said:

HoneyBadger said:
I'd like to advance the idea that, just because their aren't currently tactics to use against the Van, Helheim, that most people can agree are acceptible, doesn't mean that they have to be Nerfed, it could just mean that more tactical/strategic options should and could be added that would focus on Van and Helheim's weaknesses without making them objectively any weaker.



I completely agree



So do I, I love power in my games, raise the power levels, provide more strategic/tactical options, do not nerf nation after nation until you end up with a weak game, I hate game nerfing... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

[Sandman]

BigJMoney said:
The question is, do you increase gold cost, resources cost, or both?




I'd go for a gold cost increase to begin with. Maybe to 90 gold, the same as a Knight of the Chalice. That would cut the number of Vans in play by about a fifth. If their starting fort had 30 admin, instead of 50, it would cut their starting income by about 10% (depending on scales), reducing their numbers still further.

[Taqwus]

I wonder if a mounted unit should have a higher chance to suffer the Crippled affliction when hit, given that the mounts are usually large targets, and any significant injury to the mount might slow it down for either physical or psychological reasons.

[HoneyBadger]

Horses are not the most brave animals on the planet, taken as a whole. Even a well-trained warhorse is not a stupid animal and generally won't do something it knows is a bad idea. If vans rode giant armored wolverines, then they'd be realistically a problem, not that wolverines are stupid either, they're just incredibly brave, tough, and mean. If I were a long-lived, magically powerful van, I'd get myself some kind of undead mount, or atleast a magical construct along the lines of a golem, and I definitely wouldn't use a horse design, because it's too easy for even a good rider to suffer a freak accident and fall off-even immortal Vans have necks and spines to break. Who wants to spend a thousand years in a wheelchair?
Horses are good because there's a lot of them, because they're big and strong, because they're generally friendlier than a camel, and because they can travel faster over short distances than a human. A human is a much better long distance walker. We can outwalk almost any other animal. Horses are good mounts for humans, not immortals. If I were a Van with the resources-and as an immortal, I'd eventually have the resources-I'd breed myself a line of war-elephants trained and bred for both bravery and intelligence, I'd make friends with them and take good care of them so they didn't turn on me (elephants have excellent memories and can be vindictive), and I certainly would invest in some good barding. I'm not sure if it's in the Royal Hapsburg armory or not, but somewhere there's a complete, articulate suit of steel plate elephant barding. It's very impressive.

[Shovah32]

But vans dont ride normal horses, they ride fast, magical super-fay horses! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, so does my poor old grandmother in hillbilly heaven. The point is that the Vans would be weaker and more vulnerable because of their choice of mount. Maybe immortal horses are super brave and super tough and eat golden grain and spit sunshine, it still is a weak spot that should be able to be exploited in the game.

[alexti]

I'm not sure I like to weaken Vans for thematic reasons. Maybe they could be made sort of unreliable? For example, if every turn there's a chance that Van will leave the army to do his godly things instead following commands of some pretender it will make overall Van strategy weaker without weakening Vans themselves. Not sure if there's such code in the game though. Gladiators leave after the battle, but with probability of 1.

[Saxon]

Just briefly, I would like to reiterate that I find Vanheim too strong on all map sizes in single player. Most folks are talking about MP, but I want to raise this again. I think a tone down associated with costs will help address this.

Also, Gandalf, thank you for the ideas on random maps and working to get it part of the vanilla game. One of the weaknesses of Dom II was the limited number of maps available without downloading. The random maps add a great deal to the playing experience for the game, “out of the box.”

[Hullu]

We can outwalk almost any other animal.



I'm a bit doubtful a human outwalks a dog or a horse.

[PDF]

Sandman said:

BigJMoney said:
The question is, do you increase gold cost, resources cost, or both?




I'd go for a gold cost increase to begin with. Maybe to 90 gold, the same as a Knight of the Chalice. That would cut the number of Vans in play by about a fifth. If their starting fort had 30 admin, instead of 50, it would cut their starting income by about 10% (depending on scales), reducing their numbers still further.



Van pricing is even more ridiculous when compared to KotC, who cost 16% gold more, and ... 5 times the resources, for lower stats except the 20 prot and the "big" lance (all that is heavily factored in the 61 resource cost !).
I suggest Vans to be at least 100-120 gold, or even 150 ! Don't forget that with Dom3 high gold income you can readily have 1000+ gold/turn on turn 10-12, quite easy with those wondrous vans, plus they don't cost much upkeep thanks their sacredness...

[Saxon]

Humans are very good walkers comparativly. Horses are seen as strong, as they carry us, but actually spend most of the day standing in place, eating grass.

Have you heard about the hunting of kangaroos? You just follow it all day. It will hope away each time you get close, so you just keep going. That night, you both lie down to rest. In the morning, you walk over and hit it in the head. The lactic acid build up is so much the kangroo (built for sprints) cannot move the next day, but the human is just fine.

Speaking of which, we need kangaroo's in this game. Perhaps in Dom 4 we can have a nation with that mythology in it. Kangaroos jumping over heavy infantry and attacking archers/mages?

[Twan]

A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae
low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)
high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors

[Gandalf Parker]

Saxon said:
Just briefly, I would like to reiterate that I find Vanheim too strong on all map sizes in single player. Most folks are talking about MP, but I want to raise this again. I think a tone down associated with costs will help address this.

Also, Gandalf, thank you for the ideas on random maps and working to get it part of the vanilla game. One of the weaknesses of Dom II was the limited number of maps available without downloading. The random maps add a great deal to the playing experience for the game, “out of the box.”


Thanks for the thanks. Its good for people to "pay" for free things by thanking the ones that have helped accomplish stuff that someone would like to see more of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But I really havent seen the Van problem in solo games. I dont think Van has won a single one of mine. Of course I do tend to play really large maps with lots of choke-points, very hard independents, and in MP games its usually a victory point game. Those things tend to create a very different playing field.

[Endoperez]

Twan said:
A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae



Freezing Mist, W3A1, Evoc 3, 1 AN damage on AoE of 4+. Only mediocre range.

low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)



Darkvision would become even less useful than it currently is. Some nations are supposed to have a benefit. It only comes into play in very late game (Darkness) or when they defend their castles (Cave Castle, Cave Citadel etc), and if anyone with Nature (anyone after a while) could circumvent this, well... I'd rather have few illusion-strong nations than few underground ones made even weaker.


low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune



Eye of the Void is Constr 4, S1 and gives the commander with it an ability to dispel nearby illusions, similar to your suggested True Seeing ability. Regeneration (Thaum 3, N3 for AoE 1, Thaum 8, N4 for whole battlefield), reinvigoration (Relief) and increased magic resistance (Tempering the Will, Antimagic) are other abilities that a commander gets from Constr 4 item, and as you can see, abilities of this level aren't given to units in low-level spells. It isn't a perfect comparison, of course, but I don't think "true seeing" is supposed to be that easy to come by.


high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors



What about flying creatures? Mistform? Ethereal? True ethereal? Capability of canceling out Mistform and mirror images (both Air effects) would work; being unable to affect flying units would make Valkyries immune. Affecting ethereal creatures would be strange as it would kill Ghosts and such. Dispelling Phantasmal creatures would be strange because then this would be a very spesifically anti-Air spell.

[Twan]

Darkvision will become useful once maps will be made with (dark) cave provinces, then spells will be needed to grant darkvision.

Eye of the Void is the cheapest +2 penetration item, don't know if anybody already made one for the anti-illusion flavor effect.

Freezing mist is a crosspath spell including a level 3 skill so isn't a common spell. I was thinking about a spell a common elemental mage can cast (say f2 *or* w2).

The last spell is of course another anti-illusion spell and illusions are an air magic thing. As air is near impossible to develop with a non air nation, it's one of the many anti air spells that should exist out of air magic.

[Sandman]

PDF said:
Van pricing is even more ridiculous when compared to KotC, who cost 16% gold more, and ... 5 times the resources, for lower stats except the 20 prot and the "big" lance (all that is heavily factored in the 61 resource cost !).
I suggest Vans to be at least 100-120 gold, or even 150 ! Don't forget that with Dom3 high gold income you can readily have 1000+ gold/turn on turn 10-12, quite easy with those wondrous vans, plus they don't cost much upkeep thanks their sacredness...



