Question about EA Tir Na N'og

[Torgon]

I'm a total newb, just in my first two games at the moment.

Looking through the possible nations, my interest was struck by Tir Na N'og but it appears they basically get zero playing time as a nation in MP. Are they that bad? Is it essentially suicide to play them in an MP game? Any redeeming features?

[brxbrx]

lots of glamour

[Torgon]

Yep. Seems like they may play similarly to a Vanheim or Hellheim. But in the strat index there's a ton on both of these and absolutely nothing on Tir Na N'og.

Seems a major complaint may be lack of any death/astral. Does the addition of the endgame diversity mod compensate for the lack of death and no tartarians?

Also it seems they also don't get much love in the CBM? if they are underpowered why no cost reductions, stat increases etc.

Seems like kinda a cool nation: British mists of avalon, forgotten Sidhe realms, etc. But no one seems to pay any attention to them.

[iRFNA]

I'm always interested in them, but ignoring magic paths (you can do a lot with their paths even if they lack astral/death, especially in the CBM), they have two big weaknesses:

Fir bolgs have great stats, but their protection is awful.
Everything else costs a LOT of gold, but at the same time their units beg for a good bless on their thugs.

At least, this is what is going through my head every time I try to make a pretender and overall strategy for them.

[AfroSquirrel]

I'm right now playing as them for my first MP game, so what advice I can offer is limited, but I have noticed a couple things. Unfortunately, as per this being my first MP game, I'm paranoid about giving away any possible strategies. One thing that I can share, though: The recruit-anywhere mages have a 1/4 chance of making nice sitesearchers (1A1W1E1N)

[PriestyMan]

there is a pretty good guide by Baalz to Eriu, which is basically the same as TNN. check it out. it can give you some good ideas. basically, the Sidhe Lords are the cornerstone to your nation

[iRFNA]

Eriu plays quite a bit different than TNN, but not when it comes to the sidhe lord thugs.

[Fantomen]

Baalz wrote this Eiru guide (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37996), much of it translates well to Tir na N'og.

Basically a nation with good teleporting stealthy raiders, but weak endgame.

I actually think the latest CBM did something for them, plus tartarians are heavily nerfed in the latest patch (made non-GoRable). EDM gives you shishis at least, but you'll need to think about both bless and endgame usability when designing your pretender.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I don't think TNN are a bad nation at all. I played them in an MP game once and did okay, despite playing fairly horribly. It may just be chance that they have no guides. Also they were added in a patch quite some time after release so they haven't existed quite as long as some nations.

[brxbrx]

I'm always interested in them, but ignoring magic paths (you can do a lot with their paths even if they lack astral/death, especially in the CBM), they have two big weaknesses:

Fir bolgs have great stats, but their protection is awful.
Everything else costs a LOT of gold, but at the same time their units beg for a good bless on their thugs.

At least, this is what is going through my head every time I try to make a pretender and overall strategy for them.

then again, lots of nature mages to fix that low protection

[Jarkko]

Been tempted to try them not as a bless-thug nation, but as a scales-heavy wannabe-MA Ulm. Now why would anybody want to be MA Ulm is of course another question :p

Anyway, they have many paths available. A rainbow pretender providing access to some death and astral opens up lots of more potential.

Early expansion is ridiculously easy. Grab a Sidhe champion and half a dozen Sidhe Warriors. Script the Sidhe Champion with Quickening Song, other spells*4, Attack rear (if he did have Flight as last script, he will fly right to the backs of the enemy). With that song you have quickened glamorous elite infantry, which will rip apart anything in their path. You can pump out such expansion parties each turn. Research will of course suck (as you have nobody researching unless you took an awake rainbow), but you don't need many such groups out there. Meanwhile the sucky starting army stays home to patrol. You'll have gold coming through your nose in no time, so should be easy to pump out at least three forts first year (and those Sidhe champions all can build temples and labs in the new forts).

Haven't really thought how to go on from that on. But you'll have a bunch of elite infantry with high MR, and soon some kick-butt buffs available. With any of luck the rainbow pretender should find something useful, and meanwhile Sidhe Lords become available in masses from all your forts.

[Torgon]

Seems like the big difference between Eiru and TNN are the Sidhe warriors. Eiru has no recruit anywhere glamour troops, TNN does. The way Baalz outlines in his guide, in order to be a highly successful raiding nation Eiru has to invest in a great bless for their Sidhe Lords (plus additional equipment). The Sidhe warriors enable them to field stealth raiding parties from any castle. Makes them look a little more like Vanhiem. The Sidhe warriors are fairly decent, but what could we make of them.

Sidhe Warrior compare to Vanheim Huskarl
Gold 25 Gold 25
Resources 12 Resources 13
HP 13 HP 13
Pro 10 Pro 11
Morale 12 Moral 11
MR 14 MR 14
Enc 3 Enc 4
Str 12 Str 11
Attk 12 Att 12
Def 15 Def 14
Pre 12 Pre 12
Move 2/12 Move 2/11

Stealth 25 Same except no darkvision or forest
Glamour surv
Forest Surv
Darkvision
Spear/Javlin/Shield Axe/Jav/Shield

So the big weakness I see on both units, vanhiem and TNN is the low protection. Vanhiem is sort of stuck with it. Vanhiem also has the Vanhere, Mounted Hirdmen and Hirdmen, but they're capital only or more expensive, respectively. And except for the Vanhere who has berserk they're protection is still low. Yes you could bring an earth Vanadrott along with a pair of earth boots to buff, but this seam like a waste and a huge risk for a capital only mage who could reliably raid all by himself.

