Ashdod is worthless now

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

Those are Berserkers, and also fatigue while they are berserking.

I don't think Ashdod is "worthless". They aren't the worse nation in the roster, not by a long shot. However, the OP is right in one thing: that 2 extra encumbrance is hurting them, badly.

They are incredibly outnumbered in any fight. With fatigue, they have a tough time fighting almost any chaff. For a unit that is worth 100+ gold and 40-80 resources, they aren't that good.

Not only that, but even more important, in my opinion. With encumbrance 7, they are FORCED to have a high earth bless. There's no option, no other chance, no way to play them in a original way. 7 encumbrance per round means they'll autodeafeat themselves by fatigue, unless they have E9+ bless.

That, imho, is horrible. There should not be any "mandatory" bless for a nation.

Just my 0,02

Lets be clear on a few things:
(1) Fatigue neutral giant sacreds from turn 1 are too good. There's abundant evidence of this before CBM started fixing the problem. Ashdod was so ridiculously overpowered before CBM decided to reign it in that the changes had to make it 'hurt' relative to before. That just brought it down from 'so much better than other nations it wasn't funny' to 'reasonably balanced'.
(2) Building up 2 encumbrance every round is not the end of the world. Its better than most units, especially with the kind of armor Anakim pack.
(3) Berserk is an advantage - it means you don't run away.
(4) No one is forcing you to take a bless at all or use the sacreds troops
(5) You're going to take an E+N bless anyway if you're going to use the sacreds, they're giants. They were never played with other blesses before the encumbrance changes. Acting offended that the only logical bless is E+N is ridiculous. So yes, its assumed if you're going to invest in Ashdod's sacreds you have an E9-10 bless, probably E10. Because that's what everyone was playing them with.

And none of this changes the fact that he got clobbered by *MA Ulm* while trying to use a pure sacred army of size 5 giants. Anyone with half a brain would realize that size 2 guardians are going to clobber size 5 sacreds. Even vanilla MA Ulm would trash vanilla Ashdod. Its the single worst matchup in the game for them. Take one of the only MA sacreds that can get outnumbered 3:1 locally, realize that you're going to be outnumbered more than 3:1 overall from a gold standpoint (ie, Ulm can afford losses without losing tactical numerical superiority), and then add in a unit which specifically hoses sacreds. Only a fool would think they can win that combat.

It may well have been the only 1 on 1 early game matchup MA Ulm would expect to win in vanilla.