Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

One simple way of severely limiting the feasibility of strategies relying solely on bless would be to make Divine Blessing a H4 spell.

That might be a bit too extreme, though...

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Well than what would be the point to take a bless strategy at all? Everyone would script their priests and/or mages to dispell it anyways. That would just make the blessings almost useless. Or..yet another example: Player A is scripting his priest to dispell the blessing in all turns, Player B is scripting his priest to cast blessing in all turns.
Which player would win the bless/dispell battle? You would be forced to cast these things only with those priests. Definitely not good.


I don't see any problem with the blessings. On small map they are indeed very useful, however just blessings won't decide the game, only if an "uber bless nation" like helheim or vanheim is rushing the enemy early in the game. If the game is on 'till turn 20-25, the blessings won't be that important. They are very useful of course.
Anyways blessing is what making the sacred troops better than the normal troops, and it is totally ok. Don't forget that you use up lot of design points to take dual+ blessing. Often you have to use an imprisoned pretender and/or misfortune/drain etc.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Your point makes sense. So long is blessing don't become a no brainner for large maps as well.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

If they decided to have dispelling of blesses, MR would even it out so the dispel doesn't work every time.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Only time will tell.

Drain 2 gives you only -1 rp.
Misfortune 3 is rather harmless too, usually it doesn't hurt you enough to make you lose the game. 1 out of 10-20 of your games you might die because of the misfortune 3 events.

Most sacreds are only useful for the earlygame, but there are clear exeptions, those nations with very useful sacreds, preferably not capitol only.

Mictlan, Vanheim and Helheim fall in this category. To a lesser extent Tien Chi S&A and some of the Ape Nations too.

If they manage to kill 1-2 players in the first 25 turns of a game their additional castles and extra terrain let them recruit enough mages to overcome their research disadvantage from drain 2. Some bless nations can also take magic 1.

And Mictlan blesshordes can get out of control, because they can spend their blood on jaguar fiends which are excellent if you have a high micromanagement pain tolerance (which i obviously lack though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif ).

Mictlan might very well manage to use their bless troops well till the lategame, Vanheim and Helheim too because they are sacred and thus still perfect raiders.

And finally there is Niefelheim. In earlygame the niefel giants are very useful, in midgame you can then also use niefel Jarls with equipment.

In earlygame good blesstroops dominate, but in midgame they can still dominate if you support them with battlemagic or other tricks and in lategame they can still be useful if you buff them with battlefield wide enchantments or for raiding.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Stealthy blessed raiders is a major advantage in longer games. The one who has more efficient raiders often win. I don't mean that it's a no-brainer win, but with 2 strong players facing each other, better raiders is a huge advantage.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Heh. I'd argue that misfortune 3 isn't harmless - actually I haven't done any games yet with less than luck-1, but people have been posting about having almost won a game, only to have knights/barbarians/etc arrive in sufficient force to cost them the game. Luck/misfortune is much more on a par with how it is with CB mods, perhaps even more so.

This has always been the case, but the increased gold has made it possible to get a _lot_ of those blessed troops. All nations starting with a decent-to-good fort in their capitol also means that even resource intensive, capitol only, sacreds, can be produced in reasonable number even with sloth doesn't help either. (I've been able to recruit 5-6 sacreds requiring 30+ resources while going with sloth 2-3 - I'm typically gold/dominion limitted rather than resources.) It's nice that all nations seem to start with a decent fort in their capitol, since forts can't be chosen at dominion creation, but....

And certain blessings will _always_ dominate as things stand, regardless of early/late game. F9 or D9? Equip sacred thug commanders with multiple attack weapons. W9, N9? Faster thugs, thugs that heal and take fewer afflictions?

Dom2 took a while for the unbalances to really show, but Dom3 both has more experienced / creative players from day one, and also seems to have greater imbalances in some ways (blessings, scales, certain nations not getting heroes (and most heroes once again being nearly worthless), early mercs, etc. Wish I wasn't working so much now, or I'd try to do at least a Heroic or CB pretender mod myself, since the game desperately needs them. (Oh, and fixed versions of the maps that came with the game, sheesh!)

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Because nations are different. Heat preference gives design points and hurts enemies fighting in your dominion, but it also means that you'll probably need to spent a good amount of effort on pushing your dominion since everyone else has the wrong temperature scale.

For a heat 3 nation fighting in a cold province is a really bad idea, and if heat preference didn't give design points it would be a clear disadvantage rather than the double-edged sword it is now.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

And did he manage to capture your capital before turn 8?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Heh, I had to throw in the towel of course. I had no choince against that fast rush. Niefel cannot field enough troops for turn 4.