Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

I think people are dismissing the pop eating a little too fast as trivial. I haven't played Hinnom in a competitive environment long enough for it to really be significant yet (you know the pace the PBEM games run at), but in the test games I ran to test out my theoretical strategies the population death from building up a stack of Ba'als in my capital was very noticeable and convinced me that it was something that I needed to keep an eye on. I get the impression most people are thinking "ok, I just need to stack my mages outside my capital, no big deal", and that's true for your capital, but what this significantly impacts is blood hunting. All your blood hunters eat population, which is a critical consideration for setting up blood farms. I haven't tested if there is much/any variation, but it seems like Kohen (your most cost efficient blood hunters) eat 20 pop per turn apiece. This means if you go with a standard 3 blood hunters per province you're looking at -60 pop per turn, which means that once you account for a few pop here and there lost to bloodhunting and associated unrest you're looking at the ballpark of -1k population per year in each of the provinces you're bloodhunting. That means if you target the provinces closest to 5k population (absent from this consideration the most cost efficient places to blood hunt) they pretty quickly drop under 5k and you start getting diminishing returns from bloodhunting (a 4k province will on average yield 4/5ths the blood slaves as a 5k province). Assuming you drop the taxes to 0% , if you bloodhunt in a 10k population province the "cost" in gold for your bloodslaves is twice as much as doing it in a 5k province. So, the impact of this on any major scale bloodhunting is to make the blood slaves more expensive and to make there be fewer appropriate bloodhunting provinces. To those thinking "well, ok so I bloodhunting in 6k provinces rather than 5k provinces", just think about how the population density usually falls out, what I think will commonly happen is the one 6k population province will be bloodhunted first, then for the second one the player is faced with a choice between a 5k one or an 8k one.

It's a subtle thing, but I think it really does add a decent bit to how much gold Hinnom "spends" to get blood slaves.

Sure, I'll put it on my list.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

I was playing around with this over the weekend to see what I would do in such a matchup in the future and came up with another couple things I thought should be added to the guide.

Hinnom lacks access to water magic, which makes fighting Niefelheim SC to SC pretty difficult, but even being giants your troops don't hit hard enough to bring down dual blessed Niefels. I actually think this matchup won't be all that uncommon for Hinnom, given the extra attention they'll probably be receiving. So, what to do....

Birch boots give 50% CR which is a great start and something to start using immediately at con-2. Elemental armor will get you the other 50% you need, but unless you get lucky with the 10% random on a Ba'al, you'll need to empower to forge it. This isn't so prohibitive as it sounds at first, you've got strong fire and earth incomes, and you can empower (different mages) with either of them to do this. Since Thau-2 and site searching are going to be very early targets, you should have a solid gem income. Elemental armor and birch boots make an excellent choice for Ba'al even if you're not fighting Neifel.

Next up, Se'ir. I glanced at these guys before writing the guide and dismissed them as OK summons in a nation with lots of excellent other options. They've got a claw, claw, gore attack and 16 str, 28 hp and 7 protection and you summon 8 for 33 bloodslaves. What I didn't realize was they also have +4 berserk, are holy, and are demons. If you have a blood bless (as I suggested), cast blessing, blood lust, then blood letting they now each have 3 attacks at 28 damage and 17 attack. They're size 3, and that right there should be enough to swarm over neifels in anything short of cold-3, but if you can punch up to con-7 you can also cast a very easily castable weapons of sharpness, and you've got air mages to cast arrow fend against the obvious counter.

Trust me, it's sickening how fast these guys carve through any human sized troops even without the weapons of sharpness. With it, I don't see them having much trouble taking out any SCs in the game.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

I told you man. Se'irim are amazing especially compared with the other national blood summon. They're completely nuts if you've gone for a bless strat too - with N9 for example.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

One of Hinnom's weaknesses is that, although they've got access to most paths, they've got very few multipath mages. Blood & everything, but not much else. This limits boosters and SC items.

It's certainly not crippling, but it removes a lot of the standard SC gear choices.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

KO,

I am relatively new here but I would like to take this opportunity to say (or rather, echo, as I am sure it has been said by others) that in all these years of gaming I have never come across a developer that is as responsive and as dedicated to his/their games. Thank you and congratulations for such a superb game.

On your question on Hinnom's pop eating, my limited experience is that with a Growth 3 scale and care in the early turns (ie. not hiring Rephaims at EVERY possible opportunity) the effect is minimal (virtually all provinces are still growing), although some micromanagement with placement might be necessary. So I equate it as the equivalent of roughly a 80 reduction in design points (you are still growing in the earlier turns and only plateau out in selected provinces later) , which is not much since they get 80 points back for favouring Heat 2.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

I also want to add that Hinnom/Ashodod has answeres to most early/mid game tactics:

This counts for every giant race:
- Trampler: Don't work against giants in general
- Big Archer Troops: Archers love to kill with 1 hit because they scatter her arrows. Against giants there are a lot of hitted giants but to kill one you need mutiple hits. The target is big enough but also good protected and has a shield. (With Regeneration bless its really hard to do much damge.)
- Flyers: Giants normally don't use much archers and unprotected mages where flying units rock
- Awaken Awe Pretender: Giants have high morale and do a lot of damage. All things Cyclops (& Co) with awe hate!

And some additionals for the Fire Giants only:
- Flaming Arrow/Fire 9 Bless: 50/75 Fire Protection helps a lot!
- Etheral Forces: A Standard Magical Weapons works perfect here

The only problems they have are typical giant killers:
- "death" spells like soul slay, petrify, etc.. But the weaker forms like mind burn, smite, etc. don't help much (because of high hp). And you've to fight against this weaker form in early game!
- Masses of barbarian type of units

I don't think the icy giants are that a problem in a non-duel MP game. Normally they tend to ignore each other in early/mid game just because of the fact they use different heat/cold scales which makes attacking very exhausting and the fact that there are generally weaker victims (with weaker early game)! In mid/late game niefelheim types tend to losing power, the fire giants not.

In sum. People tend not to go in war with you in early game. Which is the basement for your very good mid/late game.

In moment i'm in a small ea mp game with formoria (paladin on llama). Also inside baalz with Lanka and evilhomer with hinnom. It will bring up some additional experiences.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

Well, this actually illustrates my point quite well. If you a) feel the need to take growth 3 for *no other reason* and b) feel the need to limit/alter how many of your best units you recruit then the effect is significant. It's not a crippling thing, but it's not an insignificant one either. Without HINNOM EATING EVERYTHING, there would be no reason to take growth scales, and indeed death scales would be a reasonable choice - you can leverage your rapid expansion to shape your empire such that good bloodhunting sites remain outside your dominion. Kind of a pain, but that'd give you points to stack a nasty bless on top of everything else.

Even taking these precautions it still will impact the bloodhunting as I suggest, growth 3 in a 5k province will offset 30 population decline per turn, so you're talking about slowing the process I describe, not stopping it (unless you're bloodhunting in provinces > 10k).

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

Baalz,

I was not trying to disagree with you. I don't always disagree with you.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I am just putting it into perspective and saying that it is no where near crippling. I agree with KO that weakening Hinnom's starting army and PD is already sufficient to bring it in line with other nations. No need to weaken it further.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

Baalz,

BTW, look forward to reading your Ashdod guide.

Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
 

I dont think that weaking Hinnom PD and army is enough to bring it in line with the average nations. Nor KO has said such thing. KO said that was an easy change becouse it does not alter the theme of the nation, while other changes might do.

Hinnom is a powerful nation even with a lesser starting army and a weaker PD. It's certainly in the class of nations KO has mentioned that require diplomacy (ie: alliances) to be controlled.