Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

i would like to back up rdonj's opinion about niefel jarls being even stronger. i would like to see cbm nerfing them in some way.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Not in my opinion. Encumbrance 5 is hard, but other troops have it. On the other hand, encumbrance 7 is absolutelly undoable. If you have encumbrance 7, you need reinvigoration no matter of what. Maybe not E10, but at the very least E6-

Not really, I already lost that war. And encumbrance 7 was not involved in the defeat, as I passed on the Annakites and built the berserkers ones instead. My defeat was a combination of a worthy foe, 2 stalls due to llamaserver problems (that affected me but not my foe), and Apostacy spell.

However, I recognize that I got surprised when I saw encumbrance 7 on the giants (never played them with 1,92 before that). I don't think Ashdod is gimped, though, I was leading the game until I got crushed by comunion+Apostacy. As I said in my very first post, Ashdod is not a bad nation, and is not the weakest nation in the roster, that for sure. But the 150g88r sacreds are, in my opinion, left dead with the change. They are atrociously expensive for what they can do, in my opinion.

Sure. But is that related to sacred units? Or to the fact that thugs and SC are the best options available for most nations? E9NX increase thugs effectiveness by a big margin. W9F9... does not. Plus the nerf to some of the sacred units (namely, Vans) also had something to do with it.


Niefel Giants have several difference to Annakites. First, they are cheaper (as in much cheaper). Second, they don't have encumbrance 7. Third, they have a frost aura that can help them to kill masses of troops (Except cold inmunes). So no, they are not in the same case than Annakites trying to kill chaff with 75 gold per attack ratio. Plus, in my opinion, Niefleheim would need a nerf more than Annakites did, but that's matter for another discussion.
The fact it fly, has a decent fighting chasis, and, maybe, it petrifies everything that attacks them also had something to do with it. Actually, in my opinion, it was the other way around. It's not that Oiorpatas benefit from E9N4 more than they'll do from, say, W9B4 or whatever. The thing is they ended having that bless, becouse Gorgon was so awesome that nobody else used other chasis. And once you are pigeonholed to a Chasis that has Earth and Nature, it makes a lot of sense to have a E/N bless. There were cheap ways to get E9/N4 with other pretenders. People used the Gorgon becouse of the chasis.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Yes, they do have some differences. Lets start with they're in EA instead of MA, and so the expected opposition is stronger in the early game. Lets also note that they have weaker gear overall, and that they are vulnerable in hot provinces.

Niefl Jarls could stand to be nerfed. Niefl *Giants* not as much. In fact, its generally considered better to ignore the Niefl Giants at the moment and use Jotun Skinshifters.

And you still haven't answered the question: namely what other bless even conceivably works with them. Maybe because there isn't one?

I believe the Niefl Giant gold to attack ratio is 125g per attack, for anyone keeping track.

You know what other question you haven't answered? What other blesses worked previously with Anakim that no longer work. This may also be because no one has ever advocated a bless other than E9+ N4+ for anakim. Ever. If you'd like to provide *evidence* to the contrary, please link such posts. If you'd like to upload turn files from a game where Ashdod used Anakim with a bless other than E9+ N4+ and did well, that would also work. My guess is that you have no such evidence.

Or we can agree that everyone sane used a big E bless with a smaller N bless, and that to pretend they will ever be played otherwise is pure sophistry. Then the question becomes 'are they still worth using with that bless?', and all other considerations are irrelevant.

You're wrong as a matter of fact here. Gorgon is available to multiple nations, but was only nerfed because of its availability to Sauromatia. Either QM or Llamabeast, maybe both, have said as much. So there's something specific to Sauromatia as to why it was nerfed, and as the chassis strength is clearly a feature of it in itself, that clearly isn't it because the Pans also had full access to that.

Recruitable sacreds, otoh, and recruitable thugs, are nation specific. The logical conclusion is Sauromatia was a problem because the cheap E9N4 bless with an awake SC was too much due to the bless effect on Sauromatia's recruitables. (Whether it was thugs or troops is rather irrelevant).

