Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Does anyone else think that giving pikemen a 1st strike, high attack against mounted units would help balance the vans somewhat.

The 1st strike of the pike against mounted units has been used in other strategy games, and is sound realistically. A charging unit into a long pike IS going to take some damage most of the time.

Thus the pike gets a very high attack bonus and 1st strike(only against mounted units). I also think the defense of the mounted unit should be lowered against the pike because the pike is going to hit the horse not the rider.

It is just hard to see the 1st wave of calvary charging into a row of pikes and avoiding injury. Several horses would be severely injured.

And I guess not just pikes, but long spears would also achieve the same result. Maybe any sharp weapon of length 4 or 5?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

EA Tien Chi beats Helheim easily, with it's pikes and chariots eliminating the glamour pretty easily, and the warriors of the 5 elements destroying it's special troops. Add in Chi's other troops, like their decent archers and heavy glaive-users, and it's a slaughter.

I've done it consistently over quite a few games.

As far as weakening Hel/Van instead of strengthening other nations-well, the ones that need strengthened are weak to begin with, and not just against Hel/Van.

I'm not saying boost Caelum, Niefel, T'C, Lanka, etc. I'm talking nations that have a hell of a time beating Helheim OR Niefel OR Caelum OR T'C, like EA R'lyeh for instance.
Sure, it's easy to weaken Hel/Van-a lot easier than it is to strengthen half a dozen nations-but EASY isn't always BEST, and Hel/Van are good nations, they're internally balanced, and they work for a lot of different styles of play.

You may have an easier time of cutting the legs out from under Hel/Van than lifting up and fixing up the least competitive nations in the game-and you certainly can tell yourself that you're doing the least amount of so-called "damage" to the 'holy internal balance' of the game, but the end result will be a game which isn't as fun to play-and that's the bottom line, fun. It's more trouble to fix a nation, but it's also a really good opportunity to make that nation more FUN to PLAY.

Plus, if done really well, it should firm up the overall balance of nations in the game.

And those things makes the game overall better, rather than worse.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Is this just me, or Vanheim/Helheim has very heavy infantry by Early Era standards ? Not only that, but the infantry is stealthy, has high defence and magic resistance ?
They're perhaps ok for middle era, but compared to other Early units they're like soviet tanks.

I can't completely verify it now because I've never been a big fan of *heims and I don't feel like creating new game just sto check....

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Is this SP or MP? Bet its SP...won't work in MP.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I can't imagine it being in MP either.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Yes, ofcourse SP. The way I figure it, if a person can wring the most out of a nation, then it doesn't mean that nation is unbalanced, it just means people know how to use it and can win with it. So, I'm only interested because Helheim and Vanheim are unbalanced for SP. Who cares about MP?

Most MP games-if they're smart-won't even let you play as Helheim/Vanheim.

You can beat them with Tien Chi pretty easily in SP though. Maybe MP too, maybe not, but who cares?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

If heavily blessed helhirdlings get the charge nothing EA Tien Chi can throw up until late game(apart from maybe a very strong SC God like an E9 cyclops) will stop them.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I've never had a problem stopping them. Not only was I able to take out their armies, I was able to hold on to land, and eventually surround and crush them, without a hitch and in a very mannerly fashion. The secret was using mixed armies of something like 10 to 1 odds against them, having a good bless of my own,, building plenty of castles with loads of PD, and being every bit as aggro as they are.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

HB, it might help put an end to some of the argument here if you could be clear that you're talking about SP in your posts. Like:

"I've never had a problem stopping the Vanheim AI. Not only was I able to take out their armies in SP, I was able to hold on to land in SP, and eventually surround and crush the AI player, without a hitch (in SP) in a very mannerly fashion (against the AI)."

I don't want to ban Helheim/Vanheim from games, but I do know I'll be trying out the CB mod in the next MP game I host.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Helheim/Vanheim are not unbalanced in SP because the AI plays them, so anyone can beat them very easily with any nation after 1 or 2 months playing experience. In SP you want to give the AI as much advantage as possible to give you a challenge.