Now for TNN. What do you have? Nature mages that are recruitable from every castle. specifically the Bean Sidhe and the Sidhe champion

First the Bean Sidhe. Their A1W1N1 plus a random AWEN. So one in four will be able to cast Wooden Warriors right out the box. Every one will if you just give them a thistle mace. The earth randoms can cast legions of steel with just a pair of boots and an earth gem.

The Sidhe champion is 1A1N but 140 vs 220 gold for the bean (both compare nicely to the 280 Sidhe Lord, Plus the bean is more useful generally). The Champion can lay down the same buffs. His stats are a little worse than the Sidhe lord but he's a whole lot cheaper. Still holy so he could also work with a slight bless.

These two and a few Sidhe warriors seem to get even better when you look at those level one nature enchantment spell songs that these guys have access too. Specifically healing song, quickening song, song of bravery. Cast quickening song right out of the gate with either one. Now you have quickened glamour protected Sidhe warriors. If you go with the Sidhe champion just place him such that he follows right behind your warriors. He seams fairly survivable so you shouldn't be too worried about losing him. Now with healing song you have quickened, regenerating, glamour protected Sidhe warriors.

For the price of a Sidhe lord you can get a sidhe champion plus 6 sidhe warriors. I've been going through a few test runs (about 20 so far , and this can reliably take out PD up to around 20 or so. After that it goes to about 2/3 or 1/2. Bump it up to 10 or 12 warriors and you can reliably get up to 25.

Now you've got raiding parties without needing to fork over a huge amount on E9N6 bless as you have to for Eiru. Thus better scales and more warriors. Plus more Ri's, Sorceresses, and Baobhan Sidhe.

Now the baobhan sidhe seems to be a strange beast. An expensive assassin with A2. If someone can figure out something else to do with her I'm all ears. Is she a money sink or would something interesting work? The thing that first comes to mind is giving her an eye of aiming, then assassinating using thunderstrike, thunderstrike(Just 2 extra air gems). Not sure how often this would work, but it seems like it would reliably take out most mages not kitted out with lightning resistance, even if they had body guards. They're stealth +45 so patrolling for the buggers would be a huge pain. (Would this work?)

I'm imagining an interesting set of moves that could prove quite devastating. Take a number of baobhan sidhe, move them to a province with a fort. Perhaps one owned by someone that doesn't even share a border with you so they're not expecting it. At the same time move in a number of your raiding parties. Equip the raiding party leaders with wall shakers. Use the baobhan sidhe to take out the leaders inside. Simultaneously attack the province with the army that you've pulled in under his nose. Bring enough Sidhe Warriors + wall shakers to bring the walls down in one turn. Attack the next turn. Unless he has a large army within striking distance (which you should be aware of since you have parties all over his territory) or was just camping out inside with a significant force, you just walk right in the gate. Pair this up with other simultaneous raids on the surrounding provinces and you can push the time you need to break the walls down to 2 turns. A great city falls in two with just 4 shakers, a fortified city to 5 shakers(assuming you don't outnumber the defender at all).

Same strategy would would when attacking a large force outside the walls. Assassinate using Baobhan Sidhe and attack simultaneously with a force they didn't even know was next to them the turn before.

As I said before, very little experience with MP. Haven't even tested this plan out in SP. Seems interesting but may have huge holes when put to the test.

[Torgon]

Seems like the Bean sides and Sorceresses would also be perfect candidates for artificially communions and crystal shields. Only problem is the only option to forge them would be with your pretender, unless you got lucky with an indi mage site (which doesn't seem that unlikely in EA).

Also, looks like they did receive some love in the latest CBM. That's where the quickening song came in along with the mists spells which could be interesting.

Possible Pretender build

Dormant Crone:
E4S4D4N4

Scales: Dom 5
O3S2L3M1

Is it worth even trying to leverage into death with the nurfs to Tartarians? Will treants, rocs, etc be all you need?

[Corinthian]

The big problem with TNN as I see it is not the bad protection, but the bad damage. Glamor cant hold up in protracted battles so killing your enemies fast is necessary. The problem is that their best cap only warrior cost 50g but only have one str18 attack. Against giants or anything tough they will fail horribly. And they are not good enough to warrant a fire bless. And they are too expensive to work as chaff.

This can be worked around using thugs and thunder spammers come midgame. But if someone rush them they are done for.

[Festin]

I have played as TNN once in MP (vanilla), and performed reasonably well. My solution to the rush problem was hiring a Sorceress every turn and going directly for Thunderstrike. I think you can hit it before most nations can rush you. Meanwhile, it is entirely possible to have a decent expansion using firbolgs. They are good, but you will lose at least 1-2 solders on almost every type of indies, so be prepared to reinforce the expansion party.

[thejeff]

I haven't played around with TNN/Eriu in the latest CBM.
Did they trade Soothing Song for Quickening Song? Quickening sounds nice, but Soothing Song was brilliant for large battles. A handful of N1 mages could keep your Thunderstrikers going forever and let them recover from the big BF spells quickly.
And Healing Song actually gives regen now? Or did it always and I'm just misremembering?

[Jarkko]

The big problem with TNN as I see it is not the bad protection, but the bad damage. Glamor cant hold up in protracted battles so killing your enemies fast is necessary. The problem is that their best cap only warrior cost 50g but only have one str18 attack. Against giants or anything tough they will fail horribly. And they are not good enough to warrant a fire bless. And they are too expensive to work as chaff.

This can be worked around using thugs and thunder spammers come midgame. But if someone rush them they are done for.