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Just play Vanilla, no problem with Ashdod nerfs! :D

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

What now? ****, I still think Ashdod is OP. The problem with Ashdod is not the sacred giants and those great troops but the recruitable SC Adons. Frankly Ashdod shouldn't buy anything except an Adon every turn.

As for the sacreds, I never saw anyone buy Ahiman Anakites even before the nerf due to the high resource cost and Sheshai Anakites are still quite powerful if you take an earth bless, and at the very least you'll take a minor one which goes a long way in a battle. And I don't get why you *have to* have zero encumbrance, how many battles actually last that long the the troops pass out? Most battle last up to 15 turns or so usually and who gives a **** if you get fatigued a little.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Have you read any of the thread? If you recruit 150gold 88res troops, you can only recruit one or 2 a turn. So your going to end up with 10 troops going up against 200 troops. Your troops will defiantely fatigue out.

And if you just recruit Adons, you will definately be dead by turn 20. Because you won't be able to equip them that early.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Yes, that's why I wouldn't buy just sacreds, especially those higher resource ones. I'd rely a bit on PD if I'm going up against larger numbers, Ashdod has great PD, and I'd add other troops, indies if needed.
Research isn't really a problem, Ashdod can easily afford an awake sage pretender to rush alteration and construction and still have a good bless.
Something else to keep in mind is that whoever fights Asdod is likely to fight in a H3 land, meaning they get +2 enc as well.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I'll redirect you to Peter's elegant post named before. You should really stop using "it's commonly used that way among Llamaserver MP competitive community" as it stands for "it's commonly used that way in Dominions 3". I play outside of Llamaserver as well, and I see Niefle Giants rushes commonly.
I'll redirect you again to Peter's post, but suffice to say that I think they are (or should be) a valid option for other blesses, like W6F6, or N9, for example. It's not that other blesses do not work with them, but that E9N4-6 is much better than any other bless (for MP compettitive play among veterans in 10-15 provinces per player maps at least). If CBM wants to balance things out, maybe they should balance what is the most ubiquitous strategy in the game. E9 bless is seen in all ages, in several nations.


Like it matters.... A group of 5+ Niefl giants produce such a cold aura that they would kill any non-cold inmune chaff by hundreds in no time. If Ashdod Giants would have a Fire Aura, I wouldn't find their 150g88r encumbrance 7 overpriced. They don't have, though. So they are overpriced.

By multiple nations you mean Pangea? Or id there another one?

Currently you can have cheap E9N4 bless with sauromatia with several options. Great Mother allows you E9N4 with Dom6 and 1 net positive scale, while the Gorgon let you have the same with 2 net positive scales. The diference in cost is not so high. The difference in effectiveness is, becouse Gorgon Chasis is 100 times better than Great Mother chasis.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Obviously this might be desirable, but it isn't possible to modify the bless effects.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

So what's the preferred build now for Ashdod? Something like an awake rainbow with 4N and moderate scales and a roll toward strange Zamzummite skelly spam/thug reverse communions? E4S6N4 dormant to get all the Conjuration summons and Wish with a decent boost to Adons? A monolith with N4S4 and killer scales?

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

"
If CBM wants to balance things out, maybe they should balance what is the most ubiquitous strategy in the game. E9 bless is seen in all ages, in several nations.
"

That is not true as far as my MP experience goes. It is popular for certain nations (recruit-able thugs/SCs) but even for these there are other options, like no bless, small E4 bless, RBW bless etc.
It can be cool to take E10 bless for a giant nation once or twice but then it get's boring and certainly other options are viable. It's a general statement but one that I think is valid for any example that comes to my mind.
I challenge you (or anyone else) to find a contrary example :)

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I must be in the absolute minority here because I did not ever see Ashdod as all that overpowered even in vanilla. Not that they were weak mind you. But over the course of an entire game, nations like Hinnom, Lanka, and LA Mictlan were all clearly more powerful.


The problem with Ashdod was mainly that it is so very hard for many nations to fight anakites in the early game. Witch means that whoever Ashdod chose to attack first is probably doomed unless they get help from other nations.


