Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed? [Archive]

Huzurdaddi

December 10th, 2006, 07:42 PM

NickW said:
If you need a specific scenario to get the conversation rolling, try telling me how to beat a F9/W9 Van rush with EA Ctis. That's a real scenario from a game I'm in.

Skell spam is, I think, your only hope for survival. But there are a number of problems with that strategy.

1) It needs enc-3
2) you need something to keep the vans off of you for a couple a castings or 2 ( IIRC vans have something like move 39 when W9 blessed ).
3) even when it goes right I'm not 100% sure what the ratio is of Vans to sauramancers to make it work. I would guess something like 1 sauramancer for every 4 vans or something like that but I have not tested.

Of course his counter would be to make a good number of Holy-Preists and then you are doomed. No hope.

And that is only talking about set-piece battles. Due to glamour he can raid you like crazy and there is nothing you can do about it.

The only nations which can deal with Van are:

1) abysia ( all ages ), since flame weapons do not affect their troops and Vans without flaming weapons are not that scary.
2) Niefelheim since the cold aura kills the vans.
3) as we saw in a post recently: Caelum since Caelum raiding is very hard to stop.
4) *maybe* ermor -- although this is more conjecture than fact.
5) maybe C'tis Miasma -- no one likes attacking Miasma with expensive troops.

Other than those nations you are SOL if you are near Vanheim ( have not tried Age of Vanir they seem somewhat less powerful ).

As for Van not breaking the game, they sure break it for the 1 or two empires that start next to them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Foodstamp

December 10th, 2006, 07:52 PM

^^^ Totally agree, if your next to an aggressive Vanheim player in a multiplayer game, your pretty much SOL.

Later on in the game, players can team up against vanheim, but early in the game, no one wants to be the guy unfortunate enough to be their neighbor.

Potatoman

December 10th, 2006, 08:15 PM

Isn't Helheim essentially vanheim with better bless troops?

Shovah32

December 10th, 2006, 08:33 PM

For EA ctis (though ive never been successful with them) i would say skele spam with runners to hit the rear/archers(hopefully getting to mages/commanders) and possibly chariots to disrupt the enemy.

Huzurdaddi

December 10th, 2006, 08:53 PM

I tried out the skelly spam. The results were not encouraging for you Nick.

I was setup as follows:
Van had 25 Vans + 1 Prophet.

C'tis had 80 HI + 1 Lizard King to use as "chaff". I then varied the number of sauramancers until C'tis won.

1) At a 1-4 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 6 Sauramancers ) C'tis got smashed. Usually inflicting 2 losses to Van and losing all units in the process.

2) At a 1-3 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 8 Sauramancers ) C'tis got crushed but inflicted more losses. Around 2-5 Helhirdlings got killed per combat.

3) At a 1-2 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 12 Sauramancers ) C'tis wins consistently.

Just for fun I tried one time with a Scorpion King pretender ( with a nice F4 fire shield ) in front of block of HI. I figured that the Vans would get stuck on the Prot-20, fire immune pretender and they would then get swamped. I forgot that the Vans have lightlances ( and 39 AP ). The Scorpion king died on the initial charge http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Huzurdaddi

December 10th, 2006, 09:25 PM

Resource summary ( in the scenario where C'tis wins )

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
C'tis Van
Gold: 3500 1800
Resources: ~1200 300
Castle Turns: 12 1
</pre><hr />

upstreamedge

December 10th, 2006, 10:15 PM

I think the best way to fight vanheim is to get them taking as many morale checks as possible

Hullu

December 11th, 2006, 05:13 AM

I don't know why people even bother to say they're not overpowered.

Beorne

December 11th, 2006, 06:23 AM

Hullu said:
I don't know why people even bother to say they're not overpowered.

Perfectly agreed, van it is so clearly overpowered that I think people doen't want it nerfed because they like win easily with them. I like very much Van thematically, but I don't take it in my mp games because I feel it cheating.

The "north world" nations are so clearly better than the "south world" nations, maybe the home countries of the devs influencies ...
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Jack_Trowell

December 11th, 2006, 06:47 AM

With early C'tis, you could try using chariots with an order to attack cavalry, trampling vans should be a good way tu hurt them, no ?

Even if you loose, it should cost them more than you. (at least I hope)

Folket

December 11th, 2006, 06:55 AM

C'tis also have poison slingers with area effect and 50% poison resistance on thier national troops. Could be worth investigating.

Hullu

December 11th, 2006, 07:04 AM

To add my previous comment.

If they're not overpowered, why do people need to find specific strategies with which you can perhaps if you're lucky be able to deal with them?

I don't remember that anyone needs a specific super-strategy against any other unit, since pretty much everything else has simple counters - due to the fact that pretty much everything else is more or less balanced.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 07:08 AM

Well, there may be an easy but not so obvious counter to them.

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 07:56 AM

Hullu said:
To add my previous comment.

If they're not overpowered, why do people need to find specific strategies with which you can perhaps if you're lucky be able to deal with them?

I don't remember that anyone needs a specific super-strategy against any other unit, since pretty much everything else has simple counters - due to the fact that pretty much everything else is more or less balanced.

hmm... u don`t know what are u talking about,
1)it IS some nations that have better rush tactics that van`s
2)u need a specific super-strategy against ANY other nation, if that nation run with exp. player
3)it IS ways to counter Van,yes u can`t stop raiding,but u can raid Van in same time as he raid u, and u can beat his army with your army, aspesially in Dom3 with it money flood...

Hullu

December 11th, 2006, 08:50 AM

I still don't see the board littered about "how can I fight against MA-Arco using tactic XY.

Why not? Because it's not a problem. Half the world see Vans are a problem though.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 09:04 AM

Ever thought that maybe the counter is not so obvious as with other nations?
Also, even if something is hard to find, that doesn't automatically mean that when you've found it it will be hard to use.

Hullu

December 11th, 2006, 09:15 AM

If a counter for something is harder to find than it is for all other stuff. It means on the average this one thing is more powerful.

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 09:43 AM

Hullu said:
I still don't see the board littered about "how can I fight against MA-Arco using tactic XY.

Why not? Because it's not a problem. Half the world see Vans are a problem though.

U still don't see the board littered about "how can I fight against MA-Arco using tactic XY just because Van 2x bless tactic just so nobrainer - everyone can use it even without big exp. playing Dom3...
and so mutch blabeling about Van is abaut newbie player just don`t want think how counter SPESIAL\NOT STANDART tactic, play against it like against typycal, & he is loosing of course...

for 2x bless u pay big price,it`s a tonn of points,u greatly sacrifice something abaut Reserch(draim-2),Numbers(near 5 sacreds per turn) & Income(bad scales)

DrPraetorious

December 11th, 2006, 11:38 AM

Van has a powerful strategy, and there's no denying that it has a powerful strategy which is -
1 - Fast
and
2 - Easy to use.

Likewise Abyssia and the other heims.

If you go up against an experienced Sauromatia player, you'd better have a very strong strategy against Sauromatia, or you're in deep trouble.

Likewise for any other strong nation - if there are nations that don't have this property, then those nations are underpowered, and need to be buffed up somehow. Having only played a fraction of the positions seriously, I'm not sure which those are (people gripe about Oceania a lot.)

Now, the *heims and EA Abyssia have an easier time getting their nasty funk in gear, so they have significant advantages, especially on smaller maps, or with people who don't like to manage complicated strategies or field skirmishers.

But if you nerf them appreciably, they're useless. They don't get an early surge of face-hugging, and their magic is mediocre (except for Niefelheim.)

NTJedi

December 11th, 2006, 12:09 PM

BigJMoney said:
I can't find any chinks in the Vanheim armor.

Could they possibly be nerfed some time? Please? I really like them, but I don't want an easy game, nor do I want to upset people in MP by choosing them.
=$= Big J Money =$=

The nation can be modded to suit your needs following the instructions inside the modding manual or you can choose another nation. Plenty of fun nations to play for each era. If all nations were perfectly balanced then it would limit game options for SP gamers.

PDF

December 11th, 2006, 12:14 PM

Aseth said:

Hullu said:
I still don't see the board littered about "how can I fight against MA-Arco using tactic XY.

Why not? Because it's not a problem. Half the world see Vans are a problem though.

U still don't see the board littered about "how can I fight against MA-Arco using tactic XY just because Van 2x bless tactic just so nobrainer - everyone can use it even without big exp. playing Dom3...
and so mutch blabeling about Van is abaut newbie player just don`t want think how counter SPESIAL\NOT STANDART tactic, play against it like against typycal, & he is loosing of course...

for 2x bless u pay big price,it`s a tonn of points,u greatly sacrifice something abaut Reserch(draim-2),Numbers(near 5 sacreds per turn) & Income(bad scales)

Please read urself, it's ard to reed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Now to the point : double-bless doesn't mean that bad scales in Dom3, even with a Sleeping F9W9 pretender I can still take Order3.
And even then, what's the problem of "only" recruiting an half-dozen killing machines per turn, as they can chew up pretty anything right from game start ?
I'm currently in a pbem playing MA Vanheim (not event the best, LA is stronger !) with experienced players and I rank first on provinces and income by turn 18 just because I can field easily 8-vans armies overcoming lvl-8 indies.
Very few nations can have such an headstart, especially in MA. Add to this that Vans are recruitable everywhere and you'll see that Vanheim may be not unbeatable but is very strong and rather unbalanced compared to most nations.

Shovah32

December 11th, 2006, 12:15 PM

Folket said:
C'tis also have poison slingers with area effect and 50% poison resistance on thier national troops. Could be worth investigating.

not in EA afaik

NTJedi

December 11th, 2006, 12:16 PM

Beorne said:
Perfectly agreed, van it is so clearly overpowered that I think people doen't want it nerfed because they like win easily with them. I like very much Van thematically, but I don't take it in my mp games because I feel it cheating.

Some nations should be much more powerful for SP games and MP games. The powerful nations are needed in MP because gamers new to Dominions_3 should be allowed to compete playing the strongest nations. And with SP gamers the stronger nations are needed to provide a greater challenge as the game becomes easier and easier.

biekert

December 11th, 2006, 12:23 PM

Belatedly coming to this thread:

I agree that Vanheim is MUCH stronger than other nations, particularly in the Early Ages. The glamour ability for most of their units is _incredibly strong_; because of it their armies can, in terms of gold/resources expended, take on enemies that have expended 2-4 times as much. They've taken on the "Ashen Empire Ermor in DOM2" title for me now; that is, I groan and curse when I first see their flag pop up on my border.

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 12:26 PM

Jack_Trowell said:
With early C'tis, you could try using chariots with an order to attack cavalry, trampling vans should be a good way tu hurt them, no ?

Trampling has an attack value of 10, which means that the chariot has to trample the Helhirding about 14 times to kill it as it will only ever be likely to get the failed trample damage of 1.

NickW

December 11th, 2006, 12:27 PM

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 12:48 PM

PDF said:Please read urself, it's ard to reed

itz nat tu ard tu reed as u sink http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif
english is my 3rd language, and if you want show your linguistic skills in Russian or Ukrainian, you always wellcome http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

full positive dominion Pithium can capture about 2-3 neutral provinces in turn - but it`s not unbalanced to all, or it is unbalanced too? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

tibbs

December 11th, 2006, 12:53 PM

Graeme Dice said:

Jack_Trowell said:
With early C'tis, you could try using chariots with an order to attack cavalry, trampling vans should be a good way tu hurt them, no ?

Trampling has an attack value of 10, which means that the chariot has to trample the Helhirding about 14 times to kill it as it will only ever be likely to get the failed trample damage of 1.

In my early era MP game, I kicked Vanheim butt with my Arco chariots. That trample does the 1 point to get rid of their glamour and then they are a lot easier to defeat.

Jack_Trowell

December 11th, 2006, 01:24 PM

Graeme Dice said:

Jack_Trowell said:
With early C'tis, you could try using chariots with an order to attack cavalry, trampling vans should be a good way tu hurt them, no ?

Trampling has an attack value of 10, which means that the chariot has to trample the Helhirding about 14 times to kill it as it will only ever be likely to get the failed trample damage of 1.

Yes but if I remind correctly how glamour works, the first damage done will remove the mirror image, and then you can start doing real damage by other means (archers, etc ...)

Note that even a lone chariot or two, if it get to attack first, can remove the mirror image from several units in one action, and then let the arrows fly ...

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 01:27 PM

Jack_Trowell said:
Yes but if I remind correctly how glamour works, the first damage done will remove the mirror image, and then you can start doing real damage by other means (archers, etc ...)

They still have a defense of 24 with a W9 bless, so all you're doing is changing the to-hit chance for your attack 10 troops to about 1% from about 0.5%. Try it in a test game against yourself and you'll quickly see how hopelessly onesided the battles are.

Note that even a lone chariot or two, if it get to attack first, can remove the mirror image from several units in one action, and then let the arrows fly ...

So what about the plurality of nations that don't even have archers?

Edi

December 11th, 2006, 01:41 PM

NTJedi said:Some nations should be much more powerful for SP games and MP games. The powerful nations are needed in MP because gamers new to Dominions_3 should be allowed to compete playing the strongest nations. And with SP gamers the stronger nations are needed to provide a greater challenge as the game becomes easier and easier.

Bull****. A newbie player who jumps into a big game with very experienced players will get what's coming and that's probably a sound stomping. At least he'll learn from it. The obvious solution is to play with people more in your own league until you get the hang of it before you try slugging it out against the big boys. My first MP was against a fairly experienced bunch of people and I actually managed to finish fourth out of eight, but that was due to a lot of things, luck as well. My second, I got stomped.

Lamest excuse ever for not tweaking something obviously too strong down a notch or two so that it will only be strong instead of ridiculously strong.

Edi

PDF

December 11th, 2006, 01:50 PM

Aseth said:

PDF said:Please read urself, it's ard to reed

itz nat tu ard tu reed as u sink http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif
english is my 3rd language, and if you want show your linguistic skills in Russian or Ukrainian, you always wellcome http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

English isn't my 1st language either, though at least we use Latin alphabet in France. But anyway the idea is to use english, so rather make it legible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Aseth said:
full positive dominion Pithium can capture about 2-3 neutral provinces in turn - but it`s not unbalanced to all, or it is unbalanced too? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Maybe my point was'nt correctly expressed, but it was that Vanheim has a much easier way to expand quickly than most other nations.

Teraswaerto

December 11th, 2006, 02:05 PM

Huzurdaddi

December 11th, 2006, 02:10 PM

Ok. All of you who are saying that Van with double bless is easy to take care of. Make a test game with Van getting stompped with Equal, x1.5, and x2 gold/resources.

And do not post Abysia, EA Giants. Good freaking luck.

NB: At x2 you will be able to do it, but good luck with x1.

Add to that all decent van units have glamour so it will be very hard to see them on the map.

I've posted my results for Nick. How about you stop flapping your virtual mouths and back it up with some action? I know none of you will. Not a single one.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 02:16 PM

Blade wind (52+ attacks, evocation 4, earth3) may be a good way to deal with glamour troops, or maybe chariots - as someone already mentioned. Then you can send in your regular troops.

Make sure that the warriors you send in against the Vans have at least a defense of 13, this because none of the Vans have higher attack than 12. High protection is less good in an economic perspective as all the Vans are pretty strong and wield high damage weapons as broad swords and axes. Buy more agile (high defense troops) instead and try to keep the numbers up. If you have more troops than the Van player you will keep their defense down and make hits (see manual).

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 02:34 PM

Dedas said:
Blade wind (52+ attacks, evocation 4, earth3) may be a good way to deal with glamour troops, or maybe chariots - as someone already mentioned.

Blade wind is evocation 4, so you won't have it researched till quite a long ways into the game. It also only does 14 damage, so it won't have much effect on troops with a protection of 12. I've seen two castings of blade wind cause a grand total of about 10 damage each when cast against an army of 60 Jotuns.

If you have more troops than the Van player you will keep their defense down and make hits (see manual).

I suggest trying an equal gold cost in C'Tisian elite warriors to see how this doesn't work very well in practice. Even with two attacks they very rarely ever hit.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 02:38 PM

But the blade wind is only there to take care of the mirror images, and they only have 1hp. Or am I misunderstanding something?

mivayan

December 11th, 2006, 02:43 PM

tibbs said:
In my early era MP game, I kicked Vanheim butt with my Arco chariots. That trample does the 1 point to get rid of their glamour and then they are a lot easier to defeat.

In the *early* era, I can see that working well.

The discussion of EA vanheim (elite medium infantry with glamour) is getting confused with the discussion of EA helheim/MA vanheim/LA Midgard dualbless elite cavalry.

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Dedas said:
But the blade wind is only there to take care of the mirror images, and they only have 1hp. Or am I misunderstanding something?

Mirror images only disappear if the real unit is hit. Blade wind isn't very likely to hit, so it won't do much good. As I said, I saw a grand total of about 5 hits from two castings against a massive formation of protection 12 units.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 03:16 PM

But as neither protection or defense will be of any use when calculating if a unit is hit or not (I say hit, not damaged) by arrows/bolts/stones/etc, you could use cheap chaff with very high defense (ex. tower shield units, attack or armor is not necessary) to let the Vans gather some fatigue (easier to hit with missiles). All while you pepper them with a massive rain of arrows (making at least one damage) with your archers who you placed as close to the chaff (but behind your real troops) as possible to get good hits; effectivly killing all the 1hp mirror images. After that you have a bunch of fatigued, no mirror image, Vans. An easy kill for you fresh, real troops (why not cavalry?), who was put on hold.

mivayan

December 11th, 2006, 03:18 PM

Dedas said:
But the blade wind is only there to take care of the mirror images, and they only have 1hp. Or am I misunderstanding something?

I'm not sure if you do, but anyhow, here's an overly ironic description of events:

Edinnausagga the Oracle of the Ancients casts blade wind, the air fills with sharp whirling blades.

Bob the Hirdman, standing in the middle of his 25 friends in the EA vanheim army, sees some of them coming straight for him.

Fortunately, half of them manages to pass through the fake mirror image of himself he has created. The mirror image is intact.

*CLONK* some of them hits his shield. His mirror image is intact.

*THUD* some hits his armor but luckily none draw blood (somewhere around 1/3 wont harm him). His mirror image is intact.

*OUCH* one gets through to harm him, his mirror image is gone.

edit:
But as neither protection or defense will be of any use when calculating if a unit is hit or not (I say hit, not damaged) by arrows/bolts/stones/etc,

There's no difference between hit and damaged for mirror image removal.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 03:32 PM

mivayan said:
There's no difference between hit and damaged for mirror image removal.

Then - as I wrote - all you need is high precision archers/slingers or whatever you can get cheap, put them relatively close and fire away. After that send in your troops as usual, preferably with some chaff first to build up fatigue on the Vans to get their high defense down.

mivayan

December 11th, 2006, 03:44 PM

Ah, sorry, what I mean is, an arrow that doesn't remove a hitpoint will never remove mirror image.

Edi

December 11th, 2006, 03:56 PM

The problem with the chaff strat is that you need to spend many times the resources required for the vans in order to get even a scratch, Dedas. Run the goddamn numbers through a test game like Graeme Dice and Huzurdadi said and see for yourself. TRY IT OUT with the bloody chaff instead of just pontificating from your chair.

Huzurdadi gave us the results with C'tis troops and the numbers don't lie. What's your excuse for not running a battery of tests?

Edi

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 03:57 PM

Dedas said:
But as neither protection or defense will be of any use when calculating if a unit is hit or not (I say hit, not damaged) by arrows/bolts/stones/etc, you could use cheap chaff with very high defense (ex. tower shield units, attack or armor is not necessary) to let the Vans gather some fatigue (easier to hit with missiles).

I'm pretty sure that you have to actually damage the unit to remove mirror images, though I could be mistaken. Van also come with shields, so they won't be damaged/hit very often by missiles.

All while you pepper them with a massive rain of arrows (making at least one damage) with your archers who you placed as close to the chaff (but behind your real troops) as possible to get good hits; effectivly killing all the 1hp mirror images.

Mirror images are not killed when they are hit. They are only removed when the real unit is hit (probably requiring damage), whereupon all mirror images are removed.

After that you have a bunch of fatigued, no mirror image, Vans. An easy kill for you fresh, real troops (why not cavalry?), who was put on hold.

What fatigue? Van have a melee encumbrance of four, so they'll only lose one point of defense for every third round that they fight, and they won't be fighting till they hit your troops, so their won't b e any fatigue. Even without mirror images, Van are still capable of defeating virtually any other army for the same gold cost. Look at how hard it is to remove their mirror images. It is only twice as likely to hit them once the images are gone.

B0rsuk

December 11th, 2006, 04:00 PM

How about this:

FFA Sulphur Haze 2 Evocation
4+ area cloud doing poison and (I think) fire damage.

If only they would stop for a turn... I know paths are a bit awkward, but Phoenix pretender can do that.

Dedas

December 11th, 2006, 04:26 PM

Edi said:
The problem with the chaff strat is that you need to spend many times the resources required for the vans in order to get even a scratch, Dedas. Run the goddamn numbers through a test game like Graeme Dice and Huzurdadi said and see for yourself. TRY IT OUT with the bloody chaff instead of just pontificating from your chair.

Huzurdadi gave us the results with C'tis troops and the numbers don't lie. What's your excuse for not running a battery of tests?

Edi

My excuse is that I'm very new to this game and trying to help the best way I can, and that is by speculating alot and coming up with fresh ideas. Of course, most of the things I think of (with my lack of experience) you can naturally dismiss (as they will not work), but maybe one or two may have something, just a tiny drop of something, that actually can... work.
Or just ignore me if you want to.

I understand now that chaff is just a waste of resources and gold on the Vans. But can't you (with magic) raise their encumberance in some way?

Edi

December 11th, 2006, 04:52 PM

Yes, you can, but that kind of magic needs research, which requires time, which means that if you have a problem NOW, you won't be around anymore after the 6 or 7 turns required to get your research that far.

The whole point of this is that if and when you run up against hard numbers the likes of which Huzurdadi brought into the discussion and others have already raised many of the points you have been saying, you will eventually get yelled at. Because the numbers generally don't lie and they tend to need answer in kind, i.e. actual test results.

Edi

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 05:19 PM

will test within fiew days...

HoneyBadger

December 11th, 2006, 05:55 PM

I'm going to run some tests with Helheim vs Atlantis, early age, the theory being that even though Atlantis doesn't have archers, they do have ready-to-order Bladewind coupled with heavy duty tramplers in the form of Basalt Kings equipped with Boots of the Behemoth, plus lots of cheap-o poisoner troops and they're amphibious, which should nullify partially or wholely early expansion. I'm using Helheim because Vanheim's ability to cross oceans makes this latter issue more vague, and because supposedly Helheim has better blessed troops, which seems to be the issue. I'd also like to put forth the (harder to test) theory that early age Ermor, in the long run, has more dangerous blessed calvalry because their calvalry recovers from disabilities, making it possible to have three and four star experience blessed troops with no hearts. I'd also imagine that ea Ermor would be successful against Vanheim etc. due to their propensity for cheap, tough javelin-throwers, which they should be able to make several times as many of as the Vans can make sacred troops.