TNN gets in CBM 1.82 the quickness song at Ench0. Buying the sacred 50g infantry makes no sense, but buying the 25 gold glamorous elite infantry makes much more sense :) Quickened they will rip apart anything in their path.

[Festin]

Did they trade Soothing Song for Quickening Song?
Soothing Song is still present. And I think that Healing Song does not give regen.

[Torgon]

No healing song doesn't give regren. Basically just meant that in a small battle with just few troops and a commander it can effectively fill the same roll as sacred troops with regen from a big nature bless.

[thejeff]

Except that you've got to keep the commander up near the troops and still casting. Which can be tricky.

[iRFNA]

Quickening song is not quickness. It is similar to the nature spell haste. It makes units able to run twice the distance in battle, but they still have one attack per round and do not gain +3 attack/defense.

The way I see damage is that you still have axe wielding fir bolgs. They're your go to troops for melee damage.

[llamabeast]

I think I did well with an S9E9 bless and pretty much exclusively used the sacreds for expansion. It worked quite well. Unfortunately I'd completely failed to make a midgame plan so I kind of got stuck then.

[Festin]

As I remember axe fir bolgs are pretty bad compared to the spear ones.

[iRFNA]

And are the only 18 damage troops besides the capital sacreds. Your next best is 15 damage sidhe. The axe doesn't have the best effect on attack and defense, but sometimes you need to pierce protection more than anything.

[Torgon]

Quickening song is not quickness. It is similar to the nature spell haste. It makes units able to run twice the distance in battle, but they still have one attack per round and do not gain +3 attack/defense.

The way I see damage is that you still have axe wielding fir bolgs. They're your go to troops for melee damage.

It appears you're right. Makes this spell much less useful. Oh well.

[iRFNA]

Quickness would be absurdly overpowered.

[Torgon]

Are wyverns any good?

[Corinthian]

No, not really. Even with dragon master they are usually only barely worth it. And EDM ads so many other good things you can spend air gems on that summoning them probably always a bad idea unless you are desperate.

[Kobal2]

I'm thinking one glaring problem TNN has (even compared with Eriu) is that they really lack means to deal with SCs, which is a very bad thing in the EA when half the nations can recruit one of those per turn on top of their own batch of EDM summons/elemental royalty/demons/tarts.

A simple const 0 ring nixes your big early evocations, and while they can trapeze around the sidhe lords seem quite lacking in the anti-SC role: no feet slot means no quickness/flight turn 0, bad buffing paths to face people with magic weapons and regen doesn't do much on a 15 hp guy.
Without S mages nor D mages to summon spectres, you're also going to be hurting for luck/antimagic ammis on the off chance you can't find a lizard province.

Ultimately I reckon everything TNN does, on paper Fomoria can do it just as well while having more options beyond that.

[Torgon]

Agree with the problems with lack of SC counters. I'm looking for ideas. What generally works well for other nations without their own SC chassis?

One solution might be using Sidhe champions instead of the lords as anit-SC squads. Significantly cheaper with similar stats, main diff is one less air and 17 def vs. 20. Give a few of them hero's blades (12 AP damage + additional to larger creatures). Script flight, attack large creatures. A squad of them coming in on the middle of a buff cycle seems like it would work nicely. 4 cost the same amount as a Niefel jarl, and they're recruit anywhere, plus 10E gems a piece for the blades, plus any other trinkets you want to throw on them (amulets of luck might work nicely, if you can forge them. Obviously another problem, but you could just outfit your pretender to summon Spectres to get a little astral if you can't find lizards). They have glamour so it has to be popped first, gives them a couple of rounds to wail away. Would have to test it out but seems like a possible strategy. As long as you don't lose more than 4 in each SC exchange you're coming out ahead in terms of gold and gems. Not sure if this would work, any thoughts?

Not really sure where the comparison to Fomoria comes from, seems like there are too many differences to name. No recruit anywhere glamour mages and commanders, only recruit anywhere mage is the druid with only A1 + random. No recruit anywhere stealth troops. No access to earth or nature for big troop buffs. Etc. Fomoria is a giant nation that relies on capital only kings and sorceresses. I agree they may be an overall stronger nation than TNN, but hardly a good comparison when trying to think about a strategy.

Seems the better comparisons would be Vanhiem or Hellheim, with either blood or death respectively, and access to heavy earth at their capitals. How do they deal with SC's?

[Torgon]

Another possibility is vine bow or vine whip on one commander plus the hero's blades on a few others. Lock the big guy down and then chop away.

[Baalz]

Caveate: I haven't played Tir yet. That said, I can offer some suggestions as to some specific questions raised. Tir, like Eriu seems likely to do very well with a heavy forging focus. Sidhe raiders obviously are exactly the same, but cheap items can go a long way towards overcoming some of the other weaknesses.

A couple indie commanders with ice pebble staffs will go a very long way towards compensating for your low damage output and will quite vex the guy who managed lightning resistant troops. Generally though lightning casters + soothing storm will bring all the damage you need.

Sidhe champions have an 18 precision once you cast eagle eyes. Bows of war and piercers can be pretty nasty when you field double digits of them, particularly on stealthy guys.

Enemy SCs shouldn't be a problem. Anybody not lightning/frost immune is trivial to bring down, and hero blades are an obvious default answer to anybody that doesn't have a more specific weakness.

[thejeff]

All of that becomes harder without hammers.

Everyone else is hurt too, but if you're relying on items for almost everything you're much worse off. Taking a Forge lord helps, but is still only 1 item a turn.

