Why no love for Caelum?

[Kel]

until turn 20-30 you have a very hard time to defend against a good caelum player i think .

earlygame some caelum fliers can kill almost every sc pretender who needs to buff first and has little protection

they can produce the most mages and everywhere .
earlygame the battle lightning spells like lightning / orbligthning are very brutal too because most nations can't protect their troops in this stage via lightning .

then just switch to stormbinders described battle tactic .
even for a seraph with 2a the false horror causes only about 9 fatigue( when i understand the sytem right perhaps a bit more or less) so he can masssummon horrorhordes .

20 mages doing this is would be 40 horrors each combat round and as caelum 20 mages are hard to get .

i think the main problem is that no other nation can earlygame attack 5-10 provinces in 1 turn with stormbinders described methods .

I have little opinion on whether Caelum is over-powered or not (or at least over-powered enough to warrant a nerf).

However, I would like to point out that everyone seems to be talking about using false horror and orb lightning in the early game but these aren't level 1-3 spells. Orb lightning is what, level 5 in evo and false horror is alt-6, iirc ?

Yes, you can get to one of these levels fairly quickly but if we are still talking about early game, we are only talking about a fairly narrow time frame, after they have researched the spells but before it becomes mid game (the definition of mid game probably varies, anyway).

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think they are strong at that certain point in the game but you have to look at the whole game to determine balance, most races are stronger at certain points in the game. Again, I am not saying that they are or are not over-powered, I am just saying that being strong for a 10-15 turn timeframe is not, in and of itself, over-powering.

To compare them to Ermor, in terms of there ability to conquer indies, isn't fair as Ermor is much more effective at bulldozing indies in *all* of the early game, which is far more important, than just the latter portion of the early game.

- Kel

[Boron]

@ kel i said that earlygame either horrors or lighning / orb lightning .

lightning is only evo 2 so researching lighning against knights and the like and then alteration 6 doesn't take too long especially since the caelum mages are so cheap and you can build soon 2 / turn with your first castle/lab and take magic 3 scale easy (cold 3 pays that e.g. )

i doubt that ermor is better earlygame they have to decide whether to research or to expand .
and more important :
ermor can't fly and even earlygame has a hard time to overwhelm enemies with good priests , d1 mages ( dust to dust ) .

i think no other race can attack out of the sudden lots of provinces like caelum with good chances to succeed like caelum early-midgame .

caelum would win against ermor most likely too easy .
stealthpreach seraphines and the ermorian hordes get killed easy by the lighningspells etc.
the archers will kill lots of ermorian undeads quick too .

kel could you please share why you think ermor is perhaps overpowered . i personally find them weak though i like them .
furthermore i think lots of ermor is overpowered has to do with 2 reasons :
pre 2.12 : vq for ermor
norfleet often played ermor

[Boron]

hm perhaps a bit of fear for caelum and ermor comes really because norfleet played these 2 races very often right ?

[Kel]

lightning is only evo 2 so researching lighning against knights and the like and then alteration 6 doesn't take too long

You are entirely missing my point. I said, myself, it doesn't take that long. I also said that nonetheless it is a portion of the early game in which they are not 'over-powered' by your definition (early expansion). Thus, they are only powerful, in the way you describe, in the latter part of the early game. That doesn't seem so bad to me.

As for using lightning early on, are you really saying that in the first 10 turns, you are expanding faster than other nations by using lightning scripted seraphs ? Pfft, and you are still getting to level 6 research fast, too ?

kel could you please share why you think ermor is perhaps overpowered . i personally find them weak though i like them

I didn't say they were. I said they were good at early expansion against indies. I don't think that early expansion against indies is the only factor to consider in determining whether a nation is over-powered. In fact, that was the whole point of my post

And all this stuff about Norfleet and what he played is ridiculous. I only played with Norfleet a couple times, a long time ago, let's not use him as a basis for every single discussion of balance, please (and this is directed at everyone, not you).

- Kel

[Boron]

you missed my points too kel .

first with norfleet i said too that lots of fear for ermor / caelum may come because he played them a lot .

i never said that you use lighning / orb lightning / lesser horrors for early game indy expansion .
but you can research this in the first 10-20 turns easy and then overwhelm 1-2 of your neighbors with that because they have really problems to defend against that .

and earlygame you can expand good with e.g. archers + mammoths or mammoths + the wingless .

i agreed with stormbinder that they are most likely the scariest early-midgame opponent .
furthermore they are quick at expansion too with their mammoths etc. but there might be other nations even a bit more quick .
but they really shine at crushing their first opponents and then with the extra resources + clamhoarding can become the strongest fraction lategame too .

[Kel]

you missed my points too kel .

Well, actually, no, I didn't. I may not have gone in depth but I clearly addressed them:

Boron:
first with norfleet i said too that lots of fear for ermor / caelum may come because he played them a lot .

Kel:
And all this stuff about Norfleet and what he played is ridiculous.

Kel:
let's not use him as a basis for every single discussion of balance, please

Boron:
@ kel i said that earlygame either horrors or lighning / orb lightning .

lightning is only evo 2 so researching lighning against knights and the like and then alteration 6 doesn't take too long especially since the caelum mages are so cheap and you can build soon 2 / turn with your first castle/lab and take magic 3 scale easy (cold 3 pays that e.g. )

Boron:
i never said that you use lighning / orb lightning / lesser horrors for early game indy expansion .

I am sorry if I misunderstood. I guess you could have been speaking about knights from nations. It seemed implied to me that you were talking about indie expansion for at least part of it. Especially since this whole conversation has been about the early game and a big portion of the early game is expansion against indies, usually. Are you saying that on turn 5, you are attacking other players with lightning scripted seraphs ? If your response is that no, not that early in the game, that comes later...than again, they are useful not in the whole early game but only part of it...which, again, was the point I was trying to make.

Boron:
but they really shine at crushing their first opponents and then with the extra resources + clamhoarding can become the strongest fraction lategame too .

We agreed that they are strong for a limited period of time during the latter part of the early game and if that is when they have their first opponents, they are at their peak. My point, again, was that being the most powerful nation, for a limited portion of the game, does not, in and of itself, make them over-powered.

As far as their late game potential, this wasn't a previous point that you made in the post I responded to, are you now contending that they are generally stronger than, say, arco, late game, due to resources and clamhoarding ?

- Kel