Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

About the same as an unexperienced Helheim player does against an experienced marveni player.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

This will not be settled easily Id guess.
There are always discussions about too powerful, or too easy, or automatic win, etc etc. But when it comes down to selecting, no one seems to agree on what ones they were talking about. So I tend to disregard such conversations.

IMHO any experienced player with the nation of this choice would fall into the category you want. And any inexperienced player wont matter what nation they get.

Some options that have been used are:
randomly assigning nations
randomly building the gods, scales, and then randomly assigning nations
having everyone turn in a god build then redistributing them

Or lately there have been two mods created which allows everyone to play against each other using exactly the same nation and god choices. A single nation cloned many times.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

sum1lost
I give up, you are right.
My point was if an experienced player is in the game with newbies, he shouldn't choose the rush nation, but the nation it takes some time to bring to power.

I thought it was a feature. :) Poison cloud making arrows.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

Make 'em play aboleths, that'll teach 'em.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

Personally I'd say the Heims, Sauromatia, Hinnom and Lanka and maybe mictlan. If the other players (the nubs) then take one of the nations above and read the respective guides well it might be a game with a somewhat even start. (though experience will be the deciding factor in mid/end game.. I'd advice the nubs to go pretty heavy on a bless and then pretty heavy on a rush on their most experienced neighbour :D)

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

It's a feature, all right. LA Ctis has something similar, only they are slingers.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

I'd say let them have any nation they want, but start the newbies off with an extra SC and some magic items. The newbies will probably lose eventually just because the experienced ones know more tricks but they'll have fun being powerful at the beginning, and will be more willing to play again so they can use the tricks themselves. All you really want to avoid is the newbies getting steamrollered early on, and that means they need an SC or a bless or both.

-Max

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

You could also use pretender points for handicapping. Something like: the 2 experienced guys have to have 200 points left over at pretender creation time, the experienced guy needs 100 left-over points on his god, and the newbs get to use all the points. That might not be enough though.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

I don't think there's that much you do to stop an experienced player absolutely trouncing an inexperienced one, but Max and VFB's suggestions look pretty good to me. I might lean to Max's, because the inexperienced ones should learn a lot and as that disadvantage declines, their start-game advantage will become progressively less useful.

But yeah, restricting a few nations for the experienced ones might be a good idea as well.

Re: Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?
 

To Gandalf:
It's popular point of view, of course. But nevertheless, there are nations that are much easier to learn than others. Probably, experienced players should be banned from them to free these for new players.
And I also think that MaxWilson's suggestion has merit.