[HoneyBadger]

All I'm trying to say-and I didn't think it was very difficult to understand-is that you can't call a nation unbalanced purely on what's happening in an MP game. You have to look at the SP game, because it's the only way you're going to get anything approaching a pure result.

If you go by what a human player might do and might exploit, you're never going to get an accurate result, because every human player is going to be different.

Saying Hel and Van are unbalanced *just* because of what's happening in MP games, it's like calling chess unbalanced because Forrest Gump is playing chess against Bobby Fisher (or Bobby Fisher is playing ping-pong/table-tennis against Forrest Gump, for that matter). MP is a very good indicator of what *might* be unbalanced, but SP is where you can get hard facts, because you're only playing for or against yourself.

Now, I know and I admit that there are some things us clever humans can come up with that the computer never will, and those things can be exploited and make a seemingly weak nation a lot stronger, but why should intelligent, clever, unpredictible strategy be punished? that's why we're here!

What I'm trying to say is, if a nation is strong when the computer plays it, when you play it, when Forrest Gump and Bobby Fisher play it, when it's got a sprained ankle, a toothache, and a hangover, *then* it's a problem. A nation can be called unbalanced when it's *always* unbalanced. When it has an advantage in almost every situation, fair or unfair. Helheim and Vanheim do.

And it's not like I'm NOT saying that Hel and Van are unfairly favored-they are! I just think that removing things from a nation that a player might exploit, just so you can have more weak nations, is bad policy. Make the ones that are weak, stronger. Give them more exploitable qualities so they're more fun to play, rather than having us end up with yet another lame-duck nation.