Fire vs. Death heavy bless

[Squirrelloid]

So, there seems to be a marked preference for heavy fire blesses over death blesses on this forum. This confuses me greatly.

Fire 9: +6 AP damage +4 attack
Death: +2 AN damage + disease (resistable) + 350% afflictions

Fire pro:
More total damage
Attack bonus helps melee troops

Fire con:
Heavily armored targets won't take all that damage
Bless does nothing for sacred mages
You invested in an F9 mage

Death pro:
AN damage
Disease (good against thugs/SCs and tough units like giants which you might not kill)
Afflictions can cripple tough units (seeing a chest wound pop up is my most favorite result of an attack ever)
+Afflictions works on sacred mages (ie, applies to their spells).
You invested in a D9 mage

Death con:
AN damage and disease are resistable

So, the extra damage is most useful against regular line troops, which are unlikely to resist the death damage anyway. In my mind, this makes the 6AP unresistable vs. 2AN + disease resistable comparison a wash.

Then ability to apply the +afflictions chance (and its a rather large one) to sacred caster spells is amazing (and many nations have sacred casters - recruitable, summonable, or both). This means the death bless remains effective into the late game, while the entire fire bonus becomes increasingly less useful.

Then once you consider that a D9 caster is arbitrarily better than an F9 caster, I can't see ever going for an F9 bless unless you have absolutely no sacred mages (or the D9 bless is prohibitively more expensive for your available chasses).

Is there something i'm missing here?

[Agema]

A horde of F9-bless sacreds pouring across a battlefield at you is far, far more worrying than a horde of D9 blessed sacreds. The F9 bless is about smashing opponents relatively quickly and early. You might have a "better" magic path late on, but some people may have decided having an empire 2-3 times larger even more beneficial.

[Squirrelloid]

A horde of F9-bless sacreds pouring across a battlefield at you is far, far more worrying than a horde of D9 blessed sacreds. The F9 bless is about smashing opponents relatively quickly and early.

Why? Its the early game, AN will be much better against the indies that are actually tough to beat (eg, Knights) because it ignores their armor, and any that survive a hit or two will likely be crippled. For normal units, F9 vs. D9 seems to be a wash. So little to no advantage in the early game. Resistable doesn't mean much against you average independent units.

Of course, i even mentioned this in the OP. How is F9 substantially better early? Be specific.

You might have a "better" magic path late on, but some people may have decided having an empire 2-3 times larger even more beneficial.

Please tell me how a F9 bless turns into an empire 2-3x larger? I'm not seeing it.

Consider MA Marignon D9E9. First, its a great mage blessing, and most of your mages are sacred. Second, its great for knights of the chalice (D9 for kill speed, E9 for protection/reinvig). And its not terrible for flagellants (the D9 is useful at least). So its truly multipurpose. It also doesn't really hamper your expansion speed at all. (I've been testing with a Dom 6 D9E9 imprisoned Cyclops and sending out expansion parties on turns 3,6,8,10, etc....). It expands consistently through most non-elephant indies with no KotC losses (the first party is weaker, and should choose easier targets). Without interference by other players it can hit 20 provinces in the first year most of the time.

I doubt a fire bless would do better with them specifically. And I'm not sure i'd believe a fire bless nation would do much better. (In fact, the only way I can see to substantially improve on this would be to have a good expansion non-bless or rainbow bless army with an awake SC pretender).

[statttis]

Why do people favor the fire bless?
1. +4 attack is huge, often more important than the extra damage
2. The affliction bonus is weak.

I'd guess that a F9 bless gives about twice the offensive power of a D9 bless.

[Squirrelloid]

Why do people favor the fire bless?
1. +4 attack is huge, often more important than the extra damage
2. The affliction bonus is weak.

I'd guess that a F9 bless gives about twice the offensive power of a D9 bless.

When do you need 2x the offensive power? And at what stage in the game is it 2x the offensive power?

Also, 350% afflictions is not weak against regenerating sacred giants (think ashdod) or similar, where your best hope is to inflict some crippling debilitations like chest wounds to reduce their effectiveness and ultimately fatigue them out. Nor is it weak when your mage pops in to cast firestorm/earthquake/etc... Or poison cloud...

[Bo Jangles]

Quick question, I've always been a little confused by the Death Bless. Does the Affliction bonus affect all damage, including ranged weapons and spells? Does the +2AN damage bonus at D9? I *think* I've noticed that the Affliction bonus works for all damage, but the AN damage only applies to melee weapons, but I wanted to be certain.

If either of those affects do apply to all damage, I'd say that's a pretty good bargain. Of course, I also think it'd be situational (as so many things are), but in general I'd think being able to do long-lasting damage to high-HP units would be preferable.

(another small question, in case anyone knows: what does the Blood9 blessing's Death Curse or whatever do?)

[Huzurdaddi]

1. +4 attack is huge, often more important than the extra damage


This is the correct answer. The +4 to attack means that your sacred units hit far more often which greatly increases the average damage per attack.

[quantum_mechani]

Resistable doesn't mean much against you average independent units.

Not true, vs 10 mr you have a roughly 50/50 chance of having the hit negated. So against most things the death bless damage is only about half as good as it looks, and even less effective against high mr targets.

So, while the death bless certainly has some advantages, the damage output is not really comparable.

[Hadrian_II]

First about the death bless, The AN damage is MR resistible, so thugs and SCs will laugh at it, also to cause afflictions you have to cause damage first something SCs and thugs are good to avoid. (Usually a fire bless wont make a difference against an SC too, but it never hurts)

Also for comparison if sacred units would fight against each other. (Lets assume the sacreds have 10 for all their values)

The D blessed unit will attack with 10 Att against 10 Def, so it would have a 46% chance to hit.
And on every hit a 46% chance to beat the enemies MR to do 2 AN damage.

The F Blessed unit will attack with 14 Att against 10 Def which gives the F blessed unit a 76% chance to hit.
And on every hit there will be a 100% chance to do 6AP damage.

Off course death has also the affliction chance, but usually you either kill your enemies or they will kill you, maimed dead people are not more dead than ordinary dead people.

[Squirrelloid]

I grant that the F9 is better melee vs. melee. But it loses elsewhere by large margins.

Useless on sacred mages
F9 is a crappy level 9 path compared to D9
Not nearly as good against high protection units (because AP doesn't totally ignore armor).

Basically, in the following situations I would always want the D9 bless:
(1) You have sacred mages with good AoE combat spells. (Fire, Death, Water, Air, Earth, possibly Nature - ie, virtually any good mage)
(2) You have opponents with powerful units (giants or equivalent), especially blessable ones.

Lets consider case 2 a little more in-depth.

Powerful units like that will tend to appear in smaller numbers. This mean multiple attacks per such unit, and thus increasingly better chances to hit.

Blessable ones probably have an Earth bless and a nature bless (liek E9N6), and often strong base protection. Sometimes they even have strong defense. Because of this, the effect of cumulative attacks is more powerful than the F9 bonus to attack overall. Further, the AP damage is far less useful because it doesn't ignore the armor.

Much of the time your best bet is to fatigue them out so you can start racking up criticals. This means an improved chance to inflict something like 'lost an eye' which makes their attack value lower helps, and chest wound is amazing. Especially when they regenerate, the +affliction chance can really turn combats around.

While it'll happen a low proportion of the time, the AN damage totally ignores that high protection, which means 2AN is actually better than 6AP, even if it happens less often.

Even against SCs/thugs, they'll fail that resistance roll with some frequency - its just a matter of making enough attacks. And they'll tend to have enough defense/protection that the F9 bless won't be that noticeably efficient.

Generally, i think the F9 bless, when its actually better mathematically, just tends to be overkill. Ie, its extra power you *didn't need*. And if the +to hit is the really relevant part, an F4 minor bless is a lot less expensive and half as good - far better value for your points. And F4 is all the fire your pretender will ever need as a spellcaster.

Finally, I have this suspicion that, if the unit with the D9 bless has penetration gear, that'll apply to the AN+disease resistance check, so could work for sacred thugs/SCs of your own. But I don't know that.

[quantum_mechani]

Finally, I have this suspicion that, if the unit with the D9 bless has penetration gear, that'll apply to the AN+disease resistance check, so could work for sacred thugs/SCs of your own. But I don't know that.This is almost certainly not the case. Death bless is simply another weapon effect (even modable as such), and it has been well documented those are not aided by penetration gear.

[Edi]

As far as both blesses go, remember that the bless weapon (whether fire or death) replaces any secondaryeffects from equipped (or intrinsic) weapons when the bless comes into effect, which means you won't get area damage from brands with a blessed SC if you have sacred SCs (such as Hinnom, Ashdod, Fomoria) etc) or thugs (the glamour nations, Lanka etc).

So if your strategy is based on thugging with national troops in the mid/late game, your best bet would be F8 for the +4 attack. D8 is more useful in what possibilities it opens up for you and sacred mages will benefit from the affliction bonus, slight as it is.

[LDiCesare]

+4 attack vs. magic resistable attack is almost a no brainer for me.
AP/AN are nice but destruction and the like can make the difference insignificant.
I never saw a disease effect of D9 bless, only the affliction bonus.
The only drawback of fire is fire-resistant beings like Ashdod giants or abysians. On the other hand it's great vs. Niefelheim. Even then, +4 AP helps a lot.
I doubt the additional 2AP attack by mages has much effect except on lowish damage aera of effect or battlefield-wide spells, but I'd rather have the fire boost early on than rely on that small bonus late game.
In my experience, good F9 sacred troops cut through indy knights like butter, D9 don't.

