Quote:
Peter Ebbesen said:
We really do need somebody to do a thorough analysis of Ashen Empire in Dominions 3. So many of changes made to balance other nations have a weird impact on the undead hordes.
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I haven't done a thorough analysis but I've played them SP several times and I'm about to start my first MP game with AE Ermor so I'm somewhat familiar.
Overall I'd say AE Ermor got savaged with the nerf stick. They were weakened in a lot of way and subtly boosted in a few ways but the overall net is downward I believe.
Changes I've noted.
1: Capital province gives 15 death gems now instead of 10. Ermor can get a faster start and more summons.
2. Capital provine starts with 30k pop so it takes a long time to die down. Ermor gets a little more gold in the early game phase.
3. Ermor still gets the points benefit of bad scales, but can't get the point benefit of dormant/imprisoned pretenders. So Ermor doesn't get a higher point pretender than everyone else like they used to. They just get them earlier which doesn't make a lot of difference since early on they are just summoning and so forth.
4. Slower research hurts Ermor since a lot of Ermorian strategies required conjuration or construction or globals. Historically Ermor has never been as good at research as the other nations anyway and this exacerbates the problem.
5. Boosts to banishment REALLY hurt undead horde strategies. Even humble indie priests will blow big holes in an horde of longdead unless they are protected by the magics of unholy priests. This means Ermor needs to spend more gems to make sure all their armies are well covered by priests or else anyone with a few priests will evaporate their hordes.
6. Boosts to castle/temple costs really limit Ermorian access to the good undead. Ermor has always had a cash problem and now that a temple+castle combo is going to cost about 1200 minimum Ermor can't afford them. Alchemizing won't cut it at those cost levels. On the flipside, Ermoria n players are going to be drawn to enemy castles like moths to light because if they can take it a free castle is a big bonus to Ermor.
7. I can't quantify this yet, but it seems like the distribution of magic sites have changed. The sites that give more than one gem of a type seem to be rarer. My SP Ermorian games have seen me scrambling for death gems in a way I never was in Dom2. In the late game phases, it seems an AE Ermor player in Dom3 has less death gems available than he would have had in Dom2. Not 100% sure on this one yet, it could have just been crappy luck in the games I played.