Lords of Civilization

[WraithLord]

I'm not sure I agree from the standpoint that I prefer a more diverse game. Exact balance in the way of making the exact same strategies available to all nations is boring.

This is what bothered me with tartarians, that come end game everyone will rush to spam them.

As for super SCs available to Hinom - the nation is very powerful that's evident but it has its weaknesses. And most important, in an MP game sometimes being too strong is a disadvantage (the gang up on the leader syndrome).

Bottom line, I opt for more diversity in the gameplay even if some nations get situationally stronger than others.

[Zeldor]

But when you take a look there is really very limited amount of SCs available. And most of them are not available for most of the races. Just few nations have thugs and national SCs, which is really big factor later. And usually nations with strong magic get access to good SCs, making their advantage even bigger.

That B9 Hinnom ones are really very powerful. And they are given to a race that is probably one of the strongest in EA now. And access to them isn't extremely hard for them, while other ones tend to be harder to get.

[Twan]

Actually, I fear mp balance has been forgoten for this patch.

The new nations (at least the EA and MA ones) seem to have been balanced against Amos angels, or I don't know what, not (most) other vanilla nations. If they are not rushed in the very first turns (they may have a vulnerability before they finish their initial expansion, as their base units are expensive, but as soon they have gold and gems income to recruit their thugs or best mages each turn and forge some gear, they are clearly excellent).

Their theorical problem (gluttony) is laughable for thugs nations, as commanders never starve (like other giants, they just need troops for sieges, and expandable indies can do the job).

Then they have no problem I can see for start (4 or 5 sacreds with a good bless or 10 giants of any kind can take about anything), nor in mid-late game with 18 MR recruitable thugs with 50 FR and 3 misc slots, and sages to mitigate their research weakness, nor probably in endgame with rather diverse magic, access to some of the best paths, and the best national summons in the game.

There may be 4 or 5 nations arguably as good but I see none better.

In general I think thugs nations should have crappy magic to compensate, I wonder why several* of them got the most powerful paths for endgame, astral, death, blood and correct mages when some nations have no thugs nor good mages, nor good access to any of the powerful paths (Man as always).

Now of course, I've not tested them in MP yet, so I may be wrong on their strength, but I can't find where is their weakness (capitol dependance ? Man is also very capitol dependant).

* another example is Utgard, which is clearly in my "4 or 5 nations arguably as good" list -people just don't realize how much it's an excellent nation, because the 2 others are the free spawn nations dominating the late age- but at least jotun thugs have bad MR

[Aezeal]

The mages aren't that impressive are they?

[Zeldor]

Twan:

You forgot about size 6 tramplers for Hinnom, tramplers with decent morale, MR and horn blowers to boost the morale.

Great units for early game [so no points wasted for awake SC, not even dormant one], great mid-game [thugs], great end-game [uber powerful summons, try to beat stealthy seraph assassins]. And well, they can also wish for seraph if they want to.

I haven't tested MA or LA, so can't tell anything about them. And argument that powerful nations have problems in MP is simply out of place. I have no fun of trying to compesate for weaknesses of my nation with lack of starting position and diplomacy. Like good nations were forbidden to do that too...

[Twan]

Aezeal said:
The mages aren't that impressive are they?

They are not excellent but good.

Ashdod :

The capitol mage isn't very good (only 3 levels) but one/3 has S3, and of course all are thugables.

The armored thug has 2 levels, fire earth or astral.

The best non capitol mage (zamzummite), is h1 + d2/e1 + 2? with possible access to death 4 (1/12). It cost 310 gold but is sacred, so no more upkeep than an Arco astrologer (having one less level and capitol only) or a Ctisian marshmaster (same level and access to death but weak water/nature magic instead of fire/earth/astral for the other paths) -to take 2 mages based nations in example- and not far more expensive than not thugable mage/priest of many nations.

And if you don't have gold to recruit them everywhere there is sage with 2 levels (s2, e2 or f2) and +2 research bonus for 175 gold.


Hinnom :

Capitol mage with h1+ blood 3 + another path 3 (possibly astral, or fire, earth), cost 500 gold but sacred and excellent thug with fear and 66hp.

Armored thug with 2 levels + b2.

In all forts :
A 150 gold sacred blood hunter with b1 + 1 random.
2 level 2 mages costing 125 gold (one with nature one with elements or astral), one of them is healer, the other a good fortune teller (10)
120g shamans with e1 d1 n1 but with a research mallus

(all of course having 20+ hp, up to 66 for the capitol only balz)

[MaxWilson]

My reaction to Hinnom was kind of "meh." The charioteers look fun, but the mages are expensive and moderately weak outside of blood. (E3/F3/S3 on the cap-only versions, E2/F2/S2/N2 elsewhere. No cross-path spells.) The way the randoms work is interesting--I like correlated randoms--but there's no really cheap blood hunter (best is B1 for 150 gold, sacred) which would make a blood summons economy more expensive. I'm not really tempted to play them over, say, EA Ermor or Sauromatia or Agartha. Might be different in MP, and might be just because I hate blood magic for battle spells (WAY too much micromanagement), but while Hinnom is an entertaining and thematic nation I'm not going to fear them in SP the way I fear Niefelheim or the Vans.

-Max

[WraithLord]

Fielding squads of giants has its weaknesses too. For example, probably the most efficient way to play Hinom is take strong bless and expand/fight with small squads of giants and/or SCs. In the early to mid game a competent player can counter this quite effectively. For example a human nation can field armies designed to swarm the giants backed by mages scripted to stop them (with entangle, fire bonds, false fetters for example).

They don't have stealth units so a stealthy nation like Pangaea can give them extremely hard time.

The Hinom SCs flavor text implies that they may hurt their own population.

Are their mages better than EA TC?

Having said that, I think we need to wait some more time for MP evidence to start coming regarding the new nation's strength. The fact that the AI plays dead to strong bless nations is largely irrelevant to MP.

[Endoperez]

WraithLord said:
The Hinom SCs flavor text implies that they may hurt their own population.

They devour population. I don't remember how much, exactly, but it's something like 30 pop/month/Rephaite in EA. The Rephaite Warrior units, Kohen (priests), Melqarts (thugs) and Ba'al (mages) all do this, and because they're all capital-only, you probably want to take Growth to keep your capital from dying.

[Aezeal]

DO they do that standard or only if there isn't enough food though?