[Baalz]

Well, as I posted elsewhere I don't think the hammer nerf is quite as crippling as everyone makes out. Take, for instance my suggestion to crank out piercers because that particularly makes the comparison easy with everything is in E gems. With a hammer you're saving 2 gems apiece - but you sank 11 or 15 gems into the hammer so you're not even breaking even until you've made 6 (or 8) of them. This is compounded by the fact that if you've got hammers available you're not just forging a single one so it's not unlikely that it's late game before hammers really pay off. True, they do pay off in a big way by end game when you're forging big things and can easily save 50 gems per turn, but that's not really where the sweet spot is for this sort of nation.

[Torgon]

All of that becomes harder without hammers.

Everyone else is hurt too, but if you're relying on items for almost everything you're much worse off. Taking a Forge lord helps, but is still only 1 item a turn.

But what nation isn't relying heavily on forging? The SC's still have to be kitted out.

What's more expensive? 6 guys with bows of war is 30 gems. 4 guys with hero's blades are 40 gems. How many gems is a fully equipped SC? Plus the guys with blades and bows are all stealthy and so are much more flexible in their deployment; you don't know where they are until they attack. Plus the non-summonable SCs are mainly capital only mages.

Once were talking about summonable guys TNN isn't doing too badly with Rocs, Asynjas, and Shishis. All lightning immune except the Asynja. But the asynja can travel with the remainder of your stealthy armies. Can also get treants or any of the other late game summons if you want to crank your pretender for them. But those three are the ones that obviously fit with what you might want to do with them.

Also is fairy court any good? Seems like she would also fit in with what we'd be trying to do with TNN. The fairy queen herself kinda sucks, not a bad mage but not powerful at all. What catches my eye are the sprites she can summon. 100 armor negating stun damage per shot. MR negates but if you've got a ton of these things (and you do since I think she can summon three each turn) then everyone on the battle field just falls asleep, including SC's. There only 2 hp but 19 defense so hitting the buggers before they get you is damn near impossible. Counter would seem to be AOE spells or big battlefield evocations, also only 9 moral so fear would also be useful to counter. But they're stealthy so once again, you never know where they are. Use a conventional army or SC to distract, make them prepare for a traditional fight or a SC fight, then knock out their force with just a horde of little fairies and some lightning spamming mages instead.

[Festin]

In practice, I think TNN suffers heavily without hammers. When hammers were in, you could take E on pretender (not a bad idea anyway for sacred thug nation, so no wasted points), and you had little use for E gems except for hammers. Without them, things like Vine Shields (which are key items for TNN) are suddenly very costly.

I think game experience with newest CBM so far supports my words: thugs have become rare.

Concerning the anti-SC options for TNN - how about airdropping a couple of Sidhe Lords dual-wielding Axes of Hate?

[Torgon]

What we really need to know too tell if this is a huge hit to thug nations is the average gem outlay per thug, the average gem outlay per sc, and the average ratio of thugs/SC fielded in any given game prior to the removal of hammers.

If gems/thug / gems/SC = thug/SC then removal of hammers should have relatively little effect. E.g. if people were putting 15 gems worth of stuff on thugs, 45 on SC, but the average ratio of thugs to SC was 3/1 then the cost in gems for both was unchanged. You raised the price of both equivalently. 1.33 * 45 and 1.33 * 45.

If gems/thug / gems/sc > thug/SC then removal of hammers did nerf thugs. E.g. people were putting 20 gems into each thug, 40 into each SC but ratio of thug/SC was still 3/1. This effectively increased the price of the thugs. 1.33 * 60 vs 1.33 * 40.

if gems/thug / gems/SC < thug/SC then removal of hammers hurt the SC nations. Opposite of above.

So the question I have for those more experienced, what were these ratios?

[Soyweiser]

So the question I have for those more experienced, what were these ratios?

Very hard to determine :D.

Don't think you can really put numbers to those values, they depend totally on situation and play style.

[Baalz]

In practice, I think TNN suffers heavily without hammers. When hammers were in, you could take E on pretender (not a bad idea anyway for sacred thug nation, so no wasted points), and you had little use for E gems except for hammers. Without them, things like Vine Shields (which are key items for TNN) are suddenly very costly.

I think game experience with newest CBM so far supports my words: thugs have become rare.

Concerning the anti-SC options for TNN - how about airdropping a couple of Sidhe Lords dual-wielding Axes of Hate?

Well I can't speak to general perception which does seem to lean towards what you describe, but from just looking at the numbers they don't seem to me to support that conclusion. As a rough estimate assume you forge enough hammers to outfit one thug per turn with equipment not more than 10 gems apiece. You're not breaking even on the hammers until you've got 6-7 thugs fielded, and not at a very noticeable detriment until you're close to double that number. I just don't see how modest amounts of thugs mid game are suddenly not cost efficient (in plenty of situations at least).

[Festin]

Well I can't speak to general perception which does seem to lean towards what you describe, but from just looking at the numbers they don't seem to me to support that conclusion. As a rough estimate assume you forge enough hammers to outfit one thug per turn with equipment not more than 10 gems apiece. You're not breaking even on the hammers until you've got 6-7 thugs fielded, and not at a very noticeable detriment until you're close to double that number. I just don't see how modest amounts of thugs mid game are suddenly not cost efficient (in plenty of situations at least).

Sure, we can spend E gems on hammers, or we can spend them directly on equipment. But does this calculation take into account the fact that different types of gems have different utility depending on exact circumstances? Let's consider TNN. It has limited access to E, so even without using pretender for site searching it can have some kind of E income. On the other hand, it has no access to F, except on a hero. If we are talking about thug gear, two best choices for spending E gems are obviously Fire Brands and Shields of Gleaming Gold. But both are F/E items, and thus very difficult to forge for TNN. The alternative is Frost Brand+Vine Shield combo, which is perfectly easy to forge, and they do not use E gems. So, shouldn't we spend E on hammers to forge W and N thug gear? After all, what else can we do with them (if our objective is mass thugs strategy), alchemize?

