High Bless rush strategy :(

[Arameyan]

Hi all,

I wonder how to beat high bless strategy in MP. It seems that blessed elites like F9W9 Vans and N9 Niefel Jarls are very powerful in small to medium maps. Are they balanced?

Even when knowing it at the beginning of the game, I appear to me that its hard to duel theses strats. Maybe a Super Early-game SC pretender?

I know all strategies have weaknesses. With N9 jarls you can take D9 (another bless strat...) to cripple them (or spam stellar cascade), but is it really a weakness?

In the long run other strats (summons, battlefield magic, etc) can match the Bless one. My point is just that High Bless strat is really esay to use and effective at the firsts turns of the game.

Last point: Dominions is the best game in the world (besides Chess and Poker) and I'm a huge fan.

[DominionsFan]

Good question. High bless strat is excellent in 2-4 player blitzes for sure, and to be honest it is a must have also, since everyone using some high bless strat in blitz games.
It is impossible to survive a high bless rush with a non high bless design in the first part of the blitz.


In long term games [hosted on big maps], the high bless strategy is not that important imo. It can help a lot, but you might want to spend your design points elsewhere in those long games.

[Shovah32]

Bless strats are very strong and popular, especially on small maps. F9W9 is a common bless used with units like vans, it makes them extremely hard to hit and have great damage potential. Bless strats are very powerful and easy to use but each has a weakness, alot of sacreds cant take damage leaving them open to AoE spells like falling fires/frost, the tougher sacreds are either so poor at damage that they can just be swamped or so expensive that a few decent mages/crossbow groups can slaughter them (especially astral mages) even with low research.

In the long run, if your bless dosnt let you take out some-one else asap you can get left behind because your poor scales will leave you behind in gold, allowing the enemy to out mage and therefor out-everything you by mid-late game.

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFan said:
Good question. High bless strat is excellent in 2-4 player blitzes for sure, and to be honest it is a must have also, since everyone using some high bless strat in blitz games.
It is impossible to survive a high bless rush with a non high bless design in the first part of the blitz.

Impossible? As a simple example, C'Tis in every age wouldn't have a hard time (Well, possibly where they are weakest in the middle age), since they don't take any significant losses while expanding, and only need to research to enchantment 3 to be able to deal with the sacred troops of any nation. Pythium certainly isn't going to use a level 9 bless effect, nor would Caelum, Machaka, R'Lyeh, Arcoscephale, or Man.

[Truper]

Skelly spam is not going to save C'tis. There are going to be too many sacred troops. Bless-rush strats in Dom3 work much better than they did in Dom2, for 3 reasons.

1. The amount of gold available means bless-worthy but expensive troops can be available in quantity.

2. Because research costs have increased significantly, magical counters become available much later than they used to.

3. Extra design points are available from imprisoned pretenders. This means that additional blesses or better scales can be added to a Dom2 bless strat.

Right now, I find uber-bless strats by certain nations to be annoyingly powerful. I need to play some more long-term games before I can say more than that - although I want to

[Graeme Dice]

Truper said:
Skelly spam is not going to save C'tis. There are going to be too many sacred troops.

I just ran a test game against myself between C'Tis and Helheim on a 20 province random map, and I can see what you're saying. Even though it only takes 8 turns to research enchantment 3 with a magic 3 scale, that doesn't make up enough difference to keep F9W9 helhirdings from overruning your lines.

[Nerfix]

Well EA Vanheim/Helheim are sickeningly powerful anyway. Glamour on nearly all units FTW!

On bless strats, they can be very, very powerful for some nations like Niefelheim, the Vanic nations, Mictlan (those OzeLOLs are in perfect synergy with the classic W9/F9 bless) and Marignon. Late Atlantis also seems to get nice bonii from taking a smitter of Air bless and then taking some other bless to lvl 9. Pity Arssartuts are capital only. And there are propably a lot more examples than I can even count.

Other nations don't benefit from it nowhere as much, MA Ulm being the prime example with no bless troops at all.

[DominionsFan]

Graeme Dice said:

Impossible? As a simple example, C'Tis in every age wouldn't have a hard time (Well, possibly where they are weakest in the middle age), since they don't take any significant losses while expanding, and only need to research to enchantment 3 to be able to deal with the sacred troops of any nation. Pythium certainly isn't going to use a level 9 bless effect, nor would Caelum, Machaka, R'Lyeh, Arcoscephale, or Man.

Heh try to play a blitz on a small map against uber bless Helheim, Niefelheim, Mitgard etc. with a nation without a proper bless strategy. In most of the cases you won't even reach research lvl3.

[Arameyan]

Thanks all for your really interesting answers!

I agree with Quietly and DominionsFan.

I think Big Bless Strategy can be beaten, but not really because they have flaws. It seems you have to try to be Stronger. Most Wendigo's ways aren't specific for High bless and are effective vs non-blessed nations also. I agree F9W9 is bad for scales, but with an imprisoned pretender F9 for vans of N9 for jarls dont force you to have really bad scales.

I played a 4 players Dom2 MP game with F9 Vans. When I fought against the last player (Jotun without bless) he where by far stronger than me. I just harassed him with groups of sailing-stealty-blessed Vans, raising taxes to 200 % and pillaging. After 10-15 turns he manage to catch one of my raiding party. The 15 vans involved in the fight, outnumbered, killed all jotuns easily. We then realized that my sneaking groups were stronger than his army. Disgusted, he left the game.

Small question: if you charm a blessed troop, will it keep its Bless bonus for the fight? Not useful early-mid game, but probably really fun late game

Just a crazy idea: maybe priests able to dispel Bless?

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFan said:
Heh try to play a blitz on a small map against uber bless Helheim, Niefelheim, Mitgard etc. with a nation without a proper bless strategy. In most of the cases you won't even reach research lvl3.

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd exaggeration. There is no way that the forces those nations could gather on a 10 province per player map would be able to capture the C'tissian castle by turn 8. This is especially true with the imprisoned pretender necessary for a dual bless strategy.