[Sombre]

You don't get an additional 2AN damage on spells with mages from D9 - that's only for weapons. You just get a huge increase in the affliction chances.

[Zentar]

It seems like 2AP and 2AN are acronyms that are used interchangeably. Is there a difference?

[Squirrelloid]

Armor piercing (AP) damage reduces armor but does not eliminate it entirely. Armor negating (AN) damage totally ignores all armor.

LDiCesare
To say the only drawback of fire is fire resistant units is naive. You invested an obscene number of points into *F9*, which isn't any more useful than F6, or really, F4. And you could have generally had D9 instead, which is much more useful.

Also, let me know how F9 works against E9N6 blessed giants with multiple bracers sometime. I imagine it does nothing or close to nothing, because even with the AP it probably can't get through the protection, and whatever little bit that does get through just gets regenerated immediately.

I'll grant mathematically F9 does more damage vs chaff. You don't usually need more damage against chaff. Its chaff because it dies in droves. So I'm looking for a situation you'd actually care that you had F9. And no, assuming Att 10 vs. Def 10 is stupid - most sacreds are better than average on attack, and the Att N vs. Def N comparison is where the fire attack bonus matters the most, so you're just stacking the floor in favor of fire.

Knights - counter example when i have time.

[Calahan]

AP = Armour Piercing, which means the protection value is halfed for the purposes of calculations.
AN = Armour Negating, which means the protection value is ignored for the purposes of calculations.

There is a big difference between AP and AN. With AN obviously being better than AP.

[LDiCesare]

Also, let me know how F9 works against E9N6 blessed giants with multiple bracers sometime. I imagine it does nothing or close to nothing, because even with the AP it probably can't get through the protection, and whatever little bit that does get through just gets regenerated immediately.
It has worked quite well for me vs. Ashdod despite their partial fire resist. So no, it's not close to nothing. However, 2AN magic that hits less often and that can be resisted is nothing.

As for the fact that D9 is more interesting than F9, yes indeed, but then don't give your thread a title comparing blesses but comparing paths. To me a Death bless is mostly worthless whereas a Fire bless is very good. If I pick high Death magic on a pretender, it's to open Death magic, not for the bless, whereas I'll only pick high Fire for the bless.

[Endoperez]

Squirrelloid - how many sacred units are required to conquer a province? Could you believe that 6 is enough? I was never good at that part of the game, and it obviously depends a lot on the unit, but some unit/bless combinations can get by with really few units. Fire 9 and/or Water 9 are the most useful blesses here, because they force the enemy to rout faster.

That's also what makes F9 useful against chaff - you don't have to recruit as many sacred units to win the battle. On turn 5, you may have 5 armies conquering independent provinces every turn, without mercenaries, and the sacred troops will help you in your first war against almost any nation. High death isn't as useful at that point.

[K]

The benefits of D9 Bless are not just that it makes sacreds better damage dealers but not as good as F9, but when your Pretender finally does make the scene he can do crazy crap like cast Utterdark as his first action. In that sense, he is far superior to a F9 pretender in winning the game.

It all depends on whether winning the game or winning battles is your goal.

[KissBlade]

Death 9 is a crappy bless. The only one that's worse off the top of my head is B9. Considering death has great boosters along with the easily accessible skull staff, I can rarely think of a reason to take it. D8 is at least usable for sacred mages but still very subpar. F9 routs indies significantly faster than D9 which is all you care about anyway. Not to mention, they have a better chance of actually hitting other sacreds than a death bless.

[Executor]

Both air and blood are very near in their uselessness as a bless.

[KissBlade]

A4 is actually pretty decent for certain troops like flags, jags. A9 is useless most of the time but if you're dueling Caelum, it's pretty nice as well.

[MaxWilson]

So, there seems to be a marked preference for heavy fire blesses over death blesses on this forum. This confuses me greatly.

I agree that a D9 pretender is a lot better on the battlefield than an F9 pretender. However, I think you are underestimating the difference +4 attack makes to kill speed (F8 is nearly as good as F9), and overestimating how good D9 bless is for mages.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

The benefits of D9 Bless are not just that it makes sacreds better damage dealers but not as good as F9, but when your Pretender finally does make the scene he can do crazy crap like cast Utterdark as his first action. In that sense, he is far superior to a F9 pretender in winning the game.

It all depends on whether winning the game or winning battles is your goal.

As an aside: as an SP player, winning battles is *much* more fun to me than winning the game. Winning the game just means I have to start a new one (with less micro, yay!) but winning battles means 812 out of 940 enemy units killed. :) Far more satisfying.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

Armor piercing (AP) damage reduces armor but does not eliminate it entirely. Armor negating (AN) damage totally ignores all armor.

LDiCesare
To say the only drawback of fire is fire resistant units is naive. You invested an obscene number of points into *F9*, which isn't any more useful than F6, or really, F4. And you could have generally had D9 instead, which is much more useful.

Also, let me know how F9 works against E9N6 blessed giants with multiple bracers sometime. I imagine it does nothing or close to nothing, because even with the AP it probably can't get through the protection, and whatever little bit that does get through just gets regenerated immediately.

I'll grant mathematically F9 does more damage vs chaff. You don't usually need more damage against chaff. Its chaff because it dies in droves. So I'm looking for a situation you'd actually care that you had F9. And no, assuming Att 10 vs. Def 10 is stupid - most sacreds are better than average on attack, and the Att N vs. Def N comparison is where the fire attack bonus matters the most, so you're just stacking the floor in favor of fire.

Knights - counter example when i have time.

Squirrel, try literally *hundreds* of comparisons of blesses as I have - and a D9X9 bless is nowhere near as effective as a F9W9 - for a ton of reasons.

1. To purchase an X9Y9 blessing you are almost certainly going with the 3year plan on the pretender. So any advantages of the D9 path vs the f9 path is deprecated by the long delay before it arrives.

2. Death is an easily boostrappable path; and the bootstrap mechanism is well known. So sure, having a D9 mage year three is good.

But if you really want it, the odds are you can have it by year 3 without a pretender.

3. F9 makes your units able to hit ethereal (etc) units.

4. F9 scales. Sure, its only +6ap. But its for *each* attack.

So when you compare, an F9 hitting 76% of the time vs 46% for a death bless.. you hve to realized it gets exacerbated with multiple attacks. Jag warriors have 3 attacks iirc. Eagle warriors 2...

Whereas the death bless hits.. 46%... much slower ramp up.

Now combine that with a 50% quickness bonus.. its just scaling that fire bless much faster.

5. You asked when does the ability to kill more chaff faster matter.... it matters very very much.

My typical mictlan build builds an expansion group every turn. It costs 235 gp. 7 jags and a mictlan priest. You trample the average 30-60 strength indy.

You simply cannot do that with a death bless.


6. Plus - you have good synnergy with thugs/scs. A simple cheap armor - and you have now thug enabled many SCS - many chassis *need* those pluses to hit - from the golems, to the colossal fetishes to Agartha Oracles...

[Zentar]

I have some thoughts and questions about several things stated in this thread.

1) Calahan clarified AP vs AN with AP = Armour Piercing, which means the protection value is halfed for the purposes of calculations.
AN = Armour Negating, which means the protection value is ignored for the purposes of calculations.
There is a big difference between AP and AN. With AN obviously being better than AP..

So now I don't understand LDiCesare's statement I doubt the additional 2AP attack by mages has much effect except on lowish damage aera of effect or battlefield-wide spells, but I'd rather have the fire boost early on than rely on that small bonus late game.

2) While in melee combat it is always true that As far as both blesses go, remember that the bless weapon (whether fire or death) replaces any secondary effects from equipped (or intrinsic) weapons when the bless comes into effect, which means you won't get area damage from brands with a blessed SC if you have sacred SCs (such as Hinnom, Ashdod, Fomoria) etc) or thugs (the glamour nations, Lanka etc). as Edi has pointed out, I have found that blessed archers stack with a death bless. If you bless Asp Archers (Tomb Kings) with a heavy death bless it stacks with intrinsic Asp bow so that you still get the Asp poison effect while simultaneously gaining crippling and afflicting effects of the Death bless. It appears that the Death bless stacks with both spells and non-melee weapons, but the Fire bless only works for melee and replaces any equipment special effects.

3) I feel that the Fire bless is still better since you cause fire damage every time you hit, but you don't cause an affliction (let alone 3.5 afflictions - instead you are only 3.5 times more likely to cause a single affliction) every time you hit with the Death bless. In addition your number of hits with the Fire bless are higher as previously pointed out in this string.

[MaxWilson]

...poison effect while simultaneously gaining crippling and afflicting effects of the Death bless. It appears that the Death bless stacks with both spells and non-melee weapons, but the Fire bless only works for melee and replaces any equipment special effects.

The D9 bless has two parts.

1.) 2 AN + Disease (MR check required) secondary effect that gets put on any melee attack, possibly replacing any other secondary effect that you have (e.g. the area effect of a Shadow Brand will get overwritten by the 2 AN).

2.) x4.5 normal chance of afflictions (i.e. +350%) on any damaging effect produced by the blessed unit.

Only part #2 of the death bless works with spells and arrows.

-Max

[PsiSoldier]

I havent had time to look through everything posted here so forgive me if this has been mentioned, but Death Bless has one very specific advantage over fire bless.

Death bless works with Ranged weapons or at least the affliction part and Fire bless does not work at all.