Helheim/Vanheim are unbalanced purely in MP play when a good player will use there strengths to the max.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Yeah when you're talking about SP you can still talk about balance (you can deduce the relative strengths of a lot of units etc) but you can't use the fact that you can beat the AI as an example that a nation isn't overpowered. Because of course you can beat any AI nation with any other nation. You can beat them even if they're improved 500%. You can beat them even if you stale the first 5 turns. If you want to assess whether Vans are overpowered you could try playing with them and see if it's actually worth using any other kind of strategy with Helheim / Vanheim.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Which ofcourse is exactly what I WASN'T saying.

I am saying that they're overpowered. In SP. I don't have an opinion about MP since I don't play a lot of MP.

I wasn't saying that, "just because you can beat the AI in SP that they're not overpowered". Infact, I'm not sure how you got that. I did say you can beat them in an SP game with Tien Chi, but that's entirely in another direction from the point. What I'm saying is that, if you compare them to other nations, they're clearly more powerful. Human intelligence (or a clear lack thereof) is entirely aside from that.

I wonder if anyone actually reads my posts before replying to them, or takes them in any kind of context?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I read up to this point...

... before I stopped caring what you were saying.

But hey, I'm sure I took that out of context.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I can't fathom why you're trying to be rude, Velusion, but I haven't noticed you posting anything I cared about either, ever, so I guess we're even?

And, since you don't seem to know what the word "context" means or how to use it, and since the last two times you've posted in this thread, you haven't made any particular sense, contextual or otherwise, then perhaps you ought to look into it?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif Whatever.

Edit: Many of us here ONLY play MP. To ask "Who cares about MP?", as if it isn't worth discussing, isn't exactly being very diplomatic or polite. I would never think to say "Who cares about SP?"

....

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I don't think he was being rude, I think you were / are. Dom3 is a game with a big MP community so saying 'who cares about MP?' is obviously going to cause problems.

I hope your post along the lines of 'learn to read' wasn't directed at me because I didn't misunderstand what you said at all. I question the relevancy of it given the context of this thread and think you should have clarified from the start you were talking about SP, but I wasn't accusing you of claiming Vans aren't overpowered based on SP. I was just pointing out that it's a bad idea to do so in case that's the direction things were about to go.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Can't we all get along?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Again, it's a simple matter of context. I wasn't saying that "nobody cares about MP ever in the history of the world", that would be ridiculous. To put it very simply and directly, I was saying that MP is a much more volatile environment than SP. SP is the control. If something is unbalanced in SP then it's a much bigger deal than MP because it's objective. I don't think that's too difficult to understand.

No, I wasn't directing anything towards you, Sombre, I realize that it was a misunderstanding, and I could have been clearer. SP is what's important to me (obviously) but it's also a good measuring stick for balance, since the human brain is capable of a relatively infinite amount of permutations, whereas a computer is a finite thing-especially where AI is involved. I didn't intend that to be misunderstood, but if it was, I take the responsibility.

And Velusion was being rude. I wasn't speaking to him directly, and he wasn't making any real point that I could see, other than that he seems to have got his back up about MP. I accept responsibility for being unclear, and I realize that people care about MP, but I'm not a Pagan and he's not a Christian (well, ok, so I am a Pagan and he might be a Christian, but that's the metaphor I'm going with here), and we can go our separate ways without trying to convert one another.

There's no reason for him to chime in, unless he was looking to pick a fight. If I want to say "who cares about MP?" I can. I had a reason to say it, and it wasn't to be rude. If I had wanted to be rude, I would have said something along the lines of "screw people who play MP". I happen to like that this game is multi-player, and I happen to like people who multi-play. It's also useful for improving the game and the experience, since it's a great way to figure out everything that can be done with a particular nation.