The KotC has better attack, strength, hit points and morale than the Van, although the Van is a better unit thanks to glamour, very high defence and a low resource cost.

Vanheim is a cool nation, and I'd hate to overdo things and end up with Vans being useless. Better to take things slowly.

[Wyatt Hebert]

Hello, all...

As a longtime forum lurker, I've watched a lot of debates. I'd like to point out one thing, and ask someone to run a test...

(As an aside, I've played a piece of one MP game, which is why I'm asking for someone to test this idea)

Vans are susceptible to AoE attacks. Everyone acknowledges this. The earliest and most easily spammable AoE I know of is the Magma Children for EA Agartha. It's Conjuration 2 or 3, and has the Flame Strike attack. Can anyone do a realistic test of a turn 10-12 attack on Agartha by Helheim?

I only ask because my EA Agartha game, I was up against Helheim and Ulm (SP, of course), and I had much worse problems against Ulm, typically. Magma Children and the Earth Elementals did a real number on the Glamoured units, and Troglodytes are useful against the unmounted ones...

Of course, you also have easy access to Blade Wind and the Magma spells, but those are a bit too far away to take seriously in a rush, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Anyways, just a point...

[Endoperez]

AoE attacks, and trample, are both good suggestions. Abysia can recruit Salamanders, whose attack has AoE 1 IIRC. They should also work well, at least for one turn before they are butchered.

Fire Shield is also very good. Again, EA Agartha has Magma Children and EA Abysia the Burning Ones.

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm I didnt think of heat or cold auras as being an area attack. Thats really a good point for the fast games.

[HoneyBadger]

This thread moves to fast

To address the question of a human outwalking a horse or a dog: The Zulu in their heyday could RUN 50 miles, fight a full scale battle, and then RUN back. That's not just one Zulu, that was a whole Zulu division. At the battle of Marathon, a Greek soldier ran something like 26 miles in full armor (he delivered the message of victory and then promptly dropped dead, but still). 20 miles is no problem for a typical healthy human being. The problem isn't the distance, it's motivation. I myself am fat, I've got flat feet, and painful arthritis, and I can walk 12 miles at a stretch. Mind you, there are painful consequences, and it takes me about 3 days to recover, but I have done such a thing before and could again if I found it necessary. Humans get a bad rep compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but we can wear anything out, eventually, and we can survive in more extreme conditions than just about anything, too, atleast among the "higher" forms of life. We're also able to eat more different types of food than most, and store that food as fat (not a bad survival trick), we have, as far as I know, the finest sense of taste (not smell, mind you) in the whole animal kingdom, and we can deal with both land and-to a limited degree-water environments.

We're not firmly on top of the food-chain by mistake, friends and relatives, and it wasn't just our brains and opposable thumbs that put us here.

[Sheap]

Of course athletes can run 26 miles, they do it all the time, but I don't think the "original" marathon was done in full armor. I'd certainly leave MY armor behind.

I'm squarely in the middle of the food chain http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Kristoffer O]

When I walked to Santiago de Compostela (1000 miles) we met a guy on a horse that made the same journey. We met him for a couple of days before he advanced ahead of us. I think he traveled slightly faster then a human, but for a shorter time each day not to exhaust his mount. By the time we met him he had been traveling for several weeks IIRC. It was just before we crossed the pyrenées and he was a bit worried that his horse 'Pedro' (strange that I don't remember the name of the man, but his horse) would become worse in its hind leg that was a bit exhausted and shaky (or whatever happens to tired horses). So my impression is that hoses are able to travel faster, but are less durable and might need some rest or so once in a while. Not that we didn't rest :-)

[HoneyBadger]

He definitely did it in armor as far as I know, he was afraid of running into the enemy along the way, so he carried weapons and armor. And that's the thing about humans vs horses-humans can travel steadily and wear down a horse if the horse has to keep moving. Stopping and starting is fine for a horse, but a human hunter might not give the horse the option. That's also why wolves hunt in packs, because an individual wolf quickly gets tired, while a pack can relay off and give it's members time to recover in a long hunt.

[Corwin]

HoneyBadger said:
He definitely did it in armor as far as I know, he was afraid of running into the enemy along the way, so he carried weapons and armor. And that's the thing about humans vs horses-humans can travel steadily and wear down a horse if the horse has to keep moving. Stopping and starting is fine for a horse, but a human hunter might not give the horse the option. That's also why wolves hunt in packs, because an individual wolf quickly gets tired, while a pack can relay off and give it's members time to recover in a long hunt.




I disagree. I happen to have some experience with riding and horses.

The young healthy and strong horse with a rider who knows how to take good care of his horse, and with enough good food (not the grass type of food that horse may be able to find during the breaks, but the real horse food) will cover much longer daily distance then human, and will be able to do it consistently over more or less unlimited period of time, as long as the rider is taking good care of the horse.


Also biologically humans are quite weak comparable to many animals. The reason why we got on the top of the food chain are not our fragile bodies, small teeth and lack of claws, lack of fur to protect against cold, very weak (by animal standards) hearing and sense of smell, lack of night vision, extremely slow and inefficient reproduction system, et cetera, et cetera...

The reason we got to the top of the food chain and become dominant lifeform on this palnet, despite being rather weak race, is our brain, which helped us to overcome all these weaknesses. One might argue that humans developed intelligence exactly because they were so weak, and they needed it to survive competing against better prepared species and hostile enviroment.

[HoneyBadger]

That may be the case, but it would be circumstantial. You're postulating a certain horse supplied with certain food traveling over certain ground against a certain opponent. I don't disagree with the assessment in theory, but you're talking about a horse PLUS a human VS a human, that throws the experiment off. Animal vs animal is a whole other deal since one of the reasons humans perform so well is by using our brains. We're talking a flat stretch of more or less constant motion. Again, in your experiment, the horse would be stopping and starting at the discretion of it's rider, not motivated by it's own fear. Don't forget also that some humans can travel 50 miles at a stretch, day after day. That's a good run even for a horse. I know horses might be able to go 70 miles or more, but they also tend to take more wear and tear than a human does and tend to recover from injury more slowly if at all.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, I won't disagree that humans are weaker than a bear, have worse vision than an eagle, breed more slowly than a rat, etc. But my point is that in some ways, we can compete against animals, and even are superior in a few areas besides our brains. Ofcourse, our brains are our greatest advantage but not our only one, and one might also argue that our brains are just another area for sexual competition that happen to have given us a few short-term advantages. 8,000 years isn't a long time, and that's pretty much the limit that we've been on top of the food chain. Brains aren't the perfect tool for survival anyhow. Einstein had what's considered to be one of the finest brains in history, and he paved the way for the atomic bomb.

[Wick]

HoneyBadger said:He definitely did it in armor as far as I know,



He probably didn't do it at all. Check
Pheidippides in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides)

[NTJedi]

I have also heard how people in africa would hunt deer with a spear by chasing down the deer until it fell from exhaustion. Now that's real hunting.

[Corwin]

HoneyBadger said:
Well, I won't disagree that humans are weaker than a bear, have worse vision than an eagle, breed more slowly than a rat, etc. But my point is that in some ways, we can compete against animals, and even are superior in a few areas besides our brains. Ofcourse, our brains are our greatest advantage but not our only one, and one might also argue that our brains are just another area for sexual competition that happen to have given us a few short-term advantages. 8,000 years isn't a long time, and that's pretty much the limit that we've been on top of the food chain. Brains aren't the perfect tool for survival anyhow. Einstein had what's considered to be one of the finest brains in history, and he paved the way for the atomic bomb.



You've missed by several orders of magnitude. Try 200.000+ years rather than 8000 years, beginning at least at the Middle Paleolithic Era. 8000 years ago people were already living in the large settlements, having relatively advanced agriculture knowledge and irrigation systems, were hunting other species to extinction, et cetera, et cetera.

The example of horse + man being overrun by man was mentioned by Kristoffer, not me. My reply regarding horses was addressing that scenario.