In this light, the Ahiman anakite nerf makes sense. It forces the player to use the Sheshai anakite instead. The Sheshai anakite is worse in the early game but probably about the same in the long run once counters start coming up. The Sheshai is cheaper and requires only half the resources witch means that it gets much more attacks. The drawback is of course that you cant make it prot22 and fatigue neutral.


Squirrelloids argument that Ashdod are an uber-thug nation is also questionable. Sure, Zamzumites from every castle was good before they were nerfed. But they were still arguably worse than un-nerfed Skrattis. And the nerfed version is also still worse than the CBM-nerfed version of the skratti.


As for adons, I never saw them as overpowered either. Nifelheim, Formoria and Hinnom all have clearly more powerful SC chassis. A third misc slot is nice and all but that also means that you have to pay for something to be put in that slot witch makes it expensive.

And that brings me tho the third problem with thugging with Ashdod. Namely the fact that Ashdod have terrible site searchers. Your best bet is to recruit Zamzummites and hope you get one with multiple paths. To sitesearch with your researchers would require a giant congaline due to them only having one path each. You can sire search remotely but that costs gems and although this is the most efficient method in the long run, those are gems you cant spend on gear for thugs.


Another problem is the fact that you are not going to see any Ashdod thugs before the end of year 2. Not only does ashdod have some truly mediocre researchers, they also need to recruit priests for their expansion parties. Cutting in to their limited mage recruitment. Even if you build hill forts and shuffle all the mages that can be recruited there without a lab to your capitol. You wont have the needed Alt 2, Conj 3 and whatever const any time soon.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I think the recent prevalence of E9-10, N4-6 blesses is actually the fault of CBM. Illwinter probably knew that this bless combo was the strongest bless for many nations and they balanced it out by not giving those nations pretenders with both Earth and Nature. Especially the niefelheim nations suffered from this. The only good earth bless chassie that they could get was the Cyclops. And that one prevented them from getting diversity. There was also the great enchantress I guess, but she costed 55 points back then and had no air magic.

Now that the Master Druid have both E and N it is possible for many nations to both get a bless and diversity at the same time without sacrificing scales to much.

I'm not sure this is a bad thing mind you.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

So... awake rainbow, then?

Why would they need to do that? Their non-sacred troops rock pretty hard against most indies. I'd be nervous going against wolf tribes or lizards, but most of the rest is pretty handlable, including barbarians. Ashdod's non-sacred troops are better than Hinnom's.
While the troops are conquering, your mages aren't going to outpace Tien Chi in research, but they should be able to hold their own with a M1 scale.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

So MP competitive play among veterans is somehow not a good measure of what optimal play involves? I don't think that reasoning flies anywhere. No one is saying that it literally can't be done, but for optimum efficiency of resources and nation potential, if you wanted Ashdod's sacreds you used an e9+n4+ bless, and you do that with every giant SC nation. There is no other bless that will allow them to kill as much for as long, or make them as powerful later in the game.

As for niefel giants, they can be quite powerful, but they're also just not strictly necessary. You can expand just as well using nothing but niefel jarls and later on you will prefer not to have the giant upkeep. So giants are largely overlooked due to not being necessary.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

(1) Considering suboptimal blesses like W6F6 for Niefl Giants doesn't help with balance decisions. You consider the best possible bless, balance the unit for using that, and that's that. If some other bless works, good for it. If no other bless works, oh well, that's the way it goes.

I find it highly doubtful that anyone has ever played Niefl Giants or Anikim with an F6W6 bless, so considering that as a viable alternative to stuff that is actually seen in game isn't really productive.

(2) Peter misses the point. My argument is not based on 'these are the blesses that are most commonly used' but 'these are the blesses which have the best performance for these chasses'. A unit with its best possible bless has to be balanced. If someone takes a suboptimal bless, that's them taking a suboptimal bless. That is not something that needs to be balanced around. If everyone played W9 Blindfighters it wouldn't change the fact that W9 is an awful bless for Blindfighters.