Shovah32

December 11th, 2006, 06:10 PM

Better than bladewind they have access to AoE spells like magma eruption later on. They can also get amazingly tough sacreds and basalt kings with an e9-10(possibly n4) bless.

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 07:04 PM

ok, stupid iron numbers:
early era

Van - 25 sacred vans with w9f9 bless,5 sacred van comanders(1 of them prophet),dominion 5, 3 order -3res 2drain 3 misfortune

C`Tis - 4 sauromancers, 1 Lizard King (Prophet),120 HI,3 lvl enchant reserched, dominion 5, 3 order, 3res, 3grows, 2 hot, 1 magic, 3 misfortune

C`Tis lose 20 battles from 20... sad

BUT now some MEGA-MAGIC-STRATEGIC-HINT, change 120 HI for
50Elite Warriors & 80 Slave Warriors(yep, i have so much money for them because of GOOD scales)

C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... hmmmm... what is wrong... Ou! Bingo! HI usless against so-heavy-hitting & hi-def troops, but little Slave-Lizards kick them... It`s miracle my friends! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif (all Slave-Lizards die)

next, change 80 Slave Warriors to 20 Chariots
C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... and even some troops exept Sauromancers survive! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Shovah32

December 11th, 2006, 07:12 PM

I thought elite warriors would do better vrs van. Duel to lower resources they can be massed faster and with 2 attacks(with decent skills on elite warriors) they can hit them hard. You used the sauros near the flanks right?

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 07:19 PM

i use Sauromanser & all other forces of C`Tis in the far left (back)
in the center to spam big cloud of skeletons.
All forces of Van - far right (forvard),for faster entering combat.

to <font color="red"> Edi </font> here your`s hard numbers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Shovah32

December 11th, 2006, 07:21 PM

I used to do a similar set-up with ctis but, ive found putting the sauromancers out towards the flanks a little top/bottom(left/right) allows skeletons to reach combat faster(moving round rather than through your army) and helps defend vrs flankers.

Aseth

December 11th, 2006, 07:34 PM

yep, tested, flanks is better, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif now with Chariots even more Lizard survives (about 10 chariots & some 10-20 Slaves) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Shovah32

December 11th, 2006, 08:16 PM

So im guessing chariots remove alot of mirror images, skeletons protect the flanks and when the 2 forces meet the larger ctissian force of skeletons and slaves overwhelms the now weakened van force?
I have 2 other tests for you and im not sure how they will go.
1)try basic(non-sacred) EA van/helm troops with glamour(the fairly cheap guys) and see how that goes
2)Use the sacred vrs ctis set-up and try to find a way for vanheim to win with that force.

Graeme Dice

December 11th, 2006, 08:46 PM

Shovah32 said:
So im guessing chariots remove alot of mirror images, skeletons protect the flanks and when the 2 forces meet the larger ctissian force of skeletons and slaves overwhelms the now weakened van force?

It's also a comparison of EA Vanheim and C'Tis, which is quite a bit less one-sided than EA Helheim vs. C'Tis. Van's sacreds go berserk once hit, losing them both their mirror images and several points of defense at the same time.

NTJedi

December 11th, 2006, 09:10 PM

Edi said:
Bull****. A newbie player who jumps into a big game with very experienced players will get what's coming and that's probably a sound stomping.

Yeah lets stomp and pound the newbie player by turn_12 in the blitz game... oh gosh... he never returned... wonder WHY !!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Edi said:
At least he'll learn from it. The obvious solution is to play with people more in your own league until you get the hang of it before you try slugging it out against the big boys.

Based on the type of games available, the type of players in the game and the time available for the newbie player... gamers must choose what works for them.
And even if they do move into a game for newbies, there's no stopping an experienced player from logging in unrecognized and dominating.

Edi said:
My first MP was against a fairly experienced bunch of people and I actually managed to finish fourth out of eight, but that was due to a lot of things, luck as well. My second, I got stomped.

Not everyone has your personality, thus many gamers new to multiplayer gaming will only stomach getting stomped a few times before just flat out quitting. The powerful nations provide the newbie a stronger sense of security when moving into the multiplayer arena.

Edi said:
Lamest excuse ever for not tweaking something obviously too strong down a notch or two so that it will only be strong instead of ridiculously strong.

Edi

There's LOTS of nations for every age and more coming... there's no reason for the game not to have a few very powerful nations which provide more variety into the game. If you want something completely balanced all the way around go play rock, paper, scissors.
If the developers wanted something completely balanced they would not have Vanheim and Helium designed the way they do now. You don't like it... then go develop a mod.

Zebion

December 11th, 2006, 09:22 PM

I got stomped once,about to get stomped twice,learned some new strategies in the process with two nations.

Also learned starting with nearly Pure swamplands nearby usually spells doom for gold reserves , but one does have to press on to learn , whether through victory (To find processes that work) or defeat (to find what plain out doesn't work)

Valandil

December 11th, 2006, 10:22 PM

Hmmm. Stupid test I realize, but interesting nontheless.

25 W9 F9 Helhirdings, 3 Hangadrotts (!).

25 E9 N9 Living Pillars. Warriors of Muspelheim (!!!). The uber-king-of-basalt-doom that cast the warriors then ordered to retreat.
3 basalt kings with boots of behemoth, no buffs.

The vanir routed, taking 8 losses.
4 pillars died.
so did all three kings.

Note: even this crazy test ends up in helheim's favour.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 12:58 AM

Ok, first of all, beware the Valks, the very first test game I ran, I forgot about valkyries and let's just say it's not fun to watch 8 units worth 4000gold get killed in one battle just because you don't have a good rear guard.

Second thing, Atlantis automatically has a big advantage over Helheim because you don't have to worry about them hitting you while you take over the sea, in the meantime you can research like crazy and attack them with 10-1 odds at your leisure. As long as your smart (not like me with the Valks) and pick them apart, Helheim doesn't stand a chance against EA Atlantis in a 1 on 1 fight. This should hold true even in multiplayer, as long as the player playing Atlantis is experienced and patient.

More to come on this subject as I do more tests, but for now, if you know you're going to face Helheim, Atlantis is a great counter, and while Van can cross the sea, they can't enter the sea, so it should hold true for Van as well.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 01:34 AM

By the way, I favor an imprisoned Wyrm with E10/N9 for Atlantis vs Helheim, with Luck 2, Growth 1, the rest of the scales at -3, and Dom 5. My Wyrm is imprisoned, which gives me lots of time to research Enchantment, for personal regeneration, etc. Growth and Luck are very important because this is going to be a battle of attrition, which is where Helheim really lacks. Their blessed sacreds are very powerful, it's true, but with W9/F9 you know you're not going to face a Dom10 pretender, Dom is going to be around 4 at most, which means not too many sacred troops coming out at a time, and roughly half of those should be valkyries, because they're so useful, and valkyries aren't as tough as Hangedrott calvalry.
E10 gives me plenty of prot for both my pretender and my Basalt Kings, and better than prot, it gives me +5 rejuvenation, which my Kings need because they're beautiful spell platforms and great fighters, and it means they can outlast the Vans in a fight, magical or physical. The nature 9 is good for regeneration and berserk, but this could easily be something else, astral for multiplayer or water or even death. I like it because of the spells which add to the attrition factor, like Gift of Health, because it makes my sacreds tougher and lets me build amulets of rejuvenation, and because I can create a very efficient supply-chain for my troops, while their troops are suffering from starvation and disease.

Graeme Dice

December 12th, 2006, 02:33 AM

HoneyBadger said:
Their blessed sacreds are very powerful, it's true, but with W9/F9 you know you're not going to face a Dom10 pretender, Dom is going to be around 4 at most, which means not too many sacred troops coming out at a time, and roughly half of those should be valkyries, because they're so useful, and valkyries aren't as tough as Hangedrott calvalry.

F9W9 Father of winters with order 3, sloth 3, cold 1, death 3, misfortune 3, drain 1 and dominion 9. It uses the scales that can be set negative with no real ill effects.

alexti

December 12th, 2006, 03:38 AM

Talking about Atlantis, you don't really need to defeat Vanheim in a straight battle, as long as you can raid sufficiently successful to ruin Vans economy you'll eventually win.

Corwin

December 12th, 2006, 03:49 AM

HoneyBadger said:
Ok, first of all, beware the Valks, the very first test game I ran, I forgot about valkyries and let's just say it's not fun to watch 8 units worth 4000gold get killed in one battle just because you don't have a good rear guard.

Second thing, Atlantis automatically has a big advantage over Helheim because you don't have to worry about them hitting you while you take over the sea, in the meantime you can research like crazy and attack them with 10-1 odds at your leisure. As long as your smart (not like me with the Valks) and pick them apart, Helheim doesn't stand a chance against EA Atlantis in a 1 on 1 fight. This should hold true even in multiplayer, as long as the player playing Atlantis is experienced and patient.

More to come on this subject as I do more tests, but for now, if you know you're going to face Helheim, Atlantis is a great counter, and while Van can cross the sea, they can't enter the sea, so it should hold true for Van as well.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. 1 vs 1 Helheim will eat EA atlantis for breakfast, as song as there is reasonable proportion of land to ocean provinces, like on standard MP maps. If you don't believe me we can play 1 vs 1 blitz with me playing Helheim and you playing EA Atlantis. I can promise you'll get your *** on the plate though, since the game would be very lopsided. Vanheim has always been my favorite nation in Dom, and I hate to say it, but to be honest I have to say that they did become stronger in Dom3.

(Note that I am not saying they should be nerfed, just commenting on Helheim vs Atlantis scenario)

BTW I am not sure if you have played much against good helheim players HoneyBadger. It does not make much sense to spend huge amount of points on W9/F9 and to have dominion 4. The minimum dominion level f9/W9 Helheim should be playing is 6 or higher, and you can easily get it without crippling yourself too much.

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 04:26 AM

Shovah32 said:
So im guessing chariots remove alot of mirror images, skeletons protect the flanks and when the 2 forces meet the larger ctissian force of skeletons and slaves overwhelms the now weakened van force?

no, Slaves & Skels was set a bit forward as meatshield, and Chariots was on the flancs scripted "hold & attack closest", so they not only remove mirror images - but kill with trample almost all Van,and skels finish survived(2-6) Vans...

i`ll run other test`s within 12 hours or so...

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 05:16 AM

I'm still testing, not really ready to multiplayer yet, simply because I've only been playing a couple of months so far. A decent player with a lot of experience could probably beat me using any nation and it wouldn't prove a thing.

One of the really nasty advantages Atlantis has over Helheim though, on a small map, say 60 provinces with 15 water, is the ability to locate and take out Helheim's home province. Once you've done that and destroyed their fortress, you've wiped out the whole W9/F9 question for as long as you can hold on to that province, which a decent player should be able to do for quite some time, since there's no way that Helheim minus their home province is going to be able to cut off Atlantis's troop line.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 05:24 AM

I've changed my mind about Atlantis pretender though, imprisoned Wyrm isn't that useful. Against Helheim I definitely think I'm better off with a master lich.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 06:06 AM

You know, this whole question really points to how limited the bless strategies are.

Huzurdaddi

December 12th, 2006, 06:13 AM

HoneyBadger said:
You know, this whole question really points to how limited the bless strategies are.

Limited did you mean LIMITING as in they are limiting in the choices you have when you are setting up your game. If you meant the latter than I agree, to maximize your chances in a decent game you have to figure out your bless strategy.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 06:17 AM

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Not only are you limited to 8 types of blessing, they're fairly arbitrary. You couldn't for instance begin the game with frost weapons with a water bless and improved perception with an astral bless, or bonus Hp with a nature bless. There's no real reason that something along those lines couldn't have been balanced into the game. I'm really hoping-and I've made some effort to convince others of the desireability-that we'll either see a (preferrably much) broader magic system soon or be able to mod in additional magic paths with their own types of bless.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 06:42 AM

Ok, I've had enough for today.

The results of today are: Helheim 1, Atlantis 0.

I'll try to get through another round of testing tomorrow.

PDF

December 12th, 2006, 07:05 AM

Graeme Dice said:

HoneyBadger said:
Their blessed sacreds are very powerful, it's true, but with W9/F9 you know you're not going to face a Dom10 pretender, Dom is going to be around 4 at most, which means not too many sacred troops coming out at a time, and roughly half of those should be valkyries, because they're so useful, and valkyries aren't as tough as Hangedrott calvalry.

F9W9 Father of winters with order 3, sloth 3, cold 1, death 3, misfortune 3, drain 1 and dominion 9. It uses the scales that can be set negative with no real ill effects.

Why Drain-1 ? You should take Drain-2 with no additional ill effects ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PDF

December 12th, 2006, 07:16 AM

Aseth said:
ok, stupid iron numbers:
early era

Van - 25 sacred vans with w9f9 bless,5 sacred van comanders(1 of them prophet),dominion 5, 3 order -3res 2drain 3 misfortune

C`Tis - 4 sauromancers, 1 Lizard King (Prophet),120 HI,3 lvl enchant reserched, dominion 5, 3 order, 3res, 3grows, 2 hot, 1 magic, 3 misfortune

C`Tis lose 20 battles from 20... sad

BUT now some MEGA-MAGIC-STRATEGIC-HINT, change 120 HI for
50Elite Warriors & 80 Slave Warriors(yep, i have so much money for them because of GOOD scales)

C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... hmmmm... what is wrong... Ou! Bingo! HI usless against so-heavy-hitting & hi-def troops, but little Slave-Lizards kick them... It`s miracle my friends! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif (all Slave-Lizards die)

next, change 80 Slave Warriors to 20 Chariots
C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... and even some troops exept Sauromancers survive! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

What blessings did have Vanheim ? It all hangs up on that, Vans aren't very money-effective without bless , and the Ctis units you've used aren't sacred...

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 07:19 AM

Van - w9+f9 bless
C`Tis - god with w9 bless for test Ctis Sacred Dancers (all Dancers died in tests don`t even scratch Vans,so i didn`t post these tests), but Slaves & Chariots not sacred.

Edi

December 12th, 2006, 09:40 AM

NTJedi said:
Yeah lets stomp and pound the newbie player by turn_12 in the blitz game... oh gosh... he never returned... wonder WHY !!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Anyone entering Dom3 MP games expecting anything else at the beginning is obviously too naive for his own good. Doesn't mean that a more experienced player necessarily needs to go full throttle at them, but if it happens, it happens. If you're trying to twist my words around as if I advocated piling on newbies, you can go play with yourself.

NTJedi said:
Based on the type of games available, the type of players in the game and the time available for the newbie player... gamers must choose what works for them.
And even if they do move into a game for newbies, there's no stopping an experienced player from logging in unrecognized and dominating.

Then that would suggest the problem being with the experienced player being something of an arsehole rather than there bring a problem with the concept of a newbie game, wouldn't it?

NTJedi said:
Edi said:
My first MP was against a fairly experienced bunch of people and I actually managed to finish fourth out of eight, but that was due to a lot of things, luck as well. My second, I got stomped.

Not everyone has your personality, thus many gamers new to multiplayer gaming will only stomach getting stomped a few times before just flat out quitting. The powerful nations provide the newbie a stronger sense of security when moving into the multiplayer arena.

The harsh fact is that for most people, winning a Dominions game is a fairly rare treat unless they take part in a crapload of games. Powerful nation or not, a newbie is going to get a drubbing when he moves into a game with experienced people. The only question is how bad, and that depends on quite a few things. But that does not address the issue of an obvious balance problem in any way, shape or form.

NTJedi said:
There's LOTS of nations for every age and more coming... there's no reason for the game not to have a few very powerful nations which provide more variety into the game. If you want something completely balanced all the way around go play rock, paper, scissors.

Take your sanctimonious attitude and shove it up your arse. I've never demanded complete balance for any Dominions game and I don't appreciate you trying to put words into my mouth. There is a difference between "powerful" and "ridiculously lopsided", which is what Huzurdadi, Graeme and I have been saying here.

NTJedi said:
If the developers wanted something completely balanced they would not have Vanheim and Helium designed the way they do now. You don't like it... then go develop a mod.

What I said about your attitude still applies here. Only you should do it with a cattle prod. In case you didn't happen to read the latest interview posted, the developers add new nations based on gut feeling and what feels thematically correct without worrying about balance. Occasionally that results in something that needs to be toned down and the Vanheim and Helheim issue is one of those.

As far as developing a mod or providing other content for the community goes, I've done a ****load more than you've ever dreamed of doing and I've no problem claiming that I've got a better understanding of Dominions as a whole than you do.

Now if you would care to actually address the points raised instead of whining like whipped dog, be my guest, but otherwise you can sod off.

Edi

Villan

December 12th, 2006, 10:49 AM

Aseth said:

Van - 25 sacred vans with w9f9 bless,5 sacred van comanders(1 of them prophet),dominion 5, 3 order -3res 2drain 3 misfortune

C`Tis - 4 sauromancers, 1 Lizard King (Prophet),120 HI,3 lvl enchant reserched, dominion 5, 3 order, 3res, 3grows, 2 hot, 1 magic, 3 misfortune

C`Tis lose 20 battles from 20... sad

BUT now some MEGA-MAGIC-STRATEGIC-HINT, change 120 HI for
50Elite Warriors & 80 Slave Warriors(yep, i have so much money for them because of GOOD scales)

I'd suggest tweaking the gold used for these tests a bit. The Vanhere army costs 2050 gold to recruit. C'tis army costs 2740 gold to recruit. The units don't zoom to their deaths in 0 turns though do they? The sacred units are really quite a bit cheaper than they look like when you figure in a bit of upkeep. Assuming an average survival of 12 turns for any given unit, the Vanhere army costs you 2866 gold and the C'tis one 4816 gold. This is far more than can be explained with scales.

This is also not considering how superior the dual blessed Vanheres are in taking independents, that they are invisible, and fantastic raiders, all of which should figure in their gold cost imo.

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 11:10 AM

man, plz enough theory, run the test and check how many turns you need to produce enough Slave Warriors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif and even IF i build them not in last turns, i WILL have extra gold from patrolling my Capital with my high positive scales, again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

yep, raiding, C`Tis lose 1vs1 to Van because of raids, but C`Tis lose to Pangea and Caelum because of rading too,it`s race specific of C`Tis http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

mivayan

December 12th, 2006, 11:45 AM

NTJedi said:
Based on the type of games available, the type of players in the game and the time available for the newbie player... gamers must choose what works for them.
And even if they do move into a game for newbies, there's no stopping an experienced player from logging in unrecognized and dominating.

Some nations should be much better than others so that one newbie doesn't get crushed quickly by an experienced player sneaking into a newbie game? Odd logic. An experienced arsehole could probably manage to get helheim anyway.

Villan - Since I like removing missunderstandings: Aseth did an early era test, meaing it was sacred "Vanhere" units and not "Van" units. Vanheres have stronger offense but aren't nearly as hard to kill.

Villan

December 12th, 2006, 12:00 PM

mivayan said:

Villan - Since I like removing missunderstandings: Aseth did an early era test, meaing it was sacred "Vanhere" units and not "Van" units. Vanheres have stronger offense but aren't nearly as hard to kill.

Yeah, I counted it with Vanheres, just lazy typing from me. Fixed the post.

PDF

December 12th, 2006, 12:33 PM

Aseth said:
man, plz enough theory, run the test and check how many turns you need to produce enough Slave Warriors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif and even IF i build them not in last turns, i WILL have extra gold from patrolling my Capital with my high positive scales, again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

yep, raiding, C`Tis lose 1vs1 to Van because of raids, but C`Tis lose to Pangea and Caelum because of rading too,it`s race specific of C`Tis http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Do you really mean VANS or VANHERES ? Vanheres are much less good than Vans, and I suspect your Ctissians tactics will *all* miserably fail against real Vans (the ones with 24 def) ! /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 01:10 PM

okey my little friends, test 2:
middle era.
Van attack from their dominion,C`tis from their

Van - same god, 9f+9w bless 25 vanriders with 24 def + 4 second sacred comanders. (1875 gold for regulars)

1)
C`Tis Miasma,Dominion10,all scales positive exept missfortune, 4 marshmaster, 25 swampguards 25 Slingers, 75 Slaves (2000 gold for regulars, EVOCATION 3 reserched - so NO skelspaming http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

ups, Van losing 20 of 20....

2)

OK, someone say 75 slaves is to mutch, upkeep,no time, bla-bla-bla

switch my 75 slaves for 25!!!! Swampguards

UPS, Van losing again...

poison slingers KILL all of the UBER-MEGA-Vans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

3)OKAY switch 25 cheating-totally-unbalanced slingers to Swampguards, so its 50 swampguards , 75 Slaves total

ups again! van losing! BUT now non total massacre! some Vans survive and escape now! they are trully grate warriors!
now Sleep Clouds kill all Vans, how sad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 01:19 PM

Edi said:

NTJedi said:
Yeah lets stomp and pound the newbie player by turn_12 in the blitz game... oh gosh... he never returned... wonder WHY !!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

If you're trying to twist my words around as if I advocated piling on newbies, you can go play with yourself.

Such immature behavior, as hard as it may be for you keep your conversation civilized please do your best. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

NTJedi said:
Then that would suggest the problem being with the experienced player being something of an arsehole rather than there bring a problem with the concept of a newbie game, wouldn't it?

The point being that if a few stronger nations exist within the game then the newbie players have more of a sense of security and confidence for starting a multiplayer game. "It's much harder learning how to ride a bike by starting up a steep hill."
Also SP gamers need very powerful nations whether they are new to the game or experts looking for a powerful enemy.

Edi said:
The harsh fact is that for most people, winning a Dominions game is a fairly rare treat unless they take part in a crapload of games. Powerful nation or not, a newbie is going to get a drubbing when he moves into a game with experienced people. The only question is how bad, and that depends on quite a few things. But that does not address the issue of an obvious balance problem in any way, shape or form.

As mentioned earlier the stronger nations provide the newbie gamers more confidence when playing a multiplayer game. And there's no balance problem since there's LOTS of nations for every era. Also your desire to weaken the stronger nations is from a multiplayer only view. In singleplayer games many new gamers enjoy playing the stronger nations and as they become more experienced they enjoy playing against the stronger nations. The game is very successful in its current format and I doubt we'll being seeing a change for the few wanting the "weaken the stronger nations" view.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Edi said:
There is a difference between "powerful" and "ridiculously lopsided", which is what Huzurdadi, Graeme and I have been saying here.

There's LOTS of nations... either don't play the few strong nations or develop a mod. The game in its current format is what has made it successful for BOTH multiplayer and singleplayer games.