The context was, "who cares about MP (in terms of the objective balancing of nations, because SP gives us much clearer and more useful data"). I admit I got a little irritated when people started telling me that I was wrong about things I'd never said, but that's ok, I can let that go with a smile, it happens. What I don't like is someone deciding they can pick on me without having anything like a well-formed motive, and when that happens, I feel I have the right and the duty to defend myself, which I did.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Hmmm, I think I need a little bit more clarification on what you're trying to say. You say the human brain is relatively more infinite than a computer AI, and tie that to SP being a more objective environment. I'm a little confused because I would expect that balancing by playing against a limited intelligence (the AI) gives you inferior balance to playing against a good intelligence (presumably human). It may be that there's a devastating counter Y to tactic X, which the AI will never find. (For instance, the AI can't handle SCs, and in fact doesn't seem to do much research at all.) That doesn't mean that X is too strong, it means it's risky with a payoff, except that against the AI there's no risk. Evaluating nations by playing them against the AI carries a high risk of identifying false positive imbalances. Conversely, evaluating nations by making the AI play them against you proves nothing--perhaps an imbalance exists but the AI isn't set up to exploit it. Therefore, I'm having trouble seeing how MP can be dismissed when you're trying to analyze balance, since it's the only opportunity you have to play against an opponent as intelligent as you.

Speaking as an SP player, I highly appreciate the MP players' finely-honed insights into the strategy of Dominions.

-Max

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I think the AI does quite a lot of research - it's just that it does research on seemingly random paths and never really uses battlemages as part of a true army.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

So many things bug me about the heims. On the top of the list is their stealth. To me Pangaea should be the great stealth nation. Vanheim just steals their thunder.

Personally I think that the heims should have glamour only within their dominion. After all they are gods. Wander too far away, and you start to lose your power.

Other wise I would like to see weaknesses that could be exploited in the Heims, without taking away their strengths. One of these could be to increase their encumbrance (after all this glmaour could take a lot of mental effort to maintain.) That way, they would be strong at the beginning of the battle, but if they can't take out their opponant quickly, they start to lose their effectivness.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

It's not that I'm dismissing it, MaxWilson. Not at all. It's the weight of the MP players that is the deciding factor. The nation is unbalanced in SP and carries through to MP. That's where their opinions become relevant, because you can analyze the nation in the laboratory of SP and then the imbalance plays itself out in the environment of MP.
It's definitely important. I'm just saying it's too great a variable in this kind of situation to be trusted by itself as to the degree the balance is off and should be corrected.

The game itself is so huge that it's hard to identify what's balanced and what isn't. Adding in the human factor makes it a degree more difficult. But if you can look at the SP game and say "yes, this nation is definitely, obviously better than every other one, whether I'm playing it or I'm playing against it" you're making things a lot easier on yourself.

You can come up with ways to fix the balance in SP, and test it, and then you can introduce it back into the environment of MP and see how it plays, but all the specifications should be decided in SP and then you can start talking ramifications in MP.

Do you see what I mean?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

When this thread originally started some time back, I was one of the first people to respond by saying yes the heims are overpowered.

I was told that if you were new to multiplayer, you just think the heims are overpowered because you are inexperienced.

Well its been several months, I have played in several larger MP games now and several blitzes. I am far from being a multiplayer expert, or even good for that matter, but in every game that has included a heim, I have watched them gobble up their neighbors, gobble up their neighbors neighbors and so on. The only counter I have seen against the heims is massed alliances made to wipe them out.

I may not be the best player out there, but I feel like I have been playing in games with some really great players. And I have watched those good players become eradicated by heims.

In one of my current games, I was placed next to a very experienced player that was behind the wheel of Marverni. I was pretty nervous being in such a position, then Helheim came along. Helheim utterly slaughtered Marverni and became my new neighbor.

Several months later, I still stand behind my original comments. The heims are overpowered to a point that in multiplayer games, the only solutions include hoping the player is brand new to the game and does not notice the powerful units in his recruit screen. The other alternative is to form dogpile alliances to knock out the heim player early.

That being said, I also hang on to my original proposal for a solution. Rather than nerf the heims, create a couple of new game mechanics that counter glamour, and give those new counters to nations that underperform.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I agree about counters to glamour, but I'd hate to see the "anti-Helheim" spell. I hope people will come up with enough partial solutions that they'll add up to one whole solution, rather than shoe-horning a deus ex machina.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

HoneyBadger, your base assumptions about what makes for an objective laboratory environment for testing Dom3 balance seem very strange. Your assertion that single player games provide for an accurate lab environment is, to me, nothing but a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up other than your say-so.

