Why no love for Caelum?

[Stormbinder]

That is the absolute first time I've heard of Caelum being the 'province defense killers'.

Everything happens for the first time Zen. Name any other national 100gp commander who can kill/rout any realistic number of PD without any items. Single Sauromancer with raise skeletons (or Dwarf with bladewind) would not even come close, despite costing 180gp. Unlike skeletons, flase horrors are flying, eterial, high defense, and they mostly rout, not kill. The effect is the same though.

Master's of the Way. Seithkona, Theurgs (At 150), Initiates of the Deep.

There are quite a few, they just don't happen to all fly as well. If you are so concerned with PD and their lack of fightability during any stage of the game, you are probably up the ganjies without a paddle.

[Boron]

hm i didn't play caelum much and have not an as long expierience in dominions as you zen and stormbinder but i think stormbinder is really right about caelum .

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

that all their troops have magic weapons is brutal.
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 .

they have airqueens later as Uberscs and they can clamhoard .

from cold 3 you get +120 extrapretenderpoints and you can take sloth 3 too with them .


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

this way they easy can encircle others and then when they rout all is wiped out .
scs who need to buff do bad against them .

so i think stormbinder and cohen are really true claiming caelum is too strong .

[Boron]

it forces you to madcastle . so when you would need a expensive 40 admin castle where you can only castle chokepoints / special provinces for resources you look really bad against caelum ( and to a lesser extent against abysia with flying demon armies ).

perhaps i am unexpierienced but name me any other race who can earlygame with only mages + national troops attack 5+ provinces at once and wipe out pd + a small garrison easy .

and lategame thnx to their clamhoard abilities + many points in pretenderdesign they can either make a clamhoard industry or get lots of blood too with the B1 high seraphs / sages .

so caelum is probably really too strong .

[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 .

[Cainehill]

hm i didn't play caelum much and have not an as long expierience in dominions as you zen and stormbinder but i think stormbinder is really right about caelum .

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

that all their troops have magic weapons is brutal.
earlygame some caelum fliers can kill almost every sc pretender who needs to buff first and has little protection .

[...]

so i think stormbinder and cohen are really true claiming caelum is too strong .

And I think that anytime that Cohen and Stormbinder agree on something, they're 100% wrong.

You talk about Caelum's magic weapons being a problem in the early game. How is that a problem? The only thing magic weapons do is allow a unit to hit ethereal units normally. How many ethereal independents are there? For that matter, how many ethereal pretenders? (Oh no! Caelum can give Vampire Queens a problem! Boo hoo!)

Okay - Caelum can give _some_ SCs and pretenders a hard time. But only if the SC / pretender is all on his lonesome, and even then most SCs or Pretenders will slaughter Caelum's flyers, causing them to rout PDQ. If they have troops with them, even quicker.

Similarly, Caelum's flyers aren't much good against indies, at least no more so than regular archers. The melee flyers rush up, get hit a few times, and rush right out, routing in a heart beat. They're frail and they don't have terribly good morale.

If you want to use the Storm Guards and Iceclads, you aren't going to be taking any Sloth 3 - those puppies cost almost 3 times as much for resources as gold, meaning that you probably want to take productivity if intending to use them much. Similarly, the sacred Temple Guard is very resource intensive, and it can't fly.

In addition, they're all size 3 except for the non-flyers - have too many of them in a province and they start starving, even picking up diseases the same turn they moved in sometimes.

Then if you use Mammoths, temple guards, wingless, you're not flying and not mobile.

And as other people have pointed out - False Horror and Orb Lightning aren't low level spells. Nations with death magic can do just about as well with small Groups of mages casting Raise Skeletons / Raise Dead, and they can get the spell much quicker - research level 3 instead of 6 / 5.

Vanheim and LoT Man can also take many indies with not much more than their mage commanders, and Vanheim doesn't even need to use their top-tier mage to do it.

Frankly, I think people are currently whining and complaining about Caelum because they've gotten smacked around by the nation, often when played by Norfleet. And if Norfleet was cheating in most of his games, then bloody hail, Caelum romping _then_ doesn't really signify much in real terms, does it?

Instead of going on about how Caelum is overpowered, try playing it a few times. It ain't that great for real early expansion, and has numerous weaknesses and issues. Probably half the nations are better / quicker for early expansion (first 10-20 turns), and some can get just as many or more pretender points from their scales - Vanheim, the aquatics, Jotunheim, Pangaea, and most definately Abysia.