Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[chrispedersen]

I couldn't agree more max.

People widely consider slingers worthless, and airblesses as well. Vanheim's strength is its glamour ability

Slingers are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get rid of that. Which is why I believe that air blesses, situationally, rock.

Especially since they are effective with a partial bless.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.

But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.

I have no trouble with the ratings in general. After all, saying that such a race rates low isnt necessarily wrong. If most people playing that nation are likely to come out low then its a truthful statement. Im just glad that it can be balanced with a difficulty of learning rating.

[quantum_mechani]

Gandalf Parker said:
Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops.

This comes off as a little derogatory towards people where prefer smaller and quicker games. Which is aside from the fact that almost any competent blitz player will tell you that relying on masses of armored troops is one of the classic missteps of people new to multiplayer.

[Gandalf Parker]

I suppose it does abit. I probably should be more lenient. After all, blitz games naturally tend to be the most numerous games so blitz opinions should probably carry the weight of a vocal majority. As long as it doesnt come across as the only answer.

[quantum_mechani]

I don't think they are the most numerous games, SP games are. And certainly not even close to a majority of players. I would roughly guess only about about 10-20% of the total number of MP players play blitz games.

I'm also not sure there is a dichotomy between people who are good at blitzes and those good at long term games- almost everyone I can think of who plays blitz games plays other dominions multiplayer games as well.

[JimMorrison]

Well there again you'll find an interesting dynamic though. Blitzes will rely more on early game strength. Smaller maps with less than 15 provinces per player and less than 10 players will shift more towards mid game strength being of primary importance in victory. While finally, larger and longer games is where the late game strength will more often be the deciding factor. (though any game that is mid-late game focused will still be affected by the earlier stages of course, just that late game strength is meaningless in a blitz game)

So theoretically, if there were an enormous amount of ratings submitted, MP Ease of Play would be skewed slightly towards early game strength, where a nation whose strength progression went 5-3-3 would tend be consider better for MP success than a nation who played as 3-3-5. But mainly because we're not differentiating between lengths of games, I thought rating in 5 different categories was a good compromise between detail of the data, and user friendliness of the chart.

[Twan]

Gandalf Parker said:
I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.

But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.

I think you should give notes, if you think some nations are over or undervalued in this thread, as the goal is to take into account as many players opinions possible before giving a final note.

Anyway I also think according to your post that you'd value too much some situationnal abilities or ignore their drawbacks.

Sneaking is a good example. With stealth armies you lose one turn or more before the moment you effectively take an ennemy province. It's not a bad skill, but a secondary one, if you use stealth with all yours armies you'll just be beaten by nations able to do normal moves and take your provinces (or re-take in one turn the provinces you reached in 2 or 3 with your stealth forces). It has nothing to do with blitzes, it's even more true for big games with good number of provinces, where economy matters. Having stealthy units may worth +0,5 point for midgame note, as having a sneaky raiding potential with nationals is good, but doesn't worth one / five by itself (except if you have really good high stealth thugs or sacreds, probably with glamour).

Flight is different, as it allows to strike every turn, and behind ennemy lines it's a real advantage. But the quality of flyers is often problematic to the point flyers nations often prefer to use them only as support for their non flying troops. I probably value caelian fly one point, but caelum also lose one for the global quality of troops (out of mammoths justifying a good early game note).

Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think (at least in my notes ; many nations having 4 or 5 in EG would desserve a 2 or 3 without bless). Some other nations may succeed with a bless but it hasn't to be valued as what they can do with an awake pretender or good scales is about the same (ie : I assume that LA Atlantis will have an awake pretender + a simple bless, or an inferior/non-awake pretender + a strong bless, or good scales instead of a bless allowing to recruit more ice armor troops, in the three cases the nation desserve about the same good early note).

[JimMorrison]

Twan said:
Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think (at least in my notes ; many nations having 4 or 5 in EG would desserve a 2 or 3 without bless). Some other nations may succeed with a bless but it hasn't to be valued as what they can do with an awake pretender or good scales is about the same (ie : I assume that LA Atlantis will have an awake pretender + a simple bless, or an inferior/non-awake pretender + a strong bless, or good scales instead of a bless allowing to recruit more ice armor troops, in the three cases the nation desserve about the same good early note).

Absolutely! That's exactly what I was trying to say. Rate them according to what you can expect them to have, which includes what YOU give them. If your whole strategy is banking on finding a territory you can recruit Cavemen (RANDOM example! ), then your rating of 5 can't account for how uncommon it is to fulfill your expectations. >.>

Though I find particularly interesting the few nations that can be played as peak competitors either with a strong dual bless, or without a major bless at all, like Hinnom. But that goes more to boosting Ease of Play, than the actual strength rating.

[fantasma]

Regarding Marverni against small elite armies:

Marverni has - besides slingers - cheap javelin throwers. There is the spell farstrike at zero research for druids and early thaumaturgy research has good anti elite spells, I think.

The best bet Marverni has is to come out with fast expansion and lots of gold and diplomacy to demonstrate that you will make the attacker pay hard for an early attack. If you have to dedicate mages to counter rushes you have partly lost already, but the attacker will not get far either.

I would rate Marverni as 3 4 4 but very difficult to learn.
What you field with what orders depends so much on the opposition. You have to learn communions to be effective. You need to research extremely fast, building lots of forts.
It's endgame really depends on what you do about SCs. Your only thug is the golem.

[Fal]

Having played Tir na n'Og in several MP games...

Early Game Strength 3 (poor infantry selection, no calvary, poor ranged troops, taking SC pretender is a bad idea)
Mid Game Strength 5 (Ri, Rain of stone + Fog warrior, many powerful battlefield spells)
Late Game Strength 2 (lack of powerful summons due to early focus on battlefield magic, lack of astral and death)
Ease of Learning (SP) 3 (not that difficult to learn, but takes skills to learn it right)
Ease of Use (MP) 2 (I find it hard to use this nation in MP, even harder to win with it).