No more MP for Hinnom?
 

http://i33.tinypic.com/2mqm41z.png

http://i34.tinypic.com/2lxuphy.png

http://i36.tinypic.com/wr1ac1.jpg

http://i38.tinypic.com/2ex7a09.png

http://i35.tinypic.com/334ub1e.png

http://i36.tinypic.com/2zem7aa.png

http://i34.tinypic.com/25716hg.png

http://i35.tinypic.com/30tgwf9.png

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Yeah, it happens in every game they are in. I support banning Hinnom till they get fixed. EA could use a lot more balancing though.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

haha. what were you guys doing?

a good mictlan build could probably take down Hinnom :)

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

The polls not very good, it only has 1 option, ban Hinnom, Gath and Ashdod. No choice.

DarwinsZorro is not really a true and fitting test, as to wether Hinnom is too powerful for MP. As most/all of the players (including me) have been complete and utter cowards and not even seriously tried to stop Hinnom. He has had virtually zero resistance and the other nations have just fought each another or gone AI as soon as Hinnom attacked them. We are for one reason or another a pretty apathetic bunch in DarwinsZorro!

Having said that Hinnom may be the La Ermor of the Early Age, if you know what I mean.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

In Hellscape, Hinnon is behind Neifleheim and a number of other nations and we are on turn 38. I've heard it's been hard fighting, but they don't seem too dominant.

Of course, I've been in my own wars so I don't know the exact details.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

If I were rebalancing Hinnom, I'd give them twice as much Misfortune as every other nation-since they're intended to be a nation of Nephilim-thus offensive to Creation itself, and would naturally suffer a lot of bad luck.

That would also make them unique among nations.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

1. Halve Hinnom's starting army
2. Change their preferred temp to heat 1
3. Change their PD to horites.

that's really all you need to balance them. W/ that, they're certainly no stronger than a number of other early era nations.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I don't mind Hinnom being powerful, but it is a bit silly they seem to be the best at a LOT of things. Like having by far the best PD for instance, for a nation that is already awesome. I mean I like them having great summons and great heroes and I don't want things like that removed (of course, the summons could be upped in cost a little), it's just that they have all of these things on top of each other, just piling up into a scary nation.

I was of the opinion that Ashdod was actually better, but I think Hinnom edges it due to its furious early expansion.

Regardless, I generally seek balance from CBM, not vanilla. I wouldn't like to see Hinnom banned in some MP games but I could understand why it would be. I still don't think it's anywhere near so dominant and crazy as LA Rlyeh though.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Honestly, I think the only reason Hinnom is behind Niefel in Hellscape is because Fomoria and Mictlan have been trying to beat down Hinnom for most of the game. Despite our full-fledged efforts, we are losing the war. I am not sure anyone is attacking Niefel. Even with those odds the 2 of them, Niefel and Hinnom, are pretty close. So I would tend to agree that if you want a more balanced game, you might want to avoid using Hinnom or pray that its neighbors gang up on H right out of the box.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

They were crushed in Kingmaker. Among the first 2-3 races killed out of 63. If you have a tough race, it is the other players duty to double team it.

In kingmaker lanka and kailasa took them out with little trouble.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Those charts do look extreme but no more so than any winning nation late in the game. And "fixing" the number one nation only creates another number one nation. But if the experts say that its best at too many things then it probably needs some action.

I havent seen any sign that any of those nations do better than usual as AIs or on really large maps or the small-map blitzes on my server. It might just be a problem for mid-sized MP games.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

No. Lanka took them out alone. Kailasa was not involved. And it was only because Hinnom was VERY badly played that they lost.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

A few anecdotal "Hinnom didn't do so good in this game..." is even more pointless than a single "Hinnom crushed everybody in game x!". A weaker player is always a possibility, as is just plain terrible luck and either of those factors trumps anything else. Personally, having helmed Hinnom into a crushing victory I have to say they're even more ridiculously over the top than LA Rlyeh. LA Rlyeh's biggest advantage is being the only water power of the age combined with a nation very much geared towards late game power. Several powers could certainly give them trouble 1:1 early on even in the water, it's just too inconvenient and there are easier targets so everyone leaves them alone until it's too late. Thing is, Hinnom's PD serves the same purpose. It's fricking daunting to attack them and there's always easier targets. But with Hinnom they're not only a powerhouse if left alone, they outexpand everybody else in the first place- not only in provinces, but in gems (best site searching of any nation with no other early need for gems or mages), forts (800 gold forts with no need to put up labs or temples) and research (recruiting their best research mage with no lab!)