It is my contention that the multiplayer games provide a far more accurate environment because in that environment ALL the strengths of a nation can be utilized to their full effect. It has been, since the beginning of the thread, pointed out by very experienced players that Vanheim and Helheim are not only powerful but that the power balance with them vs other nations is ridiculously lopsided. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

It just so happens that in MP, without mass alliances, you need to do everyything exactly right AND the heim player must also go along and work to YOUR script if you are to defeat him, while he has much more options. All this talk about defeating AI vanheim/Helheim means precisely nothing due to handicaps of the AI. It's much like a highly trained athlete crowing about being able to beat a person bound to a wheelchair on the 100 meter dash.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

QFT

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I think one solution might be to use the CB mod when playing MP. I'm not sure, because I haven't tried CB in MP yet, but this is why I think it should solve the heim problem:

Those who play MP based from the shrapnel forums can get help loading the CB mod (not that it's difficult). SP players (who might not even visit here) might need variety in the strengths of the AI nations, so that once you kill the 2 or 3 AIs on your doorstep, you aren't faced with either a wasteland or a bunch of 15-province fortified AI nations ready to be invaded by a now 45-province human. Considering the nationality of the developers, and the nature of IW as an independent studio, it is not surprising that they chose to make the heims powerful. Without hiems to fight in SP, at the end you would be faced with the drudgery of wading through 500 bare chested warriors etc.

And if the CB 1.00 mod doesn't work because EA Helheim still, in one turn, flies into each province of a nation with 6 or 8 W9F9s and rapes all your horses and rides off on your women, then all we need to do is make CB 1.01 where we adjust the costs so it takes 3 turns to build a Dis and 2 turns to build a single Valk. Resources and gold. And if Helheim still pwns the world, then mod the defense of heim units down too.

Of course, this does not mean anyone is forced to do this (use CB in MP). Do what's fun for you (I think that's why some experienced players still join MP games as heim, when it's an option). Next game I host will be CB, though.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I see that having to factor diplomacy into the game makes analysis harder. I see that test games and games played against yourself let you analyze tactics more easily, and if by SP you include these types of games I agree they're quite useful. And yes, if a nation is both easy to play and hard to play against in SP that's evidence of potential imbalance and I see your point. Still, a nation which is "clearly better" may simply have weaknesses that neither the AI nor the player know how to exploit. Increasing the number of players increases my confidence that no weakness exists, provided that the greater number of players don't find a weakness either.

It looks like you're pointing out that diplomacy in MP complicates analyses.

-Max

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

How about making them magical beings? They seem quite "magical", after all.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Let us wait for the first version of the glamour and helheim changes before continue the discussion here.

Kristoffer wrote in the Tir na n'Og Thread:

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Thank you. I was trying to remember if I had seen anything posted on that outside of the beta-test forum.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Guys... Once upon the time, in the days of Dominions II, I got into a heated
discussion with someone on the subject whether mainstream Ulm was weak. After
pointless arguments, we decided to duke it out on a map that would play to
Ulm's strengths, as he perceived them. After getting demolished in the one
setup that he was sure to win (against Pythium) he stopped objecting.

Why not do it again... those few who claim that Hellheim is not imbalanced will
be assigned nations and show the rest of us how one defeats a fire/water bless.

Despite being a Dominions III newbie, and having never played any -heims since
pretender changes allowed insane blesses, I am willing to take the -heim side.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Good luck in finding an opponent. Most of the people that defend the heims "as is" don't play MP.

But I agree with Calmon - I'll wait to see the changes mentioned by the devs. I'm a bit skeptical, but I'll wait and see.

Edit: Actually if this test is ever done I'd prefer someone more experienced to play the heim nations. Everyone says that the dual-bless heim strategy is simple, but I'm not sure I completely buy that. A really good player intimately familiar with exploiting the heim double-bless avenue would be a better indicator of true uber-potential. Note that this rules me out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Even most of the defenders agree that they are very strong in a small map blitz game rush strategy. Which is what any reasonable one on one game is likely to be.