Take a nation like LA TC with their Ancestor Vessels and give them a D9 bless and watch in awe at the speed at which they deliver afflictions to your enemies. Couple that with a W9 bless for double the fun and they are in a world of hurt before they ever reach your ancestor vessels who are still extremely capable of pouring out the pain in melee range when that time comes.

[Frozen Lama]

well actually there is a bug with archers and W9, they don't actually shoot twice. :(

[Dragar]

The thing with the affliction bonus is that a lot of the time you expect to be killing targets you hit with damaging battlefield spells, and when you don't and they get an affliction quite often it isn't particularly damaging within that combat - disease for instance.

The creatures you want to afflict are the thugs and SCs for the most part, and typically they aren't going to be hurt much by the big area effect spells you throw down on the battlefield.

I trialled the D9 bless a few times in MP games and I can't think of a single major battle where it made the decisive difference

F9 on the other hand makes a huge difference in a lot of battles - above all due to the +4 attack. It means you hit most of the time against normal troops, and means you have a chance against thugs! When you are trying to swarm a high defence thug or SC with sacred troops the +4 makes a huge difference.

[TheDemon]

Not only does the fire bless scale itself up, but the death bless does not scale itself in terms of both atk and MR. MR checks are always vs 10. So if you're fighting chaff with MR 10 and you're comparing the death bless, it looks better than if you're fighting with and against sacreds with stats of 14 across the board. If your 14-stat sacred goes up against an enemy 14-stat sacred, the ammount you hit for either bless will be the same as the 10-stat chaff battle, but the ammount the death bless AN damage hits will be far less.

There's one massive advantage to the death bless however, and that is that AN damage ignores the effect of shields. This can have the effect of, for practical purposes, reducing the enemy def+parry by more than the fire bless's atk bonus. However, it is only for the AN part of the damage, and only if the MR check is passed. So a death bless might be better for low-damage sacreds like Jaguar Warriors against low-MR enemies like humans, but once either the MR scales up (nonhumans typically) or the damage you're doing with the regular weapon exceeds the bless effect extra damage, the fire bless becomes better again.

While you guys are right that affliction chance on ranged and spells is nice, I find that it doesn't matter in the long run. To get into another battle with the same units, you typically have to lose. And if you're fielding mages and you lose, you've usually lost far more than the extra afflictions gain you. Its useful for hit-and-run battlefield-wide spells like Rain of Stones or Earthquake, but I wouldn't base a pretender design choice around those. Not to mention that even the most elite troops are killed in one to two hits by spells they aren't immune from. So typically you don't just damage your enemy with spellcasters.

[chrispedersen]

jaguar warriors are low damage sacreds?
Besides, how does an AN negate the effect of shields? You still have to score a hit for the secondary effect to go off; you're still down +4 on the chances to hit in the first place, and I hardly see how 2 pts of damage MR can really be considered massive.

[Micah]

There's little point in investing in either D or F bless without good, offensively minded sacreds (Jags come to mind.) If you have more defense-oriented sacreds either bless is a waste compared to E/N/W for them, as you're not really playing to their strengths.

Since you're fielding somewhat fragile sacreds you're going to want to ramp up your kill speed to the max to cut through chaff as quickly as possible while the arrows and evocations rain down, and F beats D in that case hands down, just test it if you have any doubts. You're basically trying to play to your strengths here, instead of force-fitting a role on troops they have no business being in.

A D bless doesn't really change the math of if putting your sacreds vs an SC is a good plan...if they can kill it with a D bless they'll kill it with F bless most of the time too, and if they can't kill it you're going to be on the losing end of the exchange with a pile of dead sacreds compared to a beat-up but alive SC. If the D bless is really that much of a deterrent a good opponent will fall back behind a chaff screen and blast some holes in your sacreds from afar while your D blessed guys struggle to kill the chaff quickly. The D bless also has a harder time against PD, forcing you to raise your raiding squad size, which is one of the areas that sacreds shine at come mid-game once the evocations start getting too hot and heavy.

[Micah]

AN damage doesn't ignore shields.

[Squirrelloid]

AN damage doesn't ignore shields.

I think his point was since AN ignores protection, it doesn't matter if the attack is parried or not because the extra protection from the shield is irrelevant.

[TheDemon]

jaguar warriors are low damage sacreds?
Besides, how does an AN negate the effect of shields? You still have to score a hit for the secondary effect to go off; you're still down +4 on the chances to hit in the first place, and I hardly see how 2 pts of damage MR can really be considered massive.

They're low damage in that each attack itself is low damage. Obviously jags do a ton of damage, but each individual attack isn't a big one like, say, a giant like the Unmarked sacred.

My point is that a "shield hit" still counts as a hit. For most purposes, it acts like a miss since the added protection is significant. But in the case of AN damage, the added protection is irrelavent. Stuff like Gate Cleavers, Death Blesses, Dusk Daggers, all hit and do damage through shields.

Squirrelord has it right, except "parried" is a different term used for arrows, which doesn't involve protection at all.
reference: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=39853


I'm not saying a death bless is better in melee than a fire bless, but it has that single point in its favor. The MR resistable part really kills it.

[Sombre]

Tests carried out by Micah recently suggest a shield parry in melee can do something to negate AP and AN damage from a weapon like the dusk dagger or sword of sharpness.

[MaxWilson]

Not only does the fire bless scale itself up, but the death bless does not scale itself in terms of both atk and MR. MR checks are always vs 10.

Let's be fair--F9 bless doesn't really scale either. For an unit with attack 10, a +4 bonus is huge vs anyone with a shield (def 14). (+160% damage? Something like that.) For a hypothetical elite unit with attack 15 already, the bonus would be much more modest (+40% or so), and vs. chaff without shields like Ulmish infantry it would be negligible since you're hitting all the time anyway.

In theory, if you're dueling someone high-Prot but low-Def (like Ulm), a D9 bless would be better than a F9 bless. I've also found that a E9D9 bless works okay against knights and heavy inf in general, since the 2AN attack ignores shields[1]. (This was as Helheim, whose sacreds have great endurance and multiple weak attacks.)

-Max

Note: I'm not advocating a D9 bless--I take it because it's fun, and because I like having a D9 spellcaster, not because the bless is good.

[1] Or so I have always believed. If Micah has tested it otherwise, okay.

[LDiCesare]

I think a D9F4 bless could be superior to a F9 bless (or F9D4) because +2 attack is already quite good...
Of course it depends on the nations a lot, and also on the game size/number of opponents (e.g. D9 > F9 argument is moot for blitzes).
So:
Death > Fire for sacred mages and archers.
Fire is better for low attack or high damage sacreds where extra damage is less important than extra hits.
Fire is also probably better in EA than LA due to better armor in LA.

[Agema]

Entirely as Max said.

If your sacred has generally fairly average non-bless stats and is attacking fairy average opponents, F9 will cause damage-dealing at up to twice the rate D9 will.

D9 gets you a far better magical Pretender and other situational benefits, but if your tactic is an explosive early expansion using sacreds, you'd take the F9 bless.

[Gregstrom]

Or to express things another way... what bless and pretender paths you want depends more on your nation (and its sacreds) than on the perceived relative power of the blesses. Arguing that one is generally better than another seems silly, as statements like "any time you take a X9 bless, Y9 would be better" are just begging to be proven false.

In my experience, Dom3 is not a game that bears generalisations well.

[Radio_Star]

Dom3 is not a game that bears generalisations well.

You, Sir, are demonstrably wrong!

Sorry. I couldn't resist the meta.

[chrispedersen]

I havent had time to look through everything posted here so forgive me if this has been mentioned, but Death Bless has one very specific advantage over fire bless.

Death bless works with Ranged weapons or at least the affliction part and Fire bless does not work at all.

Take a nation like LA TC with their Ancestor Vessels and give them a D9 bless and watch in awe at the speed at which they deliver afflictions to your enemies. Couple that with a W9 bless for double the fun and they are in a world of hurt before they ever reach your ancestor vessels who are still extremely capable of pouring out the pain in melee range when that time comes.


I have always wanted to use a fire and flee strategy to try out a death raiding strategy.

Just time and time (and time and time) I cannot make it effective. Whether going with blessed monkey archers, or commanders armed with bows of war - it seems that character actions are too valuable to waste trying to run an attrit strategy.

Ie, just better to try to win.

[chrispedersen]

Or to express things another way... what bless and pretender paths you want depends more on your nation (and its sacreds) than on the perceived relative power of the blesses. Arguing that one is generally better than another seems silly, as statements like "any time you take a X9 bless, Y9 would be better" are just begging to be proven false.

In my experience, Dom3 is not a game that bears generalisations well.

I am willing to duel any moderately skilled dominions player to prove the premise that F9W9 is better than D9W9. I will play La Mictlan to prove the premise.

Moderate being defined as non hall of fame.

Any race is fine - any other design options, so long as the opponent has (at least) D9W9.

[sansanjuan]

What I love about this game is that the blesses are so "all in" balanced that debating them can go on for many forum pages. One can argue that even a "weak" B9 or a9 bless can be mitigated by air and blood's spell power and flexibility.
My $0.02, ;)
-ssj

[LDiCesare]

la Mictlan(...)
Any race is fine - any other design options, so long as the opponent has (at least) D9W9.

Why W9? D9 synergises better with ranged sacreds and mages, which aren't many n LA, and W9 is worthless for mages and archers.
I wonder whether D9 increases the affliction chances of Pythium hydras' poison clouds. I think D9E8 or D9N4 with Pythium are better than D9W9 for instance...
Also, do you think a F9 bless will help you if your opponent picks Abysia?

