Glamour post 3.08
 

I'll do my bit of community service, and start a new thread, as suggested in that one about Vanheim.

OK, what're your opinions on the new rules? Any complaints still, or is everything 100% perfect now? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So I'm not just trolling, here's my take - seems to be fitting the bill so far. At least opponents have a few more viable options, especially early game, against it (Glamour that is).

Of course, the counter can still be countered - decoy troops come immediately to mind. And I don't think the changes have impacted the stealth/raiding abilities of glamour troops all that much. So maybe there's still some price/resource tweaking that can be done (like was done with Lanka). Or maybe not. What do you think?

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I'm thinking with something of a 'nerf' on the glamboys, that Lanka might be the next nation to rile people up, since it's basically good in every category.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I tried massing archers against a playing using Vans with a strong E9 bless and a weak N4-6 bless. They were completely ineffective at knocking out the glamored images as was promised.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I don't see glamor as a changeworthy issue; the last change was in fitting with the spirit of the rules and wasn't meant as a pure "nerf" for balancing, though I'm sure the complaints had something to do with it. I don't believe there was a promise to allow everyone to destroy Vans with archers; the higher protection and regen from blesses means you had better have your own troops that can guard your archers while they do their work. I'm guessing that against the F9W9 bless you're going to do a lot better assuming you have some heavy infantry to slow them down.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

"I don't believe there was a promise to allow everyone to destroy Vans with archers"

Nobody said anything about destroying Vans. I'm talking about the 150 archers I bought doing absolutely nothing. Actually, what I ended up doing was buying a ton of melee chaff that would soak up the van's high defense, and having argatha mages spamming earth bind to reduce it further.

Neither the archers, nor the spell spammers, not the chaff worked.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

It was archers and magic.
The anti-glamour tactics I have seen include many squads of slingers. Or area affect spells and equipment. The Gall Bladder Stick was mentioned.

There is a poison spell which does the entire battlefield which is seems to be particularly effective.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Ok, so vans require again very specialized tactics (the "very" means the difference between them and the other nations). I think I'll continue to ban them from my games.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

as compared to Rlyeh? Ermor? Abysia? Jotunheim? Oceania? TirNaGog? Ulm? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I've managed to avoid them in MP play so far http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

The majority of effective strategies require very specialized tactics to deal with - if they were easy to deal with they wouldnt be effective. Your chaff and archers wouldnt have been particularly effective against most good E9N4 sacreds(they have reinvigoration, high protection and regeneration - all things that counter chaff and archers) and would probably have been ineffective against a number of other things. A group of ulmish infantry with flails backed by a couple of elephants/black knights would also probably have broken through a group of chaff and archers, does that mean MA Ulm is overpowered and should be banned?.

You cant honestly expect a group of archers to do alot against high protection, regenerating troops with shields and a horde of chaff was also a mistake as superior mounted troops(with naturally low encumberance) with higher stats, regeneration(to heal and lucky damage you inflict), reinvigoration(you cant just wait for them to get worn out) and higher stats(1v1 they will destroy chaff) can keep fighting almost indefinitely against weak troops.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Oh please, then enlighten me to what MA Argatha is suppose to do against the vans. As I said, the chaff was a part of a greater strategy. The idea was to earth meld them, so their defense would be abysmal, and just let the chaff wail away on them. I also researched my way to destruction.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Depending upon the research levels, a group of Sentinels can keep W9F9 blessed Vans put for several turns while indy archers and Golem Crafters casting Magma Bolt deal with the damage part (Ench4/Evo3, Attentive Statues (Ench3) might also work). I don't know how well that would work in the field or how cost-effective it'd be, but at least you can make Vanheim player regret ever storming your castle.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Dominions isnt nation-to-nation balance. Its rock-paper-scissors balance. MA Agartha should use other nations against Vanheim.

And what about the statue and sentinel spells? HOw do they hold up against vans?

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I summoned a ton of statues. They were great, but the problem wasn't holding off the vans. I built tons of heavy infantry. Heavy infantry does a great job of "holding them off" and the statues are really no different than the infantry. Neither one deals any damage to the vans because of their low attack values, and the van's high defense coupled with high protection.