(3) Anikim before the nerf wouldn't work with N9 or F6W6, so i don't see how that's at all germane to the discussion. This is not something the nerf changed. Those have always been terrible blesses for Anikim.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I think the reason you so frequently see EN blesses is that they are the best for commanders (both thugs and spellcasters) and commanders provide utility further into the game than sacred troops since you can swap out their gear, they usually have magic, and when not fighting they can research/site search/forge or even just preach instead of just adding to your upkeep. When it comes to combat, almost every thuggable commander can use reinvigoration, regeneration and (if you go to E9) an armor bonus. The offensive blesses don't have the same utility. Adding magic weapons to troops (F9/D9) is a big plus but not much of a selling point for thugs when you'll likely be forging magic weapons. The same thing applies to the minor blood bless - you can accomplish the same thing for a thug by forging a high damage or armor piercing weapon. The offensive bless that is most appealing to thugs is W9. This can be a real plus, especially if you don't have W mages to cast quickness but it also means that fatigue will be even more of an issue which leads you right back to an E bless. So even here you are probably better off with an E bless and eventually forging quickness gear when needed. The minor F/W blesses are useful but would you really choose +2 attack over an EN bless that saves you from having to forge gear for those purposes?

Then there's the troop side of things. Mictlan is the perfect offensive bless nation: sacreds that are cheap, easily massable, recruit everywhere, with multiple attacks (up to 6 per square), and low encumbrance and armor. Sure, you can toss on S9 (which is of course useful in the late game anyway) but otherwise they are perfect for offensive blesses. But how many other nations have these types of units? Frequently sacred troops are expensive and cap only - you will have limited numbers of them and probably would like to keep them alive rather than have them be glass cannons. And generally speaking you'll get the best return by taking a troop's strongest attributes and pushing them further. In terms of number of attacks the best case scenario is sacred cavalry with 4 attacks per square. That's not bad and you might be inclined to build on that with an FW bless, but again how many of those units will you have and how much will they cost you? Giants have even less reason to take a major offensive bless since they have so few attacks per square to begin with and they already hit hard (though a minor F bless could be useful and fit into a rainbow build).

So the way I see it EN blesses are best for commanders and can also be the best choice for many troops and I think that's why you see them so frequently. If you wanted to see more offensive blesses the easiest way would be to give more nations Mictlan-style sacreds. For instance, if you made Pan's revelers sacred I'd definitely consider an offensive bless. Of course you'd have to also have an offsetting nerf or you'd just end up with a lot of OP nations.

Btw, I don't think the E9 bless needs to be nerfed. More than ever, I think the optimal pretender build under CBM is a scales build with some key magic diversity and a light bless if appropriate. You can certainly play with an E9 bless but I don't think you'll necessarily get better results with it than you would with great scales.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

The killer feature of E9N4 is possibility to take it with nice scales. Imprisoned druid E9N4 dom6 03/P3/C2/MisF2/M1 for example. You are getting nice scales & bless. It is very hard to get anything near with dual bless. Bathomet F9S9 will have 1 scale less and he is the perfect dual bless base.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Na. Other blesses like W9N4 would usually be even cheaper. Good E/N blessers are rare. F or W? Not so much.

The real reason that E9N4 is popular is that it can be used for more than just your troops. Forge a shroud and put it on a Cyclops or something and have it go wild! And that is only if you dont have national self-blessing thugs. Because no other bless is as good for thugging.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

No, that's not what I was saying. Of course is a good measure of what is optimal play... but the optimal play has to have metagame involved.

For example, among vets in MP competitive, thugs are incredibly important. So E9N4 is an awesome bless there. But if you happen to play in different playsets, other blesses might be better. For example, if you ussually play in 1vs1 blitzes in maps with 20 provinces, probably F9W9 (or even triple bless) would be better, as it's quite probable the game is over before thugs can start to dominate. On the other hand, if you happen to play in massive multiplayer games with 20 provinces per player and 15-20 players, then maybe S9 looks better, if only becouse it gives you a Wish per turn in the late game.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I've played in MP against W9 Niefelheim, and against (or, actually, along side) F4W4N4E4 Unmarked fomorians. So, once again, I redirect you to Peter's post: dont confuse what is a specific and minoritary subset of the metagame (that is, Multiplayer competitive games in Llamaserver against vets -or at the very least people who read the guides here-, in maps that have 10-15 provinces per player and 8 players per game). There are a LOT of different ways to play. That changes what is considered "optimal". For example: I used to play in games with no diplomacy, and 2 sides set from the begining. In a situation like that, your bless might need to have in consideration things like what other nations are in your side, and what magic paths your side might need.



