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.