[Twan]

Actually, I fear mp balance has been forgoten for this patch.

The new nations (at least the EA and MA ones) seem to have been balanced against Amos angels, or I don't know what, not (most) other vanilla nations. If they are not rushed in the very first turns (they may have a vulnerability before they finish their initial expansion, as their base units are expensive, but as soon they have gold and gems income to recruit their thugs or best mages each turn and forge some gear, they are clearly excellent).

Their theorical problem (gluttony) is laughable for thugs nations, as commanders never starve (like other giants, they just need troops for sieges, and expandable indies can do the job).

Then they have no problem I can see for start (4 or 5 sacreds with a good bless or 10 giants of any kind can take about anything), nor in mid-late game with 18 MR recruitable thugs with 50 FR and 3 misc slots, and sages to mitigate their research weakness, nor probably in endgame with rather diverse magic, access to some of the best paths, and the best national summons in the game.

There may be 4 or 5 nations arguably as good but I see none better.

In general I think thugs nations should have crappy magic to compensate, I wonder why several* of them got the most powerful paths for endgame, astral, death, blood and correct mages when some nations have no thugs nor good mages, nor good access to any of the powerful paths (Man as always).

Now of course, I've not tested them in MP yet, so I may be wrong on their strength, but I can't find where is their weakness (capitol dependance ? Man is also very capitol dependant).

* another example is Utgard, which is clearly in my "4 or 5 nations arguably as good" list -people just don't realize how much it's an excellent nation, because the 2 others are the free spawn nations dominating the late age- but at least jotun thugs have bad MR