Are heavy bless strategies the best ones ?

[Graeme Dice]

Baalz said:
Your implication is that you either don't know what you're doing or you're not playing to win if you do something different than the things you list as being optimal (dual bless, death scales, etc),

If you play optimally, and your opponent doesn't, then you will win, all other things being equal. The reason I refer to dual-blesses is because they are something that makes national troops completely obsolete from the first turn of the game. People complained that troops became obsolete too quickly in Dom2, yet Helhirdings make every other purchasable unit obsolete on the first turn. If your opponent comes at you with one of the effective types of dual-blessed sacreds, and you don't have at least a three to one numerical advantage in gold spent on your army, then you are almost certainly going to lose the battle.

and that the game is almost completely determined in the first 20 turns so the rest is just going through the motions.

Have you ever seen any games of Dom3 where the eventual winner was not one of the top nations at turn 20? Thee eventual winner of _any_ 4X game is decided in the early turns of the game.

Perhaps that is the case if you're playing one on one competitively with the primary purpose to win, but that doesn't sound to me like you're playing a very fun game.

It's not anywhere near as fun as Dom2. The neutering of magic, and presence of a morale system that's just as broken as Dom2's provides little reason to play the game.