[Torgon]

So the question I have for those more experienced, what were these ratios?

Very hard to determine :D.

Don't think you can really put numbers to those values, they depend totally on situation and play style.

Oh, totally agree that it would be impossible to determine across the entire spectrum of all dominions players. But it gives a handy shorthand to compare to two individual strategies to see which one was more hurt by removing hammers..

All the discussion so far has talked about relative scarcity of gems, whether ultimately you're not hurt as much because you had to forge the hammer initially anyway, etc. However, all of these arguments apply to ANY strategy that employs any forging at all.

What removing hammers essentially did is raise the price in gems of any forging strategy by 33%. This is relative to all other currencies, e.g. gold, production turns, resources.

So for instance if one strategy required 1 forged gems/4 gold invested and another strategy required 1 forged gems/10 gold then the first strategy is much worse off than the the second after the removal of hammers. Similarly, strategy one required 1 forged gems/1 ritual gems and strategy two required 3 forged gems/ 2 ritual gems, in this case strategy two is worse off after removal of hammers.

To give a more specific example. Formoria was mentioned earlier. Formoria has the big kings that make pretty good SC. A strategy could easily be built around them. Each one costs 500 gold. Alternatively, TNN can build a strategy around Sidhe Lord, cost 280 gold. Assume that the strategy usually required the king to be outfitted with 45 gems. Assume the strategy for the Sidhe Lord required 15 gems worth of equipment. What happens without hammers? bump the price in gems of both strategies up by 33%. King was .09 gems/gold, sidhe was .05 gems to gold. Now king becomes .12 gems/gold and sidhe becomes .07 gems to gold. For any given 1000 gold investment the formorians now have to spend 29 additional gems. TNN has to spend 17 additional gems. Assuming the same opportunity cost of gems for other purposes(rituals, spells), in this example the Sidhe are better off after the removal of hammers. Change those initial ratios and you get a different answer.

My point is that to create a good argument about whether a strategy is worse or better off after the removal you have to look at an analysis like this. Just talking about when the hammers pay for themselves, or relative usefulness of a specific type of gem doesn't cut it. These problems are similar between strategies. What really changed is the amount of one resource that you have to invest in that strategy relative to other resources: gold, production turns, gems used in summoning, etc.

[13lackGu4rd]

Torgon, the problem with your example is that by the mid game gold stops becoming an issue for most nations, it comes down to fort turns instead. the more gold you have the more forts you can afford, but still you're technically not limited by gold but by forts. another problem is that Kings are capital only while Sidhe Lords aren't, and of course that Kings are much stronger than Sidhe Lords, being SCs as opposed to thugs and all that. so just comparing equal gold investments vs gem investments give a very inaccurate picture, if not false altogether.

[Kobal2]

Not really sure where the comparison to Fomoria comes from, seems like there are too many differences to name. No recruit anywhere glamour mages and commanders, only recruit anywhere mage is the druid with only A1 + random. No recruit anywhere stealth troops. No access to earth or nature for big troop buffs. Etc. Fomoria is a giant nation that relies on capital only kings and sorceresses. I agree they may be an overall stronger nation than TNN, but hardly a good comparison when trying to think about a strategy.

Seems the better comparisons would be Vanhiem or Hellheim, with either blood or death respectively, and access to heavy earth at their capitals. How do they deal with SC's?

It's not that far fetched a comparison.

- Firbolgs ? Firbolgs.

- Zappy storm ? Zappy storm.

- Fomoria has all the magic paths TNN has, and then some. High Air ? Check. High N ? Not really, but as a giant nation your god will most assuredly have at least 4N, which starts you on the nature path. Water ? Check. The only missing piece is Earth, which TNN probably needs to have on their gods too anyway. Oh, and the W/N combo, which is admittedly worthwhile in vanilla for clams, but more or less worthless in CBM.

- Stealth raiders ? Fomoria can do that just fine by focusing on their capital only units early on, or on Morrigans later. Of course, every time you recruit a stealth leader you're not recruiting an SC - but then TNN can *only* recruit stealth leaders. No SC option.

- Teleporting raiders: Fomorian kings say hi. Hell, with Soul Vortex they don't even need gear to wipe out PD.

- Fomorian druids have the same magic paths as Shidhe Champions; in fact they have better paths since they're not constrained to A1N1. Hell, they can even make better use of A1N1 than them since they have twice the hit points, thus can take advantage of Personal Regen (although in that case they admittedly need forged armour).

- Granted, most of them lack Glamour. Then again, since the nerf Glamour is crap that can be dealt with a dozen shortbows. Since EA is when huge packs of shortbows shine anyway... yes.

Oh, and they're also giants with Death magic and holy undead. I stand by my statement: anything TNN can do, Fomoria can do it and then some.

My point is that to create a good argument about whether a strategy is worse or better off after the removal you have to look at an analysis like this. Just talking about when the hammers pay for themselves, or relative usefulness of a specific type of gem doesn't cut it. These problems are similar between strategies. What really changed is the amount of one resource that you have to invest in that strategy relative to other resources: gold, production turns, gems used in summoning, etc.