I gotta say though, the thing that really brings them from extremely powerful into "too powerful" is the PD, combined with generally good gold flow. They can stop anything short of a very powerful army by spending less than 1000 gold on PD...

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I would feel endlessy uncomfortable in voting for the ban of the hard work of the devs out of the MP world :o The nation is very nicely thematic also.
But maybe some things could be adjusted... Hinnom is a powerhouse in early game (starting army, PD), and middle game (none of the giants' traditional weaknesses, incredible research potential with mages not requiring labs to be recruited), and late game (Lords of Civilization, access to almost every path). Seems really hard to stop in the hands of an expert

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Lingchih:

Kailasa had some battles against Hinnom and also Midgard attacked Hinnom, so it was 3:1 with Lanka doing most of the job. And Hinnom player did many many mistakes.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Hinnom tried to invade Kailasa, and kailasa was able to crush the invasion force. After that Lanka and Midgard double teamed Hinnom and it fell fast. So it was actually 3v1 and i dont think that this is any indicator of how strong hinnom really is.

edit: somehow i did not see zeldors answer when i wrote this post:o

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Hadrian:

I still think you could maybe even win that 3:1 with more tramplers. Especially considering Lanka had long term bless, not rush one. But still, 3:1 to get one nation does not sound like balanced. I wish I had a bit stronger early game nation in that moment :(

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

@Zeldor:

I tried to say, that when you go 3v1 against a nation, every nation will crumble fast, so it does not say anything about the power of hinnom. And i did not see any big effort on our side, as hinnom fell like a stone without much losses to the attackers.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Hadrian:

From what I remember you almost killed entire Lankan army with your chariots, if you had just a bit more of them [and maybe PD to back them up, it was probably storming your capitol], you'd win and regain most of lands.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

But KO has said that a nation needing 3 nations to beat it is within the games concept of balance. So it would not be considered "broke". Thats not to say that he might not agree to even things out a bit but in Dominions as long as there is a rock-paper-scissors answer for something then is no desire to try and achieve a chess-game everyone balanced with each other type of leveling.

I may have to play abit and see if the PD here can lead to actually balancing some of the "low" nations by making their particular skills more useful.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Gandalf:

But there are way too many nations like that in EA that need more than 1 nation to beat - Hinnom, Lanka, Niefel, Mictlan, so where can you get enough nations to take them down? And which first? You take down one, another gets enough time to gets way too powerful.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Actually the more nations you add to a list like that, the more it becomes something that doesnt need to be fixed. If it was just one that automatically held a top level then it would need to be tweaked.

You also seem to be looking at only one part of the game. Mictlan for example is one of the nations most listed as the number one failing in AI.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Maybe just because the fact the AI can't handle the EA and LA mictlan inexisting normal dominion spread.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Right. Thats the problem.
I was just pointing out that a "major failing" in one area doesnt always mean its broken. tweaking a nation needs to be done carefully to not fix something in one area and break it in another. I wouldnt consider it to be a good fix if Hinnom were balanced perfectly for MP play on average maps but it broke it for small and large maps, or for AI, or for solo play.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

This thread is a pleasant change of pace. First time in close to 2 years that there are a lot of complaints about a nation being too strong. It is always, "XXXXX" is too weak.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I disagree baalz. The fact that they were smoked in Kingmaker shows they can easily be taken down 2 v 1. There were decent players all around.