It's you who misses Peter's point. Those aren't the best blesses for those chasses, but the best blesses for those chasses in a metagame that involve Multiplayer Competitive fights in 10-15 provinces per player in matchs of 8 players that happen in Llamaserver among people who ussually fight using the conventional approach (ie: the "optimal build for chasses"). In a completelly different subset of metagame, other options might be better. That's actually the entire point in Peter's (excellent) post.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

:rolleyes:

W9 Nieflheim who lost horribly I assume? I mean, that doesn't even begin to work well. You can't expect me to even begin to consider that a serious bless for Nieflheim, with any number of players. Its strictly worse than E4N4 for Nieflheim, much less E9N4. *Not taking any bless* would be better than that.

(The Fomoria doesn't sound so bad - more scales than bless, nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure i'd call that an unmarked bless though, he just happened to use some unmarked. Scales are a viable build for most nations, with or without some light rainbow blessing.)

Some chasses have clearly optimal blesses. If you're going to use Niefl Giants, the optimal bless is obviously E9N4. Now, you may go with less than that because of cost, but that doesn't make it not the optimal bless for that chassis. And to pretend that chasses don't have optimal blesses with which they perform the best on the field is ridiculous.

Is bless the only consideration when building your pretender? Of course not. But it *is* the only consideration when it comes to judging whether or not its worth hiring a given sacred. In the context of a sacred a bless is either good or bad or indifferent. One possible bless is the best.

If people choose to use suboptimal blesses for reasons other than blessing their troops, well, that's due to considerations beside what their sacreds are. That has nothing to do with balancing sacreds. All your reasons for taking suboptimal blesses have *nothing to do with the sacreds*. So if that particular bless makes the sacreds unplayably bad, the solution is obvious - don't play with them! Use other units.

Surely you wouldn't advocate Niefl Giants should be balanced around assuming a W9 bless for them? They're clearly really bad units that aren't worth anywhere close to 125g at that point. But if we slash the price to 50g or whatever they might be worth with a W9 bless, then someone comes along with E9N4 Niefl Giants and destroys people because they're clearly undercosted. When we're talking about balancing sacreds, we should be assuming optimal blesses on those sacreds.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Devoured by triple bless (W9F9B6) Jaguars, as far as I remember :P. The player loved Father of Winter chasis, and went nut with it. However, it's a sign that not everybody plays "by the standards".

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Yes, but if the result is 'inevitably lose horribly', then its really not something that should be taken seriously.

You're welcome to play W9 anakim and do just as well in the current CBM, if you like.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I have to admit this build really confuses me. Even with a W9 bless Niefel giants aren't going to be dishing out many attacks but if you really wanted to double your attacks your mages can easily cast quickness on them (and of course all your Jarls can cast personal quickness). So all you get out of this is +4 defense - but as giants they are going to be completely outnumbered so that defense bonus isn't going to help them like it would a smaller unit. The only advantage I can see is if they're facing other giants but even there I'd prefer to take the earth bless as it will prevent them from getting fatigued while your cold aura and possibly your own chaff tire out your opponents (assuming they don't have their own E bless). I honestly can't think of a situation where a W9 bless would be better for Niefel than an E9 bless (even aside from the fact that strong E is a much better addition to your magic diversity than strong W).


This I can see working. The nice thing about rainbow blesses is that you can usually get them just by spending a little more here and there when designing your pretender. TNN's Tuatha warriors work nicely with them as do MA Jotun's woodsmen (F4E4N4 works well though even just N4E4 will get the job done).


Well, CBM is going to have to choose something to balance against. What do you think it should be? Personally my guess is that most Dominions players play SP but there balance isn't an issue and it can actually be more interesting to have things imbalanced.

I'm not much of a minmaxer myself and there's nothing wrong with taking a build for the fun of it, but I wouldn't expect CBM to balance itself against my non-optimal builds - otherwise a true minmaxer will be able to abuse the heck out of things.

