Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

A resource increase, though a restriction for early-game expansion, is not a mid-game or late-game restriction. Personally I care more about the Hinnom chariots then I do about the elephants.

On the subject of balancing nations, lets stick to one nation at a time. It's been like five posts and we are already talking about elphants, ghost riders, and a host nations who have national summons. If your problem with the ghost rider is that deep then it should get it's own post dedicated to hating it.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Kristoffer O:

I think there are some issues with overall nation balance. Most of them are about early and mid game [before you can diversify and get big enough gem income to do almost what you want]. My biggest concerns are about:
- sacred nations [they just own, and you can always put cheap Shroud on whatever you summon later], getting a good bless is just too cheap [and some blesses are useless]
- recruitable SCs/thugs [other nations first need to get research to summon them and then pay at least 10-30 gems just to get a chassis], Niefel Jarls can even beat a big part of summonable SCs and cost well, only gold [Hinnom SCs are powerful too]
- tramplers [many nations have almost no ways of protecting against them and get nothing in exchange]

There are simply some nations that base their survival on luck or diplomacy. And they should have normal chances of getting through [even if they are weaker in that stage]. I don't like paying 150 points for awake SC only because I will be dead within 15 turns if I don't. If someone wants to pay 150 points for faster expansion it is his right, but that should be a choice. But I don't know if I can expect major changes like that before Dom4 [even QM's CBM does not try to work on that].

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Berserking Baal means no buffing. Without buff, are you going to survive against 4 hydras? I do not think so.

Arrow fend is a good counter to Sauromatia, but at Ench6, which is not something you research first, it is hardly an early game counter. Blade wind, you could very well hit the skeletons instead of poison archers.

Yes, with research scale up and in the late second year, Hinnom can start to counter effectively, but an early war will put Hinnom in disadvantage, even 1:1. Remember if you expand too fast, you also make a lot of enemies.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I'd prefer to see tramplers not get nerfed. They give some otherwise weak early game nations a nice boost. And they always have the risk of trampling their own troops and have some significant morale issues that can be exploited.

I disagree on nerfing Ghost Riders - I think it should be able to take out most PD - it is a very high level spell that requires most nations to bootstrap to be able to cast and helps accelerate the end game.

The point re: Hinnom's magical diversity is also valid - as Fomoria I turned the tide briefly until Hinnom started showing up with SR trinkets. That's something that Niefel would have a tough time with except through trading. So I wouldn't mind seeing Hinnom lose access to some magic schools.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I would really like to see more counter against SC on unit level. One solution would to incur fatigue on the target for every attack attempt. Even it is just 1, those infantries will do at least 15 fatigue damage on target every round.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Are you kidding? Slightly more than 1 in 3 niefel jarls will have A1. And they can all forge ring of shock resistance, giving 100% SR. If you mean it does not have capital A income, neither does Hinnom.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

No, I wasn't kidding, just mistaken. I hadn't played Niefel in a while and forgot they had A randoms. My bad.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

[quote=AreaOfEffect;642011]What has always balanced trampling units is the fact that when they rout, they kill your own men, instead of the enemy. Thats the key.

But the way things are right now, tramplers generally have too high hp and prot to be really risky to use in combat. Particularly if you balance thier morale by adding some slow, good morale troops to thier squad. If we just nerf thier prot and hp stats somewhat and make them vulnerable (not totally helpless, mind you!) to the relatively moderate attacks of a mundane army, then you will take tramplers back from being a no-brainer to a really interesting and risky decision.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Nah, I actually played this matchup as Hinnom vs Sauro - though granted it was late year 2 after my research had a chance to mature and I was already much larger than my opponent (scarcely a rare occurrence wit Hinnom), but I'm pretty confident I could have smashed him with much less resources. Flesheater axe gives you berzerk, but not "gone berzerk", so you can buff just fine and the first time you get hit you go berzerk (works great for SCs as the berzerk gives you more protection as well!). If you're having trouble getting this to work for some reason (cons-4 not researched? Arrows tending to hit you before you finish buffing?) you could also forego the teleportation and have one of your N2 mages (with a tower shield) stand around waiting for you do finish buffing before berzerking you and retreating. Have to say though that I had no trouble at all slaughtering groups of 8+ hydras using nothing but cons-4 gear and alt-3 buffs on a single Baal. Didn't really notice the Androphag archers because I already had SCs at that point, but if they had tried to rush me (how in the world you rush tramplers with mostly archers I've yet to see) it wouldn't have been much of a stretch to stall him with counter-raids. Following my strategy guide you're pumping out two expansion/raiding parties per turn from just your capital while leveraging your fast expansion and awesome scales to plop up cheap castles from which come more raiding parties/mages while at your suggestion Sauromatia has taken a bless and possibly an awake pretender so it's impossible for them to match Hinnom's troop output with cap only troops.

Again, I played this matchup, and not only did I attack Sauro in a crushing invasion late year 2/early year 3, I simultaneously declared war on all the remaining nations (Sauro plus Neifelheim, Lanka, and TC with none of them fighting each other) just to try and give them a fighting chance - FWIW nobody could even put up a convincing speedbump. That's in early year 3 - scarcely left alone to grow in power forever.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Lower PD - Excellent idea.
Fewer starting troops - Even better idea.
Dawn Guard +5g - Okay.

Chariot nerf - Just increase resources to decrease early numbers. They are easily dealt with later.

General trampler nerf - Please don't. It will effect alot of nations, all Caelum/Arco/Monkey nations and weaken them considerably. Elephants/Mammoths are very good as a alternative strategy to a bless and allow nice scales. After turn 20'ish elephants/mammoths are fairly useless, indeed they are expansive to maintain, so should be killed off, perhaps keep a small force to distract the enemy perhaps.