Edi said:What I said about your attitude still applies here. Only you should do it with a cattle prod. In case you didn't happen to read the latest interview posted, the developers add new nations based on gut feeling and what feels thematically correct without worrying about balance. Occasionally that results in something that needs to be toned down and the Vanheim and Helheim issue is one of those.

Perhaps if you return to a good school you'll be more civilized on the forums. The rude behavior in your posts will eventually cause you to receive warnings from the moderators.
And the fact that a few nations are very powerful out of fifty nations is not an issue. You can easily choose to not play those nations or mod those nations since the average multiplayer game is 10 nations.

Edi said:
As far as developing a mod or providing other content for the community goes, I've done a ****load more than you've ever dreamed of doing and I've no problem claiming that I've got a better understanding of Dominions as a whole than you do.

Great then go create the mods for Vanheim and Helheim. There's no reason the entire community should accept the fate of no more very powerful nations just to satisfy your multiplayer gaming needs.

Graeme Dice

December 12th, 2006, 01:49 PM

NTJedi said:
The point being that if a few stronger nations exist within the game then the newbie players have more of a sense of security and confidence for starting a multiplayer game. "It's much harder learning how to ride a bike by starting up a steep hill."

No, what actually happens here in the real world is the newbies pick Ulm, thinking that it's a powerful nation (while nothing could be further from the truth), because they are new and don't understand the game, while the better players will pick the powerful nations and play them to win.

Also SP gamers need very powerful nations whether they are new to the game or experts looking for a powerful enemy.

Then they can mod those nations in. The default game should be balanced as well as is possible.

As mentioned earlier the stronger nations provide the newbie gamers more confidence when playing a multiplayer game. And there's no balance problem since there's LOTS of nations for every era.

This is a particularly silly thing to say. "Balance doesn't matter because there's lots of nations to pick." Now, please tell me how you plan to ensure that people only pick the nations that are balanced with each other? Are we supposed to limit the game so that there are even fewer viable choices compared to Dom2?

Stronger nations don't provide new players with more confidence for several reasons. The first being that truly new players aren't going to do particularly well against experienced players no matter what nation they pick. The second is second is that new players don't know what the strong nations are. They will pick nations like MA Ulm or T'ien Ch'i and then wonder why they are defeated in the first 10 turns.

Also your desire to weaken the stronger nations is from a multiplayer only view.

Yes, that's because the game is first and foremost a multiplayer game.

The game is very successful in its current format and I doubt we'll being seeing a change for the few wanting the "weaken the stronger nations" view.

I suppose that you've polled the Dominions community to determine what they want? Or is this another one of your crusades against Ghost Riders or about the AI building castles where you post identical arguments enough times that you cause people to leave the forum when they get fed up with you?

The rude behavior in your posts will eventually cause you to receive warnings from the moderators.

And, unfortunately, despite the fact that you are one of the rudest people on the entire forum, you'll never get warned, no matter how many experienced players you drive off, because you cover your insults with a fake veneer of civility.

And the fact that a few nations are very powerful out of fifty nations is not an issue.

Of course it's an issue. The issue is that those nations are too powerful.

You can easily choose to not play those nations or mod those nations since the average multiplayer game is only 8 nations.

Whatever happened to your refusal to use mods, and refusal to suggest that other people use mods NtJedi? I also love how your great solution to the problem is to ban nations from multiplayer, instead of fixing the actual problem. That's a cery fanboy attitude.

There's no reason the entire community should accept the fate of no more very powerful nations just to satisfy your multiplayer gaming needs.

In other words, you want to continue to be allowed to cheat against the AI by playing the overpowered nations, instead of having to feel like you're cheating by modding the game to make it easier for you.

I also suggest that you not pretend to know what the community wants, since you've clearly not done any research on the subject.

Dhaeron

December 12th, 2006, 01:57 PM

Aseth said:
ok, stupid iron numbers:
early era

Van - 25 sacred vans with w9f9 bless,5 sacred van comanders(1 of them prophet),dominion 5, 3 order -3res 2drain 3 misfortune

If it's early era you probably mean 25 Vanheres, as EA has no vans.
1250 gold 400 res
What commanders specifically did you use?

BUT now some MEGA-MAGIC-STRATEGIC-HINT, change 120 HI for
50Elite Warriors & 80 Slave Warriors(yep, i have so much money for them because of GOOD scales)

costs:
960 gold 240 res slave warriors
700 gold 450 res elite warriors

C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... hmmmm... what is wrong... Ou! Bingo! HI usless against so-heavy-hitting & hi-def troops, but little Slave-Lizards kick them... It`s miracle my friends! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif (all Slave-Lizards die)

Not a win for Ctis. Ctis pays 1.5 times the gold and 1.75 times the ressources. The scales don't make up that big of a difference, Ctis only gets 14% more gold.

next, change 80 Slave Warriors to 20 Chariots
C`Tis win 20 battles from 20... and even some troops exept Sauromancers survive! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[/quote]
1000 gold, 520 res
A better trade in gold terms but worse in res. Still not good enough if they all die, and keep in mind that vanheres aren't as dangerous as MA vans or EA helhirdings anyway.

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 02:21 PM

I check my 1st test,I used 180 gold Comanders.
C`Tis capital have 191res with 3of5 neighbor provinces captured. Some problems gather 690res? Seems not to me...
C`Tis have not 14% advantage in money, but slightly more - because of admin & tax+patrol multipliers - it`s abaut 36% on first turn if Van patrol too...

tomorrow i`ll test 1rst era Hellheim,HERE will be problems without poison slingers...

Edi

December 12th, 2006, 02:35 PM

NTJedi said:
Such immature behavior, as hard as it may be for you keep your conversation civilized please do your best. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Perhaps if you had gone to any kind of school that taught manners you'd be able to refrain from using that bloody rolleyes icon every time somebody disagrees with you. It gives the impression of you having your nose stuck up in the air so high that it rains INTO your nostrils. So don't be surprised that you get a response in kind. We have a saying here that goes something along the lines of "So the forest answers as it is called" and you're just seeing it in action.

NTJedi said:
The point being that if a few stronger nations exist within the game then the newbie players have more of a sense of security and confidence for starting a multiplayer game. "It's much harder learning how to ride a bike by starting up a steep hill."

See what Graeme posted. As well, you still refuse to address the distinction between "strong" and "ridiculously lopsided". Of course there are stronger and weaker nations, just as there were in Dom1 and Dom2, but that does not mean that some have to be orders of magnitude above others. You do understand the concept "order of magnitude", I hope?

NTJedi said: Also SP gamers need very powerful nations whether they are new to the game or experts looking for a powerful enemy.

Then they can either mod them or play with self-imposed handicaps such as not maxing out everything as per competitive MP style play.

NTJedi said:
As mentioned earlier the stronger nations provide the newbie gamers more confidence when playing a multiplayer game.

Provided they know which nations are the strongest and that they are not already taken. See Graeme's point again. New players do not need excessive security guarantees, they just need a decent chance and the more experienced people giving them a few breaks instead of ruthlessly exploiting every mistake they see the newbie making.

NTJedi said:
And there's no balance problem since there's LOTS of nations for every era.

There's no balance problem what with certain natiuons being ridiculously stronger than others because there's a lot of nations total. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
In case you aren't familiar with logic, that's a non sequitur.

NTJedi said:
Also your desire to weaken the stronger nations is from a multiplayer only view. In singleplayer games many new gamers enjoy playing the stronger nations and as they become more experienced they enjoy playing against the stronger nations. The game is very successful in its current format and I doubt we'll being seeing a change for the few wanting the "weaken the stronger nations" view.

As Graeme said, the MP aspect is one of the most important aspects of the game and a driving force behind the community. Hence things that detract from it, such as obvious balance problems that are not within the normal variation, are bad for the game and for the community. Why the hell do you think the CB mods were such a big hit with Dom2? They removed the most glaring problems while maintaining the game as it was meant to play. This issue is no bloody different.

NTJedi said:
Edi said:
There is a difference between "powerful" and "ridiculously lopsided", which is what Huzurdadi, Graeme and I have been saying here.

There's LOTS of nations... either don't play the few strong nations or develop a mod. The game in its current format is what has made it successful for BOTH multiplayer and singleplayer games.

Yeah. What you've been saying all along. It's perfectly all right as long as you exclude these strong ones, which detracts from the game far more than nerfing them enough that they'd still be strong instead of ridiculously powerful.

As I recall, Dom2 experienced a resurgence after the CB mods because the most glaring issues of ridiculous lopsidedness were fixed in those. So why the hell should we not have it addressed now while Dom3 is still young?

NTJedi said:
Perhaps if you return to a good school you'll be more civilized on the forums. The rude behavior in your posts will eventually cause you to receive warnings from the moderators.

Perhaps I'm not as interested in making snide remarks from behind a false veneer of mock-politeness as you are. I'm treating you in just the manner you deserve and as you might have noticed, I've been quite the opposite of rude to others here. If I think something is a stupid idea or at least not well thought out, I'll say so directly. Just as I did when I first called bull**** on your opinion and you chose to try to put words in mouth to make it seem as if I was advocating a far different position. That goes beyond being just rude, it shows you to be a deliberately dishonest person so I don't see why I should be kissing your rear and nodding sagely to the tune of your droning.

NTJedi said:
Edi said:
As far as developing a mod or providing other content for the community goes, I've done a ****load more than you've ever dreamed of doing and I've no problem claiming that I've got a better understanding of Dominions as a whole than you do.

Great then go create the mods for Vanheim and Helheim. There's no reason the entire community should accept the fate of no more very powerful nations just to satisfy your multiplayer gaming needs.

So, in addition to me busting my arse creating documentation that will enable better modding and mapmaking, I should also go and do the specific mods to address an issue that the majority here see as a problem just so that you can sit on your backside and pontificate without ever providing any kind of evidence, calculations, or even logically consistent reasoning for your positions?

Why don't you go back to playing AoW:SM and polluting the AoW Heaven forums? You've been so bent on turning this game to a micromanagement hell what with all the suggestions down the years that I'm inclined to give actual bull**** far more value than your opinion. After all, it can be used for fertilizer where as your views amount to little more than hot air most of the time.

Edi

Kristoffer O

December 12th, 2006, 03:01 PM

Hmm, nice are we http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I'm somewhat surprised about the development of this thread. Keep the discussion, but quit this [censored], please! (sorry about the language, I usually do not include feces in my posts).
Belittling someone, or their work, is not nice. Showing the entire forum that you disrespect another member is not nice either. Do that in PM's, if you have to.

You have good things to say, so do that! Not this!

Hmm, consider this a warning in disguise. I don't think I have to be more stern than this, but it is a warning none the less.

BTW, 'I'm sorry' is a nice phrase http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Kristoffer O

December 12th, 2006, 03:03 PM

Hmm, seems I got caught by some rudeness filter. I suppose that is good.

Edi

December 12th, 2006, 03:20 PM

Very well. I think I'll take a step back and concetrate on the DB project for a while. I'll make sure that this will not happen again.

Edi

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 03:24 PM

Thanks Kristoffer.

I'm not intending this to be a kiss-bottom post by any means, although I suppose it may seem like one. It just touches me that, for a game with only 2 principle designers, one of them is willing to take time out of his day to make an effort to keep not only the forum friendly, but a specific thread, said thread furthermore questioning that developer's judgement and published design.

I've lived too long to expect that we can all get along at every moment, or even consistently, but I hope that atleast we can remember that this just a friendly game, and that one of the purposes of a game is to make friends and build relationships. I hope that our common interest in helping to make this great game even better will in the end outweigh any enmity that differences of opinion and the weight of the past may engender.

tombom

December 12th, 2006, 03:27 PM

It's important that you aim for some sort of balance in the standard game. Vanheim/Helheim are obviously overpowered and therefore should have some kind of nerf. I don't expect it ever to be perfectly balanced. If new people really want to have an easy nation to stomp all over the AI with, they can add a mod that does that. For someone that is new to the series and has never been a good game player, I found the Easy AI easy enough that I won my first game.

HoneyBadger

December 12th, 2006, 03:49 PM

I think the trick to the Vans is not to give them a fight, just go around them and take out their principle provinces until you've destroyed their ability to make war. It also seems to me that a Death-Curse/amulet of vengeance strategy with some cheap sacreds would start to really irk the Vans, when you did have to fight them. Even if they win, they lose.

Edi

December 12th, 2006, 04:09 PM

I'll echo HoneyBadger's words. I should also add that it does not seem at all fawning and that the point about the dev's approach is dead on target.

I would also like to extend an apology to NT Jedi and to the community at large for being party to fouling up this thread. I can get rather vocal at times and sometimes anger can cloud my judgment. This thread has been one of those instances when it got the better of me.

Edi

NickW

December 12th, 2006, 04:13 PM

HoneyBadger said:
I think the trick to the Vans is not to give them a fight, just go around them and take out their principle provinces until you've destroyed their ability to make war.

That's not a workable strategy. If you send your army to the front and they send the Van army to the front, then you go around them and attack the backfield, they will have another Van army building up in the capital that you must contend with. You'll still lose your army, just a few turns later plus you'll be losing all your home provinces from the original front line Van army as they take out your "principle" provinces and ability to make war.

thejeff

December 12th, 2006, 04:43 PM

Yeah, a raiding strategy against Vanheim doesn't sound too workable.

They have the reputation as one of the best raiders in the game. They'll be better at it than most nations. Caelum might be able to make it work.

Add to that glamour, meaning you can't find their armies to avoid and you'll need to use significant force in your raiding parties to handle running into even a few blessed Van.

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 04:44 PM

Edi said:
Perhaps if you had gone to any kind of school that taught manners you'd be able to refrain from using that bloody rolleyes icon every time somebody disagrees with you. It gives the impression of you having your nose stuck up in the air so high that it rains INTO your nostrils. So don't be surprised that you get a response in kind.

We could both throw endless insults yet it doesn't provide any benefit to the topic of discussion. The rolleyes icon is used when someone cannot keep the conversation civilized and that's the only reason. I really do hope you can control your attitude so the discussion can be more productive.

Edi said:
See what Graeme posted. As well, you still refuse to address the distinction between "strong" and "ridiculously lopsided". Of course there are stronger and weaker nations, just as there were in Dom1 and Dom2, but that does not mean that some have to be orders of magnitude above others. You do understand the concept "order of magnitude", I hope?

As mentioned earlier there are LOTS of nations(over fifty) so even if Vanheim and Helheim are "very strong" there's plenty of other options for nations to choose. I could understand if the game only had about 5 nations, but that's not the case. Order of magnitude would be relevant if Vanheim and Helheim had to exist in every game. It's not mandatory for these nations to play in every game which removes them as a variable when not in a game.
The purpose of having some "very strong" nations serves multiple purposes. First newbies reading the forums and questioning their skills will more likely join a game knowing their first game is playing a very strong nation. Second in singleplayer games many gamers enjoy playing the very strong nations and as their experience grows they enjoy playing against the very strong nations. Third whether its singleplayer or multiplayer winning a game against a "very strong" vanheim is more rewarding than winning a game against a "nerfed" vanheim because the greater the challenge the greater the reward. And a fourth reason is for mapmakers which desire a few of the nations to be "very strong" allowing more options for creating maps. Even now I'm developing a map where the SP gamer will be playing the "very strong" Vanheim and going up against computer opponents which will be given great advantages which should provide some great battles.

Edi said:
Then they can either mod them or play with self-imposed handicaps such as not maxing out everything as per competitive MP style play.

Here you're suggesting a change so others have to do the modding or self-imposed handicaps instead of you accepting the game in its current state or making the adjustments yourself.

Edi said:
Provided they know which nations are the strongest and that they are not already taken. See Graeme's point again. New players do not need excessive security guarantees, they just need a decent chance and the more experienced people giving them a few breaks instead of ruthlessly exploiting every mistake they see the newbie making.

In most cases the newbies have to be on the forums to find the multiplayer games. As a result they will be curious enough to skim the bug thread and more popular topics such as this one.

Edi said:
There's no balance problem what with certain natiuons being ridiculously stronger than others because there's a lot of nations total. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
In case you aren't familiar with logic, that's a non sequitur.

There is no problem with balance when these nations don't have to exist in every game. I would agree with your balance concern if these very strong nations absolutely were part of every game, but there presence in the game is not mandatory. The host can easily remove them as an option using the #allowedplayer command.

Edi said:As Graeme said, the MP aspect is one of the most important aspects of the game and a driving force behind the community. Hence things that detract from it, such as obvious balance problems that are not within the normal variation, are bad for the game and for the community. Why the hell do you think the CB mods were such a big hit with Dom2? They removed the most glaring problems while maintaining the game as it was meant to play. This issue is no bloody different.

First the MP aspect is not the only part of the game and those non-MP gamers must be considered as well. If the developers wanted a MP only game then there would be no AI opponents. For the greatest success of the game it must grow with consideration to both MP gamers and SP gamers. And having Vanheim and Helheim as very powerful when over fifty nations exist will not hurt the MP gaming sessions when the host can easily remove them as an option.

Edi said:Yeah. What you've been saying all along. It's perfectly all right as long as you exclude these strong ones, which detracts from the game far more than nerfing them enough that they'd still be strong instead of ridiculously powerful.

As I recall, Dom2 experienced a resurgence after the CB mods because the most glaring issues of ridiculous lopsidedness were fixed in those. So why the hell should we not have it addressed now while Dom3 is still young?

Because Dominions is not a MP only community... changes to the game must consider those which play SP only, MP with AI opponents, and MP only.

Edi said:Perhaps I'm not as interested in making snide remarks from behind a false veneer of mock-politeness as you are. I'm treating you in just the manner you deserve and as you might have noticed, I've been quite the opposite of rude to others here. If I think something is a stupid idea or at least not well thought out, I'll say so directly. Just as I did when I first called bull**** on your opinion and you chose to try to put words in mouth to make it seem as if I was advocating a far different position. That goes beyond being just rude, it shows you to be a deliberately dishonest person so I don't see why I should be kissing your rear and nodding sagely to the tune of your droning.

Sorry you view my posts in such a negative manner. Yet as I mentioned earlier you're looking at this from a MP only view... which is why you don't understand the reasons I've provided.

Edi said:
So, in addition to me busting my arse creating documentation that will enable better modding and mapmaking, I should also go and do the specific mods to address an issue that the majority here see as a problem just so that you can sit on your backside and pontificate without ever providing any kind of evidence, calculations, or even logically consistent reasoning for your positions?

Why don't you go back to playing AoW:SM and polluting the AoW Heaven forums? You've been so bent on turning this game to a micromanagement hell what with all the suggestions down the years that I'm inclined to give actual bull**** far more value than your opinion. After all, it can be used for fertilizer where as your views amount to little more than hot air most of the time.

Hopefully the post from Kristoffer will water down your tainted mind. I've listed many reasons above for all ways the game can be played and why Vanheim and Helheim should not be nerfed. All your reasons revolve around MP only games. Changes to the game must consider those which play SP only, MP with AI opponents, and MP only.

Gandalf Parker

December 12th, 2006, 04:47 PM

Its definetly a workable strategy. What I see is that Vanheim/Helheim are not imbalanced. They ARE the balance. Against certain nations and certain strategies. This is a variation on other threads Ive seen about Ermor, or Ulm, or Jotunheim, etc etc.

Dominions does not balance nation to nation. It balances by rock-paper-scissors. So a nation is not imbalanced if its extremely difficult to beat on a certain map size with certain game settings when facing certain nations who are playing a certain way. (altho, the devs will certainly examine that and see if a tweak might improve one type of gameplay without affecting others)

Aseth

December 12th, 2006, 05:11 PM

NickW

December 12th, 2006, 05:19 PM

Gandalf Parker said:
Its definetly a workable strategy. What I see is that Vanheim/Helheim are not imbalanced. They ARE the balance. Against certain nations and certain strategies. This is a variation on other threads Ive seen about Ermor, or Ulm, or Jotunheim, etc etc.

I'm sorry, but are you doing any MP play at all? That statement seems to be completely unsupportable. Dual Blessed Van/Hel against anyone else in an MP game is going to go in favor of the Van/Hel sacreds assuming all else equal. Unless there is vastly unequal skill involved, or third party interference from another nation, the Vans/Hels are almost a lock to win.

Obviously there are a few counter strategies that work but they all revolve around being very specific nations and playing with very specific anti-Van strategies.

If the choice is between playing only a limited list of nations/strategies or losing, then the game is sadly broken.

I'd like to think I'm overlooking some obvious F9/W9 Van counter but I don't I am. Most nations simply can't beat the F9/W9 Vans without having a lot of research and being able to spend more significantly more resources defeating the Vans than the Vans themselves cost.

Gandalf Parker said:
Dominions does not balance nation to nation. It balances by rock-paper-scissors. So a nation is not imbalanced if its extremely difficult to beat on a certain map size with certain game settings when facing certain nations who are playing a certain way. (altho, the devs will certainly examine that and see if a tweak might improve one type of gameplay without affecting others)

I'd generally agree with that statement, but the imbalances that do exist and have long existed are not severe ones. Some nations didn't match up well with others but that just meant having to use clever tactics or get allies or simply be bigger/richer before engaging X with Y.

The Van/Hel dual bless thing is a bit different. If you want to start charting out all the possible scenarios and all the possible situations Van/Hel can face the sad fact is they should win almost all of them, all else being equal in terms of player skill.

DrPraetorious

December 12th, 2006, 05:35 PM

Nerfing pisses me off.

Let's compare two sorts of cardboard crack^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcollectible trading car d games: Magic the Gathering and Shadowfist.

MtG tried to rebalance the cards by nerfing everything. The result is a very flat game with no cool and powerful stuff in it, because if anything was any good it might be unbalancing.

Shadowfist, on the other hand, starts with more robust underlying mechanics, and then rebalances cards by making them *better*, not worse. As a result, shadowfist is a very well balanced game with lots of cards that do awesomely powerful stuff.

It is absolutely untrue, and I think demonstrated by various posts, that it is impossible to beat *heim. It may be true - and I admit that I haven't played every nation - that *some* nations have no viable strategy to oppose vanheim, particularly in the early game.

If that is the case - the question becomes, what can we add to those nations that would enable them to oppose vanheim more effectively, without changing them beyond recognition? Note that if you have a 33% chance of repulsing the rush, you are mounting effective opposition, especially if you can cause significant losses even in defeat.

So, in the *modders* forum, I have included a "which nations need bennies" thread, where I discuss this in some detail.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=478711&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Graeme Dice

December 12th, 2006, 05:38 PM

NTJedi said:
I really do hope you can control your attitude so the discussion can be more productive.

And I also really hope you learn to stop making snide remarks and destroying useful threads with your complete inability to change your mind. I really wish that the mosas would have banned you years ago so that you wouldn't continue to stink up threads with your complete inability to reason.