You could disprove some of the suggested counters, I suppose.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

*nods* The most common defense is "they are weaker in larger/bigger games".

I'd contend that Helheim on a large map (say 30 provinces per player - much larger than the vast majority of MP games) would still crush another non-heim nation one-on-one.

The game only starts to balance out in the extreme late game when the amount of magic researched by all nations is very, very high. The amount of high level magic puts almost everyone that can compete (income/gems/research wise) on semi-equal footing. Even then, the heims really don't have a disadvantage going into the extreme late game, whereas they have a large advantage in the early/mid game.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

All I'm trying to say-and I didn't think it was very difficult to understand-is that you can't call a nation unbalanced purely on what's happening in an MP game. You have to look at the SP game, because it's the only way you're going to get anything approaching a pure result.

If you go by what a human player might do and might exploit, you're never going to get an accurate result, because every human player is going to be different.

Saying Hel and Van are unbalanced *just* because of what's happening in MP games, it's like calling chess unbalanced because Forrest Gump is playing chess against Bobby Fisher (or Bobby Fisher is playing ping-pong/table-tennis against Forrest Gump, for that matter). MP is a very good indicator of what *might* be unbalanced, but SP is where you can get hard facts, because you're only playing for or against yourself.

Now, I know and I admit that there are some things us clever humans can come up with that the computer never will, and those things can be exploited and make a seemingly weak nation a lot stronger, but why should intelligent, clever, unpredictible strategy be punished? that's why we're here!

What I'm trying to say is, if a nation is strong when the computer plays it, when you play it, when Forrest Gump and Bobby Fisher play it, when it's got a sprained ankle, a toothache, and a hangover, *then* it's a problem. A nation can be called unbalanced when it's *always* unbalanced. When it has an advantage in almost every situation, fair or unfair. Helheim and Vanheim do.

And it's not like I'm NOT saying that Hel and Van are unfairly favored-they are! I just think that removing things from a nation that a player might exploit, just so you can have more weak nations, is bad policy. Make the ones that are weak, stronger. Give them more exploitable qualities so they're more fun to play, rather than having us end up with yet another lame-duck nation.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

When you say "there are some things us clever humans can come up with that the computer never will" it completely misses the point: the AI doesn't really play Dominions in the same sense a human does at all. It has no magic strategy and no bless strategy, it doesn't build coherent armies but rather jumbles of whatever it happens to recruit, etc. Therefore how the AI does with a nation tells practically nothing about whether or not the nation is strong or weak.

If by SP you mean tests where create a game with 2 or more human players and you control both, that can give hard data on what counters are possible.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

That's what I'm talking about, tests, yes.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

The problem is that the AI cannot play to Van/Helheim's strengths at all.

It probably won't have a F9/W9 bless. If it does it won't recruit enough sacred troops. If it does attack with sacreds it often won't bless them. It will not even try to use stealth attacks and raiding.

It's not that the AI won't use weird clever tricks that humans can, it's that it won't use the basic strengths of the nation.

Now if you're arguing that, even with the AIs limits, not using most of their strength, the heims are overpowered, then bringing that up adds to the argument.



Velusion:
I'd agree that even on a 60 province 2 player map, Helheim is likely to crush most nations. But that, though large for 2 players, is still early game. Few SCs or full battlefield magic by the end of it, would be my guess.
I'd bet on any of the good bless nations against any non-bless in that game. Some would be closer than others, but I'd also bet Neifelheim or Mictlan could give Helheim a run for it's money.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Yes, that's what I'm arguing, exactly.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I dont think we are ever going to see the nations balanced for 2-player play. At least I hope not. I dont think it fits the game.

But I would like to see nations work better with the AI or vice versa. Its quite abit of the game if a nation doesnt work well for both ai and mp.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Bumping this hated thread to know if with 3.08 and glamour adjusting Vans have become a little more balanced.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Might be a good idea, but it might also be better if a new thread was started. This one is a bit long.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Its also out of date. There was a fix in the last patch which caused glamour to be weakened as far as magic and arrows. Since then various tactics have been developed using squads of cheap archers or slingers. Or area affect spells. Poison in particular by battlefield affect spells, or items such as bladder stick.