[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by ywl:
A side note: the usefulness of javelin has made the Sun Warriors of Mictlin very interesting. They're holy and cheap (17/14). If you could get some good bless effects for them, they would be very usable.

In my experiance these are about the only useful unit you get for expansion with Mictlan. I have generally tried them with the Earth9 to give them enough protection to get good survivability and they work ok. However inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

[warning feature imbalence rant ahead]

Pythium is quite remarkable compared to other races and the only explanation I can give for its all round strength is that they wanted some nations to be much better than others. I almost wrote a very sarcastic post on the topic when I was in the midst of suffering with Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan but managed to restrain myself somewhat. I do still feel that, given the strenght of Pythium (and Arco), the answer for races like the Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan is simply to make them better and there is alot of scope for this. Its also a powerful argument for improving the accuracy of Abysian mages as Abysia is unlikely to rival Pythium and Arco in terms of strength so why should we have to put up with such a painful, mocking, feature playing Abysia? If some races get it all (or very close) then why can't the "cripple" features in the game get a serious boost? Was it a perverse form of humour to give the race with fire magic and fire resistent troops such a low precision that this seemingly excellent combination proves irritating in practice?

Another one is the low level blood summons that require a powerful blood mage to summon one ok devil a turn. For all the difference low level blood summons make to the game they may as well have left them out. Its an odd combination the extreme caution shown with some features to make sure they arn't to powerful and the richs that the uber races get. Caelum in Dom1 was truly ridiculous. Useability imbalences is the feature that has always annoyed me most about Dominion as it has huge impact on cutting down the avaiable play options and combinations. Fortunatly its not so bad in Dom2 - chiefly because the reduction in the power fo air magicmeans you don't have to have access to air for thunder ward to be a serious contender.

Please Illwinter try to make as many as possible options fun and useful.

Aaah well not to worry. Incompetent Abysian mages and useless low level blood summons have been with us since Dom1 and its unlikely that this will change.

Cheers

Keir

[ December 22, 2003, 21:38: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]