High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Hi all,

I wonder how to beat high bless strategy in MP. It seems that blessed elites like F9W9 Vans and N9 Niefel Jarls are very powerful in small to medium maps. Are they balanced?

Even when knowing it at the beginning of the game, I appear to me that its hard to duel theses strats. Maybe a Super Early-game SC pretender?

I know all strategies have weaknesses. With N9 jarls you can take D9 (another bless strat...) to cripple them (or spam stellar cascade), but is it really a weakness?

In the long run other strats (summons, battlefield magic, etc) can match the Bless one. My point is just that High Bless strat is really esay to use and effective at the firsts turns of the game.

Last point: Dominions is the best game in the world (besides Chess and Poker) and I'm a huge fan.

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

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Good question. High bless strat is excellent in 2-4 player blitzes for sure, and to be honest it is a must have also, since everyone using some high bless strat in blitz games.
It is impossible to survive a high bless rush with a non high bless design in the first part of the blitz.


In long term games [hosted on big maps], the high bless strategy is not that important imo. It can help a lot, but you might want to spend your design points elsewhere in those long games.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Bless strats are very strong and popular, especially on small maps. F9W9 is a common bless used with units like vans, it makes them extremely hard to hit and have great damage potential. Bless strats are very powerful and easy to use but each has a weakness, alot of sacreds cant take damage leaving them open to AoE spells like falling fires/frost, the tougher sacreds are either so poor at damage that they can just be swamped or so expensive that a few decent mages/crossbow groups can slaughter them (especially astral mages) even with low research.

In the long run, if your bless dosnt let you take out some-one else asap you can get left behind because your poor scales will leave you behind in gold, allowing the enemy to out mage and therefor out-everything you by mid-late game.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Impossible? As a simple example, C'Tis in every age wouldn't have a hard time (Well, possibly where they are weakest in the middle age), since they don't take any significant losses while expanding, and only need to research to enchantment 3 to be able to deal with the sacred troops of any nation. Pythium certainly isn't going to use a level 9 bless effect, nor would Caelum, Machaka, R'Lyeh, Arcoscephale, or Man.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Skelly spam is not going to save C'tis. There are going to be too many sacred troops. Bless-rush strats in Dom3 work much better than they did in Dom2, for 3 reasons.

1. The amount of gold available means bless-worthy but expensive troops can be available in quantity.

2. Because research costs have increased significantly, magical counters become available much later than they used to.

3. Extra design points are available from imprisoned pretenders. This means that additional blesses or better scales can be added to a Dom2 bless strat.

Right now, I find uber-bless strats by certain nations to be annoyingly powerful. I need to play some more long-term games before I can say more than that - although I want to http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I just ran a test game against myself between C'Tis and Helheim on a 20 province random map, and I can see what you're saying. Even though it only takes 8 turns to research enchantment 3 with a magic 3 scale, that doesn't make up enough difference to keep F9W9 helhirdings from overruning your lines.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Well EA Vanheim/Helheim are sickeningly powerful anyway. Glamour on nearly all units FTW!

On bless strats, they can be very, very powerful for some nations like Niefelheim, the Vanic nations, Mictlan (those OzeLOLs are in perfect synergy with the classic W9/F9 bless) and Marignon. Late Atlantis also seems to get nice bonii from taking a smitter of Air bless and then taking some other bless to lvl 9. Pity Arssartuts are capital only. And there are propably a lot more examples than I can even count.

Other nations don't benefit from it nowhere as much, MA Ulm being the prime example with no bless troops at all.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Isn't 9F,9W hideously expensive anyway? There's no God chasis with both water & fire, so your eco will most likely take a hit. IMO in Dom3 you cannot afford to sacrifice the economy as in Dom2, in this the new version plays pretty much like Dom:PPP did.

