Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I'm a total newb, just in my first two games at the moment.

Looking through the possible nations, my interest was struck by Tir Na N'og but it appears they basically get zero playing time as a nation in MP. Are they that bad? Is it essentially suicide to play them in an MP game? Any redeeming features?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

lots of glamour

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Yep. Seems like they may play similarly to a Vanheim or Hellheim. But in the strat index there's a ton on both of these and absolutely nothing on Tir Na N'og.

Seems a major complaint may be lack of any death/astral. Does the addition of the endgame diversity mod compensate for the lack of death and no tartarians?

Also it seems they also don't get much love in the CBM? if they are underpowered why no cost reductions, stat increases etc.

Seems like kinda a cool nation: British mists of avalon, forgotten Sidhe realms, etc. But no one seems to pay any attention to them.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I'm always interested in them, but ignoring magic paths (you can do a lot with their paths even if they lack astral/death, especially in the CBM), they have two big weaknesses:

Fir bolgs have great stats, but their protection is awful.
Everything else costs a LOT of gold, but at the same time their units beg for a good bless on their thugs.

At least, this is what is going through my head every time I try to make a pretender and overall strategy for them.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I'm right now playing as them for my first MP game, so what advice I can offer is limited, but I have noticed a couple things. Unfortunately, as per this being my first MP game, I'm paranoid about giving away any possible strategies. One thing that I can share, though: The recruit-anywhere mages have a 1/4 chance of making nice sitesearchers (1A1W1E1N)

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

there is a pretty good guide by Baalz to Eriu, which is basically the same as TNN. check it out. it can give you some good ideas. basically, the Sidhe Lords are the cornerstone to your nation

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Eriu plays quite a bit different than TNN, but not when it comes to the sidhe lord thugs.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Baalz wrote this Eiru guide, much of it translates well to Tir na N'og.

Basically a nation with good teleporting stealthy raiders, but weak endgame.

I actually think the latest CBM did something for them, plus tartarians are heavily nerfed in the latest patch (made non-GoRable). EDM gives you shishis at least, but you'll need to think about both bless and endgame usability when designing your pretender.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Yeah, I don't think TNN are a bad nation at all. I played them in an MP game once and did okay, despite playing fairly horribly. It may just be chance that they have no guides. Also they were added in a patch quite some time after release so they haven't existed quite as long as some nations.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

then again, lots of nature mages to fix that low protection

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Been tempted to try them not as a bless-thug nation, but as a scales-heavy wannabe-MA Ulm. Now why would anybody want to be MA Ulm is of course another question :p

Anyway, they have many paths available. A rainbow pretender providing access to some death and astral opens up lots of more potential.

Early expansion is ridiculously easy. Grab a Sidhe champion and half a dozen Sidhe Warriors. Script the Sidhe Champion with Quickening Song, other spells*4, Attack rear (if he did have Flight as last script, he will fly right to the backs of the enemy). With that song you have quickened glamorous elite infantry, which will rip apart anything in their path. You can pump out such expansion parties each turn. Research will of course suck (as you have nobody researching unless you took an awake rainbow), but you don't need many such groups out there. Meanwhile the sucky starting army stays home to patrol. You'll have gold coming through your nose in no time, so should be easy to pump out at least three forts first year (and those Sidhe champions all can build temples and labs in the new forts).

Haven't really thought how to go on from that on. But you'll have a bunch of elite infantry with high MR, and soon some kick-butt buffs available. With any of luck the rainbow pretender should find something useful, and meanwhile Sidhe Lords become available in masses from all your forts.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Seems like the big difference between Eiru and TNN are the Sidhe warriors. Eiru has no recruit anywhere glamour troops, TNN does. The way Baalz outlines in his guide, in order to be a highly successful raiding nation Eiru has to invest in a great bless for their Sidhe Lords (plus additional equipment). The Sidhe warriors enable them to field stealth raiding parties from any castle. Makes them look a little more like Vanhiem. The Sidhe warriors are fairly decent, but what could we make of them.