The purpose of having some "very strong" nations serves multiple purposes.

How about you prove it by doing something other than repeating the same incorrect statements.

First newbies reading the forums and questioning their skills will more likely join a game knowing their first game is playing a very strong nation.

Really? Where's your evidence for this?

Second in singleplayer games many gamers enjoy playing the very strong nations and as their experience grows they enjoy playing against the very strong nations.

I see, they enjoy demolishing the AI without having to admit to themselves that they are cheating.

Third whether its singleplayer or multiplayer winning a game against a "very strong" vanheim is more rewarding than winning a game against a "nerfed" vanheim because the greater the challenge the greater the reward.

What's rewarding is playing a properly balanced game, not one where a single nation comes to the forefront in every single game.

And a fourth reason is for mapmakers which desire a few of the nations to be "very strong" allowing more options for creating maps.

Then the mapmaker can use mods, you know, just like you've suggested the multiplayer players do.

Even now I'm developing a map where the SP gamer will be playing the "very strong" Vanheim and going up against computer opponents which will be given great advantages which should provide some great battles.

That's unlikely. The AI isn't capable of defeating a competent player unless you give it enough advantages to defeat them in the first 20 turns through sheer swarming.

There is no problem with balance when these nations don't have to exist in every game. I would agree with your balance concern if these very strong nations absolutely were part of every game, but there presence in the game is not mandatory.

I see, so we're supposed to use house rules to limit multiplayer games, which are the entire point of Dominions, so that those people who want to demolish the AI by playing F9W9 Helheim can still do so.

First the MP aspect is not the only part of the game and those non-MP gamers must be considered as well.

The SP game comes in at a distant second to the quality of the MP game.

And having Vanheim and Helheim as very powerful when over fifty nations exist will not hurt the MP gaming sessions when the host can easily remove them as an option.

Once again you repeat your asinine assertion that the game isn't hurt by removing nations from the game. Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

Because Dominions is not a MP only community... changes to the game must consider those which play SP only, MP with AI opponents, and MP only.

Why are you personally threatened by the thought that a ridiculously overpowered nation might be weakened?

I've listed many reasons above for all ways the game can be played and why Vanheim and Helheim should not be nerfed.

What you've actually done is repeat your unsupported assertions over and over again, but then, you're never been smart enough to do anything else. You're almost as useless in this forum as Gandalf is.

All your reasons revolve around MP only games.

That's because the MP game is by far the most important when balancing the game. SP balance doesn't matter one bit.

Graeme Dice

December 12th, 2006, 05:40 PM

NickW said:
I'm sorry, but are you doing any MP play at all? That statement seems to be completely unsupportable.

He doesn't and it is. Gandalf approaches every single post in this forum from the fanboy position that the game is perfect in whatever form the devs have currently built it and that any problems people have are problems with the people, not the game.

Cerlin

December 12th, 2006, 05:43 PM

While I did start another post about Helheim, I thought I might post here as well after reading all 8 pages :O

First I agree that van/hel are STRONG but I never yelled Nerf I just asked for a tactic to beat them, if these are hard to find they should still exist. Dont wave the nerf bat too widely please, just give us a new spell or something.

On tactics that can hold off or beat hel/van I think I may have found a passable one. Im playing a Single player/hotseat game with a friend and I am Agartha. Our world has both Van and Hel and the only thing that really works is in fact blade storm (It does hit more often than not but takes a lot of tries) and turtling in forts. I am able to repair the walls faster than they can take them and this has enabled me to stall them on a few forts and expand away from them and into the oceans, which allow me to raid without losing many guys or being chased down. It is tough but works somewhat. My friend is Bandar Log and was able after some initial losses to use the magical and horde troops they get to beat Van, which shocked me as I suffed under Hel.

Lets do less bashing and more what we can do to fix or deal with this, please? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Twan

December 12th, 2006, 05:49 PM

I think it's illogical to have to make mods for so obvious balance fixes.

Most MP games don't use the mods with the new nations players have created because they may be unbalanced, and many even don't use worthy heroes. Cbmod won't be as popular as in Dom2 as it would make the very well done dom3 manual obsolete.

The vanilla game *is* and should be the default MP setting when mods of all kinds are mostly a thing for SP.

So I vote adjust glamour / **heim nations in the official vanilla game, then allow to unnerf them (or not) via a mod for the minority of SP players that would do so (personnally even in SP I can't find the interest of overpowered nations, they force me to chose all my opponents instead of letting them be random if I play at high difficulty levels -try playing against an impossible AI with glamour units and compare with any other nation-).

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 06:03 PM

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 06:29 PM

DrPraetorious said:
MtG tried to rebalance the cards by nerfing everything. The result is a very flat game with no cool and powerful stuff in it, because if anything was any good it might be unbalancing.

This is what I'm trying to avoid, where these nations are nerfed without considering how it affects SP games or MP games with AI opponents.

DrPraetorious

December 12th, 2006, 06:34 PM

The problem is that we are not in agreement that glamour nations are overpowered. You have asserted that they are, and I have disagreed, I will summarize:

a) It is fair for some nations to be stronger early on, and some nations stronger later.

b) It is fair for some tactics to be easier to use. This, I think, is where the "newbies play vanheim" argument has merit. I don't think glamour rushers are actually more likely to win, even in highly experienced hands, but the double bless strategy is accessible, so it allows new players to at least participate in big MP games, and have some measure of success. You may not like being axed by my little sister on turn 9 with her pretty magic horsies - but somebody is going to get eliminated early and you can at least take it like a man.

c) It is fair for people to be eliminated on turn 8, especially if they adopt a long term strategy. Taking a dormant pretender with good scales and strong diversifying magic should be a calculated risk, with significant risk of death before your god even reappears - vs. for example taking a great sage with a lot of early research or a supercombatant, either of which goes a long way towards repulsing a rusher.

d) It is fair to expect the other players to devote 100% of their effort to repulsing an attack from you, provided you devote 100% of your effort to attacking them. It is fair if strategies exist that will successfully kill your first neighbor 75% of the time, even under such a state of total war, provided that the rusher expects to suffer sufficient losses to allow other players to take advantage of their weakness, most of the time.

e) The game is meant to be balanced on medium sized maps. On postage stamp maps rushers have to be better, because otherwise they'd be weaker on larger maps.

f) It is fair that the game has a significant element of chance. Being next to a rusher position stinks - the only way to make it not-stink is to make all rush strategies worthless, because even when you repulse a rush, you probably suffer losses such that winning is a lot less likely.

There is a problem that I am willing to admit may exist: some nations may be unable to resist the glamour rush at all. It's all well and good to say "rock, paper, scissors" but no pairing of nations should be so unbalanced that you might as well give up - unless you pursued a long term strategy in which case you took your chances and it didn't work, sucks to be you.

If that is the case, those specific nations should be given new tools so that they have means of repulsing glamour rush - NOT a majority of the time (since then glamour rushing would become an unviable strategy) but a significant fraction of the time.

I think that the main game should be altered, if it is altered at all, with the same philosophy. Since it is possible for you to make a mod that nerfs glamour rushers - if this is what you want to do, do it. You can make a much more convincing argument for incorporating such a nerf into the main game if you're willing to take the ten minutes to script it yourself, and then post what you consider to be more balanced results, than if you just, to be blunt, whine about what vague changes someone else should be making. If you can make a "nerf" that leaves glamour rushing as a viable but not, to your mind, overwhelming strategy, great. If I agree with you that it doesn't unacceptably weaken glamour rushes in my games, I'll support including it in the main fork. If it doesn't get it, you'll have your mod and you can try and find opponents who agree with you and play against them.

calmon

December 12th, 2006, 06:37 PM

I don't understand this discussion here. If something is overpowered it should be nerfed.

A nation in which i need just 1 sacred unit (in my test example a helheim helirding) and a priest commander (Vanherse) and can conquer Level 7 independence provinces without bigger problems is somehow in such a catagory.

- the sacred troops have no undead/demon weaknesses of being banishable.
- instead they are the best stealth units from all national troops.
- they need a F9/W9 blessing for this true but this didn't means very bad scales just some researching disadvantages and some unluck. Order 3 is still possible.

With most of the other nations i've to stack some troops even the blessed one to attack more then 2-3 provinces in a row but here very few troops and a leader are enough to conquere province after province. Casualties are very rare.

Thats to strong in my eyes apart from any player vs player strategies.

Twan

December 12th, 2006, 06:49 PM

Actually the only thing that can be made by a modder to balance glamour is suppressing it (+ giving simple stealth or another thing to these units) only a modification in the code may allow to balance glamour in an interesting way allowing this ability to keep an use in battles (ie I would like to see glamour working against melee attacks ***OR*** missiles, an illusion hasn't to work at all ranges).

PS : DrPraetorius I had the same opinion but I've tested since then, my opinion now is : glamour is overpowered on all maps against all nations minus one or two. Glamour is particularily powerful on big maps because only players can find some (hazardous) counters. Glamour + bless often allow to take big indie provinces without a loss with only 10 or so units, and keeping your sacred troops alive is a valid long term "strategy". Vanheim has an advantage from turn 1 to turn 40 or so and has very small chances to be weak after considering the empire they could have made.

curtadams

December 12th, 2006, 07:12 PM

DrPraetorious said:
MtG tried to rebalance the cards by nerfing everything. The result is a very flat game with no cool and powerful stuff in it, because if anything was any good it might be unbalancing.

Shadowfist, on the other hand, starts with more robust underlying mechanics, and then rebalances cards by making them *better*, not worse. As a result, shadowfist is a very well balanced game with lots of cards that do awesomely powerful stuff.

But which game is played in every school cafeteria in the nation and which game do I find almost impossible to find? This isn't making your point.

The proper response to a game imbalance too big to live with is to fix it by whatever requires the fewest fixes. Fixes are a lot of work and often introduce their own problems. If *one* nation is a basket case you should buff it rather than nerf 25. But, if *one* nation is too tough, you should nerf it rather than introduce 25 major buffs - mostly because you can be virtually guaranteed that one of the buffs will overdo it and you'll just have a different supernation.

So far there have been several counters proposed - almost all of which hinge on AOE effects, which is basically what us nerf proponents have always said. AOE isn't available for a quite a while. (Nobody's yet considered countermeasures, either) If the majority of the nations get early AOE, Dom becomes a VERY different game. I really don't want most nations to be able to handle armored def 24 units early in the game. I LIKE the fact that human-level units have some use as opposed to becoming soap-bubble screens from turn one.

Incidentally, although I think it's high priority to fix the Heims I don't think it's the prime "official" priority. The Conceptual Balance mod became almost standard, so balance issues can be fixed without designer action. I think it's a better approach for the players to work on balance mods and the designers to work on bugs and modability. An example where things can go awry would be the VQ nerfs due largely to Norfleet's rampages, which turned out to be cheating.

mivayan

December 12th, 2006, 07:23 PM

Gandalf Parker said:Dominions does not balance nation to nation. It balances by rock-paper-scissors.

It's more like... we have a game of scissors-paper-rock-dog-cat-mouse-pony. Scissors beat paper, which beats rock, which beats dog, which beats cat, which beats mouse, which beats pony, which beats everything but mouse.

White centaurs with dual bless are very strong, but vans/helhirdings are twice as hard to kill (for 5 gold / 4 res more), and can be combined with better battle magic. A big step over the next-best.

NTJedi said:I remember all the threads about the dreaded Ermor in dominions_2. In my opinion this adds nice variety into the game as players are challenged to improve strategies. During blitz games Vanheim/Helheim is too much, yet these nations can be modded or removed using the #allowedplayer command.

I dont remember much ermor whining from experienced players, I do remember a lot of ermor-with Vampire Queen whining, and a lot of VQ whining in general. Some of it fueled by a cheater, some of it was warranted... changes were made to the VQ. I dont think the changes by dom2 patches were too much, the loss of ethereal in dom3 might have been but had that anything to do with the whining?

curtadams

December 12th, 2006, 07:46 PM

AE Ermor is certainly a bigger problem in SP than the Heims, even now (partly, of course, because the AI doesn't exploit double-bless). However, in multiplayer, it's more controllable. Ermor takes a while to crank up - it starts a bit weak, actually. Player politics can usually control it. The Heims are gross right out of the box and they can cause a lot of trouble before multiplayer interactions kick in.

I much prefer games that are relatively balanced on their own. Multiplayer dynamics are fun and it's sad that they have to be directed toward rebalancing the game. And, of course, they're not available in SP.

BigJMoney

December 12th, 2006, 09:05 PM

Guys, can I please weigh back in for a moment? I left this post behind me and it exploded, leaving shrapnel (no pun intended) all over my back.

Okay, I have to agree with all of Graeme's points for once, even if I don't agree with him breaking forum protocol so regularly. (Grame, trust me, I have a feeling you are going to get into some trouble if you can't be more polite). I agree that Vanheim and Ermor's overall power are completely overlooked by the developers, even though Doms 3 is a great game. NT Jedi, I'm sorry but you've had each one of your points about strategy game balance shredded to pieces, yet you still maintain your position. I don't know why it's so hard for you to admit that balance is a positive thing. Balance does not have to mean a lack of diversity, options or strategy.

Which brings me to my response to all this. DrPraetorious, I don't know which version of Magic: The Gathering you are talkng about, but I have played many, many, many tabletop and card strategy game and I always come back to Magic because it is one of the most robust and well crafted complex strategy games in the world. There are plenty of cool and powerful cards (ridiculously powerful) in MtG, but each of them requires some kind of sacrifice in order to field that kind of power. There are cards that can make you win the game instantly, but even the most powerul ones all have their requirements.

DrPraetorious, you seem to have the strongest defense in favor of leaving Vanheim alone, so let me challenge you. You made a lot of very valuable points in your last post, but the problem is that they don't apply to this situation. Let me exlain what I'm thinking.

a) It is fair for some nations to be stronger early on, and some nations stronger later.

Yes, this creates a diversity of strategy in the game.

b) It is fair for some tactics to be easier to use. ... I don't think glamour rushers are actually more likely to win [over all], even in highly experienced hands, but the double bless strategy is accessible, so it allows new players to at least participate in big MP games, and have some measure of success.

I'll remark on this potentially being a good point, except that for Vanheim it doesn't work the way you seem to imagine it. Let us do something here, Doctor. Let us pretend that every nation has something called a "Power Strategy" (PStrat). Some nations' PStrats are easier to field, while others require the experience and skill of the veteran to make work. Assuming that all PStrats are at least somewhat balanced, this would be quite a yummy aspect of the game. Many games are balanced in this way -- PC and live games. As you say, it gives new players the ability to at least be competitive, yet not necessarily guaranteeing them the win. For this to work, however, you have to be careful to make sure that the easy to use PStrats can not be further empowered by the more skilled players, turning them into something we shall call (for the sake of discussion) an "OverPowered Strategy" (OStrat). PStrats are good; OStrats are bad. The point people seem to be making in this thread, and I tend to agree, is that Vanheim (and in other news, Ermor...) utilize OStrats, not merely easy to discover PStrats.

c) It is fair for people to be eliminated on turn 8, especially if they adopt a long term strategy.

d) [...]

e) [...]

f) [...]

Yes, rushing is quite legitimate, even if newbies can do it. I hope nobody argues with you here, because the topic of this thead is not called "Should Rushing Be Allowed?". It's about whether Vanheim should nerfed. If Vanheim's rush happens to be an OStrat, then Vanheim should be nerfed, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to field a PStrat rush strategy.

There is a problem that I am willing to admit may exist: some nations may be unable to resist the glamour rush at all. It's all well and good to say "rock, paper, scissors" but no pairing of nations should be so unbalanced that you might as well give up[...]

Precise and congent.

I think that the main game should be altered, if it is altered at all, with the same philosophy.

Exactly. I like NT Jedi just fine, and I have nothing but positive things to say about his forum contributions, but I do think it's counter-prodctive to reply to peoples' concerns with "If you don't like it, MOD it." Not only is that an ideal that ends opinions and discussion; not only is it an ideal that promotes the notion the game is perfect as it is; but it also goes without saying. Of course, if we, the community, think the game needs fixing, we will mod it. That's what the Conceptual Balance series is all about. But because of DrPraetorious' points above, we shouldn't have to do too much to allow ourselves a fun MP experience.

Finally, let me throw a bone of discussion back into the pit

I've seen blade wind and archers mentioned as a counter to Vanheim. When I originally asked the question that embodies this thread, it was if Vaheim needs nerfing, in general. You see, I don't pick F9W9; nor do I rush. I choose Air magic for Vanheim. Not only does an A10 bless give high air shield to my Vans, but it also gives me the spell that turns the entire world stormy for the mid/late game. This further reduces the effect of missiles against me. So, as you can see, my sacred troops are never afraid of missile counters. That is easily prevented by Vanheim.

=$=

Play nice, children!!

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 09:21 PM

BigJMoney said:
NT Jedi, I'm sorry but you've had each one of your points about strategy game balance shredded to pieces, yet you still maintain your position. I don't know why it's so hard for you to admit that balance is a positive thing.

The game has balance and since there's over FIFTY nations within the game this means there's plenty of room for a few to be very powerful since each game does not need to have Vanheim/Helheim. My points have been responded with statements which basically say, "We want Vanheim Nerfed for our MP games and others which don't like the changes can go use mods". Basically they don't want to mod their multiplayer games.

Two nations out of fifty nations can be powerful... since the host of every game has the option to remove them. (ex=#allowedplayer)

Dhaeron

December 12th, 2006, 09:48 PM

DrPraetorious said:
The problem is that we are not in agreement that glamour nations are overpowered. You have asserted that they are, and I have disagreed, I will summarize:

a) It is fair for some nations to be stronger early on, and some nations stronger later.

If you rephrase this as "It is for a nation to be either stronger than average early on or stronger later on" i'd sign it. This is one of the big problems with Van/Helheim though. They don't actually sacrificy late/midgame power for their rush power.

b) It is fair for some tactics to be easier to use. This, I think, is where the "newbies play vanheim" argument has merit. I don't think glamour rushers are actually more likely to win, even in highly experienced hands, but the double bless strategy is accessible, so it allows new players to at least participate in big MP games, and have some measure of success. You may not like being axed by my little sister on turn 9 with her pretty magic horsies - but somebody is going to get eliminated early and you can at least take it like a man.

As BigJmoney pointed out aptly, it is important that easy to use strategies don't get more powerful in the hands of a skilled user than hard to use strategies. Or to put it another way, ease of use and power of a strategy have to be proportional. Or else the skill of the players is far less important than dumb luck.

c) It is fair for people to be eliminated on turn 8, especially if they adopt a long term strategy. Taking a dormant pretender with good scales and strong diversifying magic should be a calculated risk, with significant risk of death before your god even reappears - vs. for example taking a great sage with a lot of early research or a supercombatant, either of which goes a long way towards repulsing a rusher.

Yes. As in all good games there is an element of risk vs. reward coupled with return on investment to modify the mere basics: stone/paper/scissors. With regard to rushs, the player taking a long-term strategy sacrifices early on survivability for an advantage later in the game. I.e. he risks being taken out very early for the reward of having a better pretender design for mid/late game. Again, it is very important for balancing that the reverse is also true. A good rush built must only be possible if you have to sacrifice lategame advantages for it.

d) It is fair to expect the other players to devote 100% of their effort to repulsing an attack from you, provided you devote 100% of your effort to attacking them.

No.
It is fair if strategies exist that will successfully kill your first neighbor 75% of the time, even under such a state of total war, provided that the rusher expects to suffer sufficient losses to allow other players to take advantage of their weakness, most of the time.

No.
In both cases, a player putting all resources into defense needs to have the advantage over a player putting all into offense.(note: defense. That is not the same as production buildup) This is very basic game balancing. Resources invested in defense are only useful in one special case: you being attacked. In dominions that means that for every viable offensive army/SC design there should exist and anti-built that can win against it for less cost. See for example priest spam and Ermor AE. Priest win consistently against undead, especially on a cost per cost basis, but are pretty useless against most everything else. There is no real counter to dual blessed sacred troops of some nations.
e) The game is meant to be balanced on medium sized maps. On postage stamp maps rushers have to be better, because otherwise they'd be weaker on larger maps.

Agreed.

f) It is fair that the game has a significant element of chance. Being next to a rusher position stinks - the only way to make it not-stink is to make all rush strategies worthless, because even when you repulse a rush, you probably suffer losses such that winning is a lot less likely.

Only where chance and skill are seperate. I.e. positioning is random. Landing next to Helheim with a longterm strategy even on a large map is bad luck. Having your temple earthquaked in turn 3 is bad luck. However there are other things were player skill is important, i.e. which strategy to choose, rush/buildup/balanced, and in those areas luck should not be more important than skill. It should never happen that one nation always looses against another, no matter what the player does.

There is a problem that I am willing to admit may exist: some nations may be unable to resist the glamour rush at all. It's all well and good to say "rock, paper, scissors" but no pairing of nations should be so unbalanced that you might as well give up - unless you pursued a long term strategy in which case you took your chances and it didn't work, sucks to be you.

Yes, this is a problem, but not the major one. The problem is that some nations are in effect Rockscissors.
If that is the case, those specific nations should be given new tools so that they have means of repulsing glamour rush - NOT a majority of the time (since then glamour rushing would become an unviable strategy) but a significant fraction of the time.

Incorrect. If you use an offensive strategy, and the guy you attacked knew about it / made a good guess and employs a strategy specifically designed at countering yours he should nearly always win. Having one strategy that can beat all other strategies the majority of the time, as you want glamour rush to be, is plainly imbalanced. It is the very definition if imbalanced. The point of rock/paper/scissors not that rock is a "means of repulsing glamour rush - NOT a majority of the time" but that rock ALWAYS beats scissors. Period.

DrPraetorious

December 12th, 2006, 09:53 PM

If you are going to propose altering the game, write a mod that carries your alterations, that's all I'm saying.

It's true that you can't nerf glamour directly - but you can nerf all the units that *have* glamour - I recall lowering their protection was proposed at one point. You can make them cost more gold. You can lower their combat stats. You can make them trade their light lances for swords or axes. There are all sorts of things you can try doing, and we can load up the mod and see how it affects the various sources of complaint.

Personally, I don't think anyone has made a persuasive argument that the glamour rushers are stronger positions than the other double-bless rushers - Abyssia is my favorite, by I think a double-blessed Niefelheim is probably the strongest, and Niefelheim has some of the best (if most expensive) magic even in the early era. Since I find the argument that glamour troops are uniquely broken (as opposed to the other double-bless rushers) unconvincing, I'm not inclined to code this up myself.

Now, the counters to these nations are more obvious, perhaps, than the counters to glamour, but they are every bit as capable of early expansion - in SP I've always expanded faster as Neifelheim with a 9N dragon than as Helheim with a 9W dragon.

