Re: Balanced Nations
 

EA Aby is not stronger in the early game. I've fought EA Aby to a stalemate in the early game with EA TC. Both have great capital-only sacreds they're going to hang their early game on.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

That's not really a great argument, squirrel, as abysia doesn't have any archers and his entire point was archers>W5E.

That said I still agree with you.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

Alright, I think Rytek's list with TC and C'Tis hits about the right notes. Feel free to keep ideas for EA flowing, but I want to try to create lists for the middle and late eras as well.

Middle:

Man
Marignon
Machaka
Agartha
Shinuyama
Abysia

Man is probably the stinker here, but with the exception of Shin, these nations favor heavy map move one infantry and limited magic diversity (but what magic they do they do very well). I don't want Arco or BL due to the presence of tramplers, and C'Tis's miasma is a non-starter for me. Thoughts?

Re: Balanced Nations
 

Shinuyama blows the rest of those nations out of the water. Trivially. (With the possible exception of Marignon, who isn't totally outclassed, just mostly outclassed).

MA Agartha actually has abundant mm3 infantry, just no good way to move them that fast until ench 6ish. All those statues are mm3.

That said, it probably wouldn't be too hard to find 6 balanced nations in MA, but these aren't them as a set. Lets try for middle-of-the-road nations, since they're abundant in MA.

With only 6 nations, Man isn't actually noticeably disadvantaged. Lets look at:

Man
Mictlan
TC
Machaka
Caelum

That's probably a decent set of nations. Remember, with only 6 players there isn't going to be much endgame, so Man's typical weakness disappears. Machaka also has a great midgame and so improves because of the smaller game size. This list just needs one more nation.

Also considered
Arco - worried they're too weak
BL - worried they're too weak
Marignon - worried they're too strong
Eriu - totally different play dynamic, might not fit well or be unexpectedly strong.

Edit: don't get me wrong, i'd totally play BL against that field, but i'm not most people.

Edit2: oh, you don't want tramplers. Well, boo.
FWIW, Man totally focuses on cavalry and archers, so mm1? ha! Marignon can also focus on cavalry. Machaka can play for spiders. And are shinuyama's actually mm1? pretty sure dai-bakemono are mm2. So your theoretical theme totally breaks down in practice.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

shinuyama is much much more powerful than anything else on that list. ulm or tc maybe

Re: Balanced Nations
 

EA TC is much stronger than EA Abysia in my experience. I walked over EA Aby as TC in a game even though I didn't want to fight them in the first place and had recruited troops to fight another kind of enemies.
TC is very flexible. It's got good capital only sacreds that will eat Lanka's sacreds for dinner, and those of Abysia too. Won't be as useful against Niefelheim but still. Then it's got composite bows. If people bring in archers against TC, they're likely going to lose the archer vs archer combat so the vulnerability of sacred troops vs archers is not really a problem, particularly since they can bring in a few well-shielded decoys to help.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

I've never played TC. Are W5E really that good? Their damage of 16 seems kind of low against Lanka.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

W5E are very good. They have low damage but two attacks and good att/def scores, are quite cheap for sacreds. Their downsides are weak armor, low hp in the bad season (but then in spring/summer they have more), and being capital-only. Double bless them, double bless lankans and pit them against each other. W9 is particularly good for W5E as 2 attacks * speed means a lot of hits and some of these will be lucky/critical.

Re: Balanced Nations
 

Ok, lets try Late Age. This one was a bit of a head scratcher for me. I know I didn't want Ermor, and still don't want tramplers, but there remained a ton of odd ball qualities to the nations remaining.

Still, how does...
Man
Ulm
Agartha
Atlantis
Bogarus
TC...

Sound?

Re: Balanced Nations
 

I think bogarus would quite easily dominate that group played properly. Their one weakness is they are vulnerable to rushes... and there are no rush nations on the list.

They have the mages to exploit ulm's MR weakness , the druzinha can compete well with tien chi cavalry. H3 priests and ease of access of penetration boosters means they can combat ktonian undead/vampires/ancestor ghosts/general undead. They *will* have far superior research and though starets arent sacred you've got a hell of alot of rp for 250 gold so you'll have a huge research lead by the time upkeep creeps up on you. Then you have some great magic diversity to put the research to use...including blood which makes you the only blood nation there bar ulm who can compete with you at all in other magic areas.

Never thought I would ever say "bogarus would quite easily dominate" but putting em up against other nations considered "weak" and they seem to really shine for me. I actually don't believe they fully deserve the reputation they've gained.