Sidhe Warrior compare to Vanheim Huskarl
Gold 25 Gold 25
Resources 12 Resources 13
HP 13 HP 13
Pro 10 Pro 11
Morale 12 Moral 11
MR 14 MR 14
Enc 3 Enc 4
Str 12 Str 11
Attk 12 Att 12
Def 15 Def 14
Pre 12 Pre 12
Move 2/12 Move 2/11

Stealth 25 Same except no darkvision or forest
Glamour surv
Forest Surv
Darkvision
Spear/Javlin/Shield Axe/Jav/Shield

So the big weakness I see on both units, vanhiem and TNN is the low protection. Vanhiem is sort of stuck with it. Vanhiem also has the Vanhere, Mounted Hirdmen and Hirdmen, but they're capital only or more expensive, respectively. And except for the Vanhere who has berserk they're protection is still low. Yes you could bring an earth Vanadrott along with a pair of earth boots to buff, but this seam like a waste and a huge risk for a capital only mage who could reliably raid all by himself.

Now for TNN. What do you have? Nature mages that are recruitable from every castle. specifically the Bean Sidhe and the Sidhe champion

First the Bean Sidhe. Their A1W1N1 plus a random AWEN. So one in four will be able to cast Wooden Warriors right out the box. Every one will if you just give them a thistle mace. The earth randoms can cast legions of steel with just a pair of boots and an earth gem.

The Sidhe champion is 1A1N but 140 vs 220 gold for the bean (both compare nicely to the 280 Sidhe Lord, Plus the bean is more useful generally). The Champion can lay down the same buffs. His stats are a little worse than the Sidhe lord but he's a whole lot cheaper. Still holy so he could also work with a slight bless.

These two and a few Sidhe warriors seem to get even better when you look at those level one nature enchantment spell songs that these guys have access too. Specifically healing song, quickening song, song of bravery. Cast quickening song right out of the gate with either one. Now you have quickened glamour protected Sidhe warriors. If you go with the Sidhe champion just place him such that he follows right behind your warriors. He seams fairly survivable so you shouldn't be too worried about losing him. Now with healing song you have quickened, regenerating, glamour protected Sidhe warriors.

For the price of a Sidhe lord you can get a sidhe champion plus 6 sidhe warriors. I've been going through a few test runs (about 20 so far , and this can reliably take out PD up to around 20 or so. After that it goes to about 2/3 or 1/2. Bump it up to 10 or 12 warriors and you can reliably get up to 25.

Now you've got raiding parties without needing to fork over a huge amount on E9N6 bless as you have to for Eiru. Thus better scales and more warriors. Plus more Ri's, Sorceresses, and Baobhan Sidhe.

Now the baobhan sidhe seems to be a strange beast. An expensive assassin with A2. If someone can figure out something else to do with her I'm all ears. Is she a money sink or would something interesting work? The thing that first comes to mind is giving her an eye of aiming, then assassinating using thunderstrike, thunderstrike(Just 2 extra air gems). Not sure how often this would work, but it seems like it would reliably take out most mages not kitted out with lightning resistance, even if they had body guards. They're stealth +45 so patrolling for the buggers would be a huge pain. (Would this work?)

I'm imagining an interesting set of moves that could prove quite devastating. Take a number of baobhan sidhe, move them to a province with a fort. Perhaps one owned by someone that doesn't even share a border with you so they're not expecting it. At the same time move in a number of your raiding parties. Equip the raiding party leaders with wall shakers. Use the baobhan sidhe to take out the leaders inside. Simultaneously attack the province with the army that you've pulled in under his nose. Bring enough Sidhe Warriors + wall shakers to bring the walls down in one turn. Attack the next turn. Unless he has a large army within striking distance (which you should be aware of since you have parties all over his territory) or was just camping out inside with a significant force, you just walk right in the gate. Pair this up with other simultaneous raids on the surrounding provinces and you can push the time you need to break the walls down to 2 turns. A great city falls in two with just 4 shakers, a fortified city to 5 shakers(assuming you don't outnumber the defender at all).

Same strategy would would when attacking a large force outside the walls. Assassinate using Baobhan Sidhe and attack simultaneously with a force they didn't even know was next to them the turn before.

As I said before, very little experience with MP. Haven't even tested this plan out in SP. Seems interesting but may have huge holes when put to the test.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Seems like the Bean sides and Sorceresses would also be perfect candidates for artificially communions and crystal shields. Only problem is the only option to forge them would be with your pretender, unless you got lucky with an indi mage site (which doesn't seem that unlikely in EA).

