Best MA sacred unit

[Shovah32]

Sorry for not just using edit but i feel this deserves a new post: I just tested 45 of xietors heart companions(F9N4 blessed) against 15 F9W9 Vans(they have worse scales but lower resource cost so i based it purely on gold cost) and the result?
45 Heart companions dead alongside 1 dead van, a complete massacre. The battle was in a province with no scales(no dominion had spread), all units were blessed, it was farmland, arco had the defenders advantage, no units had afflictions.

Sure you could make various arguements such as astrologers would have paralyzed the vans and elephants would trample them but then there are easy counter arguements such as vanadrotts would thunderstrike heart companions, dwarven smiths would destroy their armour and skinshifters and einheres would have killed elephants(high damage attack=dead elephants) ect.

In a pure test of vans vrs heart companions the vans did win, and by a rather large margin.

edit: no vans had afflictions after the fight. The vans also have glamour, stealth and higher movement and so could have avoided the heart companions rather easily.

[Xietor]

Well, you have vans with 2 9 blesses. heh. try van with 1 9 1 4. My whole point was you can get a solid, not spectacular, troop without giving up scales, and for a relatively cheap 25 gold. But you ran the fight, and my hat is off to you for that.

Still, i am surprised the heart companions did so poorly.
Fire bless is better than e9 bless, they need the added attack bonus more, plus can hit ethereal units. They never rout anyway, sick morale, then blessed and divine spell, and exp star or 2. Since the priestess heals their afflictions, i am not too worried about them getting hearts.

What god did you use for those double 9 blesses, and what were your scales?

If you do not mind, i would be curious to see the vans fight the koas of man. I am sure with the double 9 bless they would trash them.

[Shovah32]

I used an order3, sloth2, cold1(they like it), misfortune2, drain2 father of winters with dom6(he makes an amazing SC by the way) for the vanheim F9W9 bless. Not good scales but not really bad either.

With an E9 bless(i tested for fun) the heart companions did exactly the same with them wiped out and 1 dead van.

As i said i took 2 level 9 blesses rather than 1 level 9 and 1 level 4 to account for the extra resource cost of the heart companions(vans costed 240, companions costed 1350) although i'll try a 9/4 bless with around 20 vans some other time.

As for KoA vrs F9W9 vans, 15 of each in a straight fight(the KoA's got the charge) the vans won without a single casualty and no afflictions. I did a 1:1 fight because, although man wasnt paying for a bless, its knights are 5 more gold(80) and 45 more resources(61, almost 4 times the vans cost). The vans got produced fasters than the KoA's simply because gold is much more avaliable, in general, than resources, particularly for capitol only troops like KoA's.

[Micah]

Actually, I just tested it, 15 E9/W9 Vans killed 45 N9/F9 Heart Companions, taking 6 losses, I replicated the test several times, Van losses ranged from 4-6, Arco lost all 45 every single time. Prophet commander on both sides, in Arco dominion. Troops set to hold and attack, prophets to divine bless, sermon of courage, stay behind troops, center of the field.

This gives Arco a stronger bless than is suggested, and also gives them every other conceivable advantage...they actually get to find and fight the vans instead of moving around ineffectually protecting one province at a time while their empire is raided to death, the ridiculous resource differential cost is ignored, as is the triple Holy cost of producing that many Heart Companions, and the benefits of having an Earth bless with sacred mages on Vanheim's side is also not accounted for. Actually fighting a straight up battle is the Van's WORST point, and they STILL win.

Xietor, it seems your understanding of the competitive MP environment is not very developed at this point, and I was there myself about 6 months ago, getting killed in a few games, and doing well in others where I've taken advice has really led me to trust the opinions of the people on this board that have had extensive MP experience. Dom is a very complex game, and while something may look great on paper the people that have actually played a lot of MP are the ones that will be able to tell you if that translates to actual gameplay or not. I guess it might be hard to tell who is actually experienced and who is not, but in general most of the people that are posting here using a definitive tone are fairly accurate in their statements. (Like my earlier post about Arco being a bad bless nation) Your tendency to argue for your favored strategies despite not having nearly the amount of experience as some of the other posters is slightly frustrating, since you can always come up with SOME situation where unit X is better than unit Y. If you're not sure WHY someone is saying what they are then feel free to ask, but arguing based on hypothetical situations doesn't accomplish much.

[MaxWilson]

I ran a quick test, 15 F9W4 Vans vs. 45 F9N4 Heart Companions. Lost exactly 80% of the Vans and 80% of the Heart Companions. The Vans wound up with the province but that was just coincidence since they both routed the same turn. To me it looked like roughly parity, at least for those blesses.

On the other hand, it took 3 times as long to amass the Heart Companions as the Vans, and the Vans have tremendous strategic advantages. And the Vans could have afforded a W6 or W8 bless without giving up much of anything.

-Max

[Xietor]

I do not consider myself an experienced mp player. Though i have played many mp games, they are not against people that are hardcore DOM II and III players, giving me a huge advantage(regardless of strategy). I would be glad to play a game with 1 or 2 players and 12 Ai on difficult. A game with
10 or so players has little appeal to me.

I like to play for 3-4 straight hours and get in many many turns in one setting. The more people, the harder that is to coordinate. I also see no point to diplomacy. If you are relying on your skills, then you should not need to team up
to eliminate another player. How can you accurately assess your skills if you are being aided or double teamed?

I am not actually arguing that the heart companion is better, but that with his low gold cost, he can be quite effective with a slight bless, and allowing acrosphale to keep good scales.

Additionally, I think(do not know) that the heart companion would withstand missile fire much better than the vans due to better protection. With e9 bless that is not true, but many on here claim the f9 w9 bless is the best for vans, and the added defense would not help against missiles.

[MaxWilson]

Since we're talking hypotheticals here, yeah, the Vans will take slightly more damage per combat round from missiles (although shields help a lot), for fewer rounds (39 AP vs 7). I don't know in whose favor that works out, but the blazing speed of W9 Vans *does* help against missiles.

Also, consider that the low resource cost of Vans plus Vanir cold tolerance allows Vanheim to take worse scales and not really feel the pinch, while Arcoscephale will have to blow points on Production to make effective use of Heart Companions.

Edit: I didn't realize until just now that Heart Companions are capitol-only. That makes the gold cost of producing them nearly irrelevant; resources and Holy cost will almost certainly be your bottleneck. Vans are clearly a superior sacred IMO.

-Max

[Xietor]

The stealth factor would be deadly mp, but even when i play Pangaea mp, i never use it. Unfortunately, none of my friends i play with can beat me playing a very vanilla game. if i started taking their provinces with stealth armies they likely
would quit playing me(:

None of my friends are hardcore dom III players and ask me basic questions every time we play.

[Shovah32]

As you said Xietor, f9 lets your heart companions take on ethereal units ect fairly successfully but you missed one big point: thats not their job! Arco's mages, summons(including SCs) and sometimes elephants are the guys who are meant to do the damage, why waste points on an offensive bless when you could get a defensive one which could buy you a few more turns in combat and allow your heavy hitters to do their damage?

As a final test I tried 45 of my reccomended N9(even cheaper than the other tested bless) heart companions against 15 double blessed vans and the results? All companions dead but arco prophet still alive and 2.5(2 first time, 3 second time) dead vans. With an even cheaper bless than before and 3 times the previous dead vans i hereby declare my n9 bless a success(although both battles could have been flukes).

[Sombre]

Anyone feel like running a test based off the Conceptual Balance Mod values?

I know the gap would be considerably less.