You have to use diplomacy in MP games. Otherwise stick to single players. If you are in a game and LA Ermor is eating your neighbor, and you do not help him, then he gobbles you next, do not complain that LA Ermor is too powerful.

You should have got off your arse and ganged him. All races are not equal. Mp games require diplomacy to bring down overpowered races. The fact that your style is to sit and build up rather than fight early wars is irrelevant.

Situations often dictate strategy. The motto for weaker nations is," United we stand, divided we fall." If you are one of these antisocial guys that do not like diplomacy, then you are likely not going to a be a very good at playing dominions in the multiplay context.

If a race cannot beat 2 on 1, it is not overpowered.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

And what is the reasoning behind that seemingly arbitrary statement?

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Hinnom can beat 2:1. It can beat 5:1 some nations. Saying fight is easy when you have nation able to fight anyone early on. There are many nations that won't survive 20 turns against almost any opponent if not diplomacy. That is not a balance.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

X, I disagree as to the assessment of Hinnom's impact on an MP game. Here is a quote from Niefelheim who in Hellscape is just slightly more powerful than Hinnom at the moment, though my money is on Hinnom to win this game:

So basically, Hinnom has been ganged up on by its two neighbors, Mictlan and Fomoria. Both of the attackers have been beaten down and lost any chance of winning the game. In the classic prisoner's dilmena we were damned if we attacked and damned if we didn't. Meanwhile, Niefel has turtled his way into a respectable position. But I predict as soon as Fomoria and Mictlan crumble, Hinnom's graphs will jump as they do in Omni's first post.

The point of this cautionary tale is, at least in Hellscape, Hinnom creates what I'd call an unfun dynamic as the nation forces its neighbor's into a losing binary outcome. And anyone who doesn't neighbor Hinnom, is clearly going to turtle. So you can almost predict the outcome of a game up front.

Anyway, I don't feel very strong about it because I don't mind losing and I do like variety, but I would caution people that the MP game experience with Hinnom is not as interesting.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

There is also an element of "right tool for the right job."

In this very thread we have a Hinnom invasion army being beaten by Kailasa. That is just stupidly surprising in my book based on the relative strength and cost of their troops, but after some thought I worked out a few early game scenarios where it could happen. Mostly, they revolve around Kailasa's unique strengths and Hinnon's particular weaknesses.

A nation's overall strength is determined not just their potential strengths, but the numbers of tactics and strategies they are were able to develop over the course of play to meet the different situations they will encounter.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Well it is easy enough to restrict a game so that certain nations cannot sign up to play. Thats an option and I would have no problem seeing it happen.

I dont think Id like the idea of some sort of mass effort to make it a "rule" and try to enforce it on others.

But if enough people running games locked out certain nations on a regular basis then thats one of the best ways to get the devs attention.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

In my opinion, if a nation can always win its duels easily and thus must be countered by alliance, it has greatly limited our diplomacy and strategy choice and made the fun fading.

And vice versa if a nation can only survive relying on diplomacy, that's what I think unbalance, and that's why some nations have been boosted by previous patches.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Fine as long as its not fixing it just for you and messing it up for others. Believe me. Im on the beta team. If I pushed to fix things that applied only to the way I play Dominions then it would have a horrible impact on many of the other players here. But I wouldnt do that.

Discussion is good. We might be able to come up with some careful tweaks to suggest which everyone can be happy with.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Most concerns are about early game. Later you can diversify. But if you are able to get much bigger for less design points then you have it easier in late game. Hinnom gets free points from heat. More free points for not needing bless or awake SC. And has great PD to beat most attackers and makes them require a lot of research and mage power to get through real hinnom armies [backed by PD]. And you have recruitable SCs. On the other hand we have nation that need to waste [yes, waste] 150 points for awake SC to have a CHANCE of SURVIVING [not dominating or making a rush] early game. They usually also need a lot of research [so even with awake SC they cannot match any bless nation or Hinnom], normal PD, normal troops that get trampled or easily killed [especially under enemy H3 or C3 dom]. And they need to summon all thug and SC chassises as additional cost to kitting them [and they have worse site searching abilities]. Of course that nations can be fun, but you take lottery. And I don't want to depend on luck, not my design, if I survive 20-30 turns [not even talking about chances to win the game].