[K]

Death 9 is a crappy bless. The only one that's worse off the top of my head is B9. Considering death has great boosters along with the easily accessible skull staff, I can rarely think of a reason to take it. D8 is at least usable for sacred mages but still very subpar. F9 routs indies significantly faster than D9 which is all you care about anyway. Not to mention, they have a better chance of actually hitting other sacreds than a death bless.

Well, if your plan is "on turn 35 I toss down an Utterdark so big that it won't go down even if an S9 is in this game and people alchemize and pool thier available gems, and then anyone without 10K gold in the bank and/or doing Blood in a serious way for the last 25 turns will be worthless by turn 40", then wasting Death gems or even Astral gems on boosters is just you not doing your plan as well as you could and increasing your risk of failure. Even with Hammers or other Forge bonuses, those gems are better spend in your Utterdark if you've decided that's how you are going to win the game.

The fact that a D9 also helps your sacreds in combat is just a bonus.

[Agema]

With all respect K, that's an argument like saying a sledgehammer is better than a chainsaw at felling trees because the sledgehammer is better at breaking rocks.

[K]

With all respect K, that's an argument like saying a sledgehammer is better than a chainsaw at felling trees because the sledgehammer is better at breaking rocks.

Lol. I rate the magic I put on a Pretender on how likely it is to let me win the game and the potential Bless is just one part of that.

To use another tree analogy, you need to see the forest for the trees to play this game. Focus only on how a thing lets you win individual battles and you will probably not win the game.

[thejeff]

well actually there is a bug with archers and W9, they don't actually shoot twice. :(

Is this confirmed? It's not in the shortlist and I swear I've seen Ancestral Vessels fire twice in a round. They seem to prefer to move forward then possibly shoot.

[Sombre]

It's erratic. They can shoot twice but often shoot move instead.

[Fate]

With all respect K, that's an argument like saying a sledgehammer is better than a chainsaw at felling trees because the sledgehammer is better at breaking rocks.

Lol. I rate the magic I put on a Pretender on how likely it is to let me win the game and the potential Bless is just one part of that.

To use another tree analogy, you need to see the forest for the trees to play this game. Focus only on how a thing lets you win individual battles and you will probably not win the game.

This is a silly argument. The in game value of magic paths has little to do with the bless effects. High Death is most useful for nations with high Death already (Mictlan, for example, couldn't pull off a heavy death strategy until very late in the game, especially with an imprisoned god).

The conclusion I see from this thread so far is that in a straight, melee sacred comparison (the area that attracts the heaviest blesses) fire is better. If you are playing a nation that cannot depend so completely on its melee sacreds (meaning most nations) this kind of comparison is meaningless.

[K]

This is a silly argument. The in game value of magic paths has little to do with the bless effects. High Death is most useful for nations with high Death already (Mictlan, for example, couldn't pull off a heavy death strategy until very late in the game, especially with an imprisoned god).

Not even true. Even a nation that does not natively get Death can easily alchemize gems, Empower one guy with D1, have that guy cast Dark Knowledge, and have a huge stockpile of Death gems by the time his Pretender arrives. It's not even hard considering the lack of really good uses for gems in the early game. Since this would be your gaming-winning tactic and synergizes hugely with a Blood-heavy nation like Mictlan, it's not even a bad idea.

But, I do understand how people's strategy to winning the game is often just "win more battles", making more complex strategies seem impossible.


The conclusion I see from this thread so far is that in a straight, melee sacred comparison (the area that attracts the heaviest blesses) fire is better. If you are playing a nation that cannot depend so completely on its melee sacreds (meaning most nations) this kind of comparison is meaningless.

Well, if you cannot depend on sacreds then discussing the relative merits of any bless is pretty useless since it plays little to no part in your overall strategy.

That being said, an amount of Fire Resistance or just armor to essentially cancel the Fire Weapons effect is pitifully easy to get in the middle and late game, so a Fire bless is basically just an attack bonus by then. By comparison, the Death bless is weaker in the early game but it never goes out of style; MR tends to ramp up slightly overall as people use summons, but the AN damage will still be useful even into the late game.

Add that to the increasing importance of Thugs and SCs in the middle to late game and the affliction bonus becomes dramatically more useful.

So if you want to take anything away from this thread, take this: Fire for early game, Death for late, and both are not that useful in either if you are using a nation that hits really hard already like Lanka or Neifleheim.

[Micah]

Basing a strat around alchemizing 200 gems to empower someone up to D1 to site search so your pretender has D gems is pretty absurd.

[K]

Basing a strat around alchemizing 200 gems to empower someone up to D1 to site search so your pretender has D gems is pretty absurd.

No more absurd than spending the same amount of gems equipping five thugs or casting a single global that won't win you the game, and that's a staple of Dominions play. Spending gems to set in motion a plan that will win you the game is a far better choice.

And 200 gems is just a worse-case scenario. With Astral gems, a little luck from random events, or just some lucky site searching by finding a mixed-type site and the actual number of gems might be a lot less (and that doesn't even count the chance that you might get a Death random on a Wolf Shaman or some other indie recruitable mage or site mage).

I'm surprised that you consider it absurd. Afraid people might actually win games where you have the superior army and lands?

[LDiCesare]

It's not like Utterdark = you win. If you're facing Ermor, the darkness will be irrelevant to them for instance, and they may not worry about the income loss either. Blood nations will be happy with it too. Spending hundreds of gems to empwoer someone so your pretender can cast a spell which is not a game-winner by itself looks a bit excessive, but it is a strategy. I'm not sure it's necessarily a better strategy than rushing your neighbour with sacreds and killing them before turn 32 and then use a bigger army, gold and gem income to win.

[K]

It's not like Utterdark = you win. If you're facing Ermor, the darkness will be irrelevant to them for instance, and they may not worry about the income loss either. Blood nations will be happy with it too. Spending hundreds of gems to empwoer someone so your pretender can cast a spell which is not a game-winner by itself looks a bit excessive, but it is a strategy. I'm not sure it's necessarily a better strategy than rushing your neighbour with sacreds and killing them before turn 32 and then use a bigger army, gold and gem income to win.

Ever fought a blood nation in a post-Utterdark game where you have a real army and they only have summons?

I'm not saying that you auto-win. By turn 35 or 40 a few well-scripted mages or thugs/SCs can still turn your armies into goo, but I'd put it in the top three tactics that let you steamroll nations or break the hearts of your enemies and cause them to go AI.

As for Bless Rushes, they are not the top three tactics. Having broken the back of more than one bless rush with such exotic tactics as "archers" or "level 2 magic", I don't rate it terribly high.

[Sombre]

I'm surprised that you consider it absurd. Afraid people might actually win games where you have the superior army and lands?

Now that really is absurd.

[LDiCesare]

Ever fought a blood nation in a post-Utterdark game where you have a real army and they only have summons?
If you have a real army and they only have summons, why do you need Utterdark?
Why wouldn't they have an army? Many blood nations have units that don't care about darkness (abysia, lanka's kalamukha and Mictlan moon or rain warriors). Furhtermore Agarthans, undead hordes from Ermor or Pangaea, R'lyeh autosummons and mind blasts, that's a lot of units that won't be affected a lot by the Utterdark.

[MaxWilson]

Ever fought a blood nation in a post-Utterdark game where you have a real army and they only have summons?
If you have a real army and they only have summons, why do you need Utterdark?
Why wouldn't they have an army? Many blood nations have units that don't care about darkness (abysia, lanka's kalamukha and Mictlan moon or rain warriors). Furhtermore Agarthans, undead hordes from Ermor or Pangaea, R'lyeh autosummons and mind blasts, that's a lot of units that won't be affected a lot by the Utterdark.

"Many" blood nations? Aren't blood summons demons pretty much by definition, i.e. immune to Darkness?

-Max

[MaxWilson]

This is a silly argument. The in game value of magic paths has little to do with the bless effects. High Death is most useful for nations with high Death already (Mictlan, for example, couldn't pull off a heavy death strategy until very late in the game, especially with an imprisoned god).

Say rather that high X is most useful for nations with capacity to generate X gems. A Blood Fountain can do more for a blood nation, for instance. High Death is useful if you have at least D1 mages (Dark Knowledge is only D1). I agree that Mictlan would have problems getting death gems for a death strat unless their game plan was to ambush the first death nation they find and take its gems. Depending upon the game setup that might be viable/predictable.

-Max

[Sombre]

Ironically it'd be far more viable with a F9 bless.

[LDiCesare]

"Many" blood nations? Aren't blood summons demons pretty much by definition, i.e. immune to Darkness?

-Max
I ment national troops. F.e. Lanka's kalah mukha warriors have darkvision but the recruitable rakshasas don't.

[MaxWilson]

Even a nation that does not natively get Death can easily alchemize gems, Empower one guy with D1, have that guy cast Dark Knowledge, and have a huge stockpile of Death gems by the time his Pretender arrives. It's not even hard considering the lack of really good uses for gems in the early game. Since this would be your gaming-winning tactic and synergizes hugely with a Blood-heavy nation like Mictlan, it's not even a bad idea.Basing a strat around alchemizing 200 gems to empower someone up to D1 to site search so your pretender has D gems is pretty absurd.

No more absurd than spending the same amount of gems equipping five thugs or casting a single global that won't win you the game, and that's a staple of Dominions play. Spending gems to set in motion a plan that will win you the game is a far better choice.

Let's think this through here.

* The goal is to have piles of death gems for your pretender to use for casting Utterdark the first turn he pops out. We'll neglect the Research angle in this post. Assume he's going to pop out on turn 37, giving you 36 turns of gem accumulation.

* Base cost to get a D1 mage without national D: 200 gems (or 100 pearls). I'll neglect the indy angle because you mentioned empowerment specifically. This is a fixed cost which generates no return.

* With only one D1 mage, you'll going to be more limited by mage-time than by province-count. Let's assume (optimistically) that you can get an average return of 1 death gem per turn per 2 provinces searched, by targeting swamps and deserts and by getting lucky with multiple-death-gem-generating sites. (In practice I think it's about 1 for 3 or less.) We'll say that half of these are level 1 sites, discoverable by manual D1 searching.

* Assume for simplicity that you can have a total non-death income which scales linearly with time. We'll say that on turn N, you get 2N non-death gems from national mages searching, etc. And we'll pretend getting to this point doesn't cost any gems or research. That means you can have 210 non-death gems by turn 14, which means that you can have a D1 mage and 20 death gems from alchemy by turn 15. That gives you 22 turns of gem accumulation.

* Under these assumptions, it takes either 8 turns of mage-time (manual site-searching), or 2 turns of mage-time and 6 death gems, or 2 turns of mage-time and 24 non-death gems, to generate an income of 1 death gem per turn. Your best bet is to search with Dark Knowledge until turn 31 (14 turns, cost 42 death gems, yield 2*Sum(1...7)=56, net 14 death gems) and then manually search for the 6 remaining turns because mage-searching wouldn't have time to recoup costs. If you get lucky and find the site on your first manual search, that brings in an extra 6 gems.

* That means you spent 200 gems alchemizing to D1 and searched for 22 turns to net 14 death gems and one D1 mage (and an income of +8 death). If you had just alchemized those 200 gems and kept the death gems you'd be 36 gems ahead.

* It should be clear by this point that if you really do want to Utterdark your way to victory by turn 36, bootstrapping your way to a Death income via alchemy + empowerment is not the way to do it. You'd be better off building on your core national strengths (water, astral, whatever) and alchemizing THOSE for your Utterdark. (By turn 37 you'd have an income of +74 non-death gems, a stockpile of 1406 gems, and you can alchemize that to 351 death gems.)

* You could also trade with someone who does have a core competency in Death (Helheim, Lanka, etc.). Or kill them and take their gems. Either way it's better than trying to bootstrap yourself.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

"Many" blood nations? Aren't blood summons demons pretty much by definition, i.e. immune to Darkness?

-Max
I ment national troops. F.e. Lanka's kalah mukha warriors have darkvision but the recruitable rakshasas don't.

You mean the Palankashas, etc.? They don't have Darkvision but they're demons, which is just as good. Undead and demons are immune to Darkness. Or is my memory playing tricks on me?

-Max

[Micah]

Thugs don't get dispelled.

I have no concept of how you're proposing to get an Utterdark cast by a non-D nation to actually stick unless you save up your gems until well past turn 100.

It's 70 gems more expensive than a dispel (And dispel has a decent chance of getting a few bonus gems from a high-level caster), in a non-native gemtype that's twice as difficult to alchemize to compared to pearls for a dispel, and you can't even start site searching until you figure out how to actually GET a D mage, at which point you still only have one site searcher, and DKing 20 provs still takes 20 turns and 60 gems from that point. If this is a duel situation you also have to be fending off those 5 thugs you didn't spend your gems on while you research up to alt-9, and if it's a bigger game you have to contend with universal hate, and more importantly, gem-pooling for a dispel.

And I was replying to your statement that "Even a nation that does not natively get Death can easily alchemize gems, Empower one guy with D1, have that guy cast Dark Knowledge, and have a huge stockpile of Death gems by the time his Pretender arrives." Using a wolf tribe shaman to site search D is a perfectly reasonable strat, though still far from reliable enough to base a pretender build on since finding them and then lucking out on a random can be difficult.

[chrispedersen]

As for Bless Rushes, they are not the top three tactics. Having broken the back of more than one bless rush with such exotic tactics as "archers" or "level 2 magic", I don't rate it terribly high.

I am curious what you mean by this. Personally I can't think of any tactic that wins enough to be called a "top 3" tactic. But I would say that Mictlan, Mictlan, Lanka, and Niefle's bless strategies make them top 10% contenders.

[Sombre]

I ment national troops. F.e. Lanka's kalah mukha warriors have darkvision but the recruitable rakshasas don't.

Pretty sure all demons and undead get a pass on dark vision. Even without it they don't seem to suffer a malus in the dark.

I can't remember if rakshasas are demons, but I believe they are.

[Baalz]

I agree empowering to D1 is quite silly, but there is another angle that make *much* more sense for a blood nation that I've used before - Mictlan. Taking D on your pretender and empower into *blood* (assuming you didn't have the design points), this is immensely easier for a blood nation and gets you vampire lords (and for Mictlan some nice national summons). Of course you're not going to be dropping UD on turn 36 like this, but it's a much more realistic way to actually get it up around the time you're ready to switch to a blood only economy.

Note (I bet Micah remembers this game) do *not* go with burden of time under the assumption that boots of youth will protect your mages. Miserable, miserable way to end the game by killing off all your own good mages...

[Agema]

I think betting a strategy on a gem type or mage you can't easily access is a recipe for disaster.

I think we'll all have played games where we've had shockingly bad, or even no income, in certain gem types, including gems that are fairly integral to the nations (I've played EA Agartha, 30 provinces fully searched, total death income of 3). Finding mages is even worse: I want to weep when I read guides that blithely say things like "Get an indy X mage" (unless X = nature), because sure as hell I've played quite enough games where I can't find any.

[KissBlade]

But, I do understand how people's strategy to winning the game is often just "win more battles", making more complex strategies seem impossible.

Bad strategies seem impossible. And the problem with most "complex" strategies is it leaves little room for calculating your opponent's moves/strategies.

[K]

I think betting a strategy on a gem type or mage you can't easily access is a recipe for disaster.

I think we'll all have played games where we've had shockingly bad, or even no income, in certain gem types, including gems that are fairly integral to the nations (I've played EA Agartha, 30 provinces fully searched, total death income of 3). Finding mages is even worse: I want to weep when I read guides that blithely say things like "Get an indy X mage" (unless X = nature), because sure as hell I've played quite enough games where I can't find any.

Oh I agree. I can't tell you the number of times I've played an Air nation like Caelum only to find my provinces have no air income or played a Blood nation and found that all my provinces have like 2K people or that someone beat me to the unique demons and suddenly all my endgame plans are dust.

But some plan is better than no plan. It's a self-deception if you think you can just make a nation based on a few battle tactics and respond to the conditions of the game and pull out a win.

I guess that was the point I was trying to make. Is getting a decent bless with endgame uses and searching for Death gems with the plan of casting the Utterdark the "super-winna of all planz"?

No. But it does beat "and then I Bless Rush people and just have more stuff." Bless Rushes are fine if you are playing vs one opponent and once he's dead you win the game. Bless Rushes are also fine if you are playing on a very large map and can expect to own 30-40 provinces before you meet your next neighbor (and he'll own 10-15 by then).

But for any other situation, a Bless Rush is just an early game tactic and not a game-winning strategy.

It works like this. On a big map, a Bless nation starts taking a province a turn around turn 2 or 3. By turn 7-8, he's taking two a turn. By 15 he's taking 3 a turn(the rate slows as he needs to start backtracking and moving to the front). By turn 20 when he runs out of indie provinces he attacks his first enemy and he has a ton of crap and he grinds down lesser nations.

On a merely large or medium map, he runs out of provinces and attacks his first enemy on turn 12. Instead of having three or four times the provinces of his enemy, he has maybe 150% the provinces. If the enemy can smash his initial army, chances are good they can be on his doorstep before he can even build a replacement. Game over.

And that's your gamble. You have invested heavily in your early game in the hopes that it will bootstrap you into a strong late game.

But, it still won't win the game. A game-winning strategy sounds like this: "and then I do it, and start taking five or more enemy provinces a turn while losing almost no troops and none of my own provinces."

Casting the Utterdark when properly prepared can do that. Building badass SCs when other people can't can do that. Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that. Building unbreakable armies like Blessed Gandarvas, or Mandaha-backed Demon armies, or armies backed by mages with gem-producing items who cast battlefield-destroying magic that they are immune to can win you the game. Putting up the Astral Nexus and getting a gem income in the hundreds and then using that to get piles of summons or ritual magics can do that too. Running around with ten tough armies who can Astral Travel or otherwise skip over enemy armies and dissect enemy empires can do that. Building Master Enslave mages who usurp entire enemy armies can do that.

The list is long, but "bless rush" is not on it.

So yes, I rate Death higher than Fire because it opens a tactic to winning the game you otherwise might not have. Opinions will vary.

[chrispedersen]

It doesn't work like that *at all*

As a bless nation I take
1 the second turn.
2 the third.
3 the fourth.

Somewhere after that you start to be limited by geography.
But my usual target for mictlan or lanka is 48 or so territories before the end of year 2. And usually I avoid players as long as I can.

Of course I prefer maps with many adjacent territories. And bless strategies have won me *many* games.

[thejeff]

Yeah, hate to say it K, but your progression there sounds more like standard non-bless/SC pretender expansion.
A real bless rush strategy should let you send out a indy-clearing army at least every other turn. And on smaller maps, you're gunning for that first neighbor. (And hoping he isn't doing the same.)

