Best MA sacred unit

[Micah]

Actually, I just tested it, 15 E9/W9 Vans killed 45 N9/F9 Heart Companions, taking 6 losses, I replicated the test several times, Van losses ranged from 4-6, Arco lost all 45 every single time. Prophet commander on both sides, in Arco dominion. Troops set to hold and attack, prophets to divine bless, sermon of courage, stay behind troops, center of the field.

This gives Arco a stronger bless than is suggested, and also gives them every other conceivable advantage...they actually get to find and fight the vans instead of moving around ineffectually protecting one province at a time while their empire is raided to death, the ridiculous resource differential cost is ignored, as is the triple Holy cost of producing that many Heart Companions, and the benefits of having an Earth bless with sacred mages on Vanheim's side is also not accounted for. Actually fighting a straight up battle is the Van's WORST point, and they STILL win.

Xietor, it seems your understanding of the competitive MP environment is not very developed at this point, and I was there myself about 6 months ago, getting killed in a few games, and doing well in others where I've taken advice has really led me to trust the opinions of the people on this board that have had extensive MP experience. Dom is a very complex game, and while something may look great on paper the people that have actually played a lot of MP are the ones that will be able to tell you if that translates to actual gameplay or not. I guess it might be hard to tell who is actually experienced and who is not, but in general most of the people that are posting here using a definitive tone are fairly accurate in their statements. (Like my earlier post about Arco being a bad bless nation) Your tendency to argue for your favored strategies despite not having nearly the amount of experience as some of the other posters is slightly frustrating, since you can always come up with SOME situation where unit X is better than unit Y. If you're not sure WHY someone is saying what they are then feel free to ask, but arguing based on hypothetical situations doesn't accomplish much.

[Xietor]

I do not consider myself an experienced mp player. Though i have played many mp games, they are not against people that are hardcore DOM II and III players, giving me a huge advantage(regardless of strategy). I would be glad to play a game with 1 or 2 players and 12 Ai on difficult. A game with
10 or so players has little appeal to me.

I like to play for 3-4 straight hours and get in many many turns in one setting. The more people, the harder that is to coordinate. I also see no point to diplomacy. If you are relying on your skills, then you should not need to team up
to eliminate another player. How can you accurately assess your skills if you are being aided or double teamed?

I am not actually arguing that the heart companion is better, but that with his low gold cost, he can be quite effective with a slight bless, and allowing acrosphale to keep good scales.

Additionally, I think(do not know) that the heart companion would withstand missile fire much better than the vans due to better protection. With e9 bless that is not true, but many on here claim the f9 w9 bless is the best for vans, and the added defense would not help against missiles.

[MaxWilson]

Since we're talking hypotheticals here, yeah, the Vans will take slightly more damage per combat round from missiles (although shields help a lot), for fewer rounds (39 AP vs 7). I don't know in whose favor that works out, but the blazing speed of W9 Vans *does* help against missiles.

Also, consider that the low resource cost of Vans plus Vanir cold tolerance allows Vanheim to take worse scales and not really feel the pinch, while Arcoscephale will have to blow points on Production to make effective use of Heart Companions.

Edit: I didn't realize until just now that Heart Companions are capitol-only. That makes the gold cost of producing them nearly irrelevant; resources and Holy cost will almost certainly be your bottleneck. Vans are clearly a superior sacred IMO.

-Max

[Xietor]

The stealth factor would be deadly mp, but even when i play Pangaea mp, i never use it. Unfortunately, none of my friends i play with can beat me playing a very vanilla game. if i started taking their provinces with stealth armies they likely
would quit playing me(:

None of my friends are hardcore dom III players and ask me basic questions every time we play.

[Shovah32]

As you said Xietor, f9 lets your heart companions take on ethereal units ect fairly successfully but you missed one big point: thats not their job! Arco's mages, summons(including SCs) and sometimes elephants are the guys who are meant to do the damage, why waste points on an offensive bless when you could get a defensive one which could buy you a few more turns in combat and allow your heavy hitters to do their damage?

As a final test I tried 45 of my reccomended N9(even cheaper than the other tested bless) heart companions against 15 double blessed vans and the results? All companions dead but arco prophet still alive and 2.5(2 first time, 3 second time) dead vans. With an even cheaper bless than before and 3 times the previous dead vans i hereby declare my n9 bless a success(although both battles could have been flukes).