As far as different game types go, I've played several duels and obviously there you have a different focus as all you need is to defeat one opponent. IMO the main difference large and medium size games (aside from hellish micromanagement ;)) is that having your best units be cap only is more of a drawback and good scales matter more than ever.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I think it's fine balancing out against MP with 8 players per match in medium sized maps. It's a fair middleground.

However, I disagree with some of the CBM balancing decisions.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Could you give some examples please? (Other than Ahiman Anakites, that is)

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I don't see how size of the game change availability of blesses. You wouldn't play F9W9 Ashdod in any game. Power of different blesses in different metagames will be different. But game size wouldn't promote "unplayable" bless to "playable" it could only change the best one from "playable".

There are two exceptions - additional mods(ofc) and games with small number of opponents(size doesn't matter it could be duel on 100 province map).

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Sanguine Douses being unique artifacts, for example.

W9F9B8 would be absolutelly atrocious bless for any nation in a game with 25 provinces per nation and 20 nations, becouse the cost in scales would make it incredibly hurtful in the long run, plus you probably won't be able to take enough adventage from your sacreds to make it worthy.
In a 1vs1 match in a 20 provinces map, that bless alone might give you the victory before a proper counter is developed.

Otoh, a bless like S9 gets extra power once Wish is developed (it gives you a wisher, your pretender), and having +3 MR in your thugs and commanders is much more relevant in turn 60 than it is in turn 20.

So yes, I think the size of the map is very important to decide bless viability, becouse size of the game / map directly influence the length of the game, and the things that are useful in turn 15 aren't the same that are useful in turn 90. Blitz matches tend to gravitic toward fast and furious blesses, making some options unviable in that specific kind of match. That does not mean the option is not viable in some other kinds of matches.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Actually Squirrel, I have done some test and I found out that if you are taking a bless only for the Niefel giants, you are much better of with a Son of Fenrir with W4N6 and dom9.

Why? I compared him to the Master druid with a E9N4 bless and the wolf got *4* more scales and *3* points of extra dominion. The giants wont be quite as strong with this bless but you'll have much more of them and you are much more likely to fight your battles in cold dominion.

Actually strong dominion is a must with Niefelheim in general because every province without cold 3 gets income penalties. And its good for the popsicle giants in particular because of the Coldpower and Cold protection that they got.

Now the drawback is that you cant put Fire and Earth on him for diversity. Thats bad because those paths are a pain to bootstrap into unless you get lucky with indies or use Aschaic records.

This bless is also worse for your thugs (but we took it strictly for the troops). You have to put messenger boots on your skrattis if you want to thug with them. So thats 5 gems extra for every thug.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

That's my point. You can, if you want, be creative. Sure, there are "better" blesses than others. It's hard to argue that E9 or W9 are better than A9, for example. But even if some blesses are "optimal", they should not be "the only one that is possible". There's a difference between Jaguars benefiting more from F9 than S9, and not being able to use any other bless but F9.

Encumbrance 7 in a unit with 75g44r per attack (and no damaging aura), pretty much *force* them to earth blesses. With Encumbrance 5 it'll be the best possible bless anyway, but it would not force people to take it no matter of what. Someone could try to be creative as you did with your W4N6 bless. With encumbrance 7, that's simply not an option.


Now that I think, what other units have encumbrance 7, besides Annakites and centaur Cataphracts?

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Blindfighters? (Was 10, now 8 in CBM)

There's piles of heavily armored units with >5 encumbrance in the base game.

And the problem with enc 5 anakim is they're broken overpowered in year 1 with E10N4+. So that's not even an option. It doesn't matter if it would let other blesses work, E10N4+ is too good so it can't be allowed to happen.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Contradiction much? (Note emphasis added)

It may be stronger for the nation (though I highly doubt it), but its not stronger for Niefl Giants. As you admit yourself. There's a difference between a bless that's optimal for a sacred and a pretender build that's optimal for the nation.

More generally, why would you even take a Son of Fenrir, its a bad chassis that does nothing for you? A green dragon would get you the N bless and be able to expand (not that Nieflheim needs it - well, they probably do as you apparently don't plan on using Niefl Jarls).

