Re: Broken Nations
 

I think LE R'lyeh is very good at what it does (irritate neighbors with Dominion, stock up on cheap units, offer most of the same advantages of ME R'lyeh) but the insanity on your own commanders can be very offputting and LE has a number of amphibious nations that, in my opinion, are -very- dangerous to R'lyeh if they decide they want to compete for the waters -- after all, I think a double-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan horde coming into the water is going to make life -extremely- ugly for R'lyeh even if they've recruited scads of dreaming fodder along the way. Let's also just say that I prefer the (amphibious!) sacreds those two nations can buy multiples of -every turn- a great deal more than I do the sacreds that R'lyeh MIGHT be able to spawn through the Gate every few turns if they're lucky.

I love R'lyeh. I'm a huge enthusiast and think the Dreamlands theme is fun. But calling it broken is, I think, overstating the case.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I think you may be a little too sour from losing to qm on that note ... Qm is an excellent player and you are most likely dead if you're 2 provinces away from him anyway. I wager your build was not prepared for an uber bless which is what you lost to, not the "massed sacreds". I got attacked with 122 Vans, one game. THAT'S a massed Sacred army! XD If you are playing a small blitz against Mictlan or S&A, you should be prepared with an awakened fire res Thug/SC with your build. If not, you're pretty much asking for it. And should I point out, you can just as easily "mass" woodsmen as well to equal numbers if I recall ... You shouldn't single out Mictlan and S&A as the mass sacred kings, especially not S&A which was my point of contention. They really don't mass any more effectively than any other sacred nations. In fact, I find Mictlan's and S&A nations both pretty ideally balanced. Though the jags might still need a bit of tweaking ...

PS. Niefel is also a bit countered by the f9/w9 bless since they're prone to catching on fire.

Re: Broken Nations
 

LE Ryleh has one of the fastest expansions out of the gates, offensive dominion, and great mages. They're actually my favorite LE nation but they're a bit broken. (not too much) If Atlantis/Mictlan comes into waters dual blessed, mind blast the crap out of them. It'll make them think twice about their invasion and make most player want to go after easier prey. However, the main strength of Ryleh comes from the free troops and having almost unchallenged access in the oceans. The extras you get from void gate is just flavor in comparisant to their other advantages.

Re: Broken Nations
 

*wink* I dunno about that mind-blasting response to the dual-blessed Atlantis/Mictlan crew if one of those blesses is, say, Astral for the MR. Pair that with Water perhaps to reach the other side of the battlefield before suffering much in the way of paralysis and you're talking a lot of dead lobos and illithid.

I also think it's difficult to gauge how broken R'lyeh is because, like Ermor, their Dominion creates a dogpile effect on the other players which means that the psychological sense of imbalance seems to correct, or even overcompensate for, any discrepancy therein.

I dunno. I think it'd be fun to try. Perhaps a blitz sometime if you're game, as I'm curious to see how R'lyeh holds up against an aggressive opponent, particularly since I love playing them so much myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Broken Nations
 

Like I've said it was a 5 FFA not a 1v1. Mictlan's early rush is just almost impossible to beat without a specific build. You won't make a specific build against XY nation/player in an FFA game. I know that QM is an excellent player, but this has nothing to do with the fact, that Mictlan can field much more sacreds than most of other nations. Since their sacreds are good and cheap, with a proper bless they are rolling. In a couple of turns you can have a small army from those sacreds. So if you have 30 sacreds with nation X, and like 10 with nation Y, in the same time, we can talk about massing if you ask me.

Just for the record, I've also used rush tactic against many players in the blitzes with certain nations, and needless to say that they couldn't do anything. This all happens because of the imbalances of sacreds/blessings.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I'd love to pick LE Ryleh in a blitz if it wasn't constantly banned. =)

Re: Broken Nations
 

Agreed. There are imbalances in uber blesses in current blitz settings. However, I do not think Mictlan is one of the culprits in this situation. Van/Helheim holds the current imba bless medal currently IMO. Catch me in the channel sometimes if you can and I'll duel your rush tactic. The key to defeating /most/ rush tactics in blitzes is to be prepared for them. Obviously if you're running around with a human pretender and focused on a building up strat you'll get stomped against an uber bless. I remember my first encounter with an uber bless I thought it was imba as well but I stomped it pretty thoroughly after I changed my strat/build. IMO, currently the BIGGEST problem is Order gives you too much gold. Every uber bless can just take order 3 and sack every other scale without any significant disadvantage.

Re: Broken Nations
 

I'll play you with them one-on-one sometime. If you wipe me up, it'll just teach me why everyone else bans 'em. ;-)

Re: Broken Nations
 

Sounds good to me =). Just name the time and place!

Re: Broken Nations
 

I also agree that van/hel are the best uber bless nations in EA. The problem is that you can prepare yourself against uber bless builds in a duel of course, but it is impossible to tell that what will player XY gonna use in a team or FFA game. So if you choose to start with an "anti bless" build there, it might be a bad choice overall, hence you will skip some otherwise very effective blitz builds.