Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.

[Stryke11]

It's too bad it needs to be like that, that you have to choose a specific race and specific magic path to be able to compete against another specific race - at the expense of sucking against every other race. Don't get me wrong, I like the paper/rock/scissors mentality, but it should be within each race and not between them. For example in most RTS' each race is different and has a strength, but by utilyzing that strength (and tactics, which frankly, uber blessed EA Heims don't even need to think about) they have the potential to beat any other race. You won't hear a Starcraft player saying "oh, they're Zerg? Well, I guess that means I have to be Protoss because Terrans don't have a chance against Zerg."

Ideally, each race should have something that makes them competitive no matter what period in the game and no matter who they are up against.

[Foodstamp]

Stryke11 I agree,

I think maybe some of the drastic changes in the game were not tested enough when going from Dominions 2 to Dominions 3. The two changes that I think have had a huge impact on this situation are the double income changes and the sleeping/imprisoned pretenders freeing up points.

That being said, TBS games have always been insanely hard to balance. The reason why is because not every side has access to the same units, because that would make the game boring. Alot of RTS games solve this by giving a nation 1 unique unit or a very tiny boost in one area (Age of Empire series).

But in TBS games, we demand variety! We want one nation to be different than the next, and this leads to exploitably powerful strategies. Then heap on the two drastic changes mentioned, and the game gets thrown totally out of wack. In the dominions 3 life span, we will probably see other FOTM strategies that may even make the heim thing pale in comparison, but that is the nature of these types of games.

[dirtywick]

Heh, I don't really know what they were thinking with Helheim at a glance. Give everyone glamour and make them cheap and good? I mean, they've got some oddball path combos on some of the mages, but they're hardly useless with access to both death (good enough to forge boosters too) and blood (Storm Demons, Devils, and Demon Knights are realistic and empowering them to do that isn't a big deal as they won't die of old age). I guess I'm not seeing what their downside is for having such strong national troops. Definately one of the stronger nations.

[curtadams]

I think the Vanheim set always had really strong national units. It's just that in Dom2 supercombatants and mage armies were so dominant it didn't much matter. Now that magic's been seriously toned down 20 defense units which usually ignore the first hit or two due to glamour are just killer.

[Ironhawk]

Foodstamp said:
I think maybe some of the drastic changes in the game were not tested enough when going from Dominions 2 to Dominions 3. The two changes that I think have had a huge impact on this situation are the double income changes and the sleeping/imprisoned pretenders freeing up points.

Ummm... Actually we tested it fine. The first words out of my mouth when I saw the Imprisoned option in the beta were: "Blesses will be insanely powerful. Who cares if your pretender is imprisoned?? Your troops will be unstoppable! He could never arrive, for all they would care."

But, as with many things that I, and other beta testers brought up, it was ignored. The fact is simply this, guys: The Dominions devs just dont play MP enough. They dont understand imbalance like a MP-player understands it. For goodness sake they didnt even know what "skelly-spam" was until I knocked them over the head with it.

It is up to the modders to balance Dom3 for MP.

[WSzaboPeter]

Nice builds. I may add, that pushing your heat dominion in Niefelheim's lands might be a bit difficult. Niefelheim's cold dominion expands BEYOND the dominion of the pretender God (icy winds, see manual 114), and chanses are that Van/Helm/Nief-elheim will have huge dominion, since they need it to recruit sacred troops as early and as much as they can.
I think Caelum's evocation based strategy might work very well.

[Foodstamp]

WSzaboPeter is right, forgot about the cold spread of Neifelheim. I wonder how that affects a very strong hot dominion though. Would it even the temperatures out to a no heat/cold scale, or does it affect the enemy dominions without bias, changing them all to extreme cold scales?

[alexti]

Stryke11 said:
It's too bad it needs to be like that, that you have to choose a specific race and specific magic path to be able to compete against another specific race - at the expense of sucking against every other race. Don't get me wrong, I like the paper/rock/scissors mentality, but it should be within each race and not between them.

I think you're overemphasizing here. Really, there're only couple of nations that are out of balance due to balance strategies (and I don't think Niefelheim is one of them). With Helheim's loss of sacred at any fort it's probably not overpowered on large maps either. Other than those few nations the balance is pretty good. Even Helheim on small map is not a guaranteed win. And specially crafted anti-Helheim Caelum is not hopeless against other nations. You still have good scales, you can field a lot of regular troops, you have access to all magic paths through your pretender and after branching out into other schools of magic you can make your mages useful in the battle vs other nations too.

[Graeme Dice]

Stryke11 said:
It's too bad it needs to be like that, that you have to choose a specific race and specific magic path to be able to compete against another specific race - at the expense of sucking against every other race.

None of the pretenders described so far could be honestly said to "suck" against every other race. If they can deal with F9W9 Helhirdings in the early game without magical support, then they are also likely to be able to deal with just about anything that can get thrown at them.

[Shovah32]

You could also fight fire with fire and go with a mictlan bless.

F9W9B4 imprisoned Moloch
Order 2
Sloth 3
Heat 3
Death 2
Misforune 2
Drain 2
Dominion 10

You have -6% income in provinces with your dominion but you have cheap, massable, quickened sacreds with +2 strength and flaming weapons. You also have a very mean SC (amazing attack and defense, can cast quickness and fireshield_ once your god is awakened and equiped. Jaguars(high strength, big sword) could swarm giants and either them or eagles (transforms on death vrs multiple attacks and flying) could probably (for their cost) outnumber and slaughter the glamour units. Remember that even your most expensive sacred costs less than most of their troops and that you can get 5 eagle warriors per helhirdling.

Also, prophetising your starting warlord will give a very thug capable commander (in lvl 1 friendly dominion he has 25 health, 21 prot, 20 strength, 22 attack and 13 defence with his basic equipment)