On the subject of making light infantry irrelevant - a spell with a large area of effect that does ~3 damage is less of a threat to light infantry (since they usually live) than existing spells like falling foo, let alone blade wind.

On the other hand, it is death to vans (since they almost always lose their images,) and you can legitimately put it earlier in the research tree, especially as a national spell.

So if you're worried about vanheim's rush, as opposed to other rushes, you can fix that by giving a low damage area of effect spell to the nations most vulnerable to the rush - which probably isn't Caelum, but Caelum has other problems.

If, on the other hand, you are concerned about rushers period, see my original post.

Dhaeron

December 12th, 2006, 09:58 PM

BigJMoney said:Finally, let me throw a bone of discussion back into the pit

I've seen blade wind and archers mentioned as a counter to Vanheim. When I originally asked the question that embodies this thread, it was if Vaheim needs nerfing, in general. You see, I don't pick F9W9; nor do I rush. I choose Air magic for Vanheim. Not only does an A10 bless give high air shield to my Vans, but it also gives me the spell that turns the entire world stormy for the mid/late game. This further reduces the effect of missiles against me. So, as you can see, my sacred troops are never afraid of missile counters. That is easily prevented by Vanheim.

=$=

Play nice, children!!

I think making glamour ineffective against all kinds of ranged attack would do a great deal to balance the issue. I don't think they are overpowered in general, though overpowered when played as heavily blessed nations since they don't really have to sacrifice enough for the amount of power they gain in the early game.
Also, one kind of cookiecutter defense that works against pretty much everything is also unbalanced. There needs to be some weakness to offset that.
And no, increased costs are no such weakness, since troops that are lot better at surviving will recoup those costs very, very quickly.

BigJMoney

December 12th, 2006, 10:02 PM

Since my post was long and I had less obvious statements to make, Dominions does not effectively have 50 nations. It only has 17- that can be compared to each other at one time. Thus, if Vanheim is unbalanced, it is potentially unbalanced x3. I imagine you to be excitedly dancing around with the number 50 as if that fact alone makes a valid point, when it's irrelevant. But, I'll admit, nobody had commented on that point yet.

And if you don't cease with the "but the problem can be worked around" arguments, it may drive some of the people in this thread to jump out a window to their deaths, or get banned for flaming. Offering unlikeable workarounds instead of arguing ideas will offend people. Nixing Vanheim from multiplayer is a lazy, unimaginative and undesirable workaround -- not a solution. As DrPraetorious stated, it should be just fine for there to exist nations which have powerful strategies that are easy to make use of, as long as they are ultimately well-balanced with other nations' powerful strategies. You can have your cake and eat it too, NT. You seem to think that for there to be easy nations for newbies to play that it requires the game to be unbalanced; which is false. Look at the Mortal Kombat series of games as an example.

=$=

[Edited for sharpness]

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 10:23 PM

Dhaeron said:
The game is meant to be balanced on medium sized maps. On postage stamp maps rushers have to be better, because otherwise they'd be weaker on larger maps.

...

The problem is that some nations are in effect Rockscissors.

The game should have a few nations which are both rock&scissors because the game is not MP only. Balance is a major issue when the races/nations are limited to about 11 choices, however Dominions_3 has over fifty nations and more coming with patches. I would hate to see a patch delayed because the developers are worried of releasing a nation which doesn't meet balance expectations.
This balance discussion revolves around games which involve Vanheim/Helheim and there are many ways to not include them in the game or mod the changes for these nations. Bug fixes are more important in our upcoming patches than providing balance for less than 8% of the total nations available in the game.

Villan

December 12th, 2006, 10:27 PM

DrPraetorious said:

Personally, I don't think anyone has made a persuasive argument that the glamour rushers are stronger positions than the other double-bless rushers - Abyssia is my favorite, by I think a double-blessed Niefelheim is probably the strongest, and Niefelheim has some of the best (if most expensive) magic even in the early era. Since I find the argument that glamour troops are uniquely broken (as opposed to the other double-bless rushers) unconvincing, I'm not inclined to code this up myself.

Glamour rushers are still good late game because opponents can't see them on map, and they are great raiders. Niefelheim or Abyssia aren't, so it can be argued that they actually do trade early game power for late game power.

NTJedi

December 12th, 2006, 10:39 PM

BigJMoney said:
Since my post was long and I had less obvious statements to make, Dominions does not effectively have 50 nations. It only has 17- that can be compared to each other at one time. Thus, if Vanheim is unbalanced, it is potentially unbalanced x3. I imagine you to be excitedly dancing around with the number 50 as if that fact alone makes a valid point, when it's irrelevant.

Not irrelevant... even from your statement Vanheim is only one of seventeen nations during an era. So all this noise over one nation when so many other nations are available. It's like a sultan complaining one of the 17 girls in his harem are fat instead of enjoying the other 16. If vanheim is so highly desired as a "MUST HAVE" for gaming a small mod can be made available for the multiplayer gamers.

BigJMoney said:
Offering unlikeable workarounds instead of arguing ideas will offend people. Nixing Vanheim from multiplayer is a lazy, unimaginative and undesirable workaround -- not a solution.

I have provided other optional suggestions besides nixing Vanheim from multiplayer. Heck if desired I'll even create the Vanheim nerf mod for the multiplayer gamers. No reason for the developers to take away time working on patches to NERF wack a powerful nation which any gamer can do in a MOD. Fixing bugs/crashes should be the primary focus of the patches, adding new nations and new content a close second not balance tweaking stats/units of nations.

BigJMoney said:
As DrPraetorious stated, it should be just fine for there to exist nations which have powerful strategies that are easy to make use of, as long as they are ultimately well-balanced with other nations' powerful strategies. You can have your cake and eat it too, NT.

Thus that's why we have Helheim.

BigJMoney said:
You seem to think that for there to be easy nations for newbies to play that it requires the game to be unbalanced; which is false. Look at the Mortal Kombat series of games as an example.

It does not require the game to be unbalanced, however it does help. Whether you examine the nations individually since they can be all played on the same game(see Gandalf) or whether you examine the nations by era... it's less than 8% of the nations available. The developers can spend their time more wisely fixing known bugs instead of tweaking one or two nations that gamers can MOD on their own.

UninspiredName

December 12th, 2006, 11:16 PM

Consider the following situation. The Pantokrator, in all his un-vanished glory, was added (By the devs, of course) as a pretender for, let's say Mictlan. They have a lot of sacreds. Pantokrator had 10 in every magic path, cost 0 points, and started with a Dominion Strength of 4. Don't even get me started on attributes. This would, naturally, be ridiculous, but one pretender counts for much less 'of the game' than the 2% Vanheim does. That pretender could be easilly banned, but many out there prefer to allow all options if possible. Why is it that parts of the game that unbalance it are our problem? Also, say that people did ban Vanheim. Turning the nation into something balanced would, effectively, be same as adding another nation, though it would take less work. And it makes the game feel more solid overall.

At one point in this thread, more than once, both sides have told each-other that, if they don't like change/the way things are, just make a mod. However, only true modding masterpieces could ever be as in-step with the rest of the game as something the developers created. Really, though, when it all comes down to it, it needs to be seen what the majority is. If only two people dislike Vanheim, they can't very well tell everyone else to make a mod. Unfortunately, it's much harder to tell here whether most prefer mods or not.

I haven't ever used, or experienced a Vanheim rush, though it ticks me off in principle, so I'll leave arguing whether or not it's actually unbalanced up to you lot. Still, if it is unbalanced, there's little reason for the developers not to fix it.

Gandalf Parker

December 13th, 2006, 12:48 AM

regular moderator warning
The devs are interested in this thread. So please do not endanger it. Discuss the subject, do not discuss each other.

Foodstamp

December 13th, 2006, 01:38 AM

If the devs are watching, please consider introducing very effective counter units to underperforming nations instead of nerfing the nations in question! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Gandalf Parker

December 13th, 2006, 02:23 AM

If the devs agree with that assessment then Im sure they will consider it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

HoneyBadger

December 13th, 2006, 04:51 AM

Ok, second day. I decide to drop Atlantis (Atlantis, despite having lots of advantages over Helheim doesn't stand up sacred to sacred, only due to the fact that you can't produce sacred living pillars nearly fast enough. I'm certain that Atlantis has lots of ways to beat Helheim, but not in a blitz. That doesn't mean that Atlantis conveniently folds before SP Helheim W/F, it just means that all day I kept doing poorly when I played poorly, aka at the level of normal AI, fighting Helheim on it's terms. In a Multiplayer, the Living Pillars and the ocean home province should and most likely would ensure that Atlantis remains untroubled by quick blitz.)

So, since the experienced players and regulars with more posts than me seem to agree that Tien Ch'i generally and Spring and Autumn in particular is one of the weakest, sorries, no hope nations out there, I spent today playing them vs Helheim, again on their terms, on land, with a high-bless strategy (in this case D10/B9/F4), vs Helheim W9/F9 Father of Winters Dom10, Order3, Magic -2, Cold1 etc as recommended in an above post.

I promptly beat Helheim like a red-headed stepchild.

I captured their home province in the first 6 months, successfully defended it, demolished their fortress, raised a province defense of 105, and finally gave up playing the game so that I wouldn't have to experience my very first total victory with a test game.

Now for the critics: I realise this is SP. This is also the first time I've ever played Tien Ch'i, so I don't have the advantage of nation familiarity. It's on a small map-intentionally, both because supposedly Helheim starts strong and gives good blitz, and because my strategy for dealing with them is to find their home province and take it out, killing their god in the process, which I did many times. AI was on normal. Basically I discovered a few things. 1-cheap troops with length 6 pikes are very effective against Helheim. 2-death bless 10 gives hearts like crazy, combined with added attack, 2 attacks per round, and death curse horror marking, I usually killed the few Hangedrotts leading whichever army without a hitch. I could produce 16 sacred troops for every 1 Hangedrott, and I did better than that because my scales were better, even though until the last big land-grab, Helheim had twice my overall territory. 3-composite bows help. They're not all that, but they take out some glamour, not as good as my warriors of 5 elements though. In the end, it came down to massed, cheap, pike. Helheim simply couldn't get to me before I got to them.
It was pitiful.

Now, in MP games, better strategies are going to be used by both sides, yes, but in MP games one knows one's playing vs a human, and one tends to think more deeply on both sides. Helheim has powerful mage/warriors in the Hangedrott, but Tien Ch'i has just as powerful mages, who are much, much more flexible, and who cost far less. Tien Ch'i comes ready-made with rainbow mages who can find almost all the special sites, and masses of those truly evil pike in combination with Tien Ch'is other national troops are enough to hold territory from Helheim.

Result of the day: Tien Ch'i 1, Helheim 0

Cainehill

December 13th, 2006, 05:03 AM

NTJedi said:
Hopefully the post from Kristoffer will water down your tainted mind. I've listed many reasons above for all ways the game can be played and why Vanheim and Helheim should not be nerfed. All your reasons revolve around MP only games. Changes to the game must consider those which play SP only, MP with AI opponents, and MP only.

Obviously the post from Kristoffer was unable to make you post politely - wonder if a previous poster was correct, and you won't even get a proper warning, one so blunt that you realize that it was referring to you also?

Sheesh. I don't so much mind the forums being hostile and whatnot - but I do mind the way that Dominions 3 is so broken in terms of balance, and yet a few rabid people insist that it's fine the way it is.

*shrug* As people have pointed out, people kept / went back to playing Dom2 largely because of the Conceptual Balance mods - the base game was _never_ fixed. And Dom3 essentially ignored all the play-tested balancing touches in the CB series, and introduced worse imbalances.

And yet two or three of y'all keep saying it's perfect, it's working as designed, etc. Feh.

It's working _so_ well as designed that I've found myself unable to even think of providing friends with the demo, much less suggesting they consider the full game.

Cainehill

December 13th, 2006, 05:14 AM

NTJedi said:

Gandalf Parker said:
Its definetly a workable strategy. What I see is that Vanheim/Helheim are not imbalanced. They ARE the balance. Against certain nations and certain strategies. This is a variation on other threads Ive seen about Ermor, or Ulm, or Jotunheim, etc etc.

I agree... I remember all the threads about the dreaded Ermor in dominions_2. In my opinion this adds nice variety into the game as players are challenged to improve strategies. During blitz games Vanheim/Helheim is too much, yet these nations can be modded or removed using the #allowedplayer command.

Actually, until the Vampire Queen was severely hitten by the nerf stick, Ermor was still extremely dreaded. Say - _why_ would one pretender being overpowered have been such a problem in Dom2? After all, there's umpteen different pretenders, and we need one or two overpowered pretenders for the newbies, and for people who want to be able to beat the SP AI without ever bothering to learn the game.

Isn't that essentially your argument regarding the Heims?

HoneyBadger

December 13th, 2006, 05:57 AM

I think the VQ should get Etherial back, personally. In Dom 3, SCs just aren't as powerful as they apparently were in Dom 2. I've equipped massive SCs with riduculous stuff and sent them against independents armed with nothing and they still get bit with hearts. I wince every time I send my Pretender in battle unless I've chosen one with rejuvenation (and that's what? ancient kracken? maybe 2-3 others?) and even then I worry about curse and horror-mark. I think the argument about Vans etc. is really just an old argument dredged up from Dom 2 when individual fighters and their abilities were more important than overall armies, and when magic outweighed basic economics. I don't honestly think anyone has been playing Dom3 long enough to say that any nation is totally broken, or to get as emotionally attached to this argument as people have. That's my gut-feeling anyway.

I'm still testing, and I plan to test atleast every Early Age nation against Helheim and post the results and my interpretation of those results to this thread. Hopefully it'll add some insight. I don't know if I can say that I'm totally objective, but I'll attempt to be, where Helheim's merits and flaws are concerned. Personally, I'd rather be playing on Glory of the Gods with Yomi or Aboleths or something vs 18 odd randoms. At the very least, the exercise should give me a deeper understanding of the game as a whole.

Ygorl

December 13th, 2006, 06:33 AM

For what it's worth, I agree that these mounted sacred glamorous high-defense types are too good a value. They were also quite powerful in Dom2, but people didn't cry about them as much. The dual-bless vans were acknowledged to be powerful, but not overpowering; why are they a bigger problem in Dom3?
I don't think it's just the extra design points that it's possible to get, since it's possible to build an absolutely brutal Helheim nation even with an awake pretender.
I don't think it's that other nations have gotten weaker; they're not.
Maybe it's that it takes longer to research useful counter spells? Or that gold income is so much higher, allowing the purchase of many more of the cavalry in question? Any other ideas as to why they seem to be relatively more problematic than in the previous edition? I can't think of any, offhand...
Seems like pretty much everyone agrees that the number of viable strategies that lose to this strategy is greater than the number that lose to any other strategy. Not everyone agrees that this is a problem, but I do - as has been already said lots of times, if you want an easier game, play single-player against wimpy AI, or against other new players, or against an experienced player who's fooling around with a weird sub-optimal strategy. If you do think there should be built-in handicaps, make a mod to do that. I don't see any reason why the pure game should be unbalanced ("flawed"?) in any preventable way.
Assuming everyone out there now agrees with me (ha!) it doesn't seem very hard to fix. Glamor is a nifty ability, and I'm happy with it the way it is - just make the troops that have it cost more (and especially the problematic sacreds). I'm pretty sure dual-blessers would still happily buy Vans and their cousins at 90 or 100 gold a pop, or even more. I'm also pretty sure that they'd still do well with them, just not as overpoweringly well. Folks not going the mega-bless route would then probably do a bit better to stick with the non-sacreds (whose cost might only be slightly increased), which seems fine to me.

There are plenty of good strategies out there. The mega-blessed, glamorous, super-high-defense unit, though, is very good against most of them. Those strategies which can counter it are (I think?) not nearly as universally powerful. An army of blessed Vans does very well in nearly all early-mid-game circumstances; slave-lizard hordes not as much. My opinion of this strategy is not as high as that of some folks, and I think some very nice tests have been run by people here showing that it is definitely possible to beat MBGSHD (especially in pitched battles), but even so it is so generally powerful that I'd be happy to see it weakened.

Saxon

December 13th, 2006, 06:41 AM

A point or two if I may.

Is SP, which is all I play, it seems that most games end up with me having to knock out Vanheim at some point. Either I meet them early and have to kill them to live or I meet them late, where their early expansion leads them to have huge resources and they are a monster. Either way, pretty much every game comes down to me vs. Vanheim. That takes some replayablity out of the game.

They run over independents and take next to no casualties. They expand fast and stay strong. Sure, magic can help, but I am also finding that in vanilla games, magic is slow to come. This is for another thread, but magic comes so late in Dom 3 that many, maybe most, games are already decided. In any case, my point is that the higher level spells come when Vanheim is already the 300 pound gorilla, having stomped most other nations out of the way.

The raiding strategy is a good one and I have used Joton�s troops to do it. However, you have to get lucky with Vanheim going after someone else�s empire, rather than eating the heart out of yours. In other words, it works sometimes.

Also useful are the armour destroying spells, particularly destruction. However, you need good earth paths, so again, it works sometimes.

Ermor has (had) an easy counter, available to all nations. Priests. And to get those you needed temples, which gave you the bonus of dominion, it was an attractive solution. Sure, they would run over a newbie in SP, but after their first trip to the forums, Ermor was in trouble. I argue that Vanheim does not have an easy or even somewhat easy counter.

To summarize, in SP, this nation dominates all map sizes and takes some of the flavour out of playing. They do not have an easy counter (unlike Ermor). In my opinion, they are too strong and it is all about those glamoured troops. Having played Dom 1, 2 and 3, I have never before felt something was so badly unbalanced (I did not use the CB mod, I thought vanilla Dom 2 was good). I am not an amazing player or a terribly competitive one. I am Joe Boring and Normal, so I won�t even pretend to give you numbers or detailed analysis. I just want to say the nation is too strong for SP and it really stands out. I don�t want to use a mod (someone else said the vanilla game should be the standard) and I don�t want to take the nation out, it has a nice flavour.

Thus, I vote for an increase in price, probably in both resources and gold. It would reduce the numbers available, particularly early against independents, yet retain the cool unit. It would make the massing of armour and morale to counter it possible by all nations, at a cost, but a cost which has other benefits. Really, who doesn�t have a use for armoured units with good morale? Just like everyone has a use for more dominion.

Beorne

December 13th, 2006, 06:51 AM

My experience.
For me Dom3 (and Dom2) is only MP, I find exrtremely boring playing with AI, I'd prefere read a book. In MP s beautiful.
But we banned Vanheim (and Helheim), it is overly unbalanced and it has ruined our first MP game.
For me it is painful because it is way long my favored nation (along with the Tuathas, hoping they return soon ...), has a wonderful theme and it is very fascinating in general. But it is ovewrpowered, no way.
I think that the argument about people saying it is not overpowered are made by boys that easily win MP using Van and are very satisfied of this. I can't find any other reason to say "it is clearly unbalanced but I like it.".

I too prefer Devs correct bugs before expand, I think Van is bugged.

Corwin

December 13th, 2006, 06:54 AM

HoneyBadger said:

So, since the experienced players and regulars with more posts than me seem to agree that Tien Ch'i generally and Spring and Autumn in particular is one of the weakest, sorries, no hope nations out there, I spent today playing them vs Helheim, again on their terms, on land, with a high-bless strategy (in this case D10/B9/F4), vs Helheim W9/F9 Father of Winters Dom10, Order3, Magic -2, Cold1 etc as recommended in an above post.

Tien chi *what*? Who told you that? I am playing EA Tien Chi in our forum game, and my main arch enemy is Helheim. (who is played by very good player BTW). Just this turn I've smashed 300 strong army of Helheim which included a lot of sacred, using 200 strong army of my own, and Helheim is currently losing the war. (granted, it's not 1 vs 1 war since Helheim was allied with Ulm, and I was allied with Caelum. However this was the first real battle that Helheim fought in our war, and Helheim has been preparing for this battle for many turns. And before the war started Helheim was by far the most powerful nation on all graphes except one - they hold almost twice as many provinces as nation number two for example).

Perhaps you are confusing Dom2 S&A Tien Chi with Dom3 EA Tien Chi? In Dom2 S&A Tien Chi was pathetic, it's true. In dom3 they can be quite strong nation, if played right. Sure, their sacred are not nearly as strong as Hehleim's sacred, and would lose 1 vs 1 short blitz. But they are very far from "the weakest, sorries, no hope nation out there", as you put it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Seriously, I would realy recommend you to play some MP. Your conclusions of nations strengths and weaknesses based upon your SP experience are often very far from reality when it comes to MP. Humans plays very differntly from AIs.

Foodstamp

December 13th, 2006, 06:56 AM

Balance does not matter as much in the single player arena, but I will add that in my last 3 EA games Vanheim was the last remaining nation versus me. But the AI Vanheim was massing serfs and other cheap troops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

HoneyBadger, your tests do not prove anything because the AI is not going to play as though it were using a bless strategy.

A few nations are overpowered... it happens in a game this vast. Will it get fixed? Who knows, but I imagine if it does not, players in multiplayer games will regulate it by choosing bless nations in blitzes to fight (insert uberbless here) or several players will gang up on the bless nation in larger games, hopefully before the nation is allowed to expand too much.

I think you can determine if a nation/strategy combination is overpowered by holding it up to the following test...

If you have no concern about what your enemies are doing, and are able to focus on YOUR strategy, then the nation may be overpowered.

If you have to completely adapt your nation to stand a chance against a certain enemy, then the enemy nation is probably overpowered.

From my limited experience in multiplayer, it seems that the idea is to have a mixture of both, trying to work your strategy and trying to adapt to enemy strategies. If you place an overpowered nation into the mix, that goes out the window, and your either the overpowered nation massing a troop, or the balanced/underpowered nation trying to work a strategy to survive.

Foodstamp

December 13th, 2006, 06:59 AM

@beorne

I love tuatha as well, but I am afraid that vanheim/helheim may RUIN tuatha for us because the sidhe may not have glamour this time around due to the issues with those two nations.

Dedas

December 13th, 2006, 07:13 AM

A balanced game does not necessarily mean that it will be dull and colorless.
And yes, I do understand that it is very hard to balance such a big system as this and still keep its "magic" intact. But please do remember that hard does not mean impossible.

NTJedi

December 13th, 2006, 11:46 AM

Cainehill said:
Sheesh. I don't so much mind the forums being hostile and whatnot - but I do mind the way that Dominions 3 is so broken in terms of balance, and yet a few rabid people insist that it's fine the way it is.

It's broken if you're doing a MP only game which MUST include Vanheim. Two easy fixes available... one is not play with Vanheim leaving at least 18 other nations per era available for gaming!! Second if you truly love Vanheim and must choose the nation in a MP game then the host can create a mod.

Cainehill said:
*shrug* As people have pointed out, people kept / went back to playing Dom2 largely because of the Conceptual Balance mods - the base game was _never_ fixed. And Dom3 essentially ignored all the play-tested balancing touches in the CB series, and introduced worse imbalances.