My reasoning was far from that involved, but it led me to a simple deduction: SC races (like Fomoria) used to be more or less required to squeeze Earth and sleeping on their pretenders, so they'd be able to make hammers early enough for it to matter.
This, in turn, meant they had worse scales and worse end game options than other nations.
Remove hammers and a full-on bless or scales strat becomes not only viable but a no-brainer for them since there's no opportunity cost any more. Which ironically means that removing the forge whore item from the game makes forge whore nations *more* powerful than they ever were.

[PriestyMan]

i dont really see the point of all the crap you wrote. so formoria is better. that is 100% agreed and everyone knows it. the issue i think is that people want to know what to do with tnn, not what formoria can do better than them

[Kobal2]

Torgon's OP wondered why TNN didn't see much playtime. Detailing why they (relatively) suck didn't seem all that out of topic to me.

[Torgon]

@Kobal2 @ Priestlyman

I agree w/ Kobal. What you wrote is actually helpful. Part of the question was what to do with TNN, but also did want to know why no one used them. The stuff about fomoria is helpful.

@13lackgu4rd

Then I guess then my question comes down to forged gems/production turns if production turns is the other constraining resource. In my example I just used gold as a proxy for any constraining resource. Anything other 'resource' could also be used: gems used in summoning, production turns, etc.

what's always changing is the numerator in forged gems/'other resources used in strategy'. The strategy that has the lower initial ratio is less impacted by a % change to the numerator, all other things being equal.

[Torgon]

@13lackGu4rd

But why does it matter that one's a thug and ones a SC. Lets make it more abstract.

I have strategy A that i'm attempting to win with. It requires a certain amount of resource X and a certain amount of resource Y to be effective.
You have strategy B that you are attempting to win with. It also requires a certain amount of resource X and a certain amount of resource Y to be effective.

Resource X and Y can be anything you want them to be (Gems, gold, production turns, mage turns, widgets, etc. the example can also extend to three, four, any number of resources).

Okay, now something happens and suddenly resource X is much rarer (in the dominions example this is gems as a result of the removal of hammers). Who is better off and more likely to win? From the information already presented it is impossible to know. What you need to know is relative intensities of use of each of the resources in each strategy. And whether either one of those strategies was constrained by resource X and at what times those constraints occurred. If both strategies employed roughly equal ratios of resource X to resource Y then they are both going to be impacted equally. They're both less effective by whatever the decrease in X was. However, if the ratio in each strategy was different, or one strategy was constrained on X and the other wasn't, or one strategy was constrained by X early and the other by X late, then the change in the availability of X will have a more dramatic impact on one strategy than the other. However you need this information in order to make that determination.

Up until now the only arguments for each side that I've seen essentially boil down to: 1)Strategy A has to use more of resource x now 2)Because of this strategy A is less effective.

Of course strategy A is less effective. All of the strategies are less effective including strategy B. You just tightened a constraint on everyone. Tightening a constraint always leads to a lower optimal solution. What I have yet to see is a good argument for why the tightening of this constraint has a disparate impact on one strategy than on another. Why is the new optimal point for strategy A lower than the new optimal point for strategy B? They're both lower. The question is which one was lowered by a larger amount.

If gems were the constraining factor on the number of thugs you could crank out, then yes the removal of hammers would be a huge problem. If the constraining factor was production turns then not so much. Same thing with SC's, if constraining factor was production turns then increase in gem cost really doesn't matter. If the constraining factor was gems then it matters a great deal. If your were at times constrained by gem cost for for one, and at other times by gold, and at other times by production turns, then when that constraint from gems occurred is hugely important. If the constraint was early game before you have a lot of hammers, removal of hammers is immaterial. If it was after then removal becomes very important. I guess I just have yet to see an argument that really dives down into what ways gems were really constraining the optimal strategy and at what times. I've got limited experience with multi-player dominions as I stated before, so I have no good idea where those constraints were and how tight they were. Any analysis of the impact on strategy of a scarcer resource has to make those kind of arguments in order to be sound. That's essentially what I'm asking for.

[Festin]

Your theory is too crude. Just one example: if we again compare thugs and SCs, one of the main differences between them is that thugs are expendable, while SCs are not. So, you equip a thug, he fights in a couple of battles and gets killed. You hire another thug, equip him again, etc. A SC, on the other hand, is geared to be able to reliably survive most battles, so once you equip him you use him for a long time. Of course SCs also get killed, sometimes they stupidly die in their very first battle, but on average they are expected to last longer then thugs. Meaning you spend less gems on replacing lost equipment.

[Colonial]

Torgon, christ.

The minute you abstract anything you devorce it from gameplay. aspects such as hammer time or the effectiveness of scaling down kit (for example) are highly pertinant and don't fit into the theory of relative efficiency.

I'm playing a stratagy game, if I'd wanted to play an economics game I would have bought Master of Orion 3.

sorry for the random grief, but economics sometimes pisses me off.

------------------------

I reckon of someone had 100+ hours to put into the problem you could construct an optimal model of forging efficiency when compairing CBM to Stock. but trying to superimpose models of real world export production onto the issue isn't going to provide mathematically pure responses that put an end to the debate. I reckon a general understanding of the hammer change will be achieved much more realistically with a non-mathematical forum debate.

[Torgon]

@Festin

Thank you. This response is exactly what I'm looking for (theory is not to crude, trust me, optimization under constrained resources and uncertainty is essentially what I do for a living, and its a hell of a lot more complicated than what I laid out here).

But, as I said this is exactly what I'm looking for. SC use fewer gems because on average they survive longer. This is a good argument as to why thugs are worse off after the removal of hammers.