How about this to counter the 9F,9W vans:
-Abysia with a 9F bless: you are inmune to their fire attacks, but they are not to yours.
-Any SC god with high protection and some fire magic: take the field, cast fire resist, fire shield and either evocations or attack.
-Niefelheim with a Dom8 10e,4n,2f cyclops (dormant): 6ap can barely touch 25 prot, even with the fire vulnerability on the Jarls. Once the god awakens: forge fire resistance gear and stomp the little vanir.
-Any water nation: just stay in the water until ready, negating the rusher's advantage.
-Anybody else: go for direct damage spells (evocations) or mr based spells (tahumaturgy), alternatively field tramplers: trampling always deals 1 point of damage on Dom3 and cancels the mirror image, and it's not like elephants are that more expensive than vanir anyway. If possible, buf the tramplers with stuff like berserk or luck (body ethereal useless vs the magic attacks).

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

It is, and I've been mostly using just plain F9 or W9 for those "F9 W9" nations.

Actually, that's a lie. As Mictlan I used Imprisoned F9 D4 B4 Smoking Mirror. Perhaps not the best strategy, but those OzeLOLs, Jaguar Warriors etc etc etc sure tore through stuff, and I even had decent scales from what I remember. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I don't think I've ver used W9/F9, not even in Dom 2 because I'm so leery to take bad scales unless I'm playing AE Ermor.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Many of those are also bless strategies, or limited to a certain nation... But this one is easy. Cyclops is immune to fire! Of course, Helheim can eventually forge a Vision's Foe, but that'll take too long for an early raid.

Earth Meld can be nice. I haven't yet gotten to test it properly, but it shuts the Vanir down, and lowers their defence. The manual states that Earth Grip shuts a creature down until it makes a STR + 2d6oe roll that exceeds 22. For even a 14-str Van, that's 8 or more. Unfortunately, it seems that it isn't an opposed roll with two 2d6oe, one on each side. In that case, the chance of a Van succeeding would be just few percent. Now, it's probably something like 50% chance.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I play a very fun high bless strat with arcosphale, and I really disagree that bless strats are prohibitively cost-intensive.

Not only are there more points to go around this time, but I don't think it's excessive to say that initialy money spent on sacred troops can be better than twice as good as the same money spent on standard troops... most nations with high bless strats can work it so they can advance without losing units, thus gaining high experience.

Not only do you have to spent less on troops to get an equivalently powerful force, the real kicker is that sacred units/commanders are half upkeep... which is quite a sizable income boost, long-term, probably more an impact on income than order scales. (if you are playing a nation lucky enough to be able to dump its money almost totally into sacred unit/commanders)


My main problem with the pre-eminance of bless strats, is how poorly the starting pretender magic paths are distributed in relation to this. The difference in getting a 9 bless with a pretender with 3 in a category, and one with 1 (or even 0) is 105 design points (or 168 + the extra magic path cost), but magic paths seem thrown around, somewhat at random for nations. The blesses also vary widely in quality, and none of this is reflected in the cost of the pretender.... an innate magic path seems to cost in design points, about what it would cost to buy the first level of it... for example frost father costs 55 with 2 paths and a minor ability, compared to archmage with 35 and 1 path... the extra magic seems to cost around 20... however if you are going bless strat, the difference between 2 starting magic paths, and none, is more than 150 points, depending on initial magic path costs...

I wish some nations had better options for bless strats, but I also wish the cost of innate magic paths for pretenders was rebalanced...

Most pretenders suck horribly given the new design system... for example the god of war vs the cyclops... cyclops is cheaper for bless strats, and stronger to boot. SC's are much less a factor in this version, and blesses much more-so, but the cost system doesn't reflect this. I almost always play with an imprisoned god, and high bless/scales... gives me lots of money, and troops capable of taking down any early-game SC. If you buy an SC-capable pretender, not only do you have to pay for their inflated initial costs, but you also forgo the points for imprisoned/dormancy, as you'll likely want to quicken your expansion by using your pretender.