Also, looks like they did receive some love in the latest CBM. That's where the quickening song came in along with the mists spells which could be interesting.

Possible Pretender build

Dormant Crone:
E4S4D4N4

Scales: Dom 5
O3S2L3M1

Is it worth even trying to leverage into death with the nurfs to Tartarians? Will treants, rocs, etc be all you need?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

The big problem with TNN as I see it is not the bad protection, but the bad damage. Glamor cant hold up in protracted battles so killing your enemies fast is necessary. The problem is that their best cap only warrior cost 50g but only have one str18 attack. Against giants or anything tough they will fail horribly. And they are not good enough to warrant a fire bless. And they are too expensive to work as chaff.

This can be worked around using thugs and thunder spammers come midgame. But if someone rush them they are done for.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I have played as TNN once in MP (vanilla), and performed reasonably well. My solution to the rush problem was hiring a Sorceress every turn and going directly for Thunderstrike. I think you can hit it before most nations can rush you. Meanwhile, it is entirely possible to have a decent expansion using firbolgs. They are good, but you will lose at least 1-2 solders on almost every type of indies, so be prepared to reinforce the expansion party.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I haven't played around with TNN/Eriu in the latest CBM.
Did they trade Soothing Song for Quickening Song? Quickening sounds nice, but Soothing Song was brilliant for large battles. A handful of N1 mages could keep your Thunderstrikers going forever and let them recover from the big BF spells quickly.
And Healing Song actually gives regen now? Or did it always and I'm just misremembering?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

TNN gets in CBM 1.82 the quickness song at Ench0. Buying the sacred 50g infantry makes no sense, but buying the 25 gold glamorous elite infantry makes much more sense :) Quickened they will rip apart anything in their path.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Soothing Song is still present. And I think that Healing Song does not give regen.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

No healing song doesn't give regren. Basically just meant that in a small battle with just few troops and a commander it can effectively fill the same roll as sacred troops with regen from a big nature bless.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Except that you've got to keep the commander up near the troops and still casting. Which can be tricky.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Quickening song is not quickness. It is similar to the nature spell haste. It makes units able to run twice the distance in battle, but they still have one attack per round and do not gain +3 attack/defense.

The way I see damage is that you still have axe wielding fir bolgs. They're your go to troops for melee damage.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I think I did well with an S9E9 bless and pretty much exclusively used the sacreds for expansion. It worked quite well. Unfortunately I'd completely failed to make a midgame plan so I kind of got stuck then.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

As I remember axe fir bolgs are pretty bad compared to the spear ones.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

And are the only 18 damage troops besides the capital sacreds. Your next best is 15 damage sidhe. The axe doesn't have the best effect on attack and defense, but sometimes you need to pierce protection more than anything.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

It appears you're right. Makes this spell much less useful. Oh well.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Quickness would be absurdly overpowered.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Are wyverns any good?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

No, not really. Even with dragon master they are usually only barely worth it. And EDM ads so many other good things you can spend air gems on that summoning them probably always a bad idea unless you are desperate.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

I'm thinking one glaring problem TNN has (even compared with Eriu) is that they really lack means to deal with SCs, which is a very bad thing in the EA when half the nations can recruit one of those per turn on top of their own batch of EDM summons/elemental royalty/demons/tarts.

A simple const 0 ring nixes your big early evocations, and while they can trapeze around the sidhe lords seem quite lacking in the anti-SC role: no feet slot means no quickness/flight turn 0, bad buffing paths to face people with magic weapons and regen doesn't do much on a 15 hp guy.
Without S mages nor D mages to summon spectres, you're also going to be hurting for luck/antimagic ammis on the off chance you can't find a lizard province.

Ultimately I reckon everything TNN does, on paper Fomoria can do it just as well while having more options beyond that.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Agree with the problems with lack of SC counters. I'm looking for ideas. What generally works well for other nations without their own SC chassis?