I think you'd find that E9 doubles the expected lifetime (or more) of Niefl Giants, and you don't double your income by avoiding it, plus it makes your Niefl Jarls into SCs from turn 1. The viable alternatives to E9N4 from a nation (not Niefl Giant) perspective are E4N4-based rainbows, which use skinshifters or just Jarls to expand, and the rainbow to diversify and site search.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Oh Squirrel. You are truly the master of not reading the post you are replying to. The individual giant is weaker, the Giants are stronger! More of them gives you more damage output and because the N6 bless will protect against afflictions, (unlike the N4), the giants will also suffer less attrition.

And why would anyone ever want a green dragon for this bless? It is much more expensive! Not only is it 25p more expensive, it also starts with dom 1! I told you we need strong dominion! Niefel giants get +/- 2 points of protection and +/- 1 point of attack, defense and strength per point of cold/heat in the province. Even Niefel jarls with E9N4 blessings can die to normal indies in heat 1 dominion.

And I guess the Wolf can expand on his own if taken awake. (Why?!?!) He got fear +5 and awe from his dominion. He also have 122hp.

His water bless is a small but nice bonus. But it does add up. The real protection comes from the numbers though. More giants mean more cold auras that can stack witch means less turns the enemies remain conscious. Having more giants mean that they wont be ganged up on as much so the little water bless last longer.

I have always found the skinshifters to be rather mediocre personally. They cost to much to be massable and they simply dont have the damage output or survivability to be truly powerful. Maybe if they had two claw attacks like the normal skinshifter.

And although Jarl expansion is a neat concept, it is more economical to just send out 2-3 normal giants + a priest.

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Why you can't use Niefl Jarls to expand with a W4N6 bless? It's not like Niefl Jarls *needs* a mandatory E9 to be able to kill a few indies...

Sure it helps against stronger indies, but it's not like you are not going to be able to expand. Specially with an Awake SC

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

Nightmares (blessable Onyx Amazon unit) has 12 encumbrance. They're really great if you can guarantee that they won't have to fight for more than two rounds (or one if you hit them with a W9 bless). Too bad, because that massed interlocking fear aura could be so awesome.
An E10 bless makes them useful for up to four or five rounds of actual melee!

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

It's quite possible that I'm out to left field here, but I don't really see what all this e10n* talk is about.

Squirrel is bang on with the scales build.

Scales is the way to go those commanders cost an arm and a leg! I haven't tried expanding with the non sacred smaller giants but, they look pretty good stat wise. IF I were to go for a blessing I'd rather go F4E4N4 or something like that, to maximize killing and minimize standing around waiting for the DRN to screw over your E10N* giants which you banked everything on. :)

*shrug* E9N* has been around for awhile now most people know what to do to stop it in it's tracks (swarm them giants and/or fat/paralyze/soulslay/skelli/blindness/tangle/etc spam). You're putting your eggs in one basket. Small rush map sure. Larger map, those giants are going to gas as magic comes into play and then what do you do? Even if you played an aggressive early game thats only going to get you ganked in the end. :) So yeah, imo don't bother with the e9, go scales and minor rainbow bless, and fire is necessary to maximize every attack being a hit and thereby a kill.

Anyways my 2 cents carry on. :)

Re: Ashdod is worthless now
 

I am so done with this thread, since its not even worth debating stupid things like Fenrir being a good expanding chassis (Have you even tried it? I have, it blows), or W4N6 being a good use of your pretender for Nieflheim.

But patently false things like an N4 bless not reducing affliction chance? The heck? Corinthian, you should know better than that. Regeneration - any regeneration - reduces affliction chance by the exact same amount, which is where the N-bless affliction reduction comes from.

My only answer to the recent round of stupid is - try playing that in a real game, see how it works out for you. Heck, try W4N6 Niefl Jarls as expanding SCs. I'm pretty sure that fails horribly. But its thanksgiving, and I'm not inclined to check right now. Unblessed Niefl Jarls do die to quite a bit though, so i can't imagine that bless is going to help all that much (encumbrance kills).