[Torgon]

@Colonial

Not really trying for an economics debate, and not asking for someone to lay out a huge spreadsheet of the answers. Just want arguments that compare the relative impacts of a change rather than the absolute impacts on any one strategy. Festin just provided one good argument about relative changes. Thats all i'm really looking for.

Sometimes I just have a tendency to ramble about relative efficiency, constrained optimization, etc. If it happens again let me know.

But anyway, this thread kind of got away from its intended purpose and veared off into a discussion of hammers. Original question still stands, what do you do with Tir Na n'Og? Without hammers? Are they broken beyond repair?

[kianduatha]

Remember also when comparing TNN and Fomoria without hammers that CBM also gave TNN some nice bonuses like lower encumbrance on all their Sidhe troops/commanders and Awe on the Ri, where Fomoria got higher base encumbrance on their Giants, as well as potent anti-SC measures such as Song of Power and battlefield enchantments that limit the usefulness of ranged weapons. I think there's no room to claim that Fomoria is categorically superior without actually testing out what TNN has these days.

Actually looking back you claim that CBM hasn't really boosted TNN in any appreciable way. You may wish to look again.

[13lackGu4rd]

Torgon, as Festin started to mention, the difference is huge. thugs and SCs just don't use the same mechanics to win, so comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges and asking whether it's still worth it to buy apples if oranges are 25% cheaper than they used to be.

now, seeing that you want more concrete examples than apples vs oranges than I'll give you some actual dominions reasoning. thugs are generally used as raiders, which means that they need to be able to defeat PD(and not even a lot of it), the key is maneuverability so they can be where you need them and than move out to other places. therefore thugs don't need a lot of equipment, a brand+shield is usually more than enough, however these 2 items are crucial in most scenarios. SCs on the other hand are not simply "teleporting raiders", that's what thugs are(in TNN's case, cloud trapezing). SCs are meant to take on large armies with some magic support as well. how you build SCs is very situation dependent, to what you have, what your opponent has, what counters he has available, what he is fielding, etc. so their cost varies greatly.

now, the other side of this equation is the numbers game. for a mass thug strategy to be effective(TNN, Eriu, Van if you take that road, etc) you need critical mass otherwise their impact will be minimal and your strategy will fail. what critical mass is depends on your opponent, a good rule of thumb is to be able to take out all of your opponent's undefended(as in PD only, a few stragglers are allowed, but nothing heavier) provinces while your main army(or armies) attack his defended areas and forts. thugs alone won't win you any wars, you still need your armies for heavy lifting.

SCs on the other hand can be used both as "raiders" though that's usually a waste unless you're swimming in SCs(late game tart whoring for example) as well as heavy lifters. SCs should be able to deal with the enemy's large armies and storm some of his forts(if not all of them, again depends on the circumstances). even a single SC can do wonders if equipped properly, though obviously the more the better(as it usually is).

so back to your TNN vs Fomoria example. your main missing component is critical mass. there are other factors too, some that I've mentioned(needing other components or can go solo) and others that I haven't. once you include those the scales almost immediately tip to Fomoria's favor. hence why thug nations have been hurt the most with the hammer nerf, and also why QM has worked hard on buffing them.

[Festin]

Adding a bit to my previous comment, there is one other thing to be said in favour of using hammers: hammers are a safe investment, while thug gear isn't. So, it's not like "you have 3 thugs or you have a hammer and 2 thugs and that's it". In the first case, when thugs die, you lose expensive items, your entire investment. In the second case, you lose cheaper items, and your hammer is still safe in your capital, to be used for the rest of the game.

[iRFNA]

I wonder how long it will be before there can be strategy discussions that don't turn into rants about omghammers...

[Festin]

I wonder how long it will be before there can be strategy discussions that don't turn into rants about omghammers...

Maybe as soon as this needless change is reverted, either in the main mod or in a usable custom version.

[iRFNA]

It's absurdly easy to do yourself. Just do it already and stop whining.

Find this:
#selectitem "Dwarven Hammer"
#constlevel 8
#end

And remove it.

And let people discuss the TNN strategy with all of its changes without the unending complaints.

[Festin]

It is not easy, considering that a lot of other changes were already made to counterbalance the removal of hammers, so anyone who tries to make a custom version of CBM will have to decide which parts to remove and which to leave.

And I am sure that the discussion of strategy will proceed perfectly fine as soon as you stop derailing the thread with your meaningless and aggressive remarks. Thank you in advance.

[Colonial]

It's absurdly easy to do yourself. Just do it already and stop whining.

Thats a bit daft from the perspective of a bunch of MP players. Don't rightly care if I get hammers or not SP :(.


@ Torgon:

I reckon the fact that they pay clever people full time to modal one system would be evedance of how unrealistic it would be to accurately modal another system without in entire corporate R&D department or think tank at out disposal :P

I have a personal pet pieve with people imposing economic/statistical models where they don't fit. I studied history at univerisy and that discipline is full of instances of people trying to study an economic history without re-evaluating econ's basic assumptions. so they end up analysing renaissance trade, for example, while assuming shipping costs are zero (which works in a modern, oil-feuled, context). But of course in reality renaissance shipping costs were on the order of 350% :(.

[llamabeast]

I was planning on making a "CBM 1.83: Hammer Edition" once CBM 1.83 comes out. It will just put the hammers back and undo a small number of the item cheapenings. That's not because I disagree with the hammer change (I like it), but because it seems to me like a lot of people want it. However anyone could do it and I'd strongly encourage someone else to do it if they fancy! It's only a few minutes' work.

[Torgon]

It's absurdly easy to do yourself. Just do it already and stop whining.

Thats a bit daft from the perspective of a bunch of MP players. Don't rightly care if I get hammers or not SP :(.