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

In Kingmaker lanka and kailasa crushed hinnom. of course they rushed him early. both of them.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I agree that it is difficult to determine the relative strength of a nation based purely on sparse instances of victory or defeat.

It has been implied that their is either a "right tool for the job" or a "rock-paper-scissor" approach. In order for either of these to be true their has to be an exploitable weakness to Hinom. So I ask, what is a weakness of this nation and how easy is it to exploit, as well as how easy is it for Hinom to compensate?

(I will say one thing. Thematically, I find it hard to believe that a Chariot of that size plus giant sized armor requires so few resources to build. It's only a point more then an Arcosephalian Chariot.)

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Which particular national strengths and weaknesses would you be exploiting in the early game?

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

The have the same as most of the giant nations. A tendency toward starvation. Some subtle dominion attacks would work well.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I still see plenty of LA games (more than 50% that start, which I found shocking), that do not restrict Ermor or R'lyeh unless people ask for it. So I can hardly see a community-wide rule coming into effect on Hinnom. Though, many more games are started in EA than LA, so, the tide may be stronger. ;)

Oh and for the record, I find Hinnom to be utterly ridiculous. I have 2 test games that I got bored of once indie expansion was ending. This boredom resulted from my being 3x the size of any of the AIs by this time, one game with a strong bless, the other game with a scales strat and chariots - both had equal early game results.

Obviously SP results don't reflect much on MP games per se. However, any nation that you can just pick up, and plug in whatever pretender build you like, and outperform ANY of your best/favorite nations in similar circumstances - is definitely a bit higher on the power curve.

Ashdod seems to definitely share some of papa Hinnom's power as well. Gath, seriously seems to lack the edge of their predecessors. Not that they are poorly designed in any way, just that they're much closer to the relative power of other nations.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I think that pretty much only two nations will give Hinnom a strong challenge, or may I say, beat it on equal skill level, in early game.

One is Sauromatia. Poison archer is the bane of many things, esp. small elite army of Hinnom. E blessed amazon riders can easily raid Hinnom PDs. 25 PDs cannot stop 10 E9N4 blessed riders. Hinnom can expect to counter poison archers with baals, but in turn, hydras scare the pants off those poor baals.

The other is Niefelheim. E9N8/9 blessed nief giants and jarls, with its cold spreading domain, can easily beat baals and Hinnom giants 1:1, with any bless.

From middle game on, it really depends on the skill level of player and too many other factors to predict.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Kail's Awe

Hinnom's lack of high moral units, and often disuse of sacreds (which will generally have the highest base moral that boosted even more when blessed).
and if Kail is not using an Air bless... Hinnom has no missile unit that can be mustered in any significant amount.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Kailasa did little against Hinnom in Kingmaker, other than repel him. Lanka did most of the work. I believe Hinnom's mistake in that game was building too many chariots. He relied on Chariots for everything, rather than recruiting his national SCs.

I lost early in that game because I figured Hinnom could hold against Lanka, so I attacked Lanka. Two turns later, Hinnom was dead.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Hinnom will likely be nerfed with next patch. They do have several strengths, but I never had any grip on how they would turn out in practice. There has been lots of discussions regarding their strengths and weaknesses (quite few) and I have plans for their correction.

Baalz guide, as well as the following discussions have been quite informative, and I thank you all for participating.

Now I wonder a bit about Ashdod. THey have been discussed a lot less, but they are portrayed as almost Hinnomish in power. The Zamzummim and summons are mentioned, but I have less to go on here.

I guess they have been less common in MP games?

Some things I consider:
- Lower PD, not horites though
- Fewer starting troops
- Chariot nerf (possibly size, possibly something else that might affect other tramplers as well)
- Dawn Guard +5g to original cost level.