And I'll point out the Conceptual Balance mod dealt with multiple issues... the issue under discussion is one nation. I could understand if the game had only 11 nations or less to play, but that's not the case. I see no reason why SP gamers, MP gamers with AI opponents and MP only gamers should have a very powerful nation NERF wacked when there's easy ways for gamers to address the issue.

Cainehill said:
And yet two or three of y'all keep saying it's perfect, it's working as designed, etc. Feh.

It's working _so_ well as designed that I've found myself unable to even think of providing friends with the demo, much less suggesting they consider the full game.

I never said the whole game was perfect. Some imbalances I noticed are the Umbrals that Argatha can summon for 2 death, yet there's no need for me to demand a change because I know a simple mod can make this adjustment. I could see a patch addressing an imbalance in a spell available to everyone, such as if summoning wraith lords was only 8 death gems. This would be an imbalance affecting all nations, yet this is one OPTIONAL nation and not an issue unless the host makes it available choosing not to mod the nation.

NTJedi

December 13th, 2006, 11:54 AM

Cainehill said:
Actually, until the Vampire Queen was severely hitten by the nerf stick, Ermor was still extremely dreaded. Say - _why_ would one pretender being overpowered have been such a problem in Dom2? After all, there's umpteen different pretenders, and we need one or two overpowered pretenders for the newbies, and for people who want to be able to beat the SP AI without ever bothering to learn the game.

Isn't that essentially your argument regarding the Heims?

Actually NO, the vampire queen was Nerf wacked because she was available to multiple nations. As a result multiple nations would more frequently choose the vampire queen. The issue being discussed only exists if the host chooses to include this one nation and chooses to not mod the nation.

NTJedi

December 13th, 2006, 12:05 PM

Ygorl said:
I don't see any reason why the pure game should be unbalanced ("flawed"?) in any preventable way.

I agree Vanheim is very powerful... and the reason they should remain powerful is because this game is not MP only. If the game did not include SP as an option or MP with AI opponents as an option I would not be defending Vanheim from the NERFing bat. Having an option to create an unbalanced game verses AI opponents allows the game to be easier, equal or more difficult. More options verses AI opponents increase replay value.

Edi

December 13th, 2006, 12:13 PM

NTJedi said:
It's broken if you're doing a MP only game which MUST include Vanheim. Two easy fixes available... one is not play with Vanheim leaving at least 18 other nations per era available for gaming!! Second if you truly love Vanheim and must choose the nation in a MP game then the host can create a mod.

That's completely sidestepping the entire point and you know it. If the only way to avoid a problem is to voluntarily cut a whole nation out of the game, then that nation might as well not be included in the game at all and the bleating about a host being able to make a mod is a red herring. If mods are to be the answer, then they should be the method used by those who want an excessively powerful nation in SP. The reason for that is that it is much easier for one person to use a mod in a SP game than it is to coordinate mod version compatibility with up to 17 people in MP.

NTJedi said:
And I'll point out the Conceptual Balance mod dealt with multiple issues... the issue under discussion is one nation.

Irrelevant.

NTJedi said:
I could understand if the game had only 11 nations or less to play, but that's not the case. I see no reason why SP gamers, MP gamers with AI opponents and MP only gamers should have a very powerful nation NERF wacked when there's easy ways for gamers to address the issue.

The easiest way to address the issue is for the SP game people to use the mod instead of forcing everyone else to do it. What part of this is too hard to understand? It is also easier to do a powerup mod for a nation than it is to do a balance mod, which is another reason for nerfing Helheim and Vanheim to a level of tolerably superior strength and let the SP gamers powerup them by mod.

NTJedi said:
I never said the whole game was perfect. Some imbalances I noticed are the Umbrals that Argatha can summon for 2 death, yet there's no need for me to demand a change because I know a simple mod can make this adjustment.

And is this issue something that will allow them to easily dominate any given game they are included in? Or is it something that will shore up a weak spot but does not give them an overwhelming edge? I've not seen that many topics complaining about Umbrals, while there is a lot of discussion of Vanheim and Helheim.

NTJedi said: I could see a patch addressing an imbalance in a spell available to everyone, such as if summoning wraith lords was only 8 death gems. This would be an imbalance affecting all nations, yet this is one OPTIONAL nation and not an issue unless the host makes it available choosing not to mod the nation.

So your preferred solution is to restrict content that would otherwise be available and perfectly acceptable if it were only tweaked downward a tiny bit? Gotcha. The remedy you propose is very much voluntarily cutting off your hand because it became dirty, instead of just washing it.

Edi

mivayan

December 13th, 2006, 12:26 PM

NTJedi said: The game should have a few nations which are both rock&scissors because the game is not MP only.

Did you know that 1/4 of the nations have good enough sacreds that they are rockscissors against normal strength AIs? Dont need helheim for that.

tibbs

December 13th, 2006, 12:47 PM

NTJedi said:

Ygorl said:
I don't see any reason why the pure game should be unbalanced ("flawed"?) in any preventable way.

I agree Vanheim is very powerful... and the reason they should remain powerful is because this game is not MP only. If the game did not include SP as an option or MP with AI opponents as an option I would not be defending Vanheim from the NERFing bat. Having an option to create an unbalanced game verses AI opponents allows the game to be easier, equal or more difficult. More options verses AI opponents increase replay value.

Your reasoning doesn't make much sense really. Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Dawn of War are all multiplayer and single player games yet each game was patched to fix multiplayer imbalance issues. I've never seen a game designed or patched using your reasoning.

tombom

December 13th, 2006, 12:56 PM

Having unbalanced nations affects singleplayer as well. You're arguing that we should keep these nations around for the benefit of noobs. They're unlikely to find out they're overpowered unless they visit the forums, and if they do that they'll pick up enough knowledge to defeat any other AI on easy fine. On the flip side, if they are against Vanheim they'll get annoyed that they can't seem to win.

If people are good enough to want a more challenging game, they can play multiplayer or get a mod which has a more powerful nation. I'm sure most people would prefer that the game didn't always come down to you v Vanheim because that's boring.

Cainehill

December 13th, 2006, 01:32 PM

NTJedi said:

Cainehill said:
Actually, until the Vampire Queen was severely hitten by the nerf stick, Ermor was still extremely dreaded. Say - _why_ would one pretender being overpowered have been such a problem in Dom2? After all, there's umpteen different pretenders, and we need one or two overpowered pretenders for the newbies, and for people who want to be able to beat the SP AI without ever bothering to learn the game.

Isn't that essentially your argument regarding the Heims?

Actually NO, the vampire queen was Nerf wacked because she was available to multiple nations. As a result multiple nations would more frequently choose the vampire queen. The issue being discussed only exists if the host chooses to include this one nation and chooses to not mod the nation.

Yes, the VQ was available to everyone - but it was also what made Ermor so overpowered, because Ermor could take _all_ negative scales, high dominion, and have the VQ as the most whacked out SC pretender in the game.

And for ratraping's sake - if you're saying that a nation (or _TWO_ in at least one era) needs to be modded or deliberately left out, you're admitting there's a problem.

Some of your comments have been ludicrous. "Oh, the newbies need a couple strong nations so they don't quit playing Dominions after getting whacked in MP"?

Yep, guess that's why chess, go, civilizations, etc, all have a couple over-powered sides to help newbies get into the game. Errr - with chess, is that black or f-ing white?

In dominions, the newbies wouldn't know to _choose_ the nations, and they wouldn't know the cheesy mandatory strategy required to do well with them.

Even if they did - it wouldn't do squat to help them learn the game, because W9F9 Vanheim/Helheim plays so differently from other nations.

As far as the "It can be modded" argument : a lot of people (including you in the past, I believe) haven't wanted to play using mods - some people don't trust them, other people don't like to get playing experience that isn't going to match a "real" (ie, unmodded or other, more standardly, modding) game.

It can be left out of games? Yep, _EVERY_ person who plays the game should be forced to learn and use map commands so other players (and the AI opponents) can't choose the nations, and then get into arguments with players who say, "Hey, how come I can't select Vanheim? They're the only nation I like playing!?!?"

The situation ought to be fixed, _IN THE VANILLA, STANDARD GAME_, instead of being left in because it's working "as designed", and the law of unintended consequences be damned. (Changes to gold income, supplies, shield mechanics, research speeds, dormant pretenders, not picking national fortification, etc, all having added to the problem inherent with glamour (mirror images) and stealth already having been somewhat overpowered.)

Then, as far as making things easier for newbies in SP or MP? Give _players_ the same sort of creation option that already exists for AIs, only reversed. Setting a player to expert would give _fewer_ pretender creation points, while novice would give extra points, possibly some bonuses to research, resources, etc. That way they have an easier time trying to keep up, with more than just a SPECIFIC nation or two, and are learning more of the game itself rather than a single overpowered uberbless cheese strategy.

Bah.

Gandalf Parker

December 13th, 2006, 01:39 PM

Hmmm some of these comments are long drawn out discussions of what should be done, and probably would be done, IF it was agreed that anything was broken.

tombom

December 13th, 2006, 01:47 PM

Gandalf Parker said:
Hmmm some of these comments are long drawn out discussions of what should be done, and probably would be done, IF it was agreed that anything was broken.

Every single person in this thread has agreed that Vanheim is overpowered, even the people arguing against a change.

Edi

December 13th, 2006, 01:50 PM

Gandalf, with the exception of you and NT Jedi, there seems to be a consensus that Vanheim and Helheim are overpowered. Some of those in the consensus for some reason or another do not mind the current situation, but 90+% of the rest think it should be addressed. Sounds like agreement to me.

Edi

Edi

December 13th, 2006, 01:52 PM

I should add that even many of the less experienced people who came into the thread skeptical of the issue have been changing their positions as soon as they started testing the issue and running the numbers in practice, which in my book is an even more powerful argument that there is indeed a problem.

Edi

UninspiredName

December 13th, 2006, 01:57 PM

Um, I'm probably missing something, but would it take any kind of map commands whatsoever to refuse to put Vanheim in your game?

EDIT: And since the topic is beginning to veer to the Vampire Queen...

It seems to me, the real issue is that now, stuff that boosts a supercombatant like flying, regeneration, ethereal, summon allies, and immortality is being taken much more seriously than in Dom2, and Vampire Queen had so many of them. She still does, but it slammed her down to 50 points per path, dominion 1, (which seems to be a contradiction among other human, dominion 1 units) ethereality was nixed altogether, and what started out as a buffed human mage, a Frost Father more thematic for her paths, became the most expensive pretender in the game and lost a very valuable SC ability. If you look at the Lich (not so much Master Lich) and Ghost King, they both had a bit of what the VQ had, and they both got their cost jacked up corresponding to that 'bit'. Really, it seems to me, this whole thing is in retaliation to the SC craze of Dom2. It's not so much different from the Sphinx becoming truly immobile.

Morkilus

December 13th, 2006, 02:05 PM

I know this will end up sounding like a "me too" post, but I agree there is a problem and it should be fixed in a patch. Getting a multiplayer community to agree to a mod is much more difficult than grabbing a mod from the subforum in order to whack the AI.

And please stop using arguments like "well, it's not just a MP game" and "ban Vanheim if you don't like it". If your arguments worked, you wouldn't have to repeat them word for word every time someone shoots them down. So my post isn't completely useless, I suggest some of the Amos mods from the mod forum for powerful, fun nations to try against the AI.

Endoperez

December 13th, 2006, 02:22 PM

I agree in that Helhirdings are very good for the price. I'm not sure how good, exactly, they are. They are better than White Centaurs. I'm not sure if they are good enough to beat everything and everyone.

Uh-Nu-Buh

December 13th, 2006, 02:23 PM

I personally like having a range of nations, some of which are weaker than the average, and some of which are stronger. I like it that some nations are harder to play with than others. I like it that some require more delicacy, some require more subtlety, and some require more micromanagement.

I also like it that some require less thought, less subtlety, and less micromanagement. Sometimes you just want to play. Sometimes you want the other guy to have an advantage. Sometimes you want a newb to have a chance. Sometimes you want to play against an AI who has a chance of beating you.

I just like having the sheer breadth of the current game. If anything, instead of taking away, let's add to the game. More nations, more spells, more pretenders. Let's add a nation that is even more blunt and overpowered than Vanheim.

I'd argue, also, that even Vanheim isn't obviously overpowered--it takes a bit of thinking, familiarity with the game, some trial and error, and some puttering with the math to come up with the overkill Vanheim strategy. Or else reading a lot of posts.

I vote against the nerf bat.

Now, in keeping with the whole thread: Vans are for wussies. I taunt Van players. Your mother was a rabbit and your father smelled of elderberries. You Vans, ha on you! I Squish you! Ha ha! Yes! Take that!!

DrPraetorious

December 13th, 2006, 02:26 PM

I don't think the glam positions are overpowered either. I would say that people who think there is a problem are more likely to post than those who do not, and that opinion is very much divided.

And please stop using arguments like "well, it's not just a MP game" and "ban Vanheim if you don't like it". If your arguments worked, you wouldn't have to repeat them word for word every time someone shoots them down.

While I agree that the first argument is vaccuous - I have not seen anyone "shoot it down," or even address it cogently.

As for the second argument - it is entirely sound, since there are a sizeable number of people who play MP and think the glamour positions are fine as they are. Strong, certainly - but so are many other positions. So, if your subgroup thinks the glamour nations are broken, just close them off. There's no reason to trouble everyone else who is enjoying the game as-is just fine.

PDF

December 13th, 2006, 02:30 PM

On one side we have : take Vanheim with a W9F9 bless and produce Vans, disregard everything else, you'll expand lightning fast, then win 95% of fights vs any comparable-cost army, plus you can raid, hide, attack when and where you choose, play tricks to your leisure.
On the other we have : take another nation, consider carefully how to make an army that could be effective vs vans, how to script it, what spells to use, etc etc..
And maybe if Vanheim is cool he'll fight on your terms,and you'll win. Maybe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

And that'll be "balanced" ? C'mon....

Morkilus

December 13th, 2006, 03:07 PM

DrPraetorious said:

Morkilus said:And please stop using arguments like "well, it's not just a MP game" and "ban Vanheim if you don't like it". If your arguments worked, you wouldn't have to repeat them word for word every time someone shoots them down.

While I agree that the first argument is vaccuous - I have not seen anyone "shoot it down," or even address it cogently.

tibbs said:
Your reasoning doesn't make much sense really. Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Dawn of War are all multiplayer and single player games yet each game was patched to fix multiplayer imbalance issues. I've never seen a game designed or patched using your reasoning.

Edi said:That's completely sidestepping the entire point and you know it. If the only way to avoid a problem is to voluntarily cut a whole nation out of the game, then that nation might as well not be included in the game at all and the bleating about a host being able to make a mod is a red herring. If mods are to be the answer, then they should be the method used by those who want an excessively powerful nation in SP. The reason for that is that it is much easier for one person to use a mod in a SP game than it is to coordinate mod version compatibility with up to 17 people in MP.

Saxon said:Is SP, which is all I play, it seems that most games end up with me having to knock out Vanheim at some point. Either I meet them early and have to kill them to live or I meet them late, where their early expansion leads them to have huge resources and they are a monster. Either way, pretty much every game comes down to me vs. Vanheim. That takes some replayablity out of the game.

Beorne said:
For me Dom3 (and Dom2) is only MP, I find exrtremely boring playing with AI, I'd prefere read a book. In MP s beautiful.
But we banned Vanheim (and Helheim), it is overly unbalanced and it has ruined our first MP game.
For me it is painful because it is way long my favored nation (along with the Tuathas, hoping they return soon ...), has a wonderful theme and it is very fascinating in general. But it is ovewrpowered, no way.
I think that the argument about people saying it is not overpowered are made by boys that easily win MP using Van and are very satisfied of this. I can't find any other reason to say "it is clearly unbalanced but I like it.".

Please go back and read the thread, and please point out this sizable portion of the MP community that think the 'heims and dual blesses are fine as is. They should have as much interest in the thread. I appreciate your contributions, but please don't attempt to dismiss everyone else's perfectly good arguments. They exist and are valid. Fixes to any game should be made to make people happy and have more fun, and especially should be prioritized for a multiplayer game.

B0rsuk

December 13th, 2006, 03:22 PM

PDF said:
On one side we have : take Vanheim with a W9F9 bless and produce Vans, disregard everything else, you'll expand lightning fast, then win 95% of fights vs any comparable-cost army, plus you can raid, hide, attack when and where you choose, play tricks to your leisure.
On the other we have : take another nation, consider carefully how to make an army that could be effective vs vans, how to script it, what spells to use, etc etc..
And maybe if Vanheim is cool he'll fight on your terms,and you'll win. Maybe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

And that'll be "balanced" ? C'mon....

...and then a neighbor notices you have 50 charriots(monoculture), and sends 1 niefel giant and kills them all.

To anyone who used the acronym SP in this topic:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=479064

Gandalf Parker

December 13th, 2006, 03:41 PM

Wouldnt a Victory Point game on a medium map play out quite differently? I admit that I have very little experince with the small map (10 prov or less per player) blitz-type games.

UninspiredName

December 13th, 2006, 04:00 PM

Since Victory Point games are much more reliant on quick expansion, I'd say Vanehim might actually have more of an advantage there.

Valandil

December 13th, 2006, 04:02 PM

How does helheim do in MP eg. turn 40?
What nations (EA) will beat helheim consistently.Can anyone quantify a 'good player'? Who is the best?

These questions, if answered, would go a long way towards finding a solution.

My opinion:
Helheim F9 W9 is probably stronger than it 'should be'. I would argue that anything that is clearly imbalanced should be restored to a state in balance with other nations. I would do this by adding counters to glamour/F9 W9 (Dispel illusions? Unbless?). I vote in favour of balance and against nerfing.

While I'm at it, I quote a famous objection to the "women against rape" campaign: "are there any women FOR rape?"

Uh-Nu-Buh

December 13th, 2006, 04:19 PM

I'm not sure this thread is profitable any more. People are letting their emotions get the better of them, I'm afraid. Two points of view, both valid. Neither are going to agree. Big deal, so what, jeeze. Live with it.

As for you, Gandalf Parker, you're going in my killfile. You are over the top. Too angry by far. This is just a game. Your extremist solutions are shocking. Yes, shocking.

Ozymandias

December 13th, 2006, 04:45 PM

Just to clarify a few things, EA Vanheim has capitol only sacreds that aren't nearly as good a chassis as Van or Helhirdling. Their defense is a respectable 12 before they berserk, but only 7 after. They cost three times as much as elite infantry of other nations. I don't believe that EA Vanheim has sacreds of excessive power.

Helheim and MA Vanheim are different. Van and Helhirdlings both have stock defense of 19. Oiorpata are the next closest sacred with 18 defense. White Centaurs, Equite of the Sacred Shroud, Tiger Riders, Wind Riders, Androphags, and Red Guard all have defense 17. Vanir cavalry have very high defense, particularly with a water blessing. This means that they are very rarely hit in melee, which provides normal troops very few chances to remove their mirror images. All of the previously listed sacred cavalry become very survivable in hand to hand with a water bless; Vanir cavalry have only a small advantage, but it is magnified by their mirror image. Also it is worth noting that of all the sacreds listed above, only Van are not capitol only.

In addition to their excellent tactical attributes (helhirdlings are arguably the very best national troop of any era; van are only slightly worse) they also have superior strategic abilities. The standard MA Vanheim army of a Vanjarl and a half dozen Van is sailing, glamorous, and map move 3. Helheim loses sailing on their Vanjarls, but they have flying Disr and Valkyrie forces to help compensate. One thing that all of the people who have rightly said that Vanir armies are beatable have neglected to mention is that the Vanir nations get to pick their battles. Even if they are beatable by large carefully scripted armies, they are more mobile then those armies and can easily bypass them. EA Abysia's sacreds are very powerful, but they don't appear all through your empire attacking wherever you are weak because they have to move in a visible, ploddingly slow group.

Finally the blesses. Water 9, fire 9 gets mentioned a lot on this thread, and personally I believe that water is the most powerful bless available to high defense sacreds. Fire is the best bless which provides magic weapons. Death and earth blesses are both helpful to casters as well as melee troops, and nature blesses are strong in direct proportion to the hit points of the sacred units, but for nations with basically human hit point sacreds suitable for combat fire 9 water 9 pretenders will be chosen often. I would prefer for the less optimal blesses to be made more useful rather then nerfing the big two. Making the earth blessings armor bonus not contingent on armor, making the save for death weapons at -4, not limiting the magic resistance bonus from an astral bless to 18, and removing the save for blood curse would all be good starts. I'm not sure what a good improvement for the air bless would be, but it needs help too.

curtadams

December 13th, 2006, 04:57 PM

In terms of arguments that the Heims are not overpowered -
So far we have two tracks attempted, neither very successfully.

Some have posted strategies for particular nations to beat the Heims. I've seen Abysia, Niefelheim, C'tis Miasma, Arcosephale (with a very complex idea), and elephant users. That's not enough nations and not enough testing although most are plausible. There would also need to be some counters tested - e.g. elephants are very vulnerable to archers so an archer/Van combo might allow the Heims to deal with that (their defense alone might be enough - failed tramples don't kill very effectively and those easily routed elephants are very painful to the owner)

There was also a claim that hobbit chaff can thrash the Heims. That's a legitimate idea, although you can't always find hobbits, and that also needs some testing. I'm also majorly unimpressed with hobbit meleers - there's an issue with wasted costs.

In terms of patching I have a general principle and two ideas.

First, I think an "emergency patch" should be conservative. Overnerfing is hard to reverse. The specific ideas:

1) weaken glamour so that if the *mirror image* takes a hit it goes poof. Obviously a programming change but it would get rid of the disturbing synergy between mirror images and hard-to-hurt units while still leaving it useful. Thick missle fire would pretty much fry mirrors but the mirrors would still waste a fair number of shots. In addition to balance benefits, this is "logical" to most people.

2) Raise the costs of the sacred units in view of their double-bless benefit. They would no longer have much use otherwise but that's OK - the Heims still have very strong other units. IMO Vanheim in particular seems to have really strong units in general based on how much damage they do me but it doesn't seem a runaway problem.

I'm not sure about the best approach but frankly, def 24 armored units are just too good for the early game. They are excellent in comparison even to fairly high-level summoned troops like lamia, naiads, and devils. If "summoned double-blessed van troops" were a fairly high-level spell it would still be a major target of research, probably ahead of lamias, and that's saying something.

FrankTrollman

December 13th, 2006, 05:36 PM

In terms of arguments that the Heims are not overpowered -
So far we have two tracks attempted, neither very successfully.

In what way is it not successful. The initial claim is that a double blessed heim strategy cannot be beaten. I've beaten it, therefore that's an iron-clad argument to the contrary.