I agree you need more of a plan than bless rush and win your first war, but don't underestimate how much of an advantage a fast start can be.

[TheDemon]

More territory translates rather directly into more gem income and more blood income. You will agree that a more effective bless means faster territory gain? But that's only the first step, you need to follow it up with more forts and more sitesearching and more bloodhunting. There's no reason you can't pursue a so-called "game winning" strategy in addition to supercharged expansion with a strong bless.

So yes, a bless means you have "more stuff", but it does not mean simply "more sacreds".

[K]

Yeah, hate to say it K, but your progression there sounds more like standard non-bless/SC pretender expansion.
A real bless rush strategy should let you send out a indy-clearing army at least every other turn.

You'll note I said "take a province" and not "send out an army". Practical matters such as being able to reach new indies or being forced to go around provinces with something crazy like 30 knights or six Dark Vines or something means you most likely won't be consistently hitting the benchmarks until the turns I outlined. Its more a matter of the geography of your map more than anything else, so you might be much faster if there are lots of connections on your map and no impassable mountains or special indies that require you to merge two or more province-taking armies.

But yeh, on very large maps where you can actually enter 48 indie provinces before meeting a neighbor, you don't need any other tactic. I totally said that. In fact, I wrote a page explaining that.

It is not a coincidence that people believe that Bless Rushing is very powerful AND people like to play on very large maps.

[Frozen Lama]

K- just go and try a F9W9 bless rush. on turn 3, it is entirely possible to take 2 provs with jags. on turn 4, you can take 3, unless you happen to have a capital with only 2 neighbors. you don't circle you cap first of course. if you have 4 neighbor provs, turn 5 your taking 4 provs. just go try it. its insane to think a bless rush nation won't take 2 provs a turn until turn 7

[Squirrelloid]

K- just go and try a F9W9 bless rush. on turn 3, it is entirely possible to take 2 provs with jags. on turn 4, you can take 3, unless you happen to have a capital with only 2 neighbors. you don't circle you cap first of course. if you have 4 neighbor provs, turn 5 your taking 4 provs. just go try it. its insane to think a bless rush nation won't take 2 provs a turn until turn 7

Connections isn't sufficient. I mean, unless jags are far more awesome than i think they are, a bloodhenge druid province will stop you cold. As will any number of other nasty independents. So if you see nothing but tribal warriors and militia/archer/infantry combinations, sure, i believe you. And while K might underestimate the speed a little, i think you vastly overestimate based on the assumption 1 turns production of jaguars can take *any* indie province.

[chrispedersen]

K- just go and try a F9W9 bless rush. on turn 3, it is entirely possible to take 2 provs with jags. on turn 4, you can take 3, unless you happen to have a capital with only 2 neighbors. you don't circle you cap first of course. if you have 4 neighbor provs, turn 5 your taking 4 provs. just go try it. its insane to think a bless rush nation won't take 2 provs a turn until turn 7

Connections isn't sufficient. I mean, unless jags are far more awesome than i think they are, a bloodhenge druid province will stop you cold. As will any number of other nasty independents. So if you see nothing but tribal warriors and militia/archer/infantry combinations, sure, i believe you. And while K might underestimate the speed a little, i think you vastly overestimate based on the assumption 1 turns production of jaguars can take *any* indie province.

Squirrel, both you and K are *very* wrong. Jags are just as good as I say they are.
jags laugh at cavs, cat, elephants.

Its the *slingers* you worry about not the elephants. slingers and archers have a tendency to kill your blessing cleric about one time in three.

I'm not *assuming* anything - the last 4 games I have played as mictlan the low was 38 territories by the end of year 2. High was 50 something.

Sure BHD might cause you to leap frog around. But you *want* to leap frog. The idea is capture as many territories as possible and fill in later.

[K]

K- just go and try a F9W9 bless rush. on turn 3, it is entirely possible to take 2 provs with jags. on turn 4, you can take 3, unless you happen to have a capital with only 2 neighbors. you don't circle you cap first of course. if you have 4 neighbor provs, turn 5 your taking 4 provs. just go try it. its insane to think a bless rush nation won't take 2 provs a turn until turn 7

Connections isn't sufficient. I mean, unless jags are far more awesome than i think they are, a bloodhenge druid province will stop you cold. As will any number of other nasty independents. So if you see nothing but tribal warriors and militia/archer/infantry combinations, sure, i believe you. And while K might underestimate the speed a little, i think you vastly overestimate based on the assumption 1 turns production of jaguars can take *any* indie province.

Squirrel, both you and K are *very* wrong.
jags laugh at cavs, cat, elephants.

Its the *slingers* you worry about not the elephants. slingers and archers have a tendency to kill your blessing cleric about one time in three.

I'm not *assuming* anything - the last 4 games I have played as mictlan the low was 38 territories by the end of year 2.

But were we talking specifically about Mictlan? They aren't the only Bless nation here, and they play a lot differently from Neifleheim or Lanka or one of the Vans (to name a few of the nations who can field a viable Bless Rush).

And how many provinces in this map? How many players?

[chrispedersen]

Yeah, hate to say it K, but your progression there sounds more like standard non-bless/SC pretender expansion.
A real bless rush strategy should let you send out a indy-clearing army at least every other turn.

You'll note I said "take a province" and not "send out an army". Practical matters such as being able to reach new indies or being forced to go around provinces with something crazy like 30 knights or six Dark Vines or something means you most likely won't be consistently hitting the benchmarks until the turns I outlined. Its more a matter of the geography of your map more than anything else, so you might be much faster if there are lots of connections on your map and no impassable mountains or special indies that require you to merge two or more province-taking armies.

But yeh, on very large maps where you can actually enter 48 indie provinces before meeting a neighbor, you don't need any other tactic. I totally said that. In fact, I wrote a page explaining that.

It is not a coincidence that people believe that Bless Rushing is very powerful AND people like to play on very large maps.

You are so wrong you have no idea.
Look the last game I won as Mictlan - I was fighting Marignon, starting turn 7. As mictlan you don't try to take fortresses - at least not at first - you have to destroy forces - demoralize the opponent. So I was raiding him for 10 turns or so. I attacked my second opponent around turn 15.

If you read any of my threads on mictlan - making a force that will *take* a province costs 235 gp. No more no less. For archers you tag on 3 slaves.

I'm not talking huge sparse maps. I'm talking maps where you have the standard 15 provinces per player.

Try it.

[chrispedersen]

Connections isn't sufficient. I mean, unless jags are far more awesome than i think they are, a bloodhenge druid province will stop you cold. As will any number of other nasty independents. So if you see nothing but tribal warriors and militia/archer/infantry combinations, sure, i believe you. And while K might underestimate the speed a little, i think you vastly overestimate based on the assumption 1 turns production of jaguars can take *any* indie province.

Squirrel, both you and K are *very* wrong.
jags laugh at cavs, cat, elephants.

Its the *slingers* you worry about not the elephants. slingers and archers have a tendency to kill your blessing cleric about one time in three.

I'm not *assuming* anything - the last 4 games I have played as mictlan the low was 38 territories by the end of year 2.

But were we talking specifically about Mictlan? They aren't the only Bless nation here, and they play a lot differently from Neifleheim or Lanka or one of the Vans (to name a few of the nations who can field a viable Bless Rush).

And how many provinces in this map? How many players?


You said bless rushes aren't a viable strategy. I said I routinely expect to take 48ish by the end of year two with Mictlan (Ea/LA) or Lanka.

So yes, I specifically said mictlan and lanka. Blesses on xheims are for the most part not optimal.

Niefle has a bless strategy - and its a powerful one - but you can't call it a bless rush. Niefles strategy relies on a lack of attrition, and SC's to win. Fun - but not a bless rush. Plus the problem with his bless is capitol dependency - there are some very easy counters.

As for #of players - I dont care. ter/player - I don't care. Anything within the realm of normal play is fine by me. Stronger indie settings make bless nations work better. Smaller maps probably help bless nations more on average.

Map geography matters - lots of choke points makes for a very static game - not suitable to bless rushes.

[K]

You are so wrong you have no idea.
Look the last game I won as Mictlan - I was fighting Marignon, starting turn 7. As mictlan you don't try to take fortresses - at least not at first - you have to destroy forces - demoralize the opponent. So I was raiding him for 10 turns or so. I attacked my second opponent around turn 15.

If you read any of my threads on mictlan - making a force that will *take* a province costs 235 gp. No more no less. For archers you tag on 3 slaves.

I'm not talking huge sparse maps. I'm talking maps where you have the standard 15 provinces per player.

Try it.

Yeh, I totally want to trust you based on "that one game where I schooled everyone...."

I play Bless nations all the time. My experience is that on a normal-sized map the other players see your quick expansion and dogpile you before you can get any meaningful lead in provinces. My last three games as Lanka ended for me when 3-4 players attacked me at the same time. Sure, I averaged destroying one and crippling two others, but I did not reach the endgame.

And that's why it is not a game-winning tactic unless you play on a large map. Its a fine tactic for winning fights, but winning a game requires so much more and I'll put my eggs in some other basket.

It seems like you've been getting a free pass from the Dominions community if they are letting you expand on those maps, and I can't take account of "and maybe I get lucky and my opponents are chumps or buds of mine" in any tactical or strategic decisions I make.

On the bright side I now know why you think the way you do, so I don't have to keep arguing with you on the chance you have valuable insights. It's been fun.

[chrispedersen]

You are so wrong you have no idea.
Look the last game I won as Mictlan - I was fighting Marignon, starting turn 7. As mictlan you don't try to take fortresses - at least not at first - you have to destroy forces - demoralize the opponent. So I was raiding him for 10 turns or so. I attacked my second opponent around turn 15.

If you read any of my threads on mictlan - making a force that will *take* a province costs 235 gp. No more no less. For archers you tag on 3 slaves.

I'm not talking huge sparse maps. I'm talking maps where you have the standard 15 provinces per player.

Try it.

Yeh, I totally want to trust you based on "that one game where I schooled everyone...."

I play Bless nations all the time. My experience is that on a normal-sized map the other players see your quick expansion and dogpile you before you can get any meaningful lead in provinces. My last three games as Lanka ended for me when 3-4 players attacked me at the same time. Sure, I averaged destroying one and crippling two others, but I did not reach the endgame.

And that's why it is not a game-winning tactic unless you play on a large map. Its a fine tactic for winning fights, but winning a game requires so much more and I'll put my eggs in some other basket.

It seems like you've been getting a free pass from the Dominions community if they are letting you expand on those maps, and I can't take account of "and maybe I get lucky and my opponents are chumps or buds of mine" in any tactical or strategic decisions I make.

On the bright side I now know why you think the way you do, so I don't have to keep arguing with you on the chance you have valuable insights. It's been fun.

Sure, attack the player, instead of the points.

*IF* you play bless nations all the time, you would know that it does not take until turn 7 for a bless nation to conquer 2 territories per turn.

You say its not a game winning strategy except on a large map.
Fine.

How about we settle this on a small map. Say.. Albatha. I'll take EA mictlan. You take any EA nation you want (except grossly unbalanced hinnom). Of course to make your point you'd logically not have to choose a bless nation.

Plain vanilla game.
Standard settings.

You say large benefits bless- I'm giving you small.
You'll know I'm starting with an f9w9 bless at the minimum - you can keep yours secret.
You're even a better player than I. Still won't matter.

[K]

Sure, attack the player, instead of the points.

*IF* you play bless nations all the time, you would know that it does not take until turn 7 for a bless nation to conquer 2 territories per turn.

You say its not a game winning strategy except on a large map.
Fine.

How about we settle this on a small map. Say.. Albatha. I'll take EA mictlan. You take any EA nation you want (except grossly unbalanced hinnom). Of course to make your point you'd logically not have to choose a bless nation.

Plain vanilla game.
Standard settings.

You say large benefits bless- I'm giving you small.
You'll know I'm starting with an f9w9 bless at the minimum - you can keep yours secret.
You're even a better player than I. Still won't matter.

Hilarious. Reread the thread, especially the part where I note where Blesses are game-winning strats on very big maps AND small maps with a single opponent.

So if you win, you prove me right. If I win, I am right again by proving that Bless rushes that lose their first battle tend to lose the war.

How about we just skip the middle part and just recognize I'm right?

Or even better, how about we just back away from any trials by combat and agree that our results have varied. I truly believe that you truly believe you are right and the only way you will change your mind is to have a run of multiplay games like I have had.

In all seriousness and semi-friendly jabbing aside, the last time I proved someone wrong about a strategy game by playing a public game with them he ended up in a hospital because he had a nervous breakdown the same day he received the turn where I did the killing stroke to his empire. I'm not going to claim credit for his personal problems, but from then on I decided that being proven right in public is not worth it, especially for a game that is supposed to be about fun.

Peace.

[LDiCesare]

Even on small maps with 4 players, a strong bless can help a lot. With a good bless you can take out one opponent first and then turn on those two other players who are busy fighting each other.
Also, a bless strategy can go well into mid-game (EA T'ien Ch'i is a nice bless nation for that reason: demons of heavenly water nicely complement the warrior of the 5 elements by being tougher and summonable anywhere).

Also, a strong Fire bless doesn't preclude a late game strategy. I like F9S9 with Mictlan for instance. Since I pick S9 you guess that end-game strategies revolve around that rather than Death and I think S9F9 > S9D9 without compromising late game.

[chrispedersen]

[QUOTE=chrispedersen;706463] I truly believe that you truly believe you are right and the only way you will change your mind is to have a run of multiplay games like I have had.

I've played way north of 300 games of dominions.. more than 50 mp games... although only maybe a dozen here. Losing 3-4 games because you're gang banged can happen to any nation and doesn't prove the lack of validity of a bless strategy.

If you say the game averages 10 opponents - heck you rate to lose 9... losing three just proves bless is giving you an advantage =P

[thejeff]

Yeah, hate to say it K, but your progression there sounds more like standard non-bless/SC pretender expansion.
A real bless rush strategy should let you send out a indy-clearing army at least every other turn.

You'll note I said "take a province" and not "send out an army". Practical matters such as being able to reach new indies or being forced to go around provinces with something crazy like 30 knights or six Dark Vines or something means you most likely won't be consistently hitting the benchmarks until the turns I outlined. Its more a matter of the geography of your map more than anything else, so you might be much faster if there are lots of connections on your map and no impassable mountains or special indies that require you to merge two or more province-taking armies.

Maybe you play on very different maps than I have. Or maybe we're talking past each other. Obviously there's a difference between taking provinces and sending out armies. I find that becomes more significant later in the indy clearing phase. I don't think I've ever been in a game where, with a little planning I couldn't reliably find provinces to take with at least the 1st and 2nd armies. By the time they have to start back tracking the 3rd army should have targets to attack. And every other turn is slow for a uber bless nation.

From your original post:
It works like this. On a big map, a Bless nation starts taking a province a turn around turn 2 or 3. By turn 7-8, he's taking two a turn. By 15 he's taking 3 a turn(the rate slows as he needs to start backtracking and moving to the front).

I simply don't see how sending out an army at least every other turn can lead to progress like that. Sure there will be some backtracking and some indies you have to bypass or combine to take, but to do that badly most of those armies won't be attacking most turns. If you're that constrained by geography, skip the bless and just use regular troops. You should be able to do as well.

But yeh, on very large maps where you can actually enter 48 indie provinces before meeting a neighbor, you don't need any other tactic. I totally said that. In fact, I wrote a page explaining that.


And as I said, you need more of a plan than just bless rush. I'm not disagreeing with that. But you're claiming an uber-bless is ineffective even at what it's good at.

[KissBlade]

Actually K, from the opinions you've posted in this thread, it looks like a majority of games you've played are either against the AI or players that are giving you a free pass. Your claims sound so out of touch with the way a game with vets would run that I would find it time consuming to comment on every misinformation there. You are consistently just ignoring what people say will actually happen in lieu of a made up scenario where you claim will be true just to somehow back your hilariously incorrect statement that D9 is a better bless to take than F9.

Your impression that a bless strat is somehow worse off in a small map versus a big one due to "dogpiling" is ridiculous as any good player using an uber bless are able to fend off 3-4 non blessed nations early game without very specific counters easily while stomping them one nation at a time with strategic use of chokes and general good planning in expansion tactics. Bless nations are favored by several things, namely difficult research and lower gem frequency but more provinces is certainly not one of them! The moment a bless nation destroys a main expansion force of a neighbor, you not only massively set back his expansion rate significantly but you force him to wall up while you slowly take the ring around his capital. Once your siege sets in, it's leave and forget since the income from a capital shouldn't be underestimated on it's own.

People have given points on why W9/F9 or E9/n4-8 are effective. Your own actual point to back your d9 suggestion was the entirely silly "Rush for utterdark = game winning plan" when any nation without innate death/blood access is already at a massive disadvantage at any death gem stockpiling versus a death nation in this strat.

Then you posit this with a paragraph claiming that game winning strategies are "Building badass SCs ... Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that..."

That whole spiel makes it sound as if you're playing against newbies, AI or players stuck in the stone age of research while you're hitting 9's. On top of the fact that your point of Arcane Nexus shows your inexperience since the spell is either banned or good players WILL dogpile you and significantly more so for casting spells like Nexus or Utterdark than playing a bless nation with an out of the gates province rate.

[K]

From your original post:
It works like this. On a big map, a Bless nation starts taking a province a turn around turn 2 or 3. By turn 7-8, he's taking two a turn. By 15 he's taking 3 a turn(the rate slows as he needs to start backtracking and moving to the front).

I simply don't see how sending out an army at least every other turn can lead to progress like that. Sure there will be some backtracking and some indies you have to bypass or combine to take, but to do that badly most of those armies won't be attacking most turns. If you're that constrained by geography, skip the bless and just use regular troops. You should be able to do as well.

Yeh, I used a very conservative model to illustrate a point about expansion on different map sizes. In a more reasonable model, or even an ideal model the rates are much higher.

But how am I going to know that I've been placed in a "constrained by geography" part of a map until after I've started?



Your impression that a bless strat is somehow worse off in a small map versus a big one due to "dogpiling" is ridiculous as any good player using an uber bless are able to fend off 3-4 non blessed nations early game without very specific counters easily while stomping them one nation at a time with strategic use of chokes and general good planning in expansion tactics.

Oh, you can hold off 3-4 players for a while. You can even take down one of your attackers and take his stuff.

But you won't win the game because while you are embroiled in a war with 3-4 players and holding your own or slowly expanding, other people are in wars with one guy at a time and by midgame and lategame they've been expanding their research and hoarding their gems for globals while you've been sending mages into battle and using gems for spells and combat magic.

But sure, in a perfect game you could win despite all that and take all comers.