One solution might be using Sidhe champions instead of the lords as anit-SC squads. Significantly cheaper with similar stats, main diff is one less air and 17 def vs. 20. Give a few of them hero's blades (12 AP damage + additional to larger creatures). Script flight, attack large creatures. A squad of them coming in on the middle of a buff cycle seems like it would work nicely. 4 cost the same amount as a Niefel jarl, and they're recruit anywhere, plus 10E gems a piece for the blades, plus any other trinkets you want to throw on them (amulets of luck might work nicely, if you can forge them. Obviously another problem, but you could just outfit your pretender to summon Spectres to get a little astral if you can't find lizards). They have glamour so it has to be popped first, gives them a couple of rounds to wail away. Would have to test it out but seems like a possible strategy. As long as you don't lose more than 4 in each SC exchange you're coming out ahead in terms of gold and gems. Not sure if this would work, any thoughts?

Not really sure where the comparison to Fomoria comes from, seems like there are too many differences to name. No recruit anywhere glamour mages and commanders, only recruit anywhere mage is the druid with only A1 + random. No recruit anywhere stealth troops. No access to earth or nature for big troop buffs. Etc. Fomoria is a giant nation that relies on capital only kings and sorceresses. I agree they may be an overall stronger nation than TNN, but hardly a good comparison when trying to think about a strategy.

Seems the better comparisons would be Vanhiem or Hellheim, with either blood or death respectively, and access to heavy earth at their capitals. How do they deal with SC's?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Another possibility is vine bow or vine whip on one commander plus the hero's blades on a few others. Lock the big guy down and then chop away.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Caveate: I haven't played Tir yet. That said, I can offer some suggestions as to some specific questions raised. Tir, like Eriu seems likely to do very well with a heavy forging focus. Sidhe raiders obviously are exactly the same, but cheap items can go a long way towards overcoming some of the other weaknesses.

A couple indie commanders with ice pebble staffs will go a very long way towards compensating for your low damage output and will quite vex the guy who managed lightning resistant troops. Generally though lightning casters + soothing storm will bring all the damage you need.

Sidhe champions have an 18 precision once you cast eagle eyes. Bows of war and piercers can be pretty nasty when you field double digits of them, particularly on stealthy guys.

Enemy SCs shouldn't be a problem. Anybody not lightning/frost immune is trivial to bring down, and hero blades are an obvious default answer to anybody that doesn't have a more specific weakness.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

All of that becomes harder without hammers.

Everyone else is hurt too, but if you're relying on items for almost everything you're much worse off. Taking a Forge lord helps, but is still only 1 item a turn.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Well, as I posted elsewhere I don't think the hammer nerf is quite as crippling as everyone makes out. Take, for instance my suggestion to crank out piercers because that particularly makes the comparison easy with everything is in E gems. With a hammer you're saving 2 gems apiece - but you sank 11 or 15 gems into the hammer so you're not even breaking even until you've made 6 (or 8) of them. This is compounded by the fact that if you've got hammers available you're not just forging a single one so it's not unlikely that it's late game before hammers really pay off. True, they do pay off in a big way by end game when you're forging big things and can easily save 50 gems per turn, but that's not really where the sweet spot is for this sort of nation.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

But what nation isn't relying heavily on forging? The SC's still have to be kitted out.

What's more expensive? 6 guys with bows of war is 30 gems. 4 guys with hero's blades are 40 gems. How many gems is a fully equipped SC? Plus the guys with blades and bows are all stealthy and so are much more flexible in their deployment; you don't know where they are until they attack. Plus the non-summonable SCs are mainly capital only mages.

Once were talking about summonable guys TNN isn't doing too badly with Rocs, Asynjas, and Shishis. All lightning immune except the Asynja. But the asynja can travel with the remainder of your stealthy armies. Can also get treants or any of the other late game summons if you want to crank your pretender for them. But those three are the ones that obviously fit with what you might want to do with them.

