Re: Broken Nations
 

They can deal with triple numbers, easily. In fact, even the non-sacred units might be able to deal with twice or thrice their numbers without many losses. Between Glamour, Shield and mediocre protection, arrows will only rarely effect them.

Whether or not EA Vanheim's sacred units are weaker than those of other Vanir nations is irrelevant, because MA/LA Vanir are EXTREMELY good, and even if the normal Vanir are weaker, they can be VERY good.

Also, for some reason you only seem to regard the nation's sacred units when considering their worth. EA Vanheim against MA Vanheim could turn very nasty, because the latter wouldn't know a thing about the former's armies before battle. Also, while in later ages only the sacred troops can go stealth-raiding, in EA they can use somewhat cheaper Huskarls and Hirdmens for it as well.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Flaming arrows doesn't do much against vans in dom3. Which may or may not be relevant.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I have a partial solution for early blessed troop's rush.

The actual limit to the number of sacred troops to recruit is equal to the max dominion level.
If instead you could recruit equal to the actual dominion strenght in that province you can recruit only 1 sacred unit the first turn, and dependant of the dominion growth you can increase the speed of recruit.

That way bless will be equal in power but not so blitzy.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Nice idea Manuk.

Re: Broken Nations
 

You have some valid points there, I agree. But I was just surprised that people keep telling how both EA Vanheim and Helheim are overpowered with F9/W9 bless, when in fact Helheim's sacred troops are significantly more powerful (and different) than EA Vanheim, as both you and Nerfix agree. That's why I concentrated on sacred troops in my post, and not on non-sacred troops, since Huskarls/Hirdmans that you mentioned are clearly not affected by bless or lack of it.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Another idea is organizing a game where no pretenders can have any magic path above 6... this way the blessing bonus is not so extreme.

OR

Another idea is where each player will be creating a pretender for one of their random opponents. All pretenders being created must not have more than 9pts left over. The host then randomly assigns each player a pretender, but no player can have the pretender they created. Any negative scale must have an equal positive scale and any magic path given to the pretender must be at least 4.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I agree they are different, helheims are faster and alot harder to hit but vans, point for point are more damaging. Try a f9d9 van, for the gold cost they get the same number of attacks as helheims sacreds but they also have beserk AND d9, the bane of SC's. They would also be god-like vrs niefelheim (their size 2 lets them easily gang up on giants, the f9 destroys niefel giants and the d9 destroys jarls with fire resistance ect). You could also go f9, dormant pretender and decent scales with van, still having very good troops and also being able to mass produce your great, underpriced infantry.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Part of the "heims" discussion seems based on people who are trying to play them the same. Its part of the problem with many of these discussions.

A "tank commander" style of player will love Ulm, maybe Jotunheim, and Abyssia, possibly Pythium. And they will hate nations like Pangaea and Caelum. They will declare some nations to be broken or vastly in need of more armored troops.

A "researcher" would hate Ulm and love Arcos. A Stealth player would hate Arcos. Personally I play alot of "stealth" or "defensive". Usually I would do alot more breakdown of the styles but today isnt a prime day for me but I think the point is still valid. If you arent playing a nation in a way to make the best uses of what it HAS then you cant declare it broke.
You can only declare that it doesnt play like your favorite nation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
IMHO

Re: Broken Nations
 

Most games I play are multiplayer... but it sure would be nice if the AI opponents knew how to make stealthy attacks with the stealthy nations.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I've seen them do it, but not often. I think it's because they tend to mix in non-stealthy troops which prevents them from doing it, but if they just happen to have only stealthy troops, like AI with early game Kailasa, you'll see them sneak to a weak PD province and attack.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Dom3 has at most 21 nations that can be chosen to play in any one game, unless someone mods or does a special map file. Dom2, there were 17 nations, with only some having _special_ themes, giving as you say, a total of 40 nations that could be chosen in _any one_ game.

One benefit of those special themes was that when you were playing against, say, Pangaea, you didn't know right away which of three very different Pangaea's it might be. (Instead, we have global enchantments to recreate a few of the themes, which has its own serious drawbacks and flaws.)

Even without those special themes : a number of the themes available to _ANY_ nation made significant changes to how that nation might play. For instance, the way any nation with sacred troops might go underwater with their sacreds via Water Cult. Or try to specialize in constructed units with Golem Cult.

Other themes simply gave minor tweaks that made subtle differences while helping to keep from wasting more than 25 points in pretender design. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Since we no longer have castle choice (which used to give 20 point increments), _and_ we no longer have themes.... And a lot of us had commented on our desire to see some themes for Machaka, or to be able to combine non-special themes (Water Cult, Golem Cult, etc) with special themes.

Instead, we lost themes. We even lost Last of the Tuatha, and Machaka (which many people enjoyed, and were waiting patiently for a special theme or two for) is _ONLY PLAYABLE NOW IN ONE ERA_!!!!

As far as adding scads of other things - _please_ don't put "scads of new ... magic items" in one sentence? We certainly didn't get scads of new magic items.

Instead, we got aging. Feh.

Re: Broken Nations
 

Flaming arrows isn't at all the same thing as the F9 bless.