The burden of proof is on the people claiming imbalance - not the other way around. The people who are claiming that Vanheim is overpowered are saying that they lost badly and don't see what they could have done differently. That's anecdotal evidence at best. One could conclude from that anecdote that either: Vanheim is overpowered.
The faction they were playing is underpowered.
The player of vanheim in the example was really good.
The player complaining about Vanheim isn't good.
Vanheim plays differently than other nations and that repeating standard tactics with or against them is ineffective.

Those are all valid conclusions. But a lot of people are saying "Vanheim is unstoppable!" as if that conclusion was foregone. Well, I've never lost to Vanheim in any era with any nation in multiplayer or single player. So I theorize that one of the other options may be what you're actually looking at.

A strategy that loses badly to Arcocephalian Chariot Archers is hardly "unbeatable" - simply "weird and extreme". Ashen Fields isn't overpowered because people have to fight it with a heavy force of archers and priests - that's just how it works.

The Vanir are virtually immune to sword attacks. That's a big deal. But it's not an insurmountable deal.Every nation can mount an offensive that is not based on melee attacks that have a chance of missing. Area attacks, trampling, battlefield enchantments and more are all within the realm of possibility. The specific tactics to be employed will of course vary nation to nation, but you can put up a defense against the Vanir.

And if you aren't tailoring your troop setups to your opposition, you should lose. Really, the fact that it requires specific planning on your part to win is not a flaw in the game.

-Frank

Twan

December 13th, 2006, 05:58 PM

weaken glamour so that if the *mirror image* takes a hit it goes poof.

Replacing glamour by twist fate + normal stealth is probably doable in a mod and would be a good fix IMO.

Edi

December 13th, 2006, 06:47 PM

FrankTrollman said:
In what way is it not successful. The initial claim is that a double blessed heim strategy cannot be beaten. I've beaten it, therefore that's an iron-clad argument to the contrary.

That there seems to be nothing but a strawman of the actual argument put forth, namely that the Van units are overpowered. I didn't see anyone claiming they were unbeatable, but that they are overpowered. That's with the assumption of current costs and abilities.

FrankTrollman said:
The burden of proof is on the people claiming imbalance - not the other way around.

Yes. More on that shortly.

FrankTrollman said:
The people who are claiming that Vanheim is overpowered are saying that they lost badly and don't see what they could have done differently. That's anecdotal evidence at best. One could conclude from that anecdote that either: Vanheim is overpowered.
The faction they were playing is underpowered.
The player of vanheim in the example was really good.
The player complaining about Vanheim isn't good.
Vanheim plays differently than other nations and that repeating standard tactics with or against them is ineffective.

By the same token, your ability to beat Vanheim is just as anecdotal and cannot be used as evidence for any kind of larger trend. However, when there is direct testimony from a lot of people who are experienced players that the Van and Helheim units are a problem for the reasons listed because they skew games in several ways without the player using them really sacrificing anything, I'm far more likely to take that aggregate testimony as valid than someone like yourself coming out of the woodwork and just dismissing it with a handwave. I know Graeme Dice, Cainehill, Huzurdadi and some of the others here well enough to know that they can beat Vanheim or Helheim in MP, so I don't see where this accusation of incompetence that you're bandying about with that list of yours is coming from.

You're also ignoring what happened when the new people started running set-piece tests to get their own numbers. Not all of them changed their minds or did so immediately, but there was a marked drop-off of the dismissive replies at that point and even some reversals of opinion.

FrankTrollman said:
Those are all valid conclusions. But a lot of people are saying "Vanheim is unstoppable!" as if that conclusion was foregone. Well, I've never lost to Vanheim in any era with any nation in multiplayer or single player. So I theorize that one of the other options may be what you're actually looking at.

So, it's back to more anecdotal evidence (yours, this time) coupled with a strawman argument (since I at least haven't seen anyone saying Vanheim to be unstoppable, just more powerful than it should be).

FrankTrollman said:
The Vanir are virtually immune to sword attacks. That's a big deal.

Yes, and what you neglect to mention is that the same mechanism that makes them nearly immune to sword attacks also makes them nearly immune to all other forms of physical attack as well and leaves massed mages and powerful battle magic (which takes a long time to get in the kind of numbers we're talking about) as about the only brute force counter. Everything else requires either a ridiculous ratio of units from a cost comparison analysis and/or intricate strategies that are easy to counter and will only work if the Van player does what you want him to do instead.

FrankTrollman said:
But it's not an insurmountable deal.Every nation can mount an offensive that is not based on melee attacks that have a chance of missing. Area attacks, trampling, battlefield enchantments and more are all within the realm of possibility. The specific tactics to be employed will of course vary nation to nation, but you can put up a defense against the Vanir.

No, not insurmountable, but did you actually bother reading the posts in the thread where these issues were discussed in more detail?

FrankTrollman said:
And if you aren't tailoring your troop setups to your opposition, you should lose. Really, the fact that it requires specific planning on your part to win is not a flaw in the game.

-Frank

Yes, generally speaking that is true. But when the situation is such that you generally have to do everything right with complex strategies while your opponent has far more room to make mistakes and all other things being equal, then it bears at least investigating, not an outright dismissal.

Edi

Dhaeron

December 13th, 2006, 07:30 PM

This thread moves too fast.
Aseth said:

I check my 1st test,I used 180 gold Comanders.
C`Tis capital have 191res with 3of5 neighbor provinces captured. Some problems gather 690res? Seems not to me...
C`Tis have not 14% advantage in money, but slightly more - because of admin & tax+patrol multipliers - it`s abaut 36% on first turn if Van patrol too...

It's not 36%. You have to compare the modified values of both nations to each other, not simply the difference in the modifier. You setup gives vanheim 115% gold and ctis 133%. Both can patrol. Anyway, at tax 200% vanheim gets about 850 gold and ctis 990.
You didn't write any heat scale changes for vanheim, so i'm just assuming you set that at -1. At 0 it could maybe explain how you arrive at 36& (though no, not really) but that'd not only be giving 5% income away, it'd also mean paying 40 points for it.

Inigo Montoya

December 13th, 2006, 07:41 PM

Ozymandias said:
Just to clarify a few things, EA Vanheim has capitol only sacreds that aren't nearly as good a chassis as Van or Helhirdling. Their defense is a respectable 12 before they berserk, but only 7 after. They cost three times as much as elite infantry of other nations. I don't believe that EA Vanheim has sacreds of excessive power.

Helheim and MA Vanheim are different. Van and Helhirdlings both have stock defense of 19. Oiorpata are the next closest sacred with 18 defense. White Centaurs, Equite of the Sacred Shroud, Tiger Riders, Wind Riders, Androphags, and Red Guard all have defense 17. Vanir cavalry have very high defense, particularly with a water blessing. This means that they are very rarely hit in melee, which provides normal troops very few chances to remove their mirror images. All of the previously listed sacred cavalry become very survivable in hand to hand with a water bless; Vanir cavalry have only a small advantage, but it is magnified by their mirror image. Also it is worth noting that of all the sacreds listed above, only Van are not capitol only.

In addition to their excellent tactical attributes (helhirdlings are arguably the very best national troop of any era; van are only slightly worse) they also have superior strategic abilities. The standard MA Vanheim army of a Vanjarl and a half dozen Van is sailing, glamorous, and map move 3. Helheim loses sailing on their Vanjarls, but they have flying Disr and Valkyrie forces to help compensate. One thing that all of the people who have rightly said that Vanir armies are beatable have neglected to mention is that the Vanir nations get to pick their battles. Even if they are beatable by large carefully scripted armies, they are more mobile then those armies and can easily bypass them. EA Abysia's sacreds are very powerful, but they don't appear all through your empire attacking wherever you are weak because they have to move in a visible, ploddingly slow group.

Finally the blesses. Water 9, fire 9 gets mentioned a lot on this thread, and personally I believe that water is the most powerful bless available to high defense sacreds. Fire is the best bless which provides magic weapons. Death and earth blesses are both helpful to casters as well as melee troops, and nature blesses are strong in direct proportion to the hit points of the sacred units, but for nations with basically human hit point sacreds suitable for combat fire 9 water 9 pretenders will be chosen often. I would prefer for the less optimal blesses to be made more useful rather then nerfing the big two. Making the earth blessings armor bonus not contingent on armor, making the save for death weapons at -4, not limiting the magic resistance bonus from an astral bless to 18, and removing the save for blood curse would all be good starts. I'm not sure what a good improvement for the air bless would be, but it needs help too.

I agree with this post entirely. Vans in particular are overpowered. The ability to choose where you fight (glamour) in conjuction with a non-capital only production gives this unit too much benefit for its cost. The solution is to up the cost slightly with the next patch. The thing we should be arguing is how much the cost should be increased.

As far as improving the Air Bless, I'd really love to see A9 be 100% shock resistance.

HoneyBadger

December 13th, 2006, 08:22 PM

I don't agree that they're overpowered, but then I haven't done any multi-playing with them. In certain directions, yes, they are very powerful, but they have exploitable weaknesses-weaknesses exploitable by most, if not all, nations. What I have done is discover that their are plenty of strategies out there-the most direct and obvious to use heavy tramplers-which beat Helheim. I still think this whole thread is premature. I'd like a chance to multi-player with them and against them, for one thing, but I don't feel I know enough about the game as a whole to give a good objective opinion yet, or to put up a good fight, not because Helheim's strong, but because I don't know enough. That's going to take time.

NTJedi

December 13th, 2006, 08:28 PM

tibbs said:
Your reasoning doesn't make much sense really. Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Dawn of War are all multiplayer and single player games yet each game was patched to fix multiplayer imbalance issues. I've never seen a game designed or patched using your reasoning.

I am very busy at work... so only time for one short response. Other responses coming with time.

The reason for having an imbalanced nation is because the game has enough optional nations(over fifty) where it's strong enough to have an OPTIONAL powerful nation. Otherwise how many nations/races does Illwinter need before a very powerful nation can be introduced... 100 nations, 500 nations, 8000 nations?? Who is saying Illwinter can NEVER introduce a very powerful OPTIONAL nation?? To demand constant balance from a game growing with content limits the options available for gamers and developers. I'd hate for the developers to be delayed on releasing future nations because they need more time testing its balance.

For those unaware I do voice my opinion for unbalanced issues which effect the entire game... as seen from AOW:SM and the flying draconian heroes which was NERFED. = LINK (http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=29,1941,,all ) The Vanheim issue clearly ONLY effects the entire game when Vanheim is chosen with a bless strategy! This Vanheim issue DOES NOT effect the entire game unless you choose to include them and Dominions_3 has grown with enough nations to have an optional powerful nation.

HoneyBadger

December 13th, 2006, 08:32 PM

By the way, my whole point of playing against SP isn't to say that SP is in any way a model of MP, it's not. It's to compare the troops side by side-and I've set all Helheim opponents to F9/W9-and see how they do in the AI combat environment. You can't tell how a human is going to think by doing that, but you can tell a lot about how the game works, and how I respond to the Helheim nation, itself. Objective results are several degrees harder to produce in a multi-player game. All I want to know right now is how the cost of Helheim blessed troops compares with the cost of other troops, how strong their province defense is, how they hold up to arrows, tramplers, magic, etc. I want a chance to compare each and every nation in SP, and then I can have a better understanding of MP.

curtadams

December 13th, 2006, 09:29 PM

FrankTrollman said:
The Vanir are virtually immune to sword attacks. That's a big deal. But it's not an insurmountable deal.Every nation can mount an offensive that is not based on melee attacks that have a chance of missing. Area attacks, trampling, battlefield enchantments and more are all within the realm of possibility. The specific tactics to be employed will of course vary nation to nation, but you can put up a defense against the Vanir.

And if you aren't tailoring your troop setups to your opposition, you should lose. Really, the fact that it requires specific planning on your part to win is not a flaw in the game.

Vans are effectively immune to melee and quite resistant to missle fire because of glamour+armor+shield+speed. That's both the basic attacks of Dominions. Other stuff is generally not available until level 4/5 research, which is well along, and the magic requires a good supply of potent casters, which is also hard to come by. Trampling is pretty iffy and shouldn't work generally - one guy did test chariot archers and they were a flop. Each van needs to get trampled 12 times and that's quite a lot of successful tramples. In any case, the majority of nations have no AOEish attack at all for some time, and that's a huge problem.

Tailoring should NOT be necessary. Trivially, if two untailored forces encounter each other, one will win! If a particular nation always requires tailoring to be stopped, it's too strong, and if tailoring isn't even available to most nations, it simply has to be fixed.

mivayan

December 13th, 2006, 10:16 PM

I noticed the theory that trampling is a handy rock-scissors-paper style counter to F9W9 helhirdings. So I made a test.

Side one: F9W9 bless.
One holy3 priest, to cast divine blessing and smite. I wont count his cost. 40 helhirdings: 3000 gold, 480 resources.

Side two: F9W9 bless which doesn't matter
One holy3 priest, casting smite for symmetry's sake. I wont count his cost. 100 EA ctis lizard chariots: 5000 gold, 2600 resources.

No commanders were harmed in this test.
Fight one: chariots defend, 29 out of 40 helhirdings die, 95 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight two: chariots defend, 16 out of 40 helhirdings die, 98 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight three: chariots defend, 14 out of 40 helhirdings die, 88 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight four: chariots defend, 5 out of 40 helhirdings die, 75 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight five: chariots defend, 39 out of 40 helhirdings die, 54 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
In this last fight, 2925 gold were lost for helhirdings. 2700 gold lost for chariots.

So, for only 167% of the cost and 5400% of the recources, you might once in a while destroy a F9W9 helhirding army with lizard chariots. Not worth calling a counter.

UninspiredName

December 13th, 2006, 10:26 PM

Hm... How about Elephants? Chariots are girly tramplers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

FrankTrollman

December 13th, 2006, 11:05 PM

Deleted

Zebion

December 13th, 2006, 11:29 PM

NT just hides behind the fact the game should have one powerful nation. The nation can be modded easily in singleplayer. Multiplayer has hell trying to get everyone to use one mod,even one that everyone agrees

Inigo Montoya

December 14th, 2006, 12:23 AM

UninspiredName said:
Hm... How about Elephants? Chariots are girly tramplers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

The problem is they are twice as expensive as chariots, only compounding the disparity.

Inigo Montoya

December 14th, 2006, 12:30 AM

Foodstamp

December 14th, 2006, 12:45 AM

I would like to see FrankTrollman do a test as well. He has an incredible grasp of how magic works in Dom3, or atleast he seems to in the nooby game where he was pwning everyone.

I think if there is a person that can find a definate magical way to counter a heim in the early part of the game, it would be FrankTrollman.

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 12:49 AM

Sheap

December 14th, 2006, 01:08 AM

to have an OPTIONAL powerful nation

A nation that comes as part of the basic game is not optional, except in single player, where game balance is virtually irrelevant.

Inigo Montoya

December 14th, 2006, 03:36 AM

Corwin said:
I think all people are complaining mostly about Helheim and MA Vanheim. I would like to add, that even if EA Vanheim and Helheim would be toned down, IMHO it's important that these changes would not affect Midgard. (LE Vanheim)

Midgard is significantly weaker than Helheim or MA Vanheim. Their mages are much worse on the battlefield(they don't have neither air 3 van commanders, not earth 2-4 dwarves), they don't have flying sacred valkiries, and all other Midgard's national troops are relatively weak for the LA and their prices and stats, comparable to other nations. Plus because other nations have generally much better national troops in LA than in EA/MA, the advantage of van's sacred is correspondently smaller.

I agree with you, Corwin. Although Vanheim MA vans need to be more expensive, I do not think Midgard LA vans merit the same treatment. You leave out one of the most important reasons why Vanheim MA vans are underpriced compared to Midgard LA - Midgard vans are limited to capital only production. I actually don't mind seeing viable Vanheim MA double bless rush strategies. However, I think there needs to be a penalty for gambling on the double bless rush. Since you can mass produce Vanheim MA vans from multiple provinces then choose the location for the battle with glamour, there is no down side to the rush at the current price point for middle age vans. They need to be more expensive so that if you can catch the Vanheim player and kill the van army, that player will be devastated. Since they can rebuild from all over, taking the capital isn't a viable response.

I think the solution is to increase the resource cost of Vanheim MA vans.
The spear wielding hirdman has a spear, helmet, chain mail hauberk, and shield for 20 resources.
The valkyrie has a spear, cap, chain mail cuirass, and shield for 15 resources. This is a 25% lower resource cost for pretty much similar gear. I'm okay with that though because valkyries are limited to capital-only production.
The van has a light lance, cap, chain mail cuirass, shield, javelin, and horse for 16 resources. This makes no sense!!! Here's a unit that has a horse, a lance, and a javelin -- much more than a valkyrie for only 1 more resource and for 4 LESS than the hirdman. I think this should be bumped up to 32 resources.

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 06:36 AM

Inigo,

Why not just have MA Vanheim Vans limited to capitol-only ?
To me it'll be sufficient to rebalance MA Vanheim.

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 06:59 AM

FrankTrollman said:
That test doesn't really show anything, since Chariots are part of a larger strategy. A single trample effect causes small amounts of damage to everything trampled, so it ends glamor effects. That means that the big scary "they all have glamor!" is over and they are no longer effectively immune to swords or bows.

. Other stuff is generally not available until level 4/5 research, which is well along, and the magic requires a good supply of potent casters, which is also hard to come by.

You and I are looking at different spell lists.

Evocation 2:
Fire Blast
Sulphur Haze
Flare
Cold Blast
Shockwave

Alteration 2:
Earthmeld

Construction 2:
Ice Pebble Staff
Doom Glaive

Thaumaturgy 1:
Dessication
Frighten

Blood 2:
Blood Burst
Agony

All of these spells ignore Glamor. And Defense. The Helhirding is just a man against any of that. A man who costs 75 gold.

Sure, when you get up to Evocation 6 you get stuff like Magma Eruption that blows huge holes in the Vanir line at minimal cost, but even with just level 2 Research levels there's stuff you can do.

And if people are throwing around 40 Vanir, you'll have some crazy battle magic. Remember that larger units favor the side being trampled over the side trampling, because tramplers end up in the middle of the squad.

But larger armies also don't support the cause of the "Helheim is broken!" peoples, because Helheim can't produce large groups of their major units before the magical counters start coming in fast and hard.

-Frank

That seem really more theory than practice : producing 3-5 Vans/turn the *heims can field 40 vans or HH from turn 10 or so, so really very few magic has been researched by anyone. Maybe one path to 3 and another to 1, 2 at best..

Then you have tramplers, that kills mirror images, and the Vans "are no longer effectively immune to swords or bows". But you still have to find something able to overcome 24 def (swords), and a way to protect your archers from 39-speed charges. What can hit 24-def units and is available turn 10-15 ? Nothing...

Even then you're talking of "Vanir lines". But Vans don't line up, usually I use 6-Vans groups quite largely spread out, using map borders, with groups set to attack archers and rear. With their amazing speed, they are quite rarely, if ever, grouped, and will just avoid a good part of enemmy army before wreaking havoc on the rear. Big AoE Evocs, even if available will usually kill more friendlies than Vanir in such a configuration.

Lastly noone in the "non-overpowered" side ever mentioned AFAIK that Vanheim *has* magic, and potent one ! Van-leaders all can banish skellspam easily, and as soona s they hit Evo-2 Shockwave is awfully effective with Vanjarls, and I don't even mention the obvious LB, then OL and TS !

Aseth

December 14th, 2006, 07:59 AM

Van-leaders all can banish skellspam easily

yep, in my test they do banish skels, but NOT easily...
more dangerous that Vans have little 3E dwarves for Bladewind http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 09:05 AM

Aseth said:

Van-leaders all can banish skellspam easily

yep, in my test they do banish skels, but NOT easily...
more dangerous that Vans have little 3E dwarves for Bladewind http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Sure, I even forgot to mention it ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Edi

December 14th, 2006, 09:24 AM

NTJedi said:
The reason for having an imbalanced nation is because the game has enough optional nations(over fifty) where it's strong enough to have an OPTIONAL powerful nation.

So your view of what should and should not be optional is the only valid one? Especially when we're talking about a nation that has been a staple of Dominions since the PPP days? That won't fly with anyone. There is a way to get optional �ber-nations and that's by modding them in either as separate nations or alterations of existing ones. Then those who want such nations can have them in their own games, but most people have no use for them at all.

NTJedi said:
Otherwise how many nations/races does Illwinter need before a very powerful nation can be introduced... 100 nations, 500 nations, 8000 nations?? Who is saying Illwinter can NEVER introduce a very powerful OPTIONAL nation??

See the other poster's reply about things that came with the stock game. And if you do want an �ber-nation, go mod one. It's that bloody simple. Or would that be too inconvenient, too much work for you?

NTJedi said:
To demand constant balance from a game growing with content limits the options available for gamers and developers. I'd hate for the developers to be delayed on releasing future nations because they need more time testing its balance.

Strawman. Nobody has been demanding constant perfect balance or even that an initial release of a feature be balanced. The only request is that if something is later shown to be a problem balance-wise, it be adjusted in a patch.

NTJedi said:
For those unaware I do voice my opinion for unbalanced issues which effect the entire game... as seen from AOW:SM and the flying draconian heroes which was NERFED. = LINK (http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=29,1941,,all )

Bwaaahhaaaaahaaaa! Thanks for the laugh! You're using the exact same IWOI (Invincible Wall of Ignorance) tactics in this thread that your opponents in the AoW thread used and you can't even see the irony. Oww, my sides! At this rate I'll send you the medical bill for my busted ribs...

NTJedi said:
The Vanheim issue clearly ONLY effects the entire game when Vanheim is chosen with a bless strategy! This Vanheim issue DOES NOT effect the entire game unless you choose to include them and Dominions_3 has grown with enough nations to have an optional powerful nation.

Just like Draconians in AoW were an optional choice, as were the draconian heroes and their fire breathing ability and see what you argued there with the precise same logic Graeme, Huzurdadi, I and otehrs have been using here. Thank you for providing the perfect illustration for why you are in the wrong.

Edi

Inigo Montoya

December 14th, 2006, 11:03 AM

PDF said:
Inigo,

Why not just have MA Vanheim Vans limited to capitol-only ?
To me it'll be sufficient to rebalance MA Vanheim.

Without a doubt it would be more fair, but I worry some flavor will be lost. I think the developers envisioned vans being more common in the middle age and that's why they made them non-capital production. Valkyries are supposed to be your "rare" units in that age.

What I don't want to do at all is make the nations more similar to achieve balance. The joy of Dominions is balance through diversity and flexibility rather than balance by sameness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 11:21 AM

Inigo Montoya said:

PDF said:
Inigo,

Why not just have MA Vanheim Vans limited to capitol-only ?
To me it'll be sufficient to rebalance MA Vanheim.

