Why no love for Caelum?

[Arryn]

Schmoe said:Either way, I'm definitely interested in hearing what other people have to say on balance issues - it is quite educational. However, I'm not going to pass judgement on it myself until I've had a chance to examine the issues and experience them first-hand.

An excellent idea. Especially since some of those expressing opinions on "balance" tend to be very biased and/or not have a sufficiently broad background in playing various nations. I, for example, should never venture an opinion on blood issues since I don't play with blood magics. Similarly, if a player hasn't actually tried something for themselves they should refrain from passing unfounded opinions, without any basis in reality, as fact.

And judgements about particular units should and must be taken in the greater context of the entire theme that the unit is found in. Comparing a Caelumite mage against some other mage isn't appropriate unless you also take into account the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of the Caelum theme(s) versus whatever it's being compared to. All units must operate within the context of the rest of their theme's supporting units. Discussing one-on-one duels is one thing, but it bears little value towards answering a question like "is Caelum effective (magically) versus R'yleh (and which is the "stronger" nation)?" Only if you can prove that nation A is clearly superior to nation B, in such a way that A defeats B in a statistically significant percentage of encounters can you then discuss that nation A is *perhaps* unbalanced. Note I say "perhaps", because it depends on whether the devs intend for a nation's balance to be for 'average' or for 'expert'players. 'Expert' players will see different results than 'average' (or newbie) players. Also, what might be "balanced" for SP is rarely so for MP, and vice versa. Ermor is an excellent example of a nation whose "power" varies dramatically depending on whether it's opposed by humans or by AIs.