Dud nations

[CUnknown]

Responding to Micah's rebuttal:

1) Agreed. I'm glad you agree that Ulm's infantry are truely excellent. I certainly agree that Ulm armies having a strat move of 1 is a horrible disadvantage -- I think it's the worst thing about Ulm, honestly, but this wasn't mentioned in the earlier discussion. I was de-bunking the idea that Ulm's infantry aren't 1st class, and I think at least that part of my argument holds. All heavy infantry is 1 strat move, I believe, but Ulm is forced to rely on them. Admittedly, a major problem.

2) I just disagree here. Let's keep flaming arrows out of this equation and focus on the unit itself with no buffs. Let's take an average protection rating of 12 and go from there, discounting the range bonus of arbelests.

Short bows doing damage of 10, firing every turn. Using the dominions probability table from the manual, they do 1 point of damage only on a 24% chance, and they're doing 5 points of damage on a 6% chance. So, one archer hitting his target three times has a pretty good shot of doing a point of damage (if I'm understanding this right).

A crossbow doing 10 ap damage will do 1 damage 76% of the time. On average, I guess they'll do 4 damage, and 11% of the time they will do 10 damage, potentially enough for a 1 shot kill.

An arbelest doing 14 ap damage, on average, will do 9 damage to that poor fool. That's more than double the x-bow, so even if we say the crossbow fires twice as often as the arbelest, the arbelest is -still better.- In fact, the arbelest bolt will kill a 13 hp, 16 protection heavy calvary in one shot 8% of the time (the x-bow would do it only 3% of the time).

Not only that, but it is a clear advantage to front-load your damage, that's less guys shooting back at you.

3) If Ulm had a 300 gold mage option, they would be the best faction in the game. Just like if -any- other race had Ulm's forging abilty, -it- would be the best faction in the game. I'm not sure how you can view Ulm's having tons of cash on hand as anything other than a nice advantage.

4) Often, I empower my smiths so they have a wider selection of forgable items. At least I did this in dominions 2, in dominions 3, 10% of my smiths will have an extra random path, something I am salivating over.

5) Construction 6 doesn't take that long, given my research priorities. Or priority, as the case may be. That would be Construction 6. Spending a pile of gems to stay competitive, you say? I think I mentioned they only cost me 2 per lantern, if I make 10, that's only 20 gems. And often I sell them for 5-6 gems a pop, that's over 100% profit. Lightless Lanterns -make- gems, they don't cost gems! Oh, and usually I use them for a couple turns before selling them, the buyer is none the wiser they're getting used goods (shhh!).

6) Yeah, this is a problem. Yet, it's a problem that can be solved by the pretender.

About Ulm's mismatches, the one I agree with more than anything is the elephants. Arcosephale kicks the ever living crap out of Ulm -- they have elephants, infantry to rival Ulm's, astral mages to dominate my poor Ulmish minds, and to top it off, they have better research and will kill me in the lategame. But, I'd say that every well-balanced race has at least one mismatch out there, waiting for them. I'm not trying to argue that Ulm is super-awesome, or one of the top tier of factions.

One thing I didn't mention before is the access to spies. I love spies.

[tromper]

Haven't read the entire thread in one sitting, but upon glossing, I'd like anyone to tell me why LA Abysia isn't utter crap. Or were we supposed to stick to EA only? Heh. Anyway, LA Abysia gets my vote for the worst land nation.

[Wish]

uh, a pretender with nature and fire for a great bless on a sacred troop with a morningstar and a shield.

easy access to blood and devils.

relatively strong fire mages for falling flames.

and thats just at a cursory glance

[thejeff]

Isn't one of those 10% randoms Air?

That lets Master Smiths make cheap Quills too. Granted they won't have much air income to work with, but at 2 per, they don't need a lot.

[mivayan]

thejeff said:
Isn't one of those 10% randoms Air?

That lets Master Smiths make cheap Quills too. Granted they won't have much air income to work with, but at 2 per, they don't need a lot.

On average one in 40 smiths have an air random... I think you'll need a searching pretender to get usefull amounts of gems.

tromper said:
In fact, has anyone ever been overrun by LA Abysia? Has LA Abysia ever won a game? Hmmmm.

Cheap anywhere blood hunters, heavy infantry with tower shields, immunity to fire storm/heat from hell... ought to be able to do something?

Guess all usefull mages being old and capitol-only counts for something too.

[Gandalf Parker]

mivayan said:

On average one in 40 smiths have an air random... I think you'll need a searching pretender to get usefull amounts of gems.

Cheap anywhere blood hunters, heavy infantry with tower shields, immunity to fire storm/heat from hell... ought to be able to do something?

Guess all usefull mages being old and capitol-only counts for something too.

Good points. One thing about this game will be finding out whether or not rush tactics will count for anything. If not, then many of the usual nation considerations learned from smaller MP games might need altered. If Abysia plays slowly with a strong heat dominion then things might get interesting. They could even go to heat +3 which would affect others more than it would them. On the other hand, there are nations which will be able to make better use of indepts to push without waiting for their dominion to catch up.

Would Abysia playing a defensive game inside a powerful dominion until they research some power for their mages might be a tactic?

[Micah]

LA Marignon has the same or better blood potential, better magic diversity, 2 mapmove crossbows (which work great with flaming arrows), better researchers, non-cap-only mages that are actually useful, sailing, and spies, along with some kickass national summons and possibly the best PD in the game, along with non-cap H3 priests that can blood sacrifice up a storm, which is especially important with Rlyeh and Ermor's LA dominions being a very real LA threat. Abysia gets...2 free picks from heat 2? And a shot at S3/B4 on their warlocks, which is one higher than the Goetics. FR troops across the board and one extra MR is nice, but that hardly makes up for everything else being vastly inferior to Marignon. They're going to see maybe 2 anathemants all game since they'll be making warlocks the rest of the time, so less potential blood sacrificing abuse on the whole, even though they do have H3 priests as well. Abysia is a clear loser against any opponent that isn't tossing around gobs of fire magic, so their only good matchup is probably the head-to-head with Marignon. Most of the other LA nations won't really care about the FR til the battlefield enchants come out, and by that point Abysia's reliance on cap-mages is going to start to hurt them pretty badly.

[Gandalf Parker]

I didnt realize we were trying to discuss who might actually win. I might try that will a 4 man small-map blitz but not something this big.

Diplomacy and alliances are likely to affect the outcome of this game more than anything we have discussed so far. Second to that is likely to be how closely matched a nation is to the playing style of the person playing it.
If gambling wasnt illegal here Id be tempted to start a paypal betting pool.

[Shovah32]

LA Abysia is a fairly nice blood nation but i personally dont find them that good.

[Sombre]

He asked about LA Abysia.