[Micah]

OTOH keep in mind that Van and Hel have the worst researchers in the game. 3 RP for 160 gold, temple and lab both required...that's significantly worse than using shaman researchers. They need troops that are kind of unfairly good, because their ability to get to late-game magic is kind of unfairly bad. It's also hard to take magic-3 with a double bless.

MA Van having build-anywhere sacreds is kind of over the top with their raiding potential though, I'll certainly agree to that.

Vans and helhirds may be overpowered, and they're certainly going to put the hurt on people early on...small maps are a problem, but their nations' magic potential is fairly low...I think it might make for a more interesting nation if the sacreds got bumped down a bit but some better research options were available...perhaps the addition of philosopher-like serf mages, forbidden to cast spells (no paths) that are employed to help research, maybe 5 RP for 100 gold. (philosophers are 50 for 5 and benefit from sloth scales IIRC, so hopefully that's not stepping on Arco's toes too much, since they're twice the cost.)

Adding something like that in exchange for some of the sacreds' power would open up more magical options later in the game for the glam nations and give them a tradeoff, not just a straight nerf. It would also allow them to make more decisions about where to focus instead of having to go for the bless strat every time. I think it's the units that are the problem, not the nations as a whole.