As for atomic bomb - it is rather irrelevant to the discussion of human anatomy. But since you've mentioned it - it could be argued that since the invention of atomic bomb there was not a single major conflict for the last 60+ years between powers who had nuclear weapons. While before that there were two World Wars in the previous 25 years in which almost hundred of millions people died, and countless major wars before that.



Although what any of this has to do with Helheim, I have no idea... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[HoneyBadger]

I think we can safely say we've gone off-topic...ooops.

The presence of the atomic bomb-as opposed to those types of "conventional" wars that were being fought before 1945-allows for complete non-survivability of all major forms of life on Earth. It's not the fact that it has probably saved hundreds of millions of lives-It may well have done so, and I'm glad that it was invented, personally. It still remains a singular non-survivable technology if used to it's full potential. Biological weapons would most likely not affect all species, they might wipe out humans but not life on earth. Nanotechnology might have that non-survivable factor in it's prime, but we're no where near that now.

As for Pheidippides, aren't myths wonderful? Still doesn't outdo the Zulu who were 19th century.

As far as the neolithic age, we were top predators for the last 200,000-250,000 years, but I wouldn't say that we were firmly established as the ultimate top of the food-chain until we started to form permanent settlements and could really influence our environment-after all, the cave bear successfully kept us out of large swaths of territory for a long time. In modern times, so has the Tzitsi fly (I hope I spelled that right), but in that case, it's inevitable that we have or will push into those areas. A major plague or natural disaster could have wiped us out before, or another animal-Neanderthal for instance-could have taken our place, or we could have not survived the last ice age. Things that keep us on top are communities, agriculture, and advanced toolmaking. Until we had those, our position on top of the food chain was precarious. I'll concede that we may have been THE top predator for the last 20,000 years, but I still think the last ice age could potentially have wiped us out.

[Hullu]

I thought wolves and other kinds of dogs are among the best endurance runners in the world, and that is not the reason why wolves hunt in packs.

Can I get references(links) to these zulu that can run 80 kilometers, have a full combat, and run 80 kilometers back? And no, not a refernce to just one of them, but a 'division'.

Thanks:)

Also, abuot the horse and the rider being two entities and thus this has something to do with them enduring more. Well, you, your shoe manufacturer, your food manufacturer etc are also many entities. Can you really walk 50 miles a day and hunt your own food while carrying weapons necessary for hunting? ... and do this with clothes you've done yourself. If you want to compare a lone human to a lone horse endurance-wise - remember to abandon all tools and preparation. Or be prepared to let the horse get help like you do... Also, if you bring in athletes and people who are used to walking and hunting - also remember to bring in horses specifically bred or trained for long range travel, thank you:)

[Saxon]

Another point on the horses vs humans, coming from the Wikipedia article, how about climbs of mountains. Most folks switch to mules or go all the way over to human porters. Part of it is we are monkeys, but part of it is that we do better in varied terrain.

Most folks think marathons are the longest people should run. However, in South Africa, the standard is set by something called Comrades. They run between two cities, reversing the direction each year and the distance is 89 km/56 miles Further, they have lots of road races of unusual distances, often longer than marathons. My point is that the numbers of people getting involved is substantial and while most modern humans are in the middle of the food chain, historic humans, even average ones, exercising much more than we do today, could do amazing things. While diet is generally better today, I suspect that the top soldiers of any age ate well most of the time, so they would not have suffered malnutrition as much as the average person.

This is just to say the historic Marathon runner is plausible. Further, in contrast to what another poster suggested, it is quite possible he ran it nude! The Greeks liked to strip down and run “gymnos,” with the idea that carry as little weight as possible to go faster. Think of all the icons you see, the early Olympics. They are nude. This historic figure would not have needed weapons, after all, they had just won the battle.

[Hullu]

However you want to twist it the reality is that humans are good at adapting. But an average human is pretty weak. It's hard to compare a TRAINED human and an animal, since animals hardly practice anything but their natural talents at all.

Like it's very hard to measure the strength of apes. Since it's next to impossible to get them interested in it. How are you going to tell a gorilla 'now lift that car please' - they don't care enough.

Wonder why humans trained dogs to pull sleds. If people are more durable?

[PDF]

Yes but noone outruns a W9 blessed Van http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Back to topic !!

[Corwin]

PDF said:
Yes but noone outruns a W9 blessed Van http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Back to topic !!




That was subtle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[mivayan]

Hullu said:
However you want to twist it the reality is that humans are good at adapting. But an average human is pretty weak. It's hard to compare a TRAINED human and an animal, since animals hardly practice anything but their natural talents at all.


On the other hand you cant compare an untrained human since he/she would be dead quickly in the wild.



Wonder why humans trained dogs to pull sleds. If people are more durable?


A pack of dogs need less tents/booze/money to pull a sled than a group of humans would.

[Saxon]

Why do humans train dogs to pull a sled? Why did some humans make other humans slaves? Why do some humans hire other humans to clean their toilets? Is it about durability or is it about avoiding hard/disagreable work? I do not think you can use this argument to say humans are less durable, just that we tend to be lazy.

As for the issue of training, put aside ideas of modern humanity and go back 4000 years. Humans then tended to use their bodies a lot more than we do today. The average human then could be more fairly compared to an average wild animal. We did not die in the wild and our durability had something to do with it. Our brains are great, but they need the body to execute their plans. In Dominions terms (vain effort to stay on topic) a nation with 100 Sages and no infantry will be quickly over run by 100 slingers... You need both body and brains. If we are as weak as some suggest, how did we ever survive this long?

[HoneyBadger]

My point-which got out of hand and went badly (but I don't think boringly) off-topic-is that Van and Hel have weaknesses which can be exploited by an experienced player. And so I suggest: 1-if you want to beat Van, learn how to beat Van, and 2-if you don't think there's a good way to beat Van, petition for more lines of strategy, quite a few of which I suggested up there in the thread not too far back. This is after all a game of strategy, and in war all is fair. If you think this or any other computer or board game is a comprehensive strategy simulation, I direct you to Sun Tzu's the Art of War and Caesar's campain in Gaul, for starters.

[curtadams]

It makes no sense to try to fix a few overpowered units which are obviously out of whack with everything else available by designing new strategies for 10-15 other nations. Effectively, that's a game redesign. You don't redesign a whole game to fix a minor design error, regardless of how serious that error's effects are. First, it'll take ages - it's equivalent to designing 4 or so nations from scratch, which means it will take a year or so at the rate Illwinter can work. Second, with that much major redesign, it's a guarrantee that there will be something overpowered in those dozen major strategy alterations, so *that* needs to be fixed, presumably by another round of major strategy alterations by half the nations...

[krpeters]

Corwin said:The reason we got to the top of the food chain and become dominant lifeform on this palnet, despite being rather weak race, is our brain, which helped us to overcome all these weaknesses. One might argue that humans developed intelligence exactly because they were so weak, and they needed it to survive competing against better prepared species and hostile enviroment.




Wow, we're way off topic.

Anyway, you have it backwards. We became so physically weak because, thanks to a larger brain, we discovered we no longer needed claws, fur, etc. "Devolution" in action, a trait which is not needed atrophies. In 1000 years I predict most people will be nearly blind.

But there are a few human physical traits which still exceed those of most animals... vision is an obvious one, and endurance is a big one too. (What use is having a disciplined brain capable of focusing on tracking the same animal for several days if your body can't keep up?)

In the tortise vs. hare race, humans are the tortise, and we win every time.

[solops]

This stuff is interesting on Van, but I think I'm playing a different game. The biggest difference is that I play against the AI, but I also ratchet down the money, etc and I make R&D as expensive as possible. Vanheim does not seem to be the problem described here.

[UninspiredName]

Again, the AI doesn't really have the necessary coding to pull off a Bless strategy.

[NTJedi]

solops said:
This stuff is interesting on Van, but I think I'm playing a different game. The biggest difference is that I play against the AI, but I also ratchet down the money, etc and I make R&D as expensive as possible. Vanheim does not seem to be the problem described here.