So what ends up happening is that your meele guys couple with the vans for several long turns. The vans have their reinvig, high protection, high defense, high attack skill, high morale and multiple attacks. They simply break your heavy infantry through morale and fatigue, while your archers are unable to do any damage. See, the whole problem here isn't being able to stop the vans cold in their tracks. The problem is /actually damaging them/.

Honestly, I didn't try magma bolts, but I was busy trying to research up to destruction to blow the armor off the Vans, and get the AoE version of earth grip (earth meld). See, the other part of massing chaff was that if I blew the armor off the Vans, then the huge amounts of light infantry would have no problem wearing down their high defense skill since it's -2 each time they try to defend against an attack.

Just so you know, I ended up "winning" with diplomacy by offering to forge Emor in the game, who had been rather buddy-buddy with me since the beginning, whatever they wanted if they'd simply lay siege to the capital. So Van was weakened by our fighting, I mean he would have killed me in the long run, but he was definitely weakened, and Emor came in and pooped all over his capital.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I just want to make this perfectly clear. I massed over 150+ indy archers and they were completely useless. I was sad I wasted the money on them against the vans.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

This thread is starting to become like the other ... nobody says all nations should be perfectly balanced, every different nation has its own strength / weaknesses and so on. Is simply impossible to balance something with so many variables like dom3. But Van is much more difficult to deal with than any other.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

It used to be Rlyeh, and before that Ermor. If Vanheim gets nerfed further then it will be someone else. There will always be one that is harder than any other.

Altho I will agree that the gap seems to be abit much in the case of Vans. A few saved combats with masses of archers against Vans might help convince the devs to whittle it down abit more.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

You said you researched destruction? With it cast on the vans they should be alot more vunerable to your arrows. I know its probably quite far away but if you can research up to magma eruption those vans should drop like flies. Your sacred statues should take very little damage from the spell(cast by golem crafters with summon earthpower) and with its high damage and AoE it should devastate those vans(with or without destruction). Umbrals should be very effective due to their ethereality(as the vans lack F9) and high health and could provide a very good shield for your archers after you cast destruction(again due to high health and ethereality).
A marble oracle with a shadow brand, charcoal shield and some other protective items(lucky pendant would be good. A ring of tamed lightning would be great if at-all possible) should also be able to hold out almost indefinitely against E9N4 vans(0 enc and with blacksteel full-plate should have around 30 protection).

There are probably about a number of other ways but those are just some suggestions, hope they help.

ps: I too hate it when i waste alot of money(bought a load of tribal indy archers and had to fight MA Ulmish knights...).

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

One thing to note is that I got rushed by a Vans player. I didn't even have a second castle up by the time they were trying to stomp across my border. All these suggestions are great and appreciated, but most of them require level 4+ in multiple schools of magic which isn't terribly realistic for the early game.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Its also not very realistic to expect an easy counter to a strong, double(well one and a half) blessed sacred as a nation with as poor troops as MA agartha(generally regarded as one of the weaker MA nations-particularly their recruitables) but whatever floats your boat. In most cases when your rushed by superior blessed troops all you can really do is hold them off until you get some decent magics(unless you have elephants or some other unit that can counter them).

Its a generally accepted fact that getting rushed by a bless nation such as vanheim/mictlan can spell disaster for most nations who arent prepared with a strong early game(with a bless/SC pretender ect), for example in the nuance game its currently turn 10 and im already sitting on the bandar log capitol, having conquered all their other provinces with my legionaires supported by a couple of blessed shadow vestals(who did very little of the work).

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

3.08 was supposed to make a hail of arrows effective against glamour and thus offer more nations a less extreme (in terms of design points, strat, overall cost) counter to vans.

Clearly Jazzepi feels mislead - saying "well archers aren't the counter to heavy cavalry" just demonstrates that the van nerf might not have changed them much, since the big alteration was for missiles vs glamour.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Sombre said exactly what was on my mind.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

As the bandar player in nuance, it sure looked as though there were more than a couple of blessed shadow vestals involved in the attack (39 to be exact - 32 in the battle at the bandar capital).

But Shovah32's point is a good one. Many nations are capable of putting together a brutal blitz with blessed troops, not just the vans.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I'm pretty sure you can build priests to banish shadow vestals as they're undead (correct me if I'm wrong). Since every one of Argatha's casters are priests, I think that's a pretty simple counter. Most everyone has access to priests in their capital.

