.com.unity Forums - Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

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- - Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed? (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=32217)

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

This thread moves too fast.

Quote:

Aseth said:

I check my 1st test,I used 180 gold Comanders.
C`Tis capital have 191res with 3of5 neighbor provinces captured. Some problems gather 690res? Seems not to me...
C`Tis have not 14% advantage in money, but slightly more - because of admin & tax+patrol multipliers - it`s abaut 36% on first turn if Van patrol too...

It's not 36%. You have to compare the modified values of both nations to each other, not simply the difference in the modifier. You setup gives vanheim 115% gold and ctis 133%. Both can patrol. Anyway, at tax 200% vanheim gets about 850 gold and ctis 990.
You didn't write any heat scale changes for vanheim, so i'm just assuming you set that at -1. At 0 it could maybe explain how you arrive at 36& (though no, not really) but that'd not only be giving 5% income away, it'd also mean paying 40 points for it.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

Quote:

Ozymandias said:
Just to clarify a few things, EA Vanheim has capitol only sacreds that aren't nearly as good a chassis as Van or Helhirdling. Their defense is a respectable 12 before they berserk, but only 7 after. They cost three times as much as elite infantry of other nations. I don't believe that EA Vanheim has sacreds of excessive power.

Helheim and MA Vanheim are different. Van and Helhirdlings both have stock defense of 19. Oiorpata are the next closest sacred with 18 defense. White Centaurs, Equite of the Sacred Shroud, Tiger Riders, Wind Riders, Androphags, and Red Guard all have defense 17. Vanir cavalry have very high defense, particularly with a water blessing. This means that they are very rarely hit in melee, which provides normal troops very few chances to remove their mirror images. All of the previously listed sacred cavalry become very survivable in hand to hand with a water bless; Vanir cavalry have only a small advantage, but it is magnified by their mirror image. Also it is worth noting that of all the sacreds listed above, only Van are not capitol only.

In addition to their excellent tactical attributes (helhirdlings are arguably the very best national troop of any era; van are only slightly worse) they also have superior strategic abilities. The standard MA Vanheim army of a Vanjarl and a half dozen Van is sailing, glamorous, and map move 3. Helheim loses sailing on their Vanjarls, but they have flying Disr and Valkyrie forces to help compensate. One thing that all of the people who have rightly said that Vanir armies are beatable have neglected to mention is that the Vanir nations get to pick their battles. Even if they are beatable by large carefully scripted armies, they are more mobile then those armies and can easily bypass them. EA Abysia's sacreds are very powerful, but they don't appear all through your empire attacking wherever you are weak because they have to move in a visible, ploddingly slow group.

Finally the blesses. Water 9, fire 9 gets mentioned a lot on this thread, and personally I believe that water is the most powerful bless available to high defense sacreds. Fire is the best bless which provides magic weapons. Death and earth blesses are both helpful to casters as well as melee troops, and nature blesses are strong in direct proportion to the hit points of the sacred units, but for nations with basically human hit point sacreds suitable for combat fire 9 water 9 pretenders will be chosen often. I would prefer for the less optimal blesses to be made more useful rather then nerfing the big two. Making the earth blessings armor bonus not contingent on armor, making the save for death weapons at -4, not limiting the magic resistance bonus from an astral bless to 18, and removing the save for blood curse would all be good starts. I'm not sure what a good improvement for the air bless would be, but it needs help too.

I agree with this post entirely. Vans in particular are overpowered. The ability to choose where you fight (glamour) in conjuction with a non-capital only production gives this unit too much benefit for its cost. The solution is to up the cost slightly with the next patch. The thing we should be arguing is how much the cost should be increased.

As far as improving the Air Bless, I'd really love to see A9 be 100% shock resistance.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

I don't agree that they're overpowered, but then I haven't done any multi-playing with them. In certain directions, yes, they are very powerful, but they have exploitable weaknesses-weaknesses exploitable by most, if not all, nations. What I have done is discover that their are plenty of strategies out there-the most direct and obvious to use heavy tramplers-which beat Helheim. I still think this whole thread is premature. I'd like a chance to multi-player with them and against them, for one thing, but I don't feel I know enough about the game as a whole to give a good objective opinion yet, or to put up a good fight, not because Helheim's strong, but because I don't know enough. That's going to take time.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

Quote:

tibbs said:
Your reasoning doesn't make much sense really. Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Dawn of War are all multiplayer and single player games yet each game was patched to fix multiplayer imbalance issues. I've never seen a game designed or patched using your reasoning.