Even now there's multiplayer games where people are complaining about someone taking a double or triple bless strategy and the nation(s) are not just Vanheim, but Mictlan, and Neifelheim.
The issue is not that Vanheim is too strong... it's that Vanheim is too strong while using dual bless strategy during blitz games. If Vanheim is not using a bless strategy then there's no issue with this capital only sacred unit.

[Valandil]

Is the issue then perhaps not vanheim at all? maybe its something to do with blessings? ▄

[Saxon]

Blind in 1000 years? No, vision is too important in our societies, look at computers, driving, reading and so forth. You still get reproductive advantages from vision. I can see a rise in other things, like hereditary diseases controlled by medication, but not loss of vision.

As for the topic, I still argue for a boosting of the price (gold and/or resources) of the units in question. Reducing their numbers retains the flavour and option of using the strategy, but makes massing and rushing with them a bit harder. It is an easy fix technically, addresses both the SP and MP grumbles and does not impact other nations too much. Strangely, I recall a certain developer mentioning that they planned to do just such a thing in an upcoming patch, so why don’t we wait and see how it works out?

[Hullu]

In the tortise vs. hare race, humans are the tortise, and we win every time.



What do you base this on?:/ A hare can travel in an hour what takes weeks for a tortoise. Now, if a hare does this every third day the tortoise must live thousands of years to make up for what the hare can travel in it's lifetime. Or do your tortoises live an unlimited amount of years?:)

No [censored] this is off topic!

[Endoperez]

Hullu said:


In the tortise vs. hare race, humans are the tortise, and we win every time.



What do you base this on?:/ A hare can travel in an hour what takes weeks for a tortoise. Now, if a hare does this every third day the tortoise must live thousands of years to make up for what the hare can travel in it's lifetime. Or do your tortoises live an unlimited amount of years?:)

No [censored] this is off topic!



Ever heard of Aisopos? Aisopoksen sadut? Kumpi kilpajuoksun voittikaan, jänis vai kilpikonna? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If Aisopos had been a cook, the tortoise would have been a soup, and the hare cooked in the oven. The order would have stayed the same: slower comes first.

[Sheap]

maybe its something to do with blessings?


Yes, the issue is with imprisoned pretenders, which gives so many extra points for blessings, while still maintaining decent scales. The best suggestion I've heard for fixing this is that blessings shouldn't work if your god isn't awake yet (dead is OK).

[Hullu]

Hrmpf.

[Saxon]

Incidentally, I have tortoise in my garden and he can move a surprisingly quickly when so inclined. He mostly just sits in the sun, enjoying himself, but occasionally gets in a mood and goes marching across the garden at a decent speed.

With a water blessing, he could become quite dangerous… He eats many things, but particularly likes the lower bits of my cactus, so I have him down for short weapon length armor piercing attacks and heavy armor. He is grumpy and won’t do what I want, so I would argue for high morale as well. Probably a good unit to have on your side…

[solops]

Tortoises are also surprisingly stealthy. And they will converge on the back door from all directions when given a recognisable, audible signal (Good discipline? intelligence rating). It is best if a snack is involved.

They have been around much longer than humans or hares. It may be that They Shall Inherit The Earth....after battling it out with the obviously capable cockroaches.

[Ragnarok-X]

To revive this topic: Vanheim is imba. Seriously. Just a day ago i was playing Ctis vs Vanheim. I had huge armies of conventional (no summons) armies, both high protection and trampler, and i was slaughtered on almost every fight. I feel like Glamour is WAY too powerful.

[solops]

The first game I played I had huge problems with a Van AI. I eventually prevailed by liberal use of magic and summoned creatures. My progress had been impeded to the point that others eventually crushed me, but I did not feel that the Van were too tough. I simply did not understand how to handle them. Perhaps I was wrong?

[krpeters]

Saxon said:
Blind in 1000 years? No, vision is too important in our societies, look at computers, driving, reading and so forth.



Look at glasses/contact lenses. We'll be able to "see" unaided... see badly, but well enough to find the glasses on the table.

[krpeters]

Hullu said:


In the tortise vs. hare race, humans are the tortise, and we win every time.



What do you base this on?:/ A hare can travel in an hour what takes weeks for a tortoise.



I was referring to the Aesop fable, speaking metaphorically...

[Valandil]

Ooh! Since this way off topic anyway--

The tortoise starts with a lead of a foot.
After a given period of time, the hare, traveling faster than the tortoise, will have made up this lead. But the turtle will have moved forwards, creating a new gap, which must be filled in a given time, after which the tortoise again has move, ad nauseum.

[Endoperez]

Valandil said:
Ooh! Since this way off topic anyway--

The tortoise starts with a lead of a foot.
After a given period of time, the hare, traveling faster than the tortoise, will have made up this lead. But the turtle will have moved forwards, creating a new gap, which must be filled in a given time, after which the tortoise again has move, ad nauseum.



Actually, that only works only up to a certain point. You see, you are measuring ever shorter and shorter and shorter amounts of time, and thus, won't actually cover more time of the hare's run than what is needed for the first few leaps. You aren't thinking of what happens once the hare gets to where the tortoise already is, and it will get there - that point is the first one you are ignoring with your time-trick!

[Valandil]

I'm ignoring much more. That is one of Zeno's paradoxes, ancient problems of the greeks.

The problem here is actually a misunderstanding of infinites. The series is actually convergent to 1/0, not 0. I don't really want to go over the math here, but suffice to say that my conclusion is totally wrong.

[PhilD]

Valandil said:
I'm ignoring much more. That is one of Zeno's paradoxes, ancient problems of the greeks.

The problem here is actually a misunderstanding of infinites. The series is actually convergent to 1/0, not 0. I don't really want to go over the math here, but suffice to say that my conclusion is totally wrong.



I'm really interested in knowing what series is "convergent to 1/0" in the Zeno's paradox story. The way I see it, the time series is simply convergent to a finite, non-zero value, which is exactly the time where the arrow (hare) will catch up with the runner (tortoise).

[alexti]

Valandil said:
I'm ignoring much more. That is one of Zeno's paradoxes, ancient problems of the greeks.

The problem here is actually a misunderstanding of infinites. The series is actually convergent to 1/0, not 0. I don't really want to go over the math here, but suffice to say that my conclusion is totally wrong.


I'm not sure what are you trying to say here. The serie obviously converges to {lead}/({speed of hare}-{speed of tortoise}) (that's obvious because it's just the gap divided by speed of gap reduction). I'm not sure if the original mentiones that hare travels faster than tortoise, but I think it's implied. So there isn't any infinities involved here. If one wants to express it through the serie, as in fable, that's a simple geometric serie and the limit was known very long time ago, not sure if the fable predates this knowledge or not.

[PhilD]

alexti said:
that's a simple geometric serie and the limit was known very long time ago, not sure if the fable predates this knowledge or not.



Actually, the mathematical status of series, and infinites, and limits, was a problem until surprisingly recently. One version of the story was from Jean de La Fontaine, a 17th century French fabulist; at the same time, mathematicians knew how to take limits of sequences and series, but typically did not do this rigorously.

[alexti]

Wasn't geometric progression considered by Euclid? Unlike most serie analysis it doesn't require rigorous definition of limits and infinities. Rather obvious multiplication by (1-p) allows to find the limit through other means, but I'm again uncertain when those techniques were developed.

[Valandil]

Ignore. No idea why I said 1/0.

[Olive]

I've tried to cast body etheral on vans (with midgard) and mirror image seems to be turned off (some vans on the battlefield look like they were hit). Am I wrong ? (maybe did they receive some arrows). If it's true, is-it the same for all buffs ?

[Sombre]

Woah, necro-bump.

[Olive]

Yup. Didn't remember it was so old.

But the question seems fitted to this thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[HoneyBadger]

I do that all the time-I figure as long as it's Dom3 material, it's fair game.

I had a lot of good ideas a hundred years ago! why go to all the trouble of coming up with new ones, when I can just dredge them up?

[MaxWilson]

100% positive that it's not the case with all buffs. I've used Strength of Giants, Legions of Steel, Iron Warriors, and Mistform on Glamour-ized troops without it knocking off the mirror images. I don't see why Body Ethereal would be any different, and in fact I'm pretty sure I've used Body Ethereal as well without that effect. Something else must have dispelled the images on your troops.