Then you posit this with a paragraph claiming that game winning strategies are "Building badass SCs ... Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that..."

You've never scoured provinces with Horrors and taken them with flying demons? Or seen how effective Horrors can be vs armies without heavy mage support, especially when Astral Corruption is occasionally upgrading Horrors? Or shutdown enemy troop production with Rain of Toads?

Its a viable enddgame strategy if you have been turtling for a while and have a stockpile of blood slaves.



That whole spiel makes it sound as if you're playing against newbies, AI or players stuck in the stone age of research while you're hitting 9's. On top of the fact that your point of Arcane Nexus shows your inexperience since the spell is either banned or good players WILL dogpile you and significantly more so for casting spells like Nexus or Utterdark than playing a bless nation with an out of the gates province rate.

Yeh, I don't play in a lot of the games the vets run because I think its pretty cowardly to play in a game where the Utterdark and Astral Nexus has been banned. Removing spells that bring a conclusion to the game just means you want to set up a game that favors your strategies because you are afraid someone might beat you.

I also don't play CBM games. Does that make me "out of touch"?

I've played a lot of multiplayer and as far as I can tell the only difference between vets and noobs is that vets know how dangerous each other are and they either turtle until endgame or they dogpile one player at a time (unless they are neighbors to an obviously weak empire). They also pool gems to knock down game-ending globals and trade a fair bit.

Your experience has varied. I get it. The reason I don't respect you or your opinion is because my experience has obviously varied from yours and on more than one occasion I have pulled off plans that "accepted opinion" consider impossible or unwise.

I get it. I take risks you won't. I play in games where someone might cast the Utterdark, and you won't. I'll cast a game-ending global and risk a dogpile by other guys with equal research because its endgame and I consider it the only time you can effectively fight a dogpile off. I play on medium maps because turtling and fighting indies for 20 turns bores the crap out of me.

Seriously. I understand where you are coming from.

Now you can get the last word in to sooth your pride and ego by reiterating the same unconvincing points. Or not. Your choice. I'm done either way.

[Sombre]

In all seriousness and semi-friendly jabbing aside, the last time I proved someone wrong about a strategy game by playing a public game with them he ended up in a hospital because he had a nervous breakdown the same day he received the turn where I did the killing stroke to his empire. I'm not going to claim credit for his personal problems, but from then on I decided that being proven right in public is not worth it, especially for a game that is supposed to be about fun.


Yeah don't argue with K, he's so right you might actually GO MAD from, you know, how right he is. OR DIE.

[RabbitDynamite]

D9 Blesses: SERIOUS F'N BUSINESS!

[Hoplosternum]

I have not played as many games as K, Kissblade, CP or theJeff but I think I have played enough to have a healthy respect for heavy bless nations. Quick expansion, not just against indies, but also against other players can often net enough provinces to put them in a very strong position as your nation goes in to the middle game. As more provinces (and capitals) mean more gold (so more mages) and more gems in the medium to long term.

Where I think K has more of a point is that such growth and aggression can lead to gang ups. But it's not a sure thing. While it's in everyone elses interest that the early leader is taken down it is not in most peoples interested that they do much of the actual fighting - except the vital task of grabing provinces after the early leader power has been broken :p So such gang ups are fraught with difficulties. Plus there is seldom just one early leader or heavy blesser for everyone else to concentrate on. Nor is a successful early rusher easy to take down even in the mid game thanks to their large number of sacreds and the boost the extra lands, income and gems give them.

But while successfully using a dual bless only might result in a gang up, casting Utterdark certainly will. You basically kill the chances of many (most) other nations. They are dead unless your global is dispelled. While there may be some trust issues they are dead if they don't cooperate against you. Thats just not the case with an early bless fuelled leader. He only might be ganged up on and often only half heartedly at that.

I think the risk of a heavy bless strategy is not that it succeeds and puts you in such a strong position that enough enemies gang up against you but that it simply fails. An early bless rush is not a sure thing even against a none bless nation. All none bless nations need to have some defence worked out vs bless rushers. And while it is usually in the long run fatal to be the victim of such a rush you can't always be defeated in time (or even at all) to make the cost of the rush pay for the heavy blesser. And of course having paid in design points for a heavy bless sometimes you may find yourself surrounded by other dual bless nations and so with no comparative early advantage.

I think the original poster suggested that a D9 bless was as useful early on as an F9. Despite marshelling some interesting arguments I and most of the responders don't think this is so in most cases. There may be some scenarios where they are equal. But for early expansion F9 is usually a lot better.

But you don't have to buy in to K's Utterdark strategy to accept that having D9 on your Pretender is more useful spell casting wise than having F9. There are exceptions, but if you were offered a D9 Hero or an F9 one most nations would rather have the former.

Nor is it especially controversial to say by the mid to late game the F9 bless - while not useless - is not that big a plus as it was. F9 is at it's most useful in the first couple of years and declines in importance as the game goes on. You need to make it pay early in most cases and it's certainly strong enough to do that if you have the right kind of sacreds. While the effects of a death bless are still useful even in the end game, possibly more so when spells can affect the whole battlefield. Sure it's better to kill enemy SCs, mages and armies than afflict them, but thats still a useful side effect.

You don't see that many D9 blesses. For anyone to spend the points on a 9 or 10 bless of any kind that final bonus has to be good. And the resitable disease/2 AN just isn't. The main boost of the bless is the extra afflictions and the end game high death caster. But you don't need D9 for those. There are very few nations or scenarios I can think of where I would rather have an imprisoned D9 over a sleeping D6 Pretender. Thats still a +200% affliction boost and gets your Pretender up and about much sooner. Quite frankly Death 4 still gives you an affliction bless and opens the door to the death Thugs, Tartarians and the late game death spells at a fraction of the cost and without all the summoning X to call Y to summon Z needed if you have little to no death on your national mages or pretender.

[MaxWilson]

Nor is it especially controversial to say by the mid to late game the F9 bless - while not useless - is not that big a plus as it was. F9 is at it's most useful in the first couple of years and declines in importance as the game goes on. You need to make it pay early in most cases and it's certainly strong enough to do that if you have the right kind of sacreds. While the effects of a death bless are still useful even in the end game, possibly more so when spells can affect the whole battlefield. Sure it's better to kill enemy SCs, mages and armies than afflict them, but thats still a useful side effect.


In my mind, an F9 bless is still useful late in the game, because it increases the amount of chaff the enemy needs to have to protect his mages. (Particularly if your F9 sacreds are buffed with things like SoG/WoS/Fog Warriors/etc.) The limiting factor isn't so much the bless as the fact that most nations don't scale well--unless you have good recruitable-anywhere sacreds (Mictlan) you won't be fighting his chaff with sacreds anyway, making bless irrelevant.

-Max

[KissBlade]

Now you can get the last word in to sooth your pride and ego by reiterating the same unconvincing points. Or not. Your choice. I'm done either way.

Isn't that exactly what you were doing with your whole post ...?

That and you've contradicted yourself so many times in this post and well ... the entire time spent in this thread that I'm not even sure if it's worth the two pages to list and refute them anymore.

[Sombre]

Clearly Kissblade doesn't want to risk going blind or losing a limb from K's devastating arguments.

[Calahan]

K turned me into a newt.........I got better.

[Sombre]

He's not going to take credit for turning you into a newt. But it is the reason he doesn't correct people's grammar in public any more.

[Agema]

As far as I can see it, both the pro- and anti- D9 bless arguments are hedged under a vast stream of "ifs". IF you've been able to collect a huge stock of blood slaves. IF you don't get jumped by 3-4 adversaries. IF you cast utterdark and no-one removes it, IF you can expand freely because geography has been kind. IF no-one has been able to turtle. IF it's a large/medium/small map, IF etc.

All this really tells us is that lots of strategies are viable. The games everyone is talking about have had particular circumstances in game setup, what the other players have done and will also have depended how good they were.

[Sombre]

Sure but I think there's agreement amonst the majority of the veteran players that F9 as a bless is considerably better in the round than D9. That's taking into account the fact a D9 caster is more valuable than an F9 caster.

[Agema]

I agree.

The advantage of a D9 bless seems to be almost nothing to do with having the bless, but being able to access a D9 mage. (This immediately makes you wonder why you don't take, say, D6-8, and get the rest of the way with boosters.) The turn 40 Utterdark strategy seems to me to be a massive gamble, putting all your eggs in one basket. It might win spectacularly, but it's far more likely something will go wrong, and the egg will be on your face.

[Sombre]

I also can't see how making yourself an instant enemy of every player in the game, not from the position of most powerful nation (extrapolated from the lack of awake SC or powerful expansive bless), while simultaneously spending all your hard won death gems to do so is a good idea. I guess it might work great if all the others players failed to counter or coordinate. Nice idea though.

[MaxWilson]

As far as I can see it, both the pro- and anti- D9 bless arguments are hedged under a vast stream of "ifs". IF you've been able to collect a huge stock of blood slaves. IF you don't get jumped by 3-4 adversaries. IF you cast utterdark and no-one removes it, IF you can expand freely because geography has been kind. IF no-one has been able to turtle. IF it's a large/medium/small map, IF etc.

All this really tells us is that lots of strategies are viable. The games everyone is talking about have had particular circumstances in game setup, what the other players have done and will also have depended how good they were.

Well, and it also tells you the circumstances under which those strategies are viable. Frex, Baalz' point about blood nations bootstrapping into death via vampire lords is well-taken IMHO.

-Max