Also is fairy court any good? Seems like she would also fit in with what we'd be trying to do with TNN. The fairy queen herself kinda sucks, not a bad mage but not powerful at all. What catches my eye are the sprites she can summon. 100 armor negating stun damage per shot. MR negates but if you've got a ton of these things (and you do since I think she can summon three each turn) then everyone on the battle field just falls asleep, including SC's. There only 2 hp but 19 defense so hitting the buggers before they get you is damn near impossible. Counter would seem to be AOE spells or big battlefield evocations, also only 9 moral so fear would also be useful to counter. But they're stealthy so once again, you never know where they are. Use a conventional army or SC to distract, make them prepare for a traditional fight or a SC fight, then knock out their force with just a horde of little fairies and some lightning spamming mages instead.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

In practice, I think TNN suffers heavily without hammers. When hammers were in, you could take E on pretender (not a bad idea anyway for sacred thug nation, so no wasted points), and you had little use for E gems except for hammers. Without them, things like Vine Shields (which are key items for TNN) are suddenly very costly.

I think game experience with newest CBM so far supports my words: thugs have become rare.

Concerning the anti-SC options for TNN - how about airdropping a couple of Sidhe Lords dual-wielding Axes of Hate?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

What we really need to know too tell if this is a huge hit to thug nations is the average gem outlay per thug, the average gem outlay per sc, and the average ratio of thugs/SC fielded in any given game prior to the removal of hammers.

If gems/thug / gems/SC = thug/SC then removal of hammers should have relatively little effect. E.g. if people were putting 15 gems worth of stuff on thugs, 45 on SC, but the average ratio of thugs to SC was 3/1 then the cost in gems for both was unchanged. You raised the price of both equivalently. 1.33 * 45 and 1.33 * 45.

If gems/thug / gems/sc > thug/SC then removal of hammers did nerf thugs. E.g. people were putting 20 gems into each thug, 40 into each SC but ratio of thug/SC was still 3/1. This effectively increased the price of the thugs. 1.33 * 60 vs 1.33 * 40.

if gems/thug / gems/SC < thug/SC then removal of hammers hurt the SC nations. Opposite of above.

So the question I have for those more experienced, what were these ratios?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Very hard to determine :D.

Don't think you can really put numbers to those values, they depend totally on situation and play style.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Well I can't speak to general perception which does seem to lean towards what you describe, but from just looking at the numbers they don't seem to me to support that conclusion. As a rough estimate assume you forge enough hammers to outfit one thug per turn with equipment not more than 10 gems apiece. You're not breaking even on the hammers until you've got 6-7 thugs fielded, and not at a very noticeable detriment until you're close to double that number. I just don't see how modest amounts of thugs mid game are suddenly not cost efficient (in plenty of situations at least).

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Sure, we can spend E gems on hammers, or we can spend them directly on equipment. But does this calculation take into account the fact that different types of gems have different utility depending on exact circumstances? Let's consider TNN. It has limited access to E, so even without using pretender for site searching it can have some kind of E income. On the other hand, it has no access to F, except on a hero. If we are talking about thug gear, two best choices for spending E gems are obviously Fire Brands and Shields of Gleaming Gold. But both are F/E items, and thus very difficult to forge for TNN. The alternative is Frost Brand+Vine Shield combo, which is perfectly easy to forge, and they do not use E gems. So, shouldn't we spend E on hammers to forge W and N thug gear? After all, what else can we do with them (if our objective is mass thugs strategy), alchemize?

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Oh, totally agree that it would be impossible to determine across the entire spectrum of all dominions players. But it gives a handy shorthand to compare to two individual strategies to see which one was more hurt by removing hammers..

All the discussion so far has talked about relative scarcity of gems, whether ultimately you're not hurt as much because you had to forge the hammer initially anyway, etc. However, all of these arguments apply to ANY strategy that employs any forging at all.

What removing hammers essentially did is raise the price in gems of any forging strategy by 33%. This is relative to all other currencies, e.g. gold, production turns, resources.

So for instance if one strategy required 1 forged gems/4 gold invested and another strategy required 1 forged gems/10 gold then the first strategy is much worse off than the the second after the removal of hammers. Similarly, strategy one required 1 forged gems/1 ritual gems and strategy two required 3 forged gems/ 2 ritual gems, in this case strategy two is worse off after removal of hammers.

To give a more specific example. Formoria was mentioned earlier. Formoria has the big kings that make pretty good SC. A strategy could easily be built around them. Each one costs 500 gold. Alternatively, TNN can build a strategy around Sidhe Lord, cost 280 gold. Assume that the strategy usually required the king to be outfitted with 45 gems. Assume the strategy for the Sidhe Lord required 15 gems worth of equipment. What happens without hammers? bump the price in gems of both strategies up by 33%. King was .09 gems/gold, sidhe was .05 gems to gold. Now king becomes .12 gems/gold and sidhe becomes .07 gems to gold. For any given 1000 gold investment the formorians now have to spend 29 additional gems. TNN has to spend 17 additional gems. Assuming the same opportunity cost of gems for other purposes(rituals, spells), in this example the Sidhe are better off after the removal of hammers. Change those initial ratios and you get a different answer.

My point is that to create a good argument about whether a strategy is worse or better off after the removal you have to look at an analysis like this. Just talking about when the hammers pay for themselves, or relative usefulness of a specific type of gem doesn't cut it. These problems are similar between strategies. What really changed is the amount of one resource that you have to invest in that strategy relative to other resources: gold, production turns, gems used in summoning, etc.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Torgon, the problem with your example is that by the mid game gold stops becoming an issue for most nations, it comes down to fort turns instead. the more gold you have the more forts you can afford, but still you're technically not limited by gold but by forts. another problem is that Kings are capital only while Sidhe Lords aren't, and of course that Kings are much stronger than Sidhe Lords, being SCs as opposed to thugs and all that. so just comparing equal gold investments vs gem investments give a very inaccurate picture, if not false altogether.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

It's not that far fetched a comparison.

- Firbolgs ? Firbolgs.

- Zappy storm ? Zappy storm.

- Fomoria has all the magic paths TNN has, and then some. High Air ? Check. High N ? Not really, but as a giant nation your god will most assuredly have at least 4N, which starts you on the nature path. Water ? Check. The only missing piece is Earth, which TNN probably needs to have on their gods too anyway. Oh, and the W/N combo, which is admittedly worthwhile in vanilla for clams, but more or less worthless in CBM.

- Stealth raiders ? Fomoria can do that just fine by focusing on their capital only units early on, or on Morrigans later. Of course, every time you recruit a stealth leader you're not recruiting an SC - but then TNN can *only* recruit stealth leaders. No SC option.

- Teleporting raiders: Fomorian kings say hi. Hell, with Soul Vortex they don't even need gear to wipe out PD.

- Fomorian druids have the same magic paths as Shidhe Champions; in fact they have better paths since they're not constrained to A1N1. Hell, they can even make better use of A1N1 than them since they have twice the hit points, thus can take advantage of Personal Regen (although in that case they admittedly need forged armour).

- Granted, most of them lack Glamour. Then again, since the nerf Glamour is crap that can be dealt with a dozen shortbows. Since EA is when huge packs of shortbows shine anyway... yes.

Oh, and they're also giants with Death magic and holy undead. I stand by my statement: anything TNN can do, Fomoria can do it and then some.

My reasoning was far from that involved, but it led me to a simple deduction: SC races (like Fomoria) used to be more or less required to squeeze Earth and sleeping on their pretenders, so they'd be able to make hammers early enough for it to matter.
This, in turn, meant they had worse scales and worse end game options than other nations.
Remove hammers and a full-on bless or scales strat becomes not only viable but a no-brainer for them since there's no opportunity cost any more. Which ironically means that removing the forge whore item from the game makes forge whore nations *more* powerful than they ever were.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

i dont really see the point of all the crap you wrote. so formoria is better. that is 100% agreed and everyone knows it. the issue i think is that people want to know what to do with tnn, not what formoria can do better than them

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Torgon's OP wondered why TNN didn't see much playtime. Detailing why they (relatively) suck didn't seem all that out of topic to me.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

@Kobal2 @ Priestlyman

I agree w/ Kobal. What you wrote is actually helpful. Part of the question was what to do with TNN, but also did want to know why no one used them. The stuff about fomoria is helpful.

@13lackgu4rd

Then I guess then my question comes down to forged gems/production turns if production turns is the other constraining resource. In my example I just used gold as a proxy for any constraining resource. Anything other 'resource' could also be used: gems used in summoning, production turns, etc.

what's always changing is the numerator in forged gems/'other resources used in strategy'. The strategy that has the lower initial ratio is less impacted by a % change to the numerator, all other things being equal.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

@13lackGu4rd

But why does it matter that one's a thug and ones a SC. Lets make it more abstract.

I have strategy A that i'm attempting to win with. It requires a certain amount of resource X and a certain amount of resource Y to be effective.
You have strategy B that you are attempting to win with. It also requires a certain amount of resource X and a certain amount of resource Y to be effective.

Resource X and Y can be anything you want them to be (Gems, gold, production turns, mage turns, widgets, etc. the example can also extend to three, four, any number of resources).

Okay, now something happens and suddenly resource X is much rarer (in the dominions example this is gems as a result of the removal of hammers). Who is better off and more likely to win? From the information already presented it is impossible to know. What you need to know is relative intensities of use of each of the resources in each strategy. And whether either one of those strategies was constrained by resource X and at what times those constraints occurred. If both strategies employed roughly equal ratios of resource X to resource Y then they are both going to be impacted equally. They're both less effective by whatever the decrease in X was. However, if the ratio in each strategy was different, or one strategy was constrained on X and the other wasn't, or one strategy was constrained by X early and the other by X late, then the change in the availability of X will have a more dramatic impact on one strategy than the other. However you need this information in order to make that determination.

Up until now the only arguments for each side that I've seen essentially boil down to: 1)Strategy A has to use more of resource x now 2)Because of this strategy A is less effective.

Of course strategy A is less effective. All of the strategies are less effective including strategy B. You just tightened a constraint on everyone. Tightening a constraint always leads to a lower optimal solution. What I have yet to see is a good argument for why the tightening of this constraint has a disparate impact on one strategy than on another. Why is the new optimal point for strategy A lower than the new optimal point for strategy B? They're both lower. The question is which one was lowered by a larger amount.

If gems were the constraining factor on the number of thugs you could crank out, then yes the removal of hammers would be a huge problem. If the constraining factor was production turns then not so much. Same thing with SC's, if constraining factor was production turns then increase in gem cost really doesn't matter. If the constraining factor was gems then it matters a great deal. If your were at times constrained by gem cost for for one, and at other times by gold, and at other times by production turns, then when that constraint from gems occurred is hugely important. If the constraint was early game before you have a lot of hammers, removal of hammers is immaterial. If it was after then removal becomes very important. I guess I just have yet to see an argument that really dives down into what ways gems were really constraining the optimal strategy and at what times. I've got limited experience with multi-player dominions as I stated before, so I have no good idea where those constraints were and how tight they were. Any analysis of the impact on strategy of a scarcer resource has to make those kind of arguments in order to be sound. That's essentially what I'm asking for.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Your theory is too crude. Just one example: if we again compare thugs and SCs, one of the main differences between them is that thugs are expendable, while SCs are not. So, you equip a thug, he fights in a couple of battles and gets killed. You hire another thug, equip him again, etc. A SC, on the other hand, is geared to be able to reliably survive most battles, so once you equip him you use him for a long time. Of course SCs also get killed, sometimes they stupidly die in their very first battle, but on average they are expected to last longer then thugs. Meaning you spend less gems on replacing lost equipment.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

Torgon, christ.

The minute you abstract anything you devorce it from gameplay. aspects such as hammer time or the effectiveness of scaling down kit (for example) are highly pertinant and don't fit into the theory of relative efficiency.

I'm playing a stratagy game, if I'd wanted to play an economics game I would have bought Master of Orion 3.

sorry for the random grief, but economics sometimes pisses me off.

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I reckon of someone had 100+ hours to put into the problem you could construct an optimal model of forging efficiency when compairing CBM to Stock. but trying to superimpose models of real world export production onto the issue isn't going to provide mathematically pure responses that put an end to the debate. I reckon a general understanding of the hammer change will be achieved much more realistically with a non-mathematical forum debate.

Re: Question about EA Tir Na N'og
 

@Festin

Thank you. This response is exactly what I'm looking for (theory is not to crude, trust me, optimization under constrained resources and uncertainty is essentially what I do for a living, and its a hell of a lot more complicated than what I laid out here).

But, as I said this is exactly what I'm looking for. SC use fewer gems because on average they survive longer. This is a good argument as to why thugs are worse off after the removal of hammers.