-Max

[Xietor]

I did not read this whole thread, but i think pikemen should get a 1st strike with a big attack bonus against mounted units.

That solves the van problem for several nations.

[Saxon]

Over the weekend, I played a SP game as EA Vanheim, as it seemed the easiest way to make sure I did not have to face them in the end game, yet again. Tried out the water/fire bless and was astounded. They are, quite simply, hugely powerful. I know I am repeating my earlier arguments in the thread, but having played them, it is stunning. I had fun and enjoyed the mages with E3 and a shot at E4 on a random. Throw on some boots of earth and that earth booster spell and you have an E5 or E6 mage. Blade Wind forever! I did not touch the blood magic and stopped research altogether once I realized the power of Blade Wind forever. I did not even bother attacking other nations protection, but that would have boosted the effect even more. No need to buff troops, even though those spells are available in the Earth school. I have not explored this nation much, but if it has the hidden gems like most other races, there is more strength in it yet.

The only problem I ever faced was a batch of blessed flaggelents! I had no archers, and this was before Blade Wind, so I lost some of my troops killing them hand to hand. I had considered recruiting indy archers on the therory that they would be very safe behind my powerful infantry, but couldn't be bothered, there was no need!

Sure, this was single player and sure, Blade Wind is not as valuable in MP (though I would be interested to see a team of E mages casting destruction and blade wind), but this nation is damn strong. Too damn strong.

[Velusion]

Saxon said:...but this nation is damn strong. Too damn strong.



With the exception of a vocal minority, you are pretty much preaching to the choir.

[Sombre]

I just read through this entire thread.

I have to say my opinions of a couple of posters changed a bit. I won't say any more on that matter.

Just for the record I'm totally sold on the argument that Vans are overpowered, singleplayer or multiplayer wise. I also think the CB mod does a good job of toning this down resulting in a more enjoyable game.

[HoneyBadger]

I've come to the conclusion that they are somewhat unbalanced. I don't think I agree that they're untouchable supermen, but definitely more than fairly endowed.

Rather than nerf them though, I'd really like to see the weakest nations in the game boosted-and the more powerful nations diversified-until we get a more even playing field, without taking away from the appeal of playing Helheim/Vanheim.

I really don't think there's anything wrong with Vanheim/Helheim being very strong-they work as very strong nations, or we wouldn't be complaining. I just think the problem is with some other nations needing help.

There are definitely nations that make mince out of Vanheim/Helheim-Niefelheim does, for instance, and Tien Chi. That's because those nations are strong too, and because they have specific talents to combat Van/Hel. The problem isn't that Van/Hel is unbeatable unless you weigh the odds, though, it's because there aren't enough other nations that can stand toe-to-toe to them, where you might win, but you might not. Niefelheim beats them, Tien Chi beats them, other nations beat them, but what gives them a run for their money?

Van and Hel are tough to beat because they're put together well, and because they can exploit the weakness of others while protecting themselves against being exploited right back.
You don't have a chance against them playing some nations, unless your opponent is a 12 year old moron-and that's because they can pick weak nations apart-that's the problem, not that they're, by themselves, too strong.

So why wreak a couple of perfectly good, interesting nations just because they work too well? just fix the ones that are broken-and in the process, make me more good, interesting units and spells to play with.

[Sombre]

I don't think people want to start discussing this whole thing over again HB. If you read through the thread I think the point you make is addressed - when it comes to balance it's easier and it makes more sense to tone down the very overpowered stuff of 1 or 2 nations than go about improving the other 15 or so.

[Olive]

MaxWilson said:
100% positive that it's not the case with all buffs. I've used Strength of Giants, Legions of Steel, Iron Warriors, and Mistform on Glamour-ized troops without it knocking off the mirror images. I don't see why Body Ethereal would be any different, and in fact I'm pretty sure I've used Body Ethereal as well without that effect. Something else must have dispelled the images on your troops.



OK, maybe were they shot by arrows. Thanks for the answer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Szumo]

HoneyBadger, how does Tien Chi beat Vanheim?

[Saxon]

Velusion,

Oh yes, I am preaching to the choir, I am even part of it back on page 6 or so! The only reason I posted is to highlight that the nation is even stronger than I thought it was when I joined the choir...

HB,

You are right, it would be better to boost everyone else, but I think that limiting just one is probably a simpilier answer. Also, for the single player crowd, Vanheim (like Ermor in Dom II) does seem to really stand out as needing attention. In MP, it is different. It makes balance even trickier.

[Meglobob]

I would like to eat humble pie and say I have completely changed my mind on Helheim/Vanheim, they are overpowered. I am in 3 MP's at the mo and in 2 Helheims totally dominating the game. In another I am playing EA Oceania, fighting Helheim and its like banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall.

Furthermore, a very nasty strategy seems to have developed when playing Helheim. Essentially, Helheim gets globals up as follows, in one game forge of ancients then well of misery by turn 30'ish. In another well of misery/eternal pyre.

The thrust of this strategy seems 2 fold, research construction to get the unque artifacts/general bling, research conjuration to get all the water, air queens, tartarians and earth kings, fire kings etc....

So you end up with a MP in which Helheim has a huge gem income and a multitude of supercombatants, kitted out and is of course Helheim on top! Unless basically everyone else allies against Helheim, which players seem disinclined to do lately its game over.

The speed of Helheims research is very, very scarey...

[B0rsuk]

I strongly disagree. Boosting everyone else (or just some weaker nations) is a baad idea.

If you simply tone Vanheim down, you're changing balance of Vanheim vs C'tis, Vanheim vs Machaka, Vanheim vs Marignon, Vanheim vs Bandar Log.... In short, Vanheim vs EveryoneElse.

BUT if you decide to boost, say, Bandar Log and Ulm, you're changing over 2x more balance relations. Bandar Log vs (EveryoneElse-1), Bandar Log vs Ulm, Ulm vs (Everyone Else-1). Geometric scale ! Why balance several things at a time if you could safely balance just one ?

Meglobob: this is very interesting, because some people argued Vanheim/Helheim should rule early game because they supposedly don't have late game.

[Teraswaerto]

I don't see how anyone who understands anything about Dom3 could claim they don't have end game power. Just look at their magic paths: earth, air, death! Those are some weak paths, right? Sure they are.

Also, the raiding power of their stealthy troops never goes away.

[Velusion]

B0rsuk said:
I strongly disagree. Boosting everyone else (or just some weaker nations) is a baad idea.


I think the main thing people worry about is taking away the unique powers that the heims have. I'm all fine with leaving them as is... just increase the gold/resource cost.


B0rsuk said:
Meglobob: this is very interesting, because some people argued Vanheim/Helheim should rule early game because they supposedly don't have late game.



There is a certain white wizard here who likes to answer every issue with "but it all depends on how big your map is!". In the past I've let that go, because it sounds like a good point. However I'd like to debunk that thought now. The rate at which the heims can grow is astounding. The extra provinces they gain in the early game more than makes up for any losses in the scale department - plus more provinces = more gems. So in the mid/late game they have a very large empire with a superpower pretender and no real negatives.

But IMHO the biggest reason to tone them down is that it is NOT FUN to get creamed by them so early in the game. It doesn't matter how you design your nation, the vast majority of them cannot even hope to stand against an early attack by the heims and it is in their best interest to kill you quickly.

[Baalz]

1) Super strong early expansion
2) Very strong research- hammers + skulls + quills
3) Very strong combat magic
4) Strong death mages for powerful summonings.
5) Unmatched hit and run capabilities
6) Assuming a F/W bless they've got a strong mage in 5/8 of the magic paths
7) Even a taste of blood magic if you're feeling frisky

Yep, sounds like the recipe for a weak end game to me.

The only thing worse than early game Helhiem is late game Helhiem.

[Xietor]

Does anyone else think that giving pikemen a 1st strike, high attack against mounted units would help balance the vans somewhat.

The 1st strike of the pike against mounted units has been used in other strategy games, and is sound realistically. A charging unit into a long pike IS going to take some damage most of the time.

