Nations that seem strong/weak
 

I'll start.

Early Age - Strong

Sauromatia: This mounted terror shoots to the top of charts in every game it has been in. Great gem income, a diversity of aproaches to playing them, even better Misfortune tolerance than usual, blood magic, poisonous archers, blessable lizards...the list goes on.

Van/Helheim: Great blessables. Glamour troops. Vanheim gets Blade wind with the Dwarves and Blade Wind rules the Early Age.

Mictlan: Their troops are nowhere near as sucky as they used to be in the early age and the new blood summons are superb, especially Ozelotls who have terrifying synergy with the usual F9 W9 bless.

Neifelheim: Niefel Bussiness as usual, now with 256% More Wolves. 100% Ewil.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Vanheim & Helheim are very strong nations for blitz games, we usually ban them. Also we allow only 1 level9 blessing in the blitz games nowadays. Games are much more balanced like this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Multiplayer blitz games (usually played on maps where the provinces equal playerx10 or less) with no special victory conditions definetly do a lot toward defining strong/weak nations. I think that more game settings might help with those.

Mictlan with that flying stealth titan assassin pretender can also make a major dent in a blitz game very early on.

Neifelheim loses many of its drawbacks in a game like that, and it offers one of the few other strategies for a small blitz game (defensive buildup)

On the other hand, Im cranking up for some mega games on maximum maps which might shake out some people whose rankings of nations are too cast in cement. There are alot of game variations to explore.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

The nice part about dominions is experienced players have proven that no nation is so crippled to be completely hopeless in a MP game. Even some weak nations like Abysia have one or two saving graces (Demonbred in their case with axe infantries not so bad buys if I recall). Tien Chi MA gets xbows and consorts. EA Ryleh gets nice flavor and aquatic thugs.

Also superior raiding strategies and decent pretenders/diplomatics go a long way.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Since when Abysia is considered weak? O_o

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

My guess would be since old age became a problem. In Dom2 anyway Abysia wasn't thought of as weak last I remember.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Yeah Aby was quite strong in dom2. Good battle magic, good summoning, decent national troops (after CB).

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

The aging feature hits Abysia harder than most nations.
At least one unit is bugged where precision was incorrectly switched with encumbrance. {ouch}
Most if not all troops have movement of one, which is noticeable for the larger maps.

I haven't played all the nations to actually call them weak, but those are the disadvantages I noticed.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Are you saying Abysian troops were poor before? How's that?

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Try an Earth-9 bless and beeline to rejuvinate (or the age-stopping boots), and then tell me how weak Abysia is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif