Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I thought it would be interesting to start a thread dedicated to beating early w9/f9 blessed helheim/vanheim and/or beating the various double bless strategies for Neifelheim.

In this thread rather than go through what is wrong and unbalanced about these three nations, it would be interesting to see nation setups built to destroy these nations using the current version of the game.

Here is the current setup I plan to try out and refine to kill these nations. Please comment on anything you see wrong with the build and ways I can improve it.

Nation : Abysia (I've never played this nation)

Pretender: "Lord of the Desert Sun" (Imprisoned)

Magic Paths: 9 fire, 9 Nature

Scales:
3 order
1 sloth
3 heat
3 death
1 luck
1 magic

Starting Dominion 6

The idea behind this setup is to use the extreme heat scale against the heim nations, particularly Neifelheim. My hope is that it will help in making their primary blessed units less invincible.

The Nature is to stack the berserker ability gained with the existing berserker ability on Abysia's sacred unit. With fire 9 for flaming weapons and the extra attack bonus stacked with the berserker, these units should be able to atleast hit the glamour units and do enough damage to harm the giants. (Am I correct on this assumption?)

Abysia seems to get quite a few very nice mages that seem like they would make good battle mages with a little evocation researched. Not to mention they have a high end caster / priest that gets Holy 3.

Finally, alot of the Abysian units radiate heat, which damages the heat vulnerable Neifel units.

I am going to try this setup in single player versus myself playing neifelheim, vanheim and helheim. I will be controlling all 4 nations and just cheeseball massing giants, vans and helhirdings with the 3 heims to see how a standard Abysian army with a heavy mix of sacreds and mages perform.

Feel free to post advice and criticisms about this build, as well as your own Nation builds to counter EA heims.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

The nature 9 isnt really needed imo, n4 to avoid afflictions would be more than enough and would allow you to take:
Lord of the Desert Sun
f9n4
Dom5
Order 3
Prod 2(aby is resource heavy)
Heat 3
Death 1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1
Dormant

With that set-up your sacreds will be slightly weaker but you will be able to crank them out faster (along with your other high resource troops), will have more gold, wont have mages constantly dying and you will have your god alot sooner (a guy with 90 base health, fairly good base stats, full slots, the ability to cast personal regen and a f9 fireshield is very nice).

Your research (with your pretender to help) should be based mostly in evocation atleast until you reach fireball (for small-medium armies), firecloud (for van/hel) and possibly falling fires (if you find yourself facing large armies you couldnt handle otherwise) and construction. It lets you kit out your pretender, forge various helpful items and make uber-slayers against van/helheim (a demon-bred slayer with boots of giant strength, burning pearl and ring of the warrior can take out most non-ethereal commanders with health of 20 or less and, with 2 flaming weapons could probably take on some niefels, especially with a robe of shadows).

Also, dont under-estimate the low fireshield on your sacreds, vrs the van/hel armies (who rely on defence and multiple low length weapons) and niefels (who take extra fire damage) it can be the difference between winning and losing. To go with your sacreds take either flail infantry (vrs van/hel) or battle-axe infantry (vrs niefelheim) to slaughter them. Vrs van/hel your fire resistance will help immensely vrs the common f9 bless and vrs the giants your high strength (especially on your dual morning star burning ones) lets you take them out where other nations struggle.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I mean, if you're trying to fatigue them to death, wouldn't you want to have a really strong starting dominion to try and keep them in heat 3? If I was them against Abysia I'd try and push my Cold dominion onto you, and a stronger dominion helps you fight that off and keep the advantage.

Also, perhaps if you're going to use the sacreds a W9 blessing would be better, they'll get 4 attacks and a sorely needed defense skill. They'll probably get sqaushed quickly by the giants because of their high STR so 4 attacks might be better to make them count when they do attack.

Against the other heims though, I think you're set up good. The abysian heat will knock off glamour making them reasonable targets without the heat and the F9 bless is probably better.

Another thing to consider is the Spectral Infantry, the national summon. They're really good ethereal units for the cost that also radiate heat, but need a D1F1 to summon them. A lot of those could potentially be good, but you'd almost have to design a pretender to do it or hope to get lucky finding a death mage somewhere and empowering it, as they get no death picks.

Some things to think about anyway.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Dirtywick and shovah, Do you two think that Abysia is a good nation to base an anti-heim strategy on, or are there better choices in EA?

Here is a new pretender setup trying to mesh both of your comments:

Pretender: Lord of Summer Plague (Imprisoned)

9fire/6death

Scales:
3 Order
2 Production
3 heat
3 death
2 misfortune
2 magic (could lower this to increase another scale?

Starting Dominion 9

Changes: Took out nature and added death to increase the chances of afflictions if the sacreds hit. Pretender starts with death to cast national spells.

Still no good versus neifelheim?

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I think against Vanheim and Helheim, it'd be great. The radiant heat of any of the units can knock the glamour off, and without that they're not much better than any other nations units, and certainly not better than your infantry toe to toe. Those giants are tough though.

I'm just throwing this out there, but you know who might be better against Niefelheim though? Yomi. I noticed that Bonds of Fire and later Prison of Fire works pretty well against regular units, and it requires a high morale to break free, and Frighten, Panic, and later Terror are all available to them somewhat easily through a Hannya, or other mages, and they're also all from Thaum. Against the smaller armies of giants, locking them down and lowering their morale so they can't escape and peppering them with arrows and flames from the Aka-Oni might be worth a try. They'd at least have to bring more than just blessed giants to deal with that I'd think and may be enough to stop a rush in MP.

But I usually stick to SP so maybe there's something I'm not seeing there.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Thats the kind of stuff I am looking for. A nation build designed to fight the heims every step of the way, or atleast force the player to build more than one unit type. I will give the yomi units a look and also the spells http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

My suggestion would be:
Caelum,
Rainbow sage (2-2-2-2-4-3-2-1)
Order 3
Prod 2
Death 3
Cold 2
Misfortune 3
Magic 3
Dom 5

Idea is to research evocation (2 for lightning bolt, 4 for thunder strike). Build 2nd fort ASAP to hire more mages. Against Niefel's it's easy, just enough screening troops to let your mages electrocute the giants. Against Helheim you need to recruit mammoths. They can hold for quite a while vs helherdings and let mages electrocute them. If you reach evo-4, things get pretty easy. Thunder strike is very effective.

The problem with this strategy is you just playing against Niefelheim/Helheim. If you meet somebody with mass of regular troops you're in trouble http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

It's too bad it needs to be like that, that you have to choose a specific race and specific magic path to be able to compete against another specific race - at the expense of sucking against every other race. Don't get me wrong, I like the paper/rock/scissors mentality, but it should be within each race and not between them. For example in most RTS' each race is different and has a strength, but by utilyzing that strength (and tactics, which frankly, uber blessed EA Heims don't even need to think about) they have the potential to beat any other race. You won't hear a Starcraft player saying "oh, they're Zerg? Well, I guess that means I have to be Protoss because Terrans don't have a chance against Zerg."

Ideally, each race should have something that makes them competitive no matter what period in the game and no matter who they are up against.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Stryke11 I agree,

I think maybe some of the drastic changes in the game were not tested enough when going from Dominions 2 to Dominions 3. The two changes that I think have had a huge impact on this situation are the double income changes and the sleeping/imprisoned pretenders freeing up points.

That being said, TBS games have always been insanely hard to balance. The reason why is because not every side has access to the same units, because that would make the game boring. Alot of RTS games solve this by giving a nation 1 unique unit or a very tiny boost in one area (Age of Empire series).

But in TBS games, we demand variety! We want one nation to be different than the next, and this leads to exploitably powerful strategies. Then heap on the two drastic changes mentioned, and the game gets thrown totally out of wack. In the dominions 3 life span, we will probably see other FOTM strategies that may even make the heim thing pale in comparison, but that is the nature of these types of games.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I think you're overemphasizing here. Really, there're only couple of nations that are out of balance due to balance strategies (and I don't think Niefelheim is one of them). With Helheim's loss of sacred at any fort it's probably not overpowered on large maps either. Other than those few nations the balance is pretty good. Even Helheim on small map is not a guaranteed win. And specially crafted anti-Helheim Caelum is not hopeless against other nations. You still have good scales, you can field a lot of regular troops, you have access to all magic paths through your pretender and after branching out into other schools of magic you can make your mages useful in the battle vs other nations too.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Heh, I don't really know what they were thinking with Helheim at a glance. Give everyone glamour and make them cheap and good? I mean, they've got some oddball path combos on some of the mages, but they're hardly useless with access to both death (good enough to forge boosters too) and blood (Storm Demons, Devils, and Demon Knights are realistic and empowering them to do that isn't a big deal as they won't die of old age). I guess I'm not seeing what their downside is for having such strong national troops. Definately one of the stronger nations.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I think the Vanheim set always had really strong national units. It's just that in Dom2 supercombatants and mage armies were so dominant it didn't much matter. Now that magic's been seriously toned down 20 defense units which usually ignore the first hit or two due to glamour are just killer.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

None of the pretenders described so far could be honestly said to "suck" against every other race. If they can deal with F9W9 Helhirdings in the early game without magical support, then they are also likely to be able to deal with just about anything that can get thrown at them.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Ummm... Actually we tested it fine. The first words out of my mouth when I saw the Imprisoned option in the beta were: "Blesses will be insanely powerful. Who cares if your pretender is imprisoned?? Your troops will be unstoppable! He could never arrive, for all they would care."

But, as with many things that I, and other beta testers brought up, it was ignored. The fact is simply this, guys: The Dominions devs just dont play MP enough. They dont understand imbalance like a MP-player understands it. For goodness sake they didnt even know what "skelly-spam" was until I knocked them over the head with it.

It is up to the modders to balance Dom3 for MP.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

You could also fight fire with fire and go with a mictlan bless.

F9W9B4 imprisoned Moloch
Order 2
Sloth 3
Heat 3
Death 2
Misforune 2
Drain 2
Dominion 10

You have -6% income in provinces with your dominion but you have cheap, massable, quickened sacreds with +2 strength and flaming weapons. You also have a very mean SC (amazing attack and defense, can cast quickness and fireshield_ once your god is awakened and equiped. Jaguars(high strength, big sword) could swarm giants and either them or eagles (transforms on death vrs multiple attacks and flying) could probably (for their cost) outnumber and slaughter the glamour units. Remember that even your most expensive sacred costs less than most of their troops and that you can get 5 eagle warriors per helhirdling.

Also, prophetising your starting warlord will give a very thug capable commander (in lvl 1 friendly dominion he has 25 health, 21 prot, 20 strength, 22 attack and 13 defence with his basic equipment)

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Ironhawk, I apologize, I don't mean the beta testers did not do a good job, I just figured the double income was a last minute addition because it has such a huge impact on the game and it looks like the units were not balanced to compensate.

If you guys did not have the ear of the developers on these issues, beta testers are hardly to blame. Dominions 3 plays stellar as a single player game because in that arena, balance does not really matter.

To get back on topic, the Mictlan setup looks really nice. I am amazed that your able to achieve all those spell picks and high dominion. Definetly going to check out that setup!

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

Nice builds. I may add, that pushing your heat dominion in Niefelheim's lands might be a bit difficult. Niefelheim's cold dominion expands BEYOND the dominion of the pretender God (icy winds, see manual 114), and chanses are that Van/Helm/Nief-elheim will have huge dominion, since they need it to recruit sacred troops as early and as much as they can.
I think Caelum's evocation based strategy might work very well.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

WSzaboPeter is right, forgot about the cold spread of Neifelheim. I wonder how that affects a very strong hot dominion though. Would it even the temperatures out to a no heat/cold scale, or does it affect the enemy dominions without bias, changing them all to extreme cold scales?

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I understand that the income change wasn't tested any more than the income change of DomII. The terrain change made everything different, and there was much less gold around. The game went to a direction the developers hadn't intended (towards SCs). For the third game, further changes were made.

Unit balance is pretty good. There are few offenders, yes, but it's usually more about RESOURCE, not gold, costs. And even more often it's about the special abilities (Strength of the Spring vs Glamour).

I'm not sure how much I can say, but Awakening mechanic was changed, several times. And consensus was VERY rare. Some of the opinions expressed in the old threads might have changed since, after we've become more familiar with the game. Since I've started spending time on #dominions IRC channel, I've found out that many balance discussions take place, and have taken place, that are barely mentioned here in the forums.

IMO, the developers DO play Dominions, and don't play it any less than majority of the Dominions users (although perhaps less than the majority of the forum-goes here) - but they don't play blitzes, where balance problems are QUICKLY noticed, OFTEN mentioned. If it takes two games to understand that there's a balance problem, it will take at least a couple of moths of normal play.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

If its their dominion your worried about then dominion 10 abysia is probably the way to go. To my suprise i found (about 30 seconds ago) that you can take a dual bless, dominion 10 abysia without going too badly on your scales with this:

Scorpion King
Dominion 10
Imprisoned
F9E9
Order 2
Prod 1
Heat 3
Death 3(try to use your anointed of rhuax to avoid age problems)
Misfortune 2
Drain 2

This will give you fire resistant (immune to that evil bless), 21 prot(nearly immune to helhirdling attacks, berserk vans and strong niefels would cause damage), almost never tiring (enc6 reinvig 4) sacreds with 2 attack 18 flaming morning stars(thats taking weapon penalties into consideration) at strength 19 (so a total of 25 with the morning stars damage). They also have a fireshield (6ap damage) and +3 berserk, these are truely evil creatures (and the reinvig is very useful on your mages)

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

They get more attack and strength in hot lands as well.

Death bless might affect damage taken from the Fire Shield. It's been mentioned a few times. If it DOES work, Death bless is very nasty for EA Abysia.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

The attack and strength also took into account heat 3, i forgot to mention that. If fireshield does work with death bless then that is just evil, e9n4d4+ burning ones could just walk into combat and stand there, attacks bouncing off their armour and crippling the attackers.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

They are very awsome. Will beat most things at similar gold cost... resource cost is a differnt matter, you'll be hugely outnumbered and tired in huge battles.

In comparison, white centaurs are easier to dominate the early game with because 10 white centaurs cost less reources than 3 Burning ones, and are also faster on the map.

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I know they are awesome, im playing EA abysia in the newbie game (not with that bless based strat but still...)

Re: Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.
 

I am not sure that this would work. With specific scales you can recruit huge amount of troops with helheim also. Not to mention that they have excellent and cheap d2e2r1 mages. [+ Some others but those are more expensive]