Without a doubt it would be more fair, but I worry some flavor will be lost. I think the developers envisioned vans being more common in the middle age and that's why they made them non-capital production. Valkyries are supposed to be your "rare" units in that age.

What I don't want to do at all is make the nations more similar to achieve balance. The joy of Dominions is balance through diversity and flexibility rather than balance by sameness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Yep that's a valid issue. Then can I throw another suggestion : maybe then we could have "sacred vans" capitol-only and a tad weaker "mundane vans" elsewhere - ie the same differences than Mtnd Heirdlings vs Heiherdlings from LA Helheim ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

SelfishGene

December 14th, 2006, 12:26 PM

EA Hellheim and Vanheim units should lose glamour and stealth; Hellhirdrings cost +40.

ME Vanheim has stealth +10, glamour (25 stealth) only on scouts and maybe one or two units. Vans cost +40(ish).

LE Vanheim has stealth and glamour. Van cost +40.

All high def sacred EA cavalry should also get a cost bump (Centaurs, ect..).

Teraswaerto

December 14th, 2006, 12:39 PM

EA Vans should definately not lose glamour, it is very much thematic for them and removing it is not the only solution to balance problems.

UninspiredName

December 14th, 2006, 12:39 PM

That suggestion is sort of overkill... Glamour is their defining trait, really, and they'd probably be weaker than they are worthwhile if you take it away. Thematically, it also seems weird that Late Age gets more... Wondrous, let's say, Vans than Middle Age.

And asking for sacred cavalry (Don't they all have high def?) of an entire age, in nations that aren't causing any trouble to become less easilly deployed is a step towards the sameness mentioned right above, in my eyes.

SelfishGene

December 14th, 2006, 01:05 PM

Glamour should be seen less as a combat skill and more a reflection of their pending dissapearance from the world.

In other words, during the early days, the Elven peoples did not need to hide from the prying eyes of the mortal races, but as time goes on and their numbers reduce they become more and more hidden and reclusive.

If you felt the need to compensate them, you could add STR or HP, so that during the "early" days they are more straightfowardly strong, but as the later ages progress they must turn their strength to stealth, or whatever.

SelfishGene

December 14th, 2006, 01:10 PM

Also like i argued in another forum, Vans are too powerful for their cost according to the very balance logic of Dominions . 70 gold? For a 25 stealth, sacred 12 armor, high defense, good attack, fastest cavalry in the game, unit? That's a silly thing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Remember, what changed between the games was the concepts of Ages. What passed for a mediocre unit before - like Myrmiddon - suddenly becomes much more powerful in the early eras before there are crossbows or other high armor units.

Vans in Dominions 2 had to go against the full gamut of high-armor/defence units. In the EA, Hellhirdrings have almost as high armor values as any other high end unit. Hellhirdrings and to some extent, Vans, are proportionately much more powerful now than they were in Dom2. The increase cost in research also slowed down magical countersteps.

Edi

December 14th, 2006, 01:11 PM

Of all the ideas in this thread, the suggestion to take away glamour is far and away the stupidest one.

It's one of the defining characteristics of the Vanir, so taking it away will just break things even worse. Increased gold and resource cost, possibly a reduction of defense and perhaps increased strength, giving them less of a stealth bonus and other such could be good solutions. Afaik stealth isn't tied to glamour. It was not in Dom2, glamour units were just given stealth +25 as a matter of thematics, but e.g. the Mother of Tuathas which had glamour only had stealth 0.

Edi

SelfishGene

December 14th, 2006, 01:18 PM

Edi said:
Of all the ideas in this thread, the suggestion to take away glamour is far and away the stupidest one.

You're welcome! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 01:47 PM

SelfishGene said:
EA Hellheim and Vanheim units should lose glamour and stealth; Hellhirdrings cost +40.

ME Vanheim has stealth +10, glamour (25 stealth) only on scouts and maybe one or two units. Vans cost +40(ish).

LE Vanheim has stealth and glamour. Van cost +40.

No, IMHO it is definitely overkill. Removing glamour AND stealth AND increasing cost by more than 50%??

I think raising cost of vans/herdlings for Helheim and MA Vanheim by 50% would go long way toward helping tone down their sacred. At 115gp per unit, it will be significantly more difficult to recruit large armies of sacred cavalry. Especially so in the beginning. Slower beginning means less territory, means less money to hire more sacred, et cetera.

Removing glamour would take out the most interesting thematic feature of Vanheim line of nations. I am much more in favor of balancing these nations through cost.

And as I said earlier, Midgard should be left alone. It is clearly much less powerful than Helheim and MA Vanheim. I also agree with Indigo - I forgot to mention that in Midgard vans are capital only, which is indeed a very big difference vs MA Vanheim, in addition to their other several relative weaknesses that I have mentioned in earlier in my post.

I also agree that all van-style sacred cavalry should be capital only for all Ages, for the balance purposes, even if it would be less thematic for MA Vanheim.

When nerfing it's important not to go too far. 50% cost increase for already expensive unit is a big change, no matter how you look at it. If needed it could always be tweaked more with future patches.

Teraswaerto

December 14th, 2006, 01:53 PM

Increasing resource costs seems necessary, like Inigo Montoya said. It may not make much difference balance wise, but should be done anyway, in addition to any other changes.

For example, the 12 resource cost of Helhirdings seems so low when compared to the norm as to be a bug.

Edi

December 14th, 2006, 02:07 PM

It seems like there is something of a consensus on the issue of sacreds needing to be capital only but non-sacred cavalry could be recruitable everywhere. It'd be just a matter of adding one more unit to the roster and adding it to the problem nations as well as tweaking the costs of the sacreds.

I think that would make most people happy while retaining all of the thematics of the nations in question.

Edi

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 02:08 PM

Teraswaerto said:
Increasing resource costs seems necessary, like Inigo Montoya said. It may not make much difference balance wise, but should be done anyway, in addition to any other changes.

For example, the 12 resource cost of Helhirdings seems so low when compared to the norm as to be a bug.

Actually it may have a significant impact on balance. To get F9/W9 bless one of the first scales that tend to go is productivity. As of now everybody plays such strategy with Van/Helheim with Sloth3, since there is no much need for higher resources.

If resource cost of sacred cavalery would increase, it would be impossible to hire many sacred units in the capital on high Sloth settings.

That being said, I do not oppose resource increase for Helheim and ME Vanheim that Inigo suggested. Perhaps some combination of resource and money cost increase might be the best solution.

Ozymandias

December 14th, 2006, 02:13 PM

I sort of like the idea of making Van capitol only and adding a Mounted Vanir Hirdman unit to ME Vanheim. Alternately, I think that a twenty to thirty gold price increase on Van and Helhirdling wouldn't be an excessive nerf. Both would likely be too much. Restricting Van to capitol only would likely mean that at least some ME Vanheim players would switch entirely to the nonsacred cavalry, and probably field a really souped up Allfather again. Increasing the cost wouldn't change the way Vanheim plays much, but might bring them in line with other nations expansion speed.

In any case I really really don't want MA Vanheim to take the sort of heavy handed beating that the Vampire Queen got when the dom 2 forum raised a similar fuss about her. Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 02:29 PM

Ozymandias said:
I sort of like the idea of making Van capitol only and adding a Mounted Vanir Hirdman unit to ME Vanheim. Alternately, I think that a twenty to thirty gold price increase on Van and Helhirdling wouldn't be an excessive nerf. Both would likely be too much. Restricting Van to capitol only would likely mean that at least some ME Vanheim players would switch entirely to the nonsacred cavalry, and probably field a really souped up Allfather again. Increasing the cost wouldn't change the way Vanheim plays much, but might bring them in line with other nations expansion speed.

In any case I really really don't want MA Vanheim to take the sort of heavy handed beating that the Vampire Queen got when the dom 2 forum raised a similar fuss about her. Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

Whenever we talk about "vans" money and resource cost increase, it's important to keep it contained to MA Vanheim and Helheim, since same "van" units are also used in Midgard. However Midgard, as all people here seem to agree, is certainly do not need to be nerfed, since it is clearly much weaker than either Helheim or ME Vanheim.

Perhaps it will be better to have 2 different van units - one for EA/MA, which should be toned down, and one for Midgard, which should be left alone since nerfing it would seriously hurt the nation which is not overpowered in the first place.

Baalz

December 14th, 2006, 02:36 PM

I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether. You've still got a really good unit, but it's the bless effects that put them over the top. This seems like a good way to ballance them and isn't anti-thematic. They should definately cost more resources to...

SelfishGene

December 14th, 2006, 03:02 PM

There is some love for LA Midgard. I don't know why it's any less prone to spamming then other nations in the early game.

If the Van (under all it's various names) is imbalanced, it's imbalanced in LA as well.

B0rsuk

December 14th, 2006, 03:08 PM

Ozymandias said:
Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

I know Dominions2: SC's and Dominions3: F9W9, but Dominions:PPP ? What does PPP stand for ?

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 03:31 PM

SelfishGene said:
There is some love for LA Midgard. I don't know why it's any less prone to spamming then other nations in the early game.

If the Van (under all it's various names) is imbalanced, it's imbalanced in LA as well.

Not really. Have you played Midgard in MP?
Read the earlier posts by me and Inigo, it states several reasons for it. You have to consider the nation as a whole when making any changes to its untis, or you will end up with broken and unbalanced nations.

mivayan

December 14th, 2006, 03:39 PM

B0rsuk said:What does PPP stand for ?

Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders

B0rsuk

December 14th, 2006, 03:48 PM

mivayan said:

B0rsuk said:What does PPP stand for ?

Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders

Oh, come on. You know I'm being overly sarcastic.
Was there anything particularly overpowered in Dominions:PPP ?

Strages Sanctus

December 14th, 2006, 03:57 PM

Massive armies of flying monkeys raised on prune juice

Ozymandias

December 14th, 2006, 04:02 PM

PAir Elementals, POrder, & Patrolling maybe?

B0rsuk

December 14th, 2006, 04:04 PM

Oh, now I remember something. I heard there was an 'Attack Commanders' order. I remember someone mentioning you were required to have a staff of storms just to keep your mages alive.

Ozymandias

December 14th, 2006, 04:07 PM

I just discovered that indy Crystal Amazons have defense 19 sacred flying cavalry, so Van and Helhirdling aren't the only sacreds with that kind of defense. I'm starting think that a modest price increase for Helhirdlings and Van of both eras is sufficient.

curtadams

December 14th, 2006, 04:09 PM

I'm still fond of the idea of changing Glamour so the images go away when the *images* get hit. It makes sense and cuts back on the Defense-Glamour interaction which is a big part of the problem. You might still need to bump up the cost a little.

Capitol-only + high resource cost sacred is an excessive fix because sometimes a bad location can leave you starved for resources in your capital. It's used, effectively, for Marignon and seems too effective - has anybody every seen a really effective double-bless Knights of the Chalice strategy? A better approach to the low resources cost would be to reduce the armor. If that approach is taken, it should be tried with no other fixes because cutting the armor alone might make them vulnerable enough to missles. That + another nerf is a big risk of overnerf.

Generically I'd like to see some weakening of the units rather than just increasing the cost. Fundamentally, when you have some units which are virtually impossible to harm by many nations well into the game (and tough even after than) it's very hard to have a fair cost.

BigJMoney

December 14th, 2006, 05:37 PM

Baalz said:
I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether. You've still got a really good unit, but it's the bless effects that put them over the top. This seems like a good way to ballance them and isn't anti-thematic. They should definately cost more resources to...

This is exactly the solution I proposed many pages ago, but my posts are so long that little details like these are hard to extrapolate.

I think this is a fair and thematic difference. "Vans move forth into the world, but lose their holiness by making a pact with men." All while the Valkyries remain faithful and become the only sacred unit available to MA Vanheim.

I think this would work. If this seems too unbearable to the devs and most others in the community, then consider simply giving Vanheim an inherent weakness, and make it thematic. One minor thing would be to take away their Cold1 nature, but that doesn't seem like quite enough to me.

=$=

Reverend Zombie

December 14th, 2006, 06:24 PM

BigJMoney said:
If this seems too unbearable to the devs and most others in the community, then consider simply giving Vanheim an inherent weakness, and make it thematic. One minor thing would be to take away their Cold1 nature, but that doesn't seem like quite enough to me.

=$=

Heat vulnerability?

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 07:14 PM

PDF

December 14th, 2006, 07:16 PM

Ozymandias said:
I just discovered that indy Crystal Amazons have defense 19 sacred flying cavalry, so Van and Helhirdling aren't the only sacreds with that kind of defense. I'm starting think that a modest price increase for Helhirdlings and Van of both eras is sufficient.

Maybe but these are indies, and rather rare ! Noone will base a double-bless strat on *possible* Crystal Amazon encounters, so they are just a "bonus" if found and you happen to have a good bless, nothing more...

Corwin

December 14th, 2006, 09:07 PM

They also have low defense, and die to arrows easily. And since they are flying they can be always targeted by "fire at flyers", unlike cavalry, which can be masked with any other cavalery, with cavalry being much more common than flyers.

Ozymandias

December 14th, 2006, 09:36 PM

I agree that they are certainly not something anyone would plan for. I was just mentioning them because when I listed other sacred national cavalries nothing had as high a defense as Van. I think the ability to hang out at the furthest back edge of the battlefield and still close instantly does tend to mitigate their arrow weakness quite a lot though.

Epaminondas

December 14th, 2006, 10:32 PM

Graeme Dice said:

NickW said:
I'm sorry, but are you doing any MP play at all? That statement seems to be completely unsupportable.

He doesn't and it is. Gandalf approaches every single post in this forum from the fanboy position that the game is perfect in whatever form the devs have currently built it and that any problems people have are problems with the people, not the game.

I have to agree with you on Gandalf as a long-time lurker, even before I started posting. According to him, there are no units that are more powerful/useful than others, nor units weaker/less usesful than others (see the thread on redundant/useless units I put up).

It's really an intellectual malady. Some people just have an intellectual framework where every position or argument or thing is valid or just as good as one another, and Gandalf seems to be the representative of them.

On the topic at hand, I agree that Vanheim/Hellheim are noticeably stronger than their competitors. And while I do agree that it's impossible to perfectly balance everything in a game of this nature--and one nation has to be top and one has to be the worst--Vanheim/Hellheim may be too far above other nations to have a fair, workable MP game within them if the map is small.

Epaminondas

December 14th, 2006, 10:47 PM

tombom said:

Gandalf Parker said:
Hmmm some of these comments are long drawn out discussions of what should be done, and probably would be done, IF it was agreed that anything was broken.

Every single person in this thread has agreed that Vanheim is overpowered, even the people arguing against a change.

He's obviously clueless. The stubborn idiocy of some posters is just obtrusively obvious.

Epaminondas

December 14th, 2006, 10:49 PM

Edi said:
Gandalf, with the exception of you and NT Jedi, there seems to be a consensus that Vanheim and Helheim are overpowered. Some of those in the consensus for some reason or another do not mind the current situation, but 90+% of the rest think it should be addressed. Sounds like agreement to me.

Edi

It's just Gandalf; I think even NTJedi seems to agree that Vanheim/Helheim are overpowered.

Gandalf probably thought the "Coalition of the Willing" v. Iraq was an even fight, and it was Saddam's generals' unwillingness to exploit their many advantages that cost them the war http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

curtadams

December 14th, 2006, 11:04 PM

Just a note for people dumping personal criticism:

You do know that personal criticism reduces attention to and acceptance of your claims, especially when the target was involved in the Dom3 project?

Epaminondas

December 14th, 2006, 11:13 PM

curtadams said:
Just a note for people dumping personal criticism:

You do know that personal criticism reduces attention to and acceptance of your claims, especially when the target was involved in the Dom3 project?

1. While I am loath to make "ad hominem" arguments as a rule, in some cases they are valid.

And honestly, I find most of Gandalf's posts on threads of this nature worthless, because you know exactly what he will say and he rarely even tries to make "arguments."

And please note that I made criticisms regarding the type of arguments (really "assertions") he makes, rather than making comments about his mother or directing graituitous epithets at him.

2. Who cares if he was a beta tester or even more heavily involved in the development of Dom III?

There are tons of people in this world who are "involved" in projects but are in reality deadweights contributing nothing to those projects. I suppose we should take Dan Quayle seriously when he discourses upon geopolitics because he was the VP?

Besides, even if Gandalf really understood the game inside-out, the acid test is still to translate that "knowledge" into persuasive--or at least intelligible--arguments. Bromides like "every side has its advantages and disadvantages" do not make intelligent arguments.

Corwin

December 15th, 2006, 01:12 AM

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.

Also devs do listen to us MP players. In the latest patch for example, they reduced cost of vastly underpowered Oni demonic troops - something that me and other MP players have been vocally complaining about. (granted, the current price reduction didn't go nearly far enough unfortunately, but it is certainly a step in right direction) It shows that they do care and they do listen.

Personally I am reasonably sure that devs will do something about Helheim and MA Vanheim in the next one or two patches. These 15 pages long thread clearly shows that there is a overwhelming general consensus among MP players (which I support) that units of those two nations are currently too good for their price/stats - on these 15 pages only two people posted any objections.

However making personal attacks does nothing to help your cause, quite an opposite.

Cainehill

December 15th, 2006, 04:06 AM

Baalz said:
I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether.

Given that it seems that only reliable way to beat _any_ nation that has decent sacreds troops and a double blessing is .... to have your own good sacred troops and a strong blessing, I'd love to see sacredness wiped out altogether, for all nations. Maybe leave sacred commanders (mainly since I can't see have priest powers on a unit that isn't sacred), but a mod that wiped out all sacred troops and replaced them for balance would be great.

At least until Illwinter does something about the blessing mess they've made.

BigJMoney

December 15th, 2006, 04:20 AM

If this thread gets locked I won't be alarmed or disappointed. I think we've covered everything, at least voiced all the major concerns, and the thread is now boiling down to a little bit of seething, which is absolutely unecessary. I don't agree with the way some of the other side's arguments have gone, but the truth is that we are all entitled to an opinion, even if it is stated in an illogical manner. I think there are enough people here to make decisions for themselves about whether a person's opinions prove valuable or not; I don't think anyone need point it out.

Let's also remember that the majority of the people posting in this thread do not represent the majority of the people who play this game regardless of how good the arguments are. And no matter if we are right or not, this game is the dev's baby, and they are going to have some personal feelings about the issue. The only thing that personally surprises me about this issue is how beloved the Vans must be to them as a nation, yet they don't go all the way to ensure their proper balance in the pack. But hey, if you can't beat `em, join `em. I'll just play the Vans as I feel fit (except to stray to other nations occasionally to make sure I'm actually good at the game). This issue certainly isn't worth getting upset about. If anyone has any more points to make about the issue and not about other peoples' points, you might get the chance to squeeze them in, `ere we remain.

=$=

Teraswaerto

December 15th, 2006, 09:57 AM

B0rsuk said:
Oh, now I remember something. I heard there was an 'Attack Commanders' order. I remember someone mentioning you were required to have a staff of storms just to keep your mages alive.

You could just stick your commanders inside the main troop formations to protect them from fliers, although Amulets of Missile Protection were pretty mandatory.

A few things I remember in addition to those are that Gateway worked like Astral Travel, and that scouts could be used to hunt blood slaves. Sphinx could & did Teleport.

Gandalf Parker

December 15th, 2006, 02:28 PM

I have not disagreed with everyone. There is a definate agreement amoung a large number of players that there is a problem here for MP, small maps, no victory conditions. Thats probably why the devs are interested in hearing some suggestions (and why the thread is not locked).

When I say IF I mean that its possible that the DEVS will agree it needs a fix. Any suggestions that wont do too much damage to other methods of play will get considered Im sure. So keep the suggestions coming. Lets not decalre the game broken, and lets not fill the thread with comments about other people.

Kristoffer O

December 15th, 2006, 03:24 PM

Hi, and thanks. It's been a while since I inspected the development of this thread. I'm glad about how it turned out. Perhaps some heat, but interesting reading.

We were aware thet the vanir were powerful when we released the game. This thread and earlier experiences confirm this.

Vanheim will not lose glamour. Nor will it lose +25 stealth as stealth is linked to glamour. It was in dom2 as well, but wasn't explicit IIRC.

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

If you like you can continue discussions here, but I will not follow it unless notified for some reason.

Thanks!

Sandman

December 15th, 2006, 05:01 PM

My suggestion: take away Vanheim's starting fortified city and replace it with something more modest. Not a big change, but it would slow them down a little bit.

Inigo Montoya

December 15th, 2006, 05:22 PM

I stick with my suggestion to increase the resource cost of MA Vanheim vans to 32. This slows them down in the early game by 50%. I hate to nerf all sacred units (decreases bless strategy diversity), or require that MA vans be built capital-only (decreases national diversity).

Sticking to the OP, my position is MA Vanheim is overpowered. If you make their vans capital-only, you are nerfing them by hurting their late game, but you don't diminish their early double bless rush effectiveness. If you increase their resource cost (or perhaps both gold and resource cost), you are hurting their early game and to a lesser extent their late game. It feels more balanced to me to up their resource cost and it actually feels more accurate to pay more resources for vans for what you get (lance, javelin, horse, etc).

DrPraetorious

December 15th, 2006, 05:34 PM

Given that the extreme north has not historically been a heavily populated part of the world, starting with a city has always struck me as generous.

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.

So we need a "Fae" tag, with a little icon, which the various faery creatures would have (faery queen, nymphs, should also have it, I'm sure there are units I'm forgetting), and add spells that harm Fae creatures, especially overland. To use against vanheim, overland spells would require a great deal of skill to use unless you are attacked (because you have to figure out the van's unit locations).

Iron Sun - Alteration 1
10 Earth Gems, ESS
Using the power of sympathetic magic, the light of celestial bodies is infused with the spiritual properties of cold iron. Creatures of fae or elven nature that do not find shelter from the light will be slain if they cannot resist the magic. Up to half the fae creatures in a province can be struck dead in this way in an exposed area, but fortresses and forests provide shelter from the deadly light.

Elfbane - Alteration 2
40 fatigue, NDD, AoE 4, Range 20, Deadly poison(fae only), 5+ damage fatigue (poison), Armor Negating, MRN
The mage will blow the seeds from a sprig of elfbane, and magically expand them to a great cloud. Elfbane is mildly toxic to most beings, producing irritation and fatigue, but is deadly to cratures of a fae or elven nature.

Circle of Salt - Enchantment 1
20 fatigue, W, Aoe 5, Range 5, 75+ fatigue damage fae only, maybe weakness, too?, no magic resistance allowed
Magically purified sea salt is an effective deterrent against faery creatures. Although a bag of the salt cannot be thrown far, fae creatures struck by it will quickly find they lack the strength even to lift their own limbs.

And you get the point. Obviously I think such a thing would be great for the basic game - game balance considerations aside - but if we just had the tools to mod it in ourselves that would satisfy me just fine.