I am very busy at work... so only time for one short response. Other responses coming with time.

The reason for having an imbalanced nation is because the game has enough optional nations(over fifty) where it's strong enough to have an OPTIONAL powerful nation. Otherwise how many nations/races does Illwinter need before a very powerful nation can be introduced... 100 nations, 500 nations, 8000 nations?? Who is saying Illwinter can NEVER introduce a very powerful OPTIONAL nation?? To demand constant balance from a game growing with content limits the options available for gamers and developers. I'd hate for the developers to be delayed on releasing future nations because they need more time testing its balance.

For those unaware I do voice my opinion for unbalanced issues which effect the entire game... as seen from AOW:SM and the flying draconian heroes which was NERFED. = LINK The Vanheim issue clearly ONLY effects the entire game when Vanheim is chosen with a bless strategy! This Vanheim issue DOES NOT effect the entire game unless you choose to include them and Dominions_3 has grown with enough nations to have an optional powerful nation.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

By the way, my whole point of playing against SP isn't to say that SP is in any way a model of MP, it's not. It's to compare the troops side by side-and I've set all Helheim opponents to F9/W9-and see how they do in the AI combat environment. You can't tell how a human is going to think by doing that, but you can tell a lot about how the game works, and how I respond to the Helheim nation, itself. Objective results are several degrees harder to produce in a multi-player game. All I want to know right now is how the cost of Helheim blessed troops compares with the cost of other troops, how strong their province defense is, how they hold up to arrows, tramplers, magic, etc. I want a chance to compare each and every nation in SP, and then I can have a better understanding of MP.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

Quote:

FrankTrollman said:
The Vanir are virtually immune to sword attacks. That's a big deal. But it's not an insurmountable deal.Every nation can mount an offensive that is not based on melee attacks that have a chance of missing. Area attacks, trampling, battlefield enchantments and more are all within the realm of possibility. The specific tactics to be employed will of course vary nation to nation, but you can put up a defense against the Vanir.

And if you aren't tailoring your troop setups to your opposition, you should lose. Really, the fact that it requires specific planning on your part to win is not a flaw in the game.

Vans are effectively immune to melee and quite resistant to missle fire because of glamour+armor+shield+speed. That's both the basic attacks of Dominions. Other stuff is generally not available until level 4/5 research, which is well along, and the magic requires a good supply of potent casters, which is also hard to come by. Trampling is pretty iffy and shouldn't work generally - one guy did test chariot archers and they were a flop. Each van needs to get trampled 12 times and that's quite a lot of successful tramples. In any case, the majority of nations have no AOEish attack at all for some time, and that's a huge problem.

Tailoring should NOT be necessary. Trivially, if two untailored forces encounter each other, one will win! If a particular nation always requires tailoring to be stopped, it's too strong, and if tailoring isn't even available to most nations, it simply has to be fixed.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

I noticed the theory that trampling is a handy rock-scissors-paper style counter to F9W9 helhirdings. So I made a test.

Side one: F9W9 bless.
One holy3 priest, to cast divine blessing and smite. I wont count his cost. 40 helhirdings: 3000 gold, 480 resources.

Side two: F9W9 bless which doesn't matter
One holy3 priest, casting smite for symmetry's sake. I wont count his cost. 100 EA ctis lizard chariots: 5000 gold, 2600 resources.

No commanders were harmed in this test.
Fight one: chariots defend, 29 out of 40 helhirdings die, 95 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight two: chariots defend, 16 out of 40 helhirdings die, 98 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight three: chariots defend, 14 out of 40 helhirdings die, 88 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight four: chariots defend, 5 out of 40 helhirdings die, 75 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
Fight five: chariots defend, 39 out of 40 helhirdings die, 54 out of 100 Lizard chariots die.
In this last fight, 2925 gold were lost for helhirdings. 2700 gold lost for chariots.

So, for only 167% of the cost and 5400% of the recources, you might once in a while destroy a F9W9 helhirding army with lizard chariots. Not worth calling a counter.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

Hm... How about Elephants? Chariots are girly tramplers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

NT just hides behind the fact the game should have one powerful nation. The nation can be modded easily in singleplayer. Multiplayer has hell trying to get everyone to use one mod,even one that everyone agrees