This is so unlike, say, Vans.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Shadow vestals with a f9/s9 bless. Twist of fate and MR 19? Good luck with the banishment. Bandar log has access to level 1 priests. ooh . . . I am sure those vestals were shaking in their boots. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Shadow vestals are also a lot cheaper than van (in terms of both gold and resources) so there are a lot more to fight.

The counter for vestals with a bless like this is the same as for the vans - area effect magic. If you try to get by with priests, chaff, massed archers, and the like, you are going to have disappointing results.

In short they are every bit as likely to steamroll MA Agartha as Vanheim is. At least early on. Of course that isn't saying much, as most nations have an easy time picking on MA Agartha in the early game.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Level 1 priests are just as effective as level 5 priests at spamming banishment.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

But are less effective against a high mr, since magic levels impact penetration, if I remember correctly.

horay 4 listening.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

That, I did not know. I read on here that the banishment was exactly the same.

Jazzepi

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

A voice from the single player crowd here.

If the Vans are still trashing large forces of mixed troops, they are still going to dominate the single player maps. This leads to the same “Vans vs human player” end games that I seemed to run into all the time. Linked to this, I stopped having Vanheim in my single player games a while back, but I have noticed that Trig’o’how’doyou’spellit seem to end up beating other AI regularly.

It appears that the AI has a real problem with glamour.

In any case, I will put Vanheim back in the game and see what happens.

My other point is to support Jazzepi. If 150 archers do not at least remove some glamour, there is a bit of a problem. These are not SC, they are recruitable troops. I don’t expect the archers to win, but they should be able to at least scratch the enemy. It wasn’t high Air blessing these Vans had, it was Water and Earth.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Not only that, Banishment is AoE 2+(2* H level), Dam 3+(2* H level). According to the spell spreadsheet, not the manual, it's even range 15 + (5* H level).

H1: AoE 4, Dam 5, range 20
H2: AoE 6, Dam 7, range 25
H3: AoE 8, Dam 9, MR-1, range 30
H4: AoE 10, Dam 11, MR-1, range 35
H5: AoE 12, Dam 13, MR-2, range 40

(Extra bonus points if you go to the all effort of making an H5 priest just to cast banishment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Actually, saxon raises a good point. Vanheim has extremely easy acces to archery neuters (Air bless, arrow fend). How will a buff to archers vs glamour actuallly weaken vanheim, save by makoing F9 W9 (slightly) less attractive?

I'm a SP player, mainly, and I should mention that I've never ran into the "Vans vs. Human player" situation before- It's usually Ry'leh or Ermor (Even MA).

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I don't think this thread was to rehash the "Van's kick everyone's asses in the early game badly" thread. I think this thread was just to see if the 3.08 change actually weakened the vans somewhat.

The only player with any experience has been Jazzepi - who has said (from what i can tell) No, it hasn't.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Hm, when I ran a quick test with a screen of statues and 50 indy archers, the glamour did get dispelled on quite many vans. However, after that you're left with a problem how to kill low-resource-cost high-defence high-protection cavalry. Which is not easy.

But evocation spells at least seem to work better against Vans nowadays.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

banishment is almost USELESS against shadow vestals, no matter what priest you are, H1 or H3.

I did a test run just now, using 8 C'tis priest king(who has much better precision--10 to 7--than agartha priests) scripted to 5x banishment banish 27 shadow vestals led by one ermor priest(NO ASPOSTACY, that is), and the result is pretty ridiculous: the first wave of banishment go before bless killed 6 vestals, and that's pretty much about it. yes, the second and third wave killed only 1 of 21 left, leave me 20 experienced vestals and 8 good fried lizard holy meats.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Did you give the priests any meatshields?

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

No. I just want to see exactly how well priests will do against vestals (e.g. how good is 8 banishment against normal vestals, how good is 8 against blessed one), as I already knew from my own experience that an army(read:20 to 40) of these shady girls in real battle is just unstoppable without mage's intervention.

High Priests and Banishment are there for LA Ermor' undead chaff, they are no match for few elite shock troop. Just imagine that: would you spam banishment against a Wraith Lord?