Thus the pike gets a very high attack bonus and 1st strike(only against mounted units). I also think the defense of the mounted unit should be lowered against the pike because the pike is going to hit the horse not the rider.

It is just hard to see the 1st wave of calvary charging into a row of pikes and avoiding injury. Several horses would be severely injured.

And I guess not just pikes, but long spears would also achieve the same result. Maybe any sharp weapon of length 4 or 5?

[HoneyBadger]

EA Tien Chi beats Helheim easily, with it's pikes and chariots eliminating the glamour pretty easily, and the warriors of the 5 elements destroying it's special troops. Add in Chi's other troops, like their decent archers and heavy glaive-users, and it's a slaughter.

I've done it consistently over quite a few games.

As far as weakening Hel/Van instead of strengthening other nations-well, the ones that need strengthened are weak to begin with, and not just against Hel/Van.

I'm not saying boost Caelum, Niefel, T'C, Lanka, etc. I'm talking nations that have a hell of a time beating Helheim OR Niefel OR Caelum OR T'C, like EA R'lyeh for instance.
Sure, it's easy to weaken Hel/Van-a lot easier than it is to strengthen half a dozen nations-but EASY isn't always BEST, and Hel/Van are good nations, they're internally balanced, and they work for a lot of different styles of play.

You may have an easier time of cutting the legs out from under Hel/Van than lifting up and fixing up the least competitive nations in the game-and you certainly can tell yourself that you're doing the least amount of so-called "damage" to the 'holy internal balance' of the game, but the end result will be a game which isn't as fun to play-and that's the bottom line, fun. It's more trouble to fix a nation, but it's also a really good opportunity to make that nation more FUN to PLAY.

Plus, if done really well, it should firm up the overall balance of nations in the game.

And those things makes the game overall better, rather than worse.

[B0rsuk]

Is this just me, or Vanheim/Helheim has very heavy infantry by Early Era standards ? Not only that, but the infantry is stealthy, has high defence and magic resistance ?
They're perhaps ok for middle era, but compared to other Early units they're like soviet tanks.

I can't completely verify it now because I've never been a big fan of *heims and I don't feel like creating new game just sto check....

[Meglobob]

HoneyBadger said:EA Tien Chi beats Helheim easily, with it's pikes and chariots eliminating the glamour pretty easily, and the warriors of the 5 elements destroying it's special troops. Add in Chi's other troops, like their decent archers and heavy glaive-users, and it's a slaughter.



Is this SP or MP? Bet its SP...won't work in MP.

[Velusion]

Meglobob said:

HoneyBadger said:EA Tien Chi beats Helheim easily, with it's pikes and chariots eliminating the glamour pretty easily, and the warriors of the 5 elements destroying it's special troops. Add in Chi's other troops, like their decent archers and heavy glaive-users, and it's a slaughter.



Is this SP or MP? Bet its SP...won't work in MP.



I can't imagine it being in MP either.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, ofcourse SP. The way I figure it, if a person can wring the most out of a nation, then it doesn't mean that nation is unbalanced, it just means people know how to use it and can win with it. So, I'm only interested because Helheim and Vanheim are unbalanced for SP. Who cares about MP?

Most MP games-if they're smart-won't even let you play as Helheim/Vanheim.

You can beat them with Tien Chi pretty easily in SP though. Maybe MP too, maybe not, but who cares?

[Shovah32]

If heavily blessed helhirdlings get the charge nothing EA Tien Chi can throw up until late game(apart from maybe a very strong SC God like an E9 cyclops) will stop them.

[HoneyBadger]

I've never had a problem stopping them. Not only was I able to take out their armies, I was able to hold on to land, and eventually surround and crush them, without a hitch and in a very mannerly fashion. The secret was using mixed armies of something like 10 to 1 odds against them, having a good bless of my own,, building plenty of castles with loads of PD, and being every bit as aggro as they are.

[vfb]

HoneyBadger said:
I've never had a problem stopping them. Not only was I able to take out their armies, I was able to hold on to land, and eventually surround and crush them, without a hitch and in a very mannerly fashion. The secret was using mixed armies of something like 10 to 1 odds against them, having a good bless of my own,, building plenty of castles with loads of PD, and being every bit as aggro as they are.



HB, it might help put an end to some of the argument here if you could be clear that you're talking about SP in your posts. Like:

"I've never had a problem stopping the Vanheim AI. Not only was I able to take out their armies in SP, I was able to hold on to land in SP, and eventually surround and crush the AI player, without a hitch (in SP) in a very mannerly fashion (against the AI)."

I don't want to ban Helheim/Vanheim from games, but I do know I'll be trying out the CB mod in the next MP game I host.

[Meglobob]

HoneyBadger said:
Yes, ofcourse SP. So, I'm only interested because Helheim and Vanheim are unbalanced for SP.



Helheim/Vanheim are not unbalanced in SP because the AI plays them, so anyone can beat them very easily with any nation after 1 or 2 months playing experience. In SP you want to give the AI as much advantage as possible to give you a challenge.

Helheim/Vanheim are unbalanced purely in MP play when a good player will use there strengths to the max.

[Sombre]

Yeah when you're talking about SP you can still talk about balance (you can deduce the relative strengths of a lot of units etc) but you can't use the fact that you can beat the AI as an example that a nation isn't overpowered. Because of course you can beat any AI nation with any other nation. You can beat them even if they're improved 500%. You can beat them even if you stale the first 5 turns. If you want to assess whether Vans are overpowered you could try playing with them and see if it's actually worth using any other kind of strategy with Helheim / Vanheim.

[HoneyBadger]

Which ofcourse is exactly what I WASN'T saying.

I am saying that they're overpowered. In SP. I don't have an opinion about MP since I don't play a lot of MP.

I wasn't saying that, "just because you can beat the AI in SP that they're not overpowered". Infact, I'm not sure how you got that. I did say you can beat them in an SP game with Tien Chi, but that's entirely in another direction from the point. What I'm saying is that, if you compare them to other nations, they're clearly more powerful. Human intelligence (or a clear lack thereof) is entirely aside from that.

I wonder if anyone actually reads my posts before replying to them, or takes them in any kind of context?

[Velusion]

HoneyBadger said:
I wonder if anyone actually reads my posts before replying to them, or takes them in any kind of context?



I read up to this point...


HoneyBadger said:
Who cares about MP?




... before I stopped caring what you were saying.

But hey, I'm sure I took that out of context.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[HoneyBadger]

I can't fathom why you're trying to be rude, Velusion, but I haven't noticed you posting anything I cared about either, ever, so I guess we're even?

And, since you don't seem to know what the word "context" means or how to use it, and since the last two times you've posted in this thread, you haven't made any particular sense, contextual or otherwise, then perhaps you ought to look into it?

[Velusion]

HoneyBadger said:
I can't fathom why you're trying to be rude, Velusion, but I haven't noticed you posting anything I cared about either, ever, so I guess we're even?

And, since you don't seem to know what the word "context" means or how to use it, and since the last two times you've posted in this thread, you haven't made any particular sense, contextual or otherwise, then perhaps you ought to look into it?



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif Whatever.

Edit: Many of us here ONLY play MP. To ask "Who cares about MP?", as if it isn't worth discussing, isn't exactly being very diplomatic or polite. I would never think to say "Who cares about SP?"

....

[Morkilus]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Sombre]

I don't think he was being rude, I think you were / are. Dom3 is a game with a big MP community so saying 'who cares about MP?' is obviously going to cause problems.

I hope your post along the lines of 'learn to read' wasn't directed at me because I didn't misunderstand what you said at all. I question the relevancy of it given the context of this thread and think you should have clarified from the start you were talking about SP, but I wasn't accusing you of claiming Vans aren't overpowered based on SP. I was just pointing out that it's a bad idea to do so in case that's the direction things were about to go.

[Xietor]

Can't we all get along?

[HoneyBadger]

Again, it's a simple matter of context. I wasn't saying that "nobody cares about MP ever in the history of the world", that would be ridiculous. To put it very simply and directly, I was saying that MP is a much more volatile environment than SP. SP is the control. If something is unbalanced in SP then it's a much bigger deal than MP because it's objective. I don't think that's too difficult to understand.

