Glamour post 3.08

Saint_Dude · #1 June 27th, 2007, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Velusion said:
You should always have a decent chance to at least fight off a rush nation.

That would be nice. But there are a number of nations (in addition to the vans) which can take out the majority of nations with an early bless rush irregardless of tactics.

Mictlan (all ages) - what do you do when you find out you have Mictlan as a neighbor on turn 5, and then are rushed by 50 dual blessed jags (and assorted chaff) on turn 7?

EA Niefelheim - what exactly is the early counter for blessed niefels? They eat vans for a light snack. Abysia can stand up to them, but who else?

MA Ermor - shadow vestals are nearly as cheap as jags and more resistant to counters such as massed archers. Depending on priests to save your bacon is laughable.

EA Pangaea and Lanka, and MA Marignon, Machaka and Jotunheim, - can also put together a pretty brutal rush. Better have your own bless strategy working or an awake SC pretender, or these nations will eat your lunch early on.

In short, nations with good sacreds and a good bless tend to eat their immediate neighbors in the early stages. The Vans are not unique.

vfb · #2 June 27th, 2007, 11:12 PM

Vanheim in LA (Midgard) also has got a nice turn 8, 200-unit skinshifter rush, as an alternative to a Van rush. Or so I hear.

Jazzepi · #3 June 27th, 2007, 11:35 PM

Quote:

vfb said:
Vanheim in LA (Midgard) also has got a nice turn 8, 200-unit skinshifter rush, as an alternative to a Van rush. Or so I hear.

Nobody suspects the werewolves.

Seriously though, I think the amazing scales + werewolves rush is a great tactic and I was very pleased that I randomly got Midgard so I could try it again. 40 werewolves can take on any neutral province, so you can expand like crazy, and you just roll over whomever doesn't have archers. Even with archers, you have early access to mist, yay!

Jazzepi

vfb · #4 June 28th, 2007, 12:30 AM

If you hadn't been swamped by a whole bunch of nations, you might even have had a chance to test that out! Midgard has loads of Air gems, so even an A2 Galderman can use an extra gem and cast it, right?

And does Storm stack with Mist?

Edit: Nothing to stop MA Van from doing the same with a Vanjarl. All the anti-glamor arrows discussion assumes you're not also casting Mist, right?

Jazzepi · #5 June 28th, 2007, 01:22 AM

Quote:

vfb said:
If you hadn't been swamped by a whole bunch of nations, you might even have had a chance to test that out! Midgard has loads of Air gems, so even an A2 Galderman can use an extra gem and cast it, right?

And does Storm stack with Mist?

Edit: Nothing to stop MA Van from doing the same with a Vanjarl. All the anti-glamor arrows discussion assumes you're not also casting Mist, right?

Yup, you're guaranteed the ability to cast mist with your Galdermans out of the box. Every one of them comes with A2. The spell requires A3, but you can gem your way to it. It costs 2 gems per casting, per big battle. But that's a pittance, really considering what you're doing to the opponents archers.

Honestly, I made three bad play errors, and then more that followed. One was not attacking you sooner if I was going to. Two was not attacking C'Tis instead of you and taking on that vassalage and tribute. Three was not attacking the one undefended province you had when I was sieging your capital, had I done that, when Mehir routed he would have died instead of retreating there.

I just checked. Experience +1 longbowmen with a base precision of 12, had 4 current precision with both storm and mist up. The same longbowmen had 7 precision with just mist up. This means they stack! My observation would say that each effect cuts precision by half, and together they do by a quarter.

Jazzepi

Saxon · #6 June 29th, 2007, 01:37 AM

Gandalf,

Most interesting to hear about the multiple long runs of the AI games. Given that no one else is reporting the issue, perhaps my sample size is too small or I am getting unusual results. In the game I was playing last night I was facing Arco in a mid to late game and their wide range of astral spells were adding up to make them much more challenging than the early game nation I know.

Valandil · #7 June 29th, 2007, 08:48 PM

I assume, with the massive number of test that have been run, that someone has tried an identical unit without glamour? Seems that that would quickly isolate the problem (that is, if we can agree on whether there IS a problem.)

Velusion · #8 June 28th, 2007, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Saint_Dude said:
That would be nice. But there are a number of nations (in addition to the vans) which can take out the majority of nations with an early bless rush irregardless of tactics.

....

In short, nations with good sacreds and a good bless tend to eat their immediate neighbors in the early stages. The Vans are not unique.

Sure you can design many nations to be a bless rush nation that will very likely be able to defeat another non-bless rush nations early - but thats like saying "you're probably going to die" compared to "you are going to die".

No other nation can turn out troops as powerful (aka invincible) in MA as Vanheim on turn 1. MA Ermor is very potent (probably too potent) - but at least they HAVE a weakness... even if it isn't easily exploitable. The fact that you can't even effectively counter-raid Vanheim is the last nail in the frustration/helpless coffin.

At least I feel like I have a small chance against Neifiel MA Ermor or Lanka - whereby I feel almost completely helpless against a W9/F9 MA Vanheim. (and I've been on the receiving end of all except Lanka)

The only other comparable frustration IMHO is the "elephants vs. all infantry non-bless rush nation" scenario... but that's a whole other problem - and limited to very specific nations vs. a limited few other nations.