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Going back to the Vans pre and post 3.08, I did not notice any difference. Massed archers still had no significant effect in any battle. I played C'tis versus Helheim in the Unlucky MP game, and fought helheim before and after 3.08. I rushed research Shadow Blast which worked. I remember that there also wasnt much difference in shadow blast effectiveness also pre and post 3.08 patch.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Well in fairness the vestals would get hit by more banishments in a battle, since they wouldn't walk right over to the mages and kill them all - there would be some chaff in the way.

If you were testing whether poison slingers were a viable counter to heavy Arco infantry, you wouldn't just put 20 slingers against 20 heavy infantry, would you?

From the sounds of it, I don't think priests would work as a counter though.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I'm playing blessed shadow vestals in two MP games. I'm not worried about banishment at all. On the other hand, I'm scared of flaming arrows. Very scared =)

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Honestly, seems like the bigger change with regards to the vans is that glamor no longer protects against *spells*. Perhaps a few scepters of authority might work well now if your screen can hold them for a few turns? Generally, there are not going to be a whole lot of vans, so spells that effect just one target might work out well. Also, has anybody yet seen the vans go up against crossbows (or arbalests) in 3.08? Seems like that would work significantly better than short bows.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I am playing MA Argatha in your game and I believe you need a strong, Awake SC pretender if you intend to have a chance to stop the early rush when playing as one of the nations with a weak start. Also having good diplomacy and being aware of your neighbors and the surroundings can make a big difference.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

The problem with this fix is that it probably affects the most problematic units least. Vans and Helhirdings carry shields and are fast enough to cross the field in a round or two. Even without the glamor, it's hard to get enough arrow hits on them to matter.

EA Vanheim's Vanheres are unshielded infantry. Without shields they'll take more hits and they're slower so you'll get more rounds of fire, before they start slaughtering your meat shield.
Vanheres are good sacred troops, but I don't think EA Vanheim was considered anywhere near as overpowered as Helheim or the later Vanheims.

I haven't played with the Sidhe, but they're mostly shielded infantry right? So they'll get more volleys, but still take few hits.
I don't believe they're considered overpowered either.

The problem units are the ones least affected by the change.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I think that Baalz makes a good point, that the most important change was that glamour no longer works against spells, rather than against arrows. Losing protection against arrows is just an added bonus to my mind.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Vans with an E9 bless have high protection and shields. You shouldnt really expect arrows to do any damage to them but if the arrows arent removing glamour then theres a problem.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Sound as if there is some consensus on blessed vanir (especially mounted) still being too powerful (or at least more powerful than most other strategies).

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I honestly dont think they are that bad and i believe there are quite simply better sacreds out there. One of the big reasons vans get hit so hard is that they require slightly more specialized tactics to combat effectively and the ai tends to struggle with this(they are also probably the most well known and popular).

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Arrows (and everything else) don't remove glamor unless the do at least one point of damage.

It does sound like Van and Helhirdings may still be too powerful. I'd like to suggest that any further nerf be to them and not to glamor in general.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

Not to sound contentious, but I'm curious as to what you would consider a quite simply better sacred? Yes, obviously there are plenty of examples of different units being better in certain niches, and perhaps you can lay out an opinion that another unit is a straight up more cost effective combat unit (though I can't think of any). The thing about the vans though is they are extremely effective at *everything*. Sure, they'll beat the snot out of you through just brute force, but even if you do manage an effective counter, their glamored stealth plus high movement allows them to control the combat both strategically and tactically. Stopping their raiders is well nigh impossible for many nations, raiding them back is pretty much suicidal as you can't tell where any of their map-move 3 defenders are, and very few tactical rituals short of late game are effective given their MR and general hardiness. This is an aspect that often gets overlooked when people are complaining about their brute strength, their brute strength is multiplied by their insane versatility. That's why they're so hard to counter, stern resistance is not met with a headlong charge, but being greeted with that other aspect of the Vanir - the fact that they're better guerrilla warriors than Pangea.

High defense, high speed, high protection, high MR, high damage output (with a good bless), high stealth, high maxage.... given that, what sacred is quite simply better?

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

I agree Vans are not that bad especially since they are capital only. On very small quick game maps they obviously seem too powerful which is why we hear about it.
Even if one of the nations was more powerful it provides more of a security blanket for new players which will probably lose the first few games anyways.

Re: Glamour post 3.08
 

This is incorrect. Almost all of the people complaining about them here don't play blitzs or "quick game maps".

I'm still undecided about the changes being enough, but I thought I would clear up this common misperception.