[earcaraxe]

my opinion is that the statement "asdod is unplayable" is obviously false.

I wanted to clear that up if we are arguing about "unplayable" or "not strong enough".

Someone already expressed something like some peoples panchant for confusing "unplayable" with "unplayable by the previously working methods". In ashdods case (one of) the previously working method was stomping the opponent by nearly irresistable brute force (something like niefel jarls can do even now against some nations/builds).

I was the witness of what i consider the event that inspired ghouls original post about the topic. This is how i saw it: in the early game he was conquering indies with adons using a super-bless E10W6F6N4, then when the indies got eaten up, he got in war with shinuyama, using his expansion army of 6 or 7 adons. After the intial defeat, shinuyama assembled a huge army, with lots of O-bakemonos (among lots of other things, goblins, dai bakemonos) and managed to beat the adon platoon, suffering great casualties in the process. the O-bakemonos were key in that as they did hit hard enough.

i dont see any problem making an expectable strategy defeatable, in fact i much prefer it. (so i wont ban these kind of nations from my games)