Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[quantum_mechani]

MaxWilson said:
QM,

I'll note up front that I waited until Jim lifted the "experience" restriction until I posted. There's a lot I don't know about the game. Nevertheless:

I see Ulm being quite strong early on because they have great troops, but as the game wears on that matters less and less. I'm less impressed than you are by Ulm's weak mages. Forge bonus is nice, but if you're just using that bonus to forge equipment to bring you up to the same level everybody else has naked I don't see that as much of an advantage. Ulm kind of peters out in my eyes as its troops become less relevant.

C'tis has a strong expansion story in the early game largely because of the Elite Warriors and the charioteers. I do have trouble with them if I run into cold scales, and maybe I should have rated them lower on the "ease of use" because of that. But the troops are very good, skelly spam is easy to research, and Sauromancers are cheap.

Perhaps I'm overestimating Marverni--it's been a while since I played them--but I quite liked their Ambibate Nobles and all the javelin-carrying troops. I thought they were pretty solid, especially after you cast Strength of Giants.

Basically, "early game" to me means "before mages are really relevant." So my early game ratings are mostly about troops.

-Max

The problem is, your ratings seem to be largely based on the strength of Ea Ulm/Marverni/C'tis regular troops, when that tends to not be all that relevant when in an EA early game fight. You can have troops far better for the price as similar indies (ulm archers and c'tis elite warriors come to mind), but they can still be shredded by a few properly blessed helhirdlings or niefel giants. If you remove mages from the equation, these nations have almost no chance in such a situation.

I also strongly disagree about Ulm's forge bonus wearing down with time. The late game revolves around thugs and SCs for the most part, and while there is little worthwhile to forge early, you are pouring maybe even the majority of your gems into it by the late game.