Quote:
Gandalf Parker said:
I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.
But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.
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I think you should give notes, if you think some nations are over or undervalued in this thread, as the goal is to take into account as many players opinions possible before giving a final note.
Anyway I also think according to your post that you'd value too much some situationnal abilities or ignore their drawbacks.
Sneaking is a good example. With stealth armies you lose one turn or more before the moment you effectively take an ennemy province. It's not a bad skill, but a secondary one, if you use stealth with all yours armies you'll just be beaten by nations able to do normal moves and take your provinces (or re-take in one turn the provinces you reached in 2 or 3 with your stealth forces). It has nothing to do with blitzes, it's even more true for big games with good number of provinces, where economy matters. Having stealthy units may worth +0,5 point for midgame note, as having a sneaky raiding potential with nationals is good, but doesn't worth one / five by itself (except if you have really good high stealth thugs or sacreds, probably with glamour).
Flight is different, as it allows to strike every turn, and behind ennemy lines it's a real advantage. But the quality of flyers is often problematic to the point flyers nations often prefer to use them only as support for their non flying troops. I probably value caelian fly one point, but caelum also lose one for the global quality of troops (out of mammoths justifying a good early game note).
Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think (at least in my notes ; many nations having 4 or 5 in EG would desserve a 2 or 3 without bless). Some other nations may succeed with a bless but it hasn't to be valued as what they can do with an awake pretender or good scales is about the same (ie : I assume that LA Atlantis will have an awake pretender + a simple bless, or an inferior/non-awake pretender + a strong bless, or good scales instead of a bless allowing to recruit more ice armor troops, in the three cases the nation desserve about the same good early note).