If I play imprisoned frost father with w9 e9 n6 jotunheim, no pretender you buy will be able to stand up to even a handful of blessed giants early game. btw drain and cold scales pretty much pay for even this overkill of a blessing (I forget but I think it needs sloth too, but jotun is gold intensive, so it hardly matters)... while sc's may scale up well with research and items, the army of giants scales up with income... and the thugs also scale up with items.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I quite like the Lord of War, but for Marverni only. Costs only 50, can easily get E4 bless for the Druids, can whack some early stuff to death in EA, especially if you hammer a Black Steel shield for him. With Marverni's magics it's possible to make a semi-SC out of him with Luck pendant and ring of regen + some other equipment. And you can get okay good scales with him, too.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Heh try to play a blitz on a small map against uber bless Helheim, Niefelheim, Mitgard etc. with a nation without a proper bless strategy. In most of the cases you won't even reach research lvl3.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Thanks all for your really interesting answers!

I agree with Quietly and DominionsFan.

I think Big Bless Strategy can be beaten, but not really because they have flaws. It seems you have to try to be Stronger. Most Wendigo's ways aren't specific for High bless and are effective vs non-blessed nations also. I agree F9W9 is bad for scales, but with an imprisoned pretender F9 for vans of N9 for jarls dont force you to have really bad scales.

I played a 4 players Dom2 MP game with F9 Vans. When I fought against the last player (Jotun without bless) he where by far stronger than me. I just harassed him with groups of sailing-stealty-blessed Vans, raising taxes to 200 % and pillaging. After 10-15 turns he manage to catch one of my raiding party. The 15 vans involved in the fight, outnumbered, killed all jotuns easily. We then realized that my sneaking groups were stronger than his army. Disgusted, he left the game.

Small question: if you charm a blessed troop, will it keep its Bless bonus for the fight? Not useful early-mid game, but probably really fun late game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Just a crazy idea: maybe priests able to dispel Bless?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd exaggeration. There is no way that the forces those nations could gather on a 10 province per player map would be able to capture the C'tissian castle by turn 8. This is especially true with the imprisoned pretender necessary for a dual bless strategy.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

That is a great idea! Would be a nice 'rock' to the bless 'scissors'. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Maybe the dark priests should be able to unbless?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Or maybe just allow priests to unbless aslong as they are within their own dominion?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Recent blitzes had quite a few pre turn 10 eliminations with bless rushes.

Vanheim + Helheim have a good chance at killing 1 player before turn 10 and then they can use their gold advantage to also use their excellent mages + slow down the remaining players with raiding.

Niefelheim's giants and jarls are strong enough to have a good chance to kill any SC.

And Mictlan and TC EA are quite scary too with their bless hordes.

Those nations might really be a little too good for blitzes.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Someone will always be too good for blitzes. But others are "too good" for large maps, or many player games with alliances. Im not sure if it could be fixed for one game type without messing up the others. Maybe if a version of DOm was created just for small blitz maps.

This might be my fault. I pushed for big maps and large games. Balancing for that might have knocked the blitzes out

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Wouldn't these bless strategies perform well on large maps too? I mean the player has 9w9f so it is not like he is going to be lacking on high end late game spells right?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Just an example. Turn 4: QM has rushed my niefel capital with a mictlan [IIRC] uber bless strategy. The map was silent seas, and the game was a 5 FFA.
I've also rushed many players before turn 5-6 with high bless sacred builds in blitzes.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

No need to apology Gandalf http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
I myself e.g. love both, large maps in SP and occasional longterm MPs and small maps in blitzes.

Only time will tell, but at least some bless rush nations might do as well in longterm games too.

And if a blitz strat can kill another player immediately, unless the longterm mp map is very huge it can happen there too. And the advantage of getting a 2nd castle, extra gems, maybe some searched provinces etc. can be a nice boost. If you were lucky to have an ultrabless strat and neighbor someone who cannot counter it adequatly such a rush might boost your longterm potential a lot too in that game.

So maybe longterm games might not be that different http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

There is more diplomacy of course, but at least those ppl who also play blitzes know then too well how scary an uberbless strat is in earlygame and thus are hesitant to gangbang the player who uses a blessrush in earlygame.

We have exactly this situation in the DDD-Pbem currently. Jurri took an uberbless, but all of his neighbors are scared and dare not to attack him. Will be definately interesting, i think Jurri has a very good chance of winning this game, especially because it is a VP game, so he doesn't have to continue till lategame where he might be more vulnerable.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Wow, you guys are making multiplayer sound depressing at any level. I didn't know the blesses were so devistating on larger FFA maps as well.

I guess I can hope that the players in my current MP games chose to have fun and be original over using someone else's strategy to try to secure easy victories.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Haven't encountered a super bless strat in MP yet, so just throwing out some ideas.

What about Mind burn + Communion? Thau lvl 2 should be able to dish this out if you can recruit astral mages. So Ermor, pythium and C'tis should be able to paralyze and kill expensive sacred units with MR below 13...

Nature mages gets Vine arrows at Evoc lvl 2. does 14+ damage and entangles the enemy.

For low strenght enemies (Mictlan?) Conjuration 1 gives tangle vines.

Thaumaturgy lvl 2, Bonds of fire. Requires F1.
Alteration lvl 2, Earth meld. Req E2
Alteration lvl 1, False fetters, Req A2

Combine this with some long range attacks like archers, or artillery mages to actually kill off the Blessed troops.

So basically Blood and death are the paths with problems if you cannot get lvl 2 mages of a certain path to spamm the above spells. In theory that is....

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Rage might work, you could get them beating up eachother.

There's also Decay for Death which I've had some success with killing units, but it's not that reliable.

Dust to Dust works against undead.

Rust Mist, Evoc 3, works wonders against high prot units blessed or not, but your mages aim with it is spotty at times.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

The problem is that most of effective low-level are single target. I can see Caelum managing to put some sort of defense - recruiting the cheapest indies just to build up numbers and electrocuting blessed enemies while they're getting through the militia screen. But Caelum has cheap serahps who almost never miss and neither MR nor morale helps vs lightning. For almost everyone else it's worse - more expensive mages, less reliable spell.

Fire nations get some reasonable spells (poor precision but area effects), maybe they can do something too. Otherwise, I guess the only way is to hide in the water http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

My suggestion:

- extra bless effects don't work until your pretender is awake.

I don't see why rushers should only get benefits from Dormant and Imprisoned status.
It could be extended to scales, too. Otherwise what's the point of having dormant/imprisoned pretender if it doesn't handicap you in any way ? Free design points ?
By the way: why do some nations get essentially free design points just because they prefer heat or cold ? They get to have an annoying (for most others) dominion, and getting paid for it ?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

They are not. It helps a lot however.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I find this thread's discussion disturbing.
Bless strat. was already very powerful in dom-II and I would have hoped that in dom-III it would be toned down, not up.

Having ubber bless become a no-brainer is not fun.
But, I'm still not convinced it is indeed so.
For starters, its a good thing that few nations have a lot to gain from bless strat. Secondly, there are counters to ubber bless, though I digress that most are available through research which is now harder.

I think that adding some obvious counters and limitations to bless might bring more diversity to the game. I like the idea of "dispel" bless by priests and/or mages. Also it would be nice to have a single target spell that causes damage or fatigue or something negative to a blessed unit, and also larger scale versions of this spell.

EDIT,

I also like the idea of having the bless effect tied to Pretenders arrival, so each season closer to its coming will add this much to the bless effect, gaining full effect when the god arrives.

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.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

So how many of his troops did you kill during the final siege?

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I cannot remember exactly, because I had many blitzes in the last days, but I am sure that he had many Mictlan sacreds by than. EA Mictlan is nasty and excellent for a bless strategy. Since their sacreds are so cheap, it is easy to mass them in a couple of turns.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Want something really nasty? Try a f9d9w9 helhiem, sure your scales a really poor but with f9w9 killing everything and d9 wearing out SCs/Thugs/Niefels ect even 4 of then can conquer lvl 7 indies without loses.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I don't like the idea of explicit counters. Remember what happened to Celestial Masters ? It's not like their astral magic cripples the game balance, but they suffer a lot from magic duel.
If you add explicit counters/spells against blessed/holy units, you'll see a disturbing trend: people will either use bless9, or no bless at all. Because mildly strong bless will just invite hard counters.
You could refine these explicit counters by making them proportionally strong depending on bless effect strenght, but I still don't like the idea. I'd prefer counters come naturally, or prerably - bless is switched on when pretender arrives, but I already said I like it.