Not sure about this, but I had an idea of switching Melqart and Ba'al blood magic lvl. Might need a slight rewrite of descriptions and events.

Main objective of nerf: reduce initial expansion power.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Nerfing tramplers in general would be great, in my opinion. Elephants have always been a bit crazy.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

Sauromatia I think is a bit of "in theory this could work". Once you get reasonably good players (on both sides) trying to counter what each other is doing I don't think Sauromatia really has much of a chance. Hydras don't even come close to countering Baals if you use them right. Flesheater axe (berzerk) + snake ring (poison immune) plus some other cheapish cons-4 gear and Hinnom is basically fielding a nearly unstoppable SC every turn *very* early which Sauromatia doesn't really have anything to address. Hinnom is a very strong research nation, and cons-4 + alt-3 + thau-3 are not very high bars to have teleporting SCs who can be configured at the lab specifically to whatever Sauromatia is fielding, then drop in on them before they can move while your normal (chariots & dawn guard) troops continue to expand in every direction twice as fast as Sauro can match. Not to mention the other thing people seem to overlook because it seldom comes up - Hinnom has such broad magic diversity + strong research that they can pretty easily bring any spells they need to the party if you do manage to counter their strong suit. You don't like my SC counter to hydras? Ok, how about spamming some blade wind into those hydras & poison archers? Or casting arrow fend and paralyzing the hydras? How about both? Whatever the most devastating counter you can come up with - Hinnom can very likely do it, and do it well.

Neifelheim in a very early dual (triple) bless rush is going to give anybody a hard time, but I can't think of anybody I'd rather have in that situation than Hinnom with a strong heat-3 dominion. Neifel's a very one dimensional power, and even fully optimized in a best case scenario (not including ganging up on somebody) I wouldn't give a triple blessed Niefel rush more than a 50% chance of succeeding against an unprepared, good scale Hinnom with an imprisoned pretender (assuming equal skill levels).

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

For the most part I have always found the price of the trampler to be fair. Most of the weaknesses of the elephant and Hinnom chariots don't warrant a higher gold cost in my opinion.

I do however find them too easy to amass in large numbers during the early game, which often upsets most of their weakness at this point. Nothing follows the rule of critical mass more faithfully then tramplers. Gold costs in my opinion aren't much of a barrier as huge quantities can be had at great personal cost. So if anything, I'm in favor of resource increases over gold increases.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I feel that nerfing elephants would nerf nations which are weak as it is like Caelum or Arco

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

What would la arcos do without elephants? my god(: No national summons. In kingmaker i am being raided by angels(la marignon), and Bandar Log's national summons. Take away elephants then make those sirrush cost water gems or something besides s gems, or give them some anti thug ability(an affliction causing attack, arm loss or something).

Something else that needs nerfed is the ghost rider leader. he is basically unkillable by pd.
You can kill all of his men but he fights on to the last hp and causes fear. Now I have used that to my advantage many times, but he needs toned done slightly. Maybe take his fear away or make him not ethereal.

A level 35 pd should have at least a chance at stopping him. Maybe ea abysia's can since they get mages and fire aura, but not your basic shinuyama, arcos pd that is strong but not magical.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

The thing is, short of a berserking baal, everything up to const6 gear I put in a baal does not help him from running away every single time when facing 4 hydras. And I do mean a lot of times. Teleporting those baals deep in enemy land facing hydra is a certain way to quick death from running. Heck, one baal who was supposed to cast call horror ran away from the first horror he summoned (no, the horror was not attacking him, he just panicked from seeing the horror he summoned). And hydras did not even need to do any damage to the baal, not that they couldnot with 9 attacks 16 damages or above, but the baal ran away 50% of the time coming into contact with hydras.

Re: No more MP for Hinnom?
 

I'd quite like to see def stat (not including parry from shield) have more of an impact on trampling. That way tramplers would be a bit worse and light infantry with virtually no armour, plus light cavlary, would be a lot better.