@ Torgon:

I reckon the fact that they pay clever people full time to modal one system would be evedance of how unrealistic it would be to accurately modal another system without in entire corporate R&D department or think tank at out disposal :P

I have a personal pet pieve with people imposing economic/statistical models where they don't fit. I studied history at univerisy and that discipline is full of instances of people trying to study an economic history without re-evaluating econ's basic assumptions. so they end up analysing renaissance trade, for example, while assuming shipping costs are zero (which works in a modern, oil-feuled, context). But of course in reality renaissance shipping costs were on the order of 350% :(.

Haha... Totally agree. A huge number of economists are idiots. I guess I got way too mathy in trying to explain what I was asking for. What I really wanted was realtive comparisons rather than absolute comparisons. The last few posts have provided that. Now I'm happy. Didn't really want or need a mathematical disseration, just used a mathematical dissertation to try to explain why simply giving an absolute statement "thugs are worse off after hammers" doesn't really help. A relative statement "Thugs are much worse off than SCs, and here is why: thugs require a massing strategy and are thus more gem/forging intensive than SCs" is helpful.

[Fantomen]

The simple truth is that we don't know yet, there hasn't been enough games after hammer removal to draw conclusions.

For the purpose of low PD clearing, Tir's thugs can be used naked and in pairs instead of kitted, and so can several other nations recruitable thugs. I suppose we'll see more of this, with players only kitting thugs chosen for special battles.

Add to that the removal/heavy nerf of several classic lategame options like Tartarians and gemgens(wish spam etc) which greatly increases the relative power of recruitable thugs and other midgame national strenghts.

[Jarkko]

Now the baobhan sidhe seems to be a strange beast. An expensive assassin with A2. If someone can figure out something else to do with her I'm all ears. Is she a money sink or would something interesting work?
I have recently fallen in love with the LA Man summon Bean Sidhe (this is a MP game using CBM1.82). Despite she being called Bean Sidhe she is actually closer to the Baobhan Sidhe (both have Stealth +45, both are assassins, etc).

There are a couple very big differences though. While all Baobhan Sidhe have Air 2, only 25% of the Bean Sidhe summons have. Then again, the Bean Sidhe summon is (in addition to what the Baobhan Sidhe is) ethereal, cold immune, poison immune, causes fear but is undead. The Bean Sidhe has Wail of Doom (pretty much useless, or at least I've found no use for it) while Baobhan Sidhe has the somewhat useful Life Drain.

Just for the record, I've used in a current ongoing MP game the Bean Sidhe summons both as thugs (practically as semi-SC's to be honest) and as assassins. Gotta love those chicks. I use the A2 versions as thugs/semi-SC's with Fire brand, Shield of Valour, Dragon Helmet, Copper Plate, Flying Boots, lucky ring (I know, I know, retardedly expensive as thugs, but as SC's not that hard; just have to be careful *what* to attack); they are thus immune to everything (Fire, Frost, Poison, Shock). They can Cloud Trapeze anywhere, or fly hidden 3 provinces per turn. In combat script Cast Mistform, Attack one turn, ShockwaveX3, Attack Rear (and *always* make sure you have at least one (I prefer two) S1 magister sneaking in the target province; it sort of lessens the risk of Mind hunts on the girlie when the hidden magister fries the brains of the mindhunters; I've a couple times risked moving a girlie where there was no magister protecting her, counting on the opponent being paranoid enough not to attempt Mind Hunts as that just results in burned brains). As she is sneaky, resistant to everything *and* protected by hidden astral magisters it is practically impossible to catch her, in combat she is immune to 80% of all missiles and glamour + ethereal makes her hard to hit in melee, and then they will just hit the mistform.

Anyway, lets look at the Baobhan Sidhe. You can't make her immune to everything like a Bean Sidhe summon. You can't protect her with cheap sneaking astral mages. She doesn't have fear. She isn't ethereal. I think we can forget about using her as a thug against anything else but weak PD.

What about using her as a pro-assassin? The weaknes of the Bean Sidhe summon is that she is undead, so there are many ways she could be killed before cutting through the body guards. Dust to dust, Banishment, plus all the other usual anti-assassin tools. The Baobhan Sidhe doesn't suffer those (except the normal ones, obviously).

So, what gear to give a Baobhan Sidhe assassin (looking this from CBM 1.84 perspective, notice that I am theorising ie not been tried in action)? I wouldn't actually give much. Copper Plate would be cool (not only does it give SR100, but it also zaps the first one hitting the wearer, which is pretty cool for an assassin) and is easy and cheap for TNN to craft. A shield maybe, perhaps a shield of valor (again, easy for TNN to craft, but a bit expensive at 10 air gems) or perhaps something simple as a black steek tower shield (makes her practically immune to missiles). A weapon shouldn't be needed as she has Lifedrain anyway. Script Mistform, Flight, AttackX1, ShockwaveX2, Attack Rear.

One could send her to action via Cloud Trapeze (possibly hitting somewhere where other TNN thugs hit the same round too), and then sneak in to where ever she is going to assassinate enemies. Or directly cloud trapeze to an enemy fort, a couple Ri's and a Baobhan will be able to kill most PD protecting forts (all PD in the game is toast, unless they have patrolling mages boosting the PD), and after that the girlie (or girlies, why not send in more than one if you are going to assassinate commanders anyway?) could start harvesting enemy commanders inside the walls. With the Stealth +45 it is *very* hard to find the Baobhan, unless there are hundreds and hundreds of patrollers in the province (and then those patrollers aren't fighting at the front).