About bless dispel: it would be a 'who-has-more-priests' fight. It would look very silly.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

About adjusting the game (IF heavy blesses are proven unbalanced even in long games on big maps -IMO a good awaken SC taking provinces since turn 2, a rainbow mage able to complete the nation ability to find/use all gems, an imprisoned pretender with very good scales, may all qualify for an equal long term utility-) another idea : in most cases heavy blesses are only problematic with uber units. Nobody had a problem with a bless strat using subpar cheap units like sacred serpents of C'tis or flagellants, nor with a capital only, slow and ressource heavy unit like heart companions.

So... Why not giving a different holy cost to some units ? If a van is proven 3 times more useful than most sacred units, just give him a holy cost of 3. Then rushes with the best sacred would become impossible (as even with dominion 10 you can recruit only 3 sacred / turn before making a second castle or 10 temples), but an heavy blesses strat stay possible, to give some interessant capacities to weak/ressource heavy sacred (and eventually try a rush strat with them... with good chances of failure) or for mid/long term (if you can spend 3x more time making an army of uber sacred, or if you have access to sacred summons not restricted by dominion).

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I really like the idea of holy cost, even better then switching bless on when pretender arrives.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I'd dislike having bless only when the pretender arrives as it would essentially make Awakening functions useless. But variable Holy costs would be good.

Or then tweaking the uber units themselves like Vans. They'd own even if blesses were toned down because Glamour is amazingly powerful.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I like variable Holy costs as well.

From my standpoint, I'm still experimenting before deciding what is and isn't useless. I do know that heavy bless strategies have been decidedly effective, much moreso than my rainbow mage or beautiful scales strategy. I haven't tried an Awake SC/rainbow Pretender strategy (and wouldn't go with an Awake blessing strategy) but my sense is that they just wouldn't be as effective as leaving the Pretender out of it for the 24 or so turns and getting the 150 points.

After all, breaking down the math, a rainbow mage will only get about 12 searches, probably more like 10 depending on map layout, before the dormant gods awake. Even on a high settings map, that's not going to mean a huge gem income difference. A SC pretender might grab a few provinces at indy setting 5, but I'm again not sure that they're worth passing up on the scales or having an army of super-blesses that will be more effective than he will come the mid-game.

I don't know. My concern is that I'd probably take bless strats about 90% of the time from my current experience and I'd probably take Dormant/Imprisoned about 95% of the time. To me, those ratios are too high.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

I'm not uber enough to tell whether Hellheim is "overpowered"; they're extreme easy to use, it's true.

However, as capital only, the number of sacred troops you can produce as part of your army starts to get smaller and smaller in proportion to the number of troops in your empire as the game progresses - and they have to come from your capital to the front lines.

Also, many bless nations have some fairly junky magic skills. Hellheim has a hard time researching now that sages have all but disappeared.

This doesn't mean, though, you can't rush a human player and have completley conquered him in less than 10 turns, which rather sucks for the receiving player. EA nations are generally much more powerful than their LA counterparts and other nations can use things like Body Etherial ect to improve their own Sacred troops, as well as have (probably) a much more robust research base.

But i'd agree with the observation that Hellheim is one of the - if not the - most powerful EA nation w/re to it's national troops.

Re: High Bless rush strategy :(
 

Helheim has two sacred troops: the Helhirding, which is a stealthy cavalry, and the Walkyrie, which is flying, and slithgly cheaper. Only the Walkyrie is capital-only, and the flying (they also have the Dis as a flying, mage, priest commander) means they can get to the front line when you need a fast-moving raiding troop. Each is only 12 Resource, so Sloth 3 doesn't hurt too much.

This, combined, is why I think Helheim is so good for a bless - they have two great sacred units, and one of them can be recruited en masse.