No, I wasn't directing anything towards you, Sombre, I realize that it was a misunderstanding, and I could have been clearer. SP is what's important to me (obviously) but it's also a good measuring stick for balance, since the human brain is capable of a relatively infinite amount of permutations, whereas a computer is a finite thing-especially where AI is involved. I didn't intend that to be misunderstood, but if it was, I take the responsibility.

And Velusion was being rude. I wasn't speaking to him directly, and he wasn't making any real point that I could see, other than that he seems to have got his back up about MP. I accept responsibility for being unclear, and I realize that people care about MP, but I'm not a Pagan and he's not a Christian (well, ok, so I am a Pagan and he might be a Christian, but that's the metaphor I'm going with here), and we can go our separate ways without trying to convert one another.

There's no reason for him to chime in, unless he was looking to pick a fight. If I want to say "who cares about MP?" I can. I had a reason to say it, and it wasn't to be rude. If I had wanted to be rude, I would have said something along the lines of "screw people who play MP". I happen to like that this game is multi-player, and I happen to like people who multi-play. It's also useful for improving the game and the experience, since it's a great way to figure out everything that can be done with a particular nation.

The context was, "who cares about MP (in terms of the objective balancing of nations, because SP gives us much clearer and more useful data"). I admit I got a little irritated when people started telling me that I was wrong about things I'd never said, but that's ok, I can let that go with a smile, it happens. What I don't like is someone deciding they can pick on me without having anything like a well-formed motive, and when that happens, I feel I have the right and the duty to defend myself, which I did.

[MaxWilson]

HoneyBadger said:
The context was, "who cares about MP (in terms of the objective balancing of nations, because SP gives us much clearer and more useful data").



Hmmm, I think I need a little bit more clarification on what you're trying to say. You say the human brain is relatively more infinite than a computer AI, and tie that to SP being a more objective environment. I'm a little confused because I would expect that balancing by playing against a limited intelligence (the AI) gives you inferior balance to playing against a good intelligence (presumably human). It may be that there's a devastating counter Y to tactic X, which the AI will never find. (For instance, the AI can't handle SCs, and in fact doesn't seem to do much research at all.) That doesn't mean that X is too strong, it means it's risky with a payoff, except that against the AI there's no risk. Evaluating nations by playing them against the AI carries a high risk of identifying false positive imbalances. Conversely, evaluating nations by making the AI play them against you proves nothing--perhaps an imbalance exists but the AI isn't set up to exploit it. Therefore, I'm having trouble seeing how MP can be dismissed when you're trying to analyze balance, since it's the only opportunity you have to play against an opponent as intelligent as you.

Speaking as an SP player, I highly appreciate the MP players' finely-honed insights into the strategy of Dominions.

-Max

[Sombre]

I think the AI does quite a lot of research - it's just that it does research on seemingly random paths and never really uses battlemages as part of a true army.

[Sir_Dr_D]

So many things bug me about the heims. On the top of the list is their stealth. To me Pangaea should be the great stealth nation. Vanheim just steals their thunder.

Personally I think that the heims should have glamour only within their dominion. After all they are gods. Wander too far away, and you start to lose your power.

Other wise I would like to see weaknesses that could be exploited in the Heims, without taking away their strengths. One of these could be to increase their encumbrance (after all this glmaour could take a lot of mental effort to maintain.) That way, they would be strong at the beginning of the battle, but if they can't take out their opponant quickly, they start to lose their effectivness.

[HoneyBadger]

It's not that I'm dismissing it, MaxWilson. Not at all. It's the weight of the MP players that is the deciding factor. The nation is unbalanced in SP and carries through to MP. That's where their opinions become relevant, because you can analyze the nation in the laboratory of SP and then the imbalance plays itself out in the environment of MP.
It's definitely important. I'm just saying it's too great a variable in this kind of situation to be trusted by itself as to the degree the balance is off and should be corrected.

The game itself is so huge that it's hard to identify what's balanced and what isn't. Adding in the human factor makes it a degree more difficult. But if you can look at the SP game and say "yes, this nation is definitely, obviously better than every other one, whether I'm playing it or I'm playing against it" you're making things a lot easier on yourself.

You can come up with ways to fix the balance in SP, and test it, and then you can introduce it back into the environment of MP and see how it plays, but all the specifications should be decided in SP and then you can start talking ramifications in MP.

Do you see what I mean?

[Foodstamp]

When this thread originally started some time back, I was one of the first people to respond by saying yes the heims are overpowered.

I was told that if you were new to multiplayer, you just think the heims are overpowered because you are inexperienced.

Well its been several months, I have played in several larger MP games now and several blitzes. I am far from being a multiplayer expert, or even good for that matter, but in every game that has included a heim, I have watched them gobble up their neighbors, gobble up their neighbors neighbors and so on. The only counter I have seen against the heims is massed alliances made to wipe them out.

I may not be the best player out there, but I feel like I have been playing in games with some really great players. And I have watched those good players become eradicated by heims.

In one of my current games, I was placed next to a very experienced player that was behind the wheel of Marverni. I was pretty nervous being in such a position, then Helheim came along. Helheim utterly slaughtered Marverni and became my new neighbor.

Several months later, I still stand behind my original comments. The heims are overpowered to a point that in multiplayer games, the only solutions include hoping the player is brand new to the game and does not notice the powerful units in his recruit screen. The other alternative is to form dogpile alliances to knock out the heim player early.

That being said, I also hang on to my original proposal for a solution. Rather than nerf the heims, create a couple of new game mechanics that counter glamour, and give those new counters to nations that underperform.

[HoneyBadger]

I agree about counters to glamour, but I'd hate to see the "anti-Helheim" spell. I hope people will come up with enough partial solutions that they'll add up to one whole solution, rather than shoe-horning a deus ex machina.

[Edi]

HoneyBadger, your base assumptions about what makes for an objective laboratory environment for testing Dom3 balance seem very strange. Your assertion that single player games provide for an accurate lab environment is, to me, nothing but a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up other than your say-so.

It is my contention that the multiplayer games provide a far more accurate environment because in that environment ALL the strengths of a nation can be utilized to their full effect. It has been, since the beginning of the thread, pointed out by very experienced players that Vanheim and Helheim are not only powerful but that the power balance with them vs other nations is ridiculously lopsided. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

It just so happens that in MP, without mass alliances, you need to do everyything exactly right AND the heim player must also go along and work to YOUR script if you are to defeat him, while he has much more options. All this talk about defeating AI vanheim/Helheim means precisely nothing due to handicaps of the AI. It's much like a highly trained athlete crowing about being able to beat a person bound to a wheelchair on the 100 meter dash.

[Foodstamp]

It just so happens that in MP, without mass alliances, you need to do everything exactly right AND the heim player must also go along and work to YOUR script if you are to defeat him, while he has much more options.



QFT

[vfb]

I think one solution might be to use the CB mod when playing MP. I'm not sure, because I haven't tried CB in MP yet, but this is why I think it should solve the heim problem:

Those who play MP based from the shrapnel forums can get help loading the CB mod (not that it's difficult). SP players (who might not even visit here) might need variety in the strengths of the AI nations, so that once you kill the 2 or 3 AIs on your doorstep, you aren't faced with either a wasteland or a bunch of 15-province fortified AI nations ready to be invaded by a now 45-province human. Considering the nationality of the developers, and the nature of IW as an independent studio, it is not surprising that they chose to make the heims powerful. Without hiems to fight in SP, at the end you would be faced with the drudgery of wading through 500 bare chested warriors etc.

And if the CB 1.00 mod doesn't work because EA Helheim still, in one turn, flies into each province of a nation with 6 or 8 W9F9s and rapes all your horses and rides off on your women, then all we need to do is make CB 1.01 where we adjust the costs so it takes 3 turns to build a Dis and 2 turns to build a single Valk. Resources and gold. And if Helheim still pwns the world, then mod the defense of heim units down too.

Of course, this does not mean anyone is forced to do this (use CB in MP). Do what's fun for you (I think that's why some experienced players still join MP games as heim, when it's an option). Next game I host will be CB, though.

[MaxWilson]

HoneyBadger said:
You can come up with ways to fix the balance in SP, and test it, and then you can introduce it back into the environment of MP and see how it plays, but all the specifications should be decided in SP and then you can start talking ramifications in MP.



I see that having to factor diplomacy into the game makes analysis harder. I see that test games and games played against yourself let you analyze tactics more easily, and if by SP you include these types of games I agree they're quite useful. And yes, if a nation is both easy to play and hard to play against in SP that's evidence of potential imbalance and I see your point. Still, a nation which is "clearly better" may simply have weaknesses that neither the AI nor the player know how to exploit. Increasing the number of players increases my confidence that no weakness exists, provided that the greater number of players don't find a weakness either.

It looks like you're pointing out that diplomacy in MP complicates analyses.

-Max

[Reverend Zombie]

Darrel said:
<snip>

Other wise I would like to see weaknesses that could be exploited in the Heims, without taking away their strengths. One of these could be to increase their encumbrance (after all this glmaour could take a lot of mental effort to maintain.) That way, they would be strong at the beginning of the battle, but if they can't take out their opponant quickly, they start to lose their effectivness.



How about making them magical beings? They seem quite "magical", after all.

[calmon]

Let us wait for the first version of the glamour and helheim changes before continue the discussion here.

Kristoffer wrote in the Tir na n'Og (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=509410&Forum=, All_Forums&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=50941 0&Search=true&where=&Name=4238&daterange=&newerval =&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post50 9410) Thread:


Kristoffer O said:
Changes to helheim are on the agenda. Some have been implemented. We're experimenting with glamour right now. Quite important as there is about to be another glamour nation.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thank you. I was trying to remember if I had seen anything posted on that outside of the beta-test forum.

[Tuidjy]

Guys... Once upon the time, in the days of Dominions II, I got into a heated
discussion with someone on the subject whether mainstream Ulm was weak. After
pointless arguments, we decided to duke it out on a map that would play to
Ulm's strengths, as he perceived them. After getting demolished in the one
setup that he was sure to win (against Pythium) he stopped objecting.

Why not do it again... those few who claim that Hellheim is not imbalanced will
be assigned nations and show the rest of us how one defeats a fire/water bless.

Despite being a Dominions III newbie, and having never played any -heims since
pretender changes allowed insane blesses, I am willing to take the -heim side.

[Velusion]

Tuidjy said:
Guys... Once upon the time, in the days of Dominions II, I got into a heated
discussion with someone on the subject whether mainstream Ulm was weak. After
pointless arguments, we decided to duke it out on a map that would play to
Ulm's strengths, as he perceived them. After getting demolished in the one
setup that he was sure to win (against Pythium) he stopped objecting.

Why not do it again... those few who claim that Hellheim is not imbalanced will
be assigned nations and show the rest of us how one defeats a fire/water bless.

Despite being a Dominions III newbie, and having never played any -heims since
pretender changes allowed insane blesses, I am willing to take the -heim side.



Good luck in finding an opponent. Most of the people that defend the heims "as is" don't play MP.

But I agree with Calmon - I'll wait to see the changes mentioned by the devs. I'm a bit skeptical, but I'll wait and see.

Edit: Actually if this test is ever done I'd prefer someone more experienced to play the heim nations. Everyone says that the dual-bless heim strategy is simple, but I'm not sure I completely buy that. A really good player intimately familiar with exploiting the heim double-bless avenue would be a better indicator of true uber-potential. Note that this rules me out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif.

[thejeff]

Even most of the defenders agree that they are very strong in a small map blitz game rush strategy. Which is what any reasonable one on one game is likely to be.

You could disprove some of the suggested counters, I suppose.

[Velusion]

thejeff said:
Even most of the defenders agree that they are very strong in a small map blitz game rush strategy. Which is what any reasonable one on one game is likely to be.

You could disprove some of the suggested counters, I suppose.



*nods* The most common defense is "they are weaker in larger/bigger games".

I'd contend that Helheim on a large map (say 30 provinces per player - much larger than the vast majority of MP games) would still crush another non-heim nation one-on-one.

The game only starts to balance out in the extreme late game when the amount of magic researched by all nations is very, very high. The amount of high level magic puts almost everyone that can compete (income/gems/research wise) on semi-equal footing. Even then, the heims really don't have a disadvantage going into the extreme late game, whereas they have a large advantage in the early/mid game.

[HoneyBadger]

All I'm trying to say-and I didn't think it was very difficult to understand-is that you can't call a nation unbalanced purely on what's happening in an MP game. You have to look at the SP game, because it's the only way you're going to get anything approaching a pure result.

If you go by what a human player might do and might exploit, you're never going to get an accurate result, because every human player is going to be different.

Saying Hel and Van are unbalanced *just* because of what's happening in MP games, it's like calling chess unbalanced because Forrest Gump is playing chess against Bobby Fisher (or Bobby Fisher is playing ping-pong/table-tennis against Forrest Gump, for that matter). MP is a very good indicator of what *might* be unbalanced, but SP is where you can get hard facts, because you're only playing for or against yourself.

Now, I know and I admit that there are some things us clever humans can come up with that the computer never will, and those things can be exploited and make a seemingly weak nation a lot stronger, but why should intelligent, clever, unpredictible strategy be punished? that's why we're here!

What I'm trying to say is, if a nation is strong when the computer plays it, when you play it, when Forrest Gump and Bobby Fisher play it, when it's got a sprained ankle, a toothache, and a hangover, *then* it's a problem. A nation can be called unbalanced when it's *always* unbalanced. When it has an advantage in almost every situation, fair or unfair. Helheim and Vanheim do.

And it's not like I'm NOT saying that Hel and Van are unfairly favored-they are! I just think that removing things from a nation that a player might exploit, just so you can have more weak nations, is bad policy. Make the ones that are weak, stronger. Give them more exploitable qualities so they're more fun to play, rather than having us end up with yet another lame-duck nation.

[Teraswaerto]

When you say "there are some things us clever humans can come up with that the computer never will" it completely misses the point: the AI doesn't really play Dominions in the same sense a human does at all. It has no magic strategy and no bless strategy, it doesn't build coherent armies but rather jumbles of whatever it happens to recruit, etc. Therefore how the AI does with a nation tells practically nothing about whether or not the nation is strong or weak.

If by SP you mean tests where create a game with 2 or more human players and you control both, that can give hard data on what counters are possible.

[HoneyBadger]

That's what I'm talking about, tests, yes.

[thejeff]

The problem is that the AI cannot play to Van/Helheim's strengths at all.

It probably won't have a F9/W9 bless. If it does it won't recruit enough sacred troops. If it does attack with sacreds it often won't bless them. It will not even try to use stealth attacks and raiding.

It's not that the AI won't use weird clever tricks that humans can, it's that it won't use the basic strengths of the nation.

Now if you're arguing that, even with the AIs limits, not using most of their strength, the heims are overpowered, then bringing that up adds to the argument.



Velusion:
I'd agree that even on a 60 province 2 player map, Helheim is likely to crush most nations. But that, though large for 2 players, is still early game. Few SCs or full battlefield magic by the end of it, would be my guess.
I'd bet on any of the good bless nations against any non-bless in that game. Some would be closer than others, but I'd also bet Neifelheim or Mictlan could give Helheim a run for it's money.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, that's what I'm arguing, exactly.

[Gandalf Parker]

I dont think we are ever going to see the nations balanced for 2-player play. At least I hope not. I dont think it fits the game.

But I would like to see nations work better with the AI or vice versa. Its quite abit of the game if a nation doesnt work well for both ai and mp.

[Beorne]

Bumping this hated thread to know if with 3.08 and glamour adjusting Vans have become a little more balanced.

[Kristoffer O]

Might be a good idea, but it might also be better if a new thread was started. This one is a bit long.

[Gandalf Parker]

Its also out of date. There was a fix in the last patch which caused glamour to be weakened as far as magic and arrows. Since then various tactics have been developed using squads of cheap archers or slingers. Or area affect spells. Poison in particular by battlefield affect spells, or items such as bladder stick.