DRAS - Tactical opinion needed!

[Burnsaber]

Firstly DRAS stands for "Difficult Research with Anti-rush Spells". The idea of the soon-to-be mod is to allow for the "difficult" and "very difficult" research settings to be actually used.

You see, hard research grants an very unfair advantage to those powerful nations that really don't need any early research versus the numereous human nations that can't counter rushes without some sorts of magical tricks.

The idea for doing this is to just a provide a nice selection of "anti-rush" spells into very early research leves (like 1 or 2 at max) by lowering the research requirements for excisting spells.

I'm not really that great of a player (more on that later),but it seems to me that there are 3 types of rushes. Note that this list is very generalized, just for the sake of keeping discussion simple.

1) Powerful Sacreds - These guys are not numereous, but provide a nearly indestructible foe in the early game due to high bless and special abilities. Examples: Niefel Giants, Hinnom Giants, Recruitable bless SC's (Jarls, Eagle Kings, Fomoria Kings etc...).

2 Mass Sacreds - Invidually not so though. But with low resource cost and a huge bless, these things will obliterate everything in their path. Examples: Jaqs, Eagle Warriors, Shadow Vestals

3 Special Troops - Big troops that are not necessarily sacred, but can provide a tough nut to crack without easy access to magical counters. Examples: Hydras, Elephants, Mammoths.

Now, it doens't take a rocket scientist to see that these threats need different counters. Tangle Vines really isn't an effective counter to Jaquar Warriors, but might be in some cases to Jarls, for example.

But, back to the point of me being a medicore player at best. I really don't have much idea what works against what, so I made this thread to get opinions on those who have actually faced and perhaps fended off rushes. This is the reason why this is in the main