[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

This statement makes no sense. That players might choose the wrong tool for a job does not make the presence of more tools a weakness.

Forgive me. The addition of more tools does indeed make the nation stronger. However, you can't ignore the fact that enticing players toward a dead end isn't somehow counterproductive. I'm mostly worried that people put too much stock into the Hall of Fame and decide that nations need a boost because they aren't winning. The slippery slope of this is that you buff a nation so that new players find it easy to use and experienced players become unstoppable when using them.

Originally Posted by thejeff

Since most didn't bother using the sacreds in vanilla (or past CBM versions), diversity was never a problem before for Man?
You've only got nature and air above 1! The only other paths you even get at 1 are Earth and Water. Everything else has to come off your god. Not just casting and forging, but also any site searching.
You can't even make air boosters with your nationals. Neither of those paths let you expand into other paths with summons.
Your god can't carry the whole nation.

They're not even the best in their age at either of those paths. Which don't even synergize well.

Most forget that astral magic can strengthen most of your other paths with ease. One ring of wizardry gets you an earth booster and your second water booster. That same ring gets you to Air 4, which removes that requirement from your god as well. Also, you shouldn't discount the effectiveness of manual site searching, even with only one skill in a path. Blood is handled with scouts. All you need to cover is Fire, Death, and Astral.

Yeah, I'm with you on the synergy though. I mean, Thunder Strike and Soothing Song! Lame! Panic and False Horror combined with stealth units! Suck! They don't even have any solid MR spells like Stream of Life, Sleep, or Confusion. I mean its not like some of the best battlefield buff spells in alteration and enchantment happen to all be nature and air spells. Now if only they could summon a flying ethereal size 6 trampler to deal with lightning resistant troops for one gem a piece, or perhaps a flock of smaller units that all deal armor negating damage.

Lots of times people look at what they don't have more often then they look at what they do have. Sure, I'm all for Man getting a boost to diversity. Still, I'm not so quick to just start throwing astral on a bunch of mages. Particularly astral magic as that might come back to bite you when a real astral nation starts casting mage dual.


Forgive me QM, balancing a nation is harder then I'm sure most understand. Lots of people would just like to see Man suddenly 'fixed' not realizing that even a guru of dominions multi-player can't know the effects of many changes all taken at once.