Most powerful nation

[Sombre]

I guess I could say,

Only an idiot would think demons aren't immune to disease.

Only a fool would claim that without a recruitable H3 priest you can't bless armies.

Only an idiot would claim mass lvl1 priests are an effective counter to tough, sacred demons (who probably have nature bless).

... but since being a complete dick on this forum holds no appeal, I won't.

[Frostmourne27]

Sombre said:
I guess I could say,
...
Only an idiot would claim mass lvl1 priests are an effective counter to tough, sacred demons (who probably have nature bless).
...

I haven't played Lanka extensively, but in my (SP) experiance, this could be a major issue. A province with an indie priest will usually kill one or two sacreds. I could see major issues with seven or eight of them. Yes, a nature bless helps, but regardless, the banishments still make it easier to kill them off some other way. An astral bless would be of huge help, but I doubt many people would take much astral on a lankan pretender - its possible, but I don't think it's the best bet for Lanka. Twist fate just isn't great on high hp units.

[Sombre]

Frostmourne27 said:
I haven't played Lanka extensively, but in my (SP) experiance, this could be a major issue. A province with an indie priest will usually kill one or two sacreds. I could see major issues with seven or eight of them. Yes, a nature bless helps, but regardless, the banishments still make it easier to kill them off some other way. An astral bless would be of huge help, but I doubt many people would take much astral on a lankan pretender - its possible, but I don't think it's the best bet for Lanka. Twist fate just isn't great on high hp units.

If one 50 gold priest could banish 1 demon sacred per battle, it might be worth it as a counter. But the priest isn't useful against much else, where the Lankan sacred is useful in a lot of different situations. By building loads of priests looking to counter the demons, you'd basically be weakening yourself against all other non undead non demon strats. Let's say the Lankan player just switches to Kala sacreds - they aren't that much worse. Priests are now pretty useless.

That's assuming H1 priests can actually do that and are a legit counter to lankan demons, which in my opinion they aren't. I've never seen banishment from H1s do more than make nature blessed lankan sacreds go berserk. I'd guess enough of them could kill quite a few sacreds, but you can't mass as many priests as they have sacreds and if you did, you'd have invested lots of resources in an easy to dodge counter.

[KissBlade]

My votes for Lanka for EA, Ermor for MA, Ryleh for LA. This is assuming that we aren't claiming as a disadvantage that those nations will usually draw attention from other players for being strong picks. That argument never made too much sense to me since such factors rarely influences diplomacy in my experience and usually these nations tend to get more ganged after they've swept away their share of nations due to their OPness.

[DrPraetorious]

This is a 4X game in a sense, so those who are strong expanders will tend to have stronger armies, more gems and more money means more magic in the late game, etc.

The sea nations are a special case, as their strength depends entirely on how much water people think is "fair". With that much variability between maps, I don't think you can give a general answer for the water nations.

I do not, myself, think that the strong nations are enough stronger than the regular nations that it is a problem - but I have an accepting attitude towards the fact that players are often eliminated by a strong bless rush.

The *weak* nations are something of a problem, however. I'd say that Marverni and the Ulms tend to be serious underperformers, although how much of this is reinforced by our expectations, I couldn't say.

EA - Niefelheim is nearly as fierce as Lanka out of the gate and in the midgame, and has much better magic diversity for late game craziness. Neither position has good researchers; I was terrified of Lanka when it first came out but, for the reasons that K specified, am less impressed by it now. Niefelheim is also my pick for overall strongest nation - if you started with equal-sized empires at turn 30 this would not be the case, but that's not how the game works.

MA - Ermor, as much as it pains me to agree with QM and KtB, MA Ermor is a great expander with a very strong (and diverse) military and great combat magic. What else could you ask for?

LA - This is harder, but I'd say LA Mictlan.
Most late age nations have weaker magic than other eras; LA Mictlan is basically an EA nation transplanted into the late era.
I don't want to rehash this old argument, but I am very much of the "LA Ermor is just okay" school of thought.

[Xietor]

Since we are all one big happy family, we should strive to refrain from personal attacks.

K is a nice enough guy, and he edited his posts. Hopefully there can be some more editing so the focus can be limited to in game discussions.

[Edratman]

Xietor said:
Since we are all one big happy family, we should strive to refrain from personal attacks.

K is a nice enough guy, and he edited his posts. Hopefully there can be some more editing so the focus can be limited to in game discussions.

Well said. It seems to me that there has been an increase in uncivil posts of late. I may be wrong, but that is the impression that I have.

This is the nicest, most polite and helpful forum that I have participated in. I think this is why a few rude and/or attack postings stand out like a sore thumb.

I silently applauded K for deleting his postings when I first saw them as deletions few days ago. We are all gamers here and should remember that. In the big picture, being the best Dom3 player in the world really isn't going to put a lot of groceries on the table.

[Chris_Byler]

DrPraetorious said:Niefelheim is also my pick for overall strongest nation - if you started with equal-sized empires at turn 30 this would not be the case, but that's not how the game works.

It is possible to start with more than one province - wouldn't this tend to tone down the "monster expander because it easily massacres indies with 0 losses" nations, as well as reduce the number of tedious (especially in MP where they aren't even fast) early turns where not much happens?

Personally, I'd like an option to give every nation X free research points (where the game creator can choose X on a slider) on the first turn, in addition to the option to start with multiple provinces; in combination these would not only tone down the explosive-expanders, but also significantly reduce the effectiveness of some cheesy rush tactics.

[Morkilus]

I've played on such "accelerated start" games, Chris. They are quick and pretty fun. We accelerated the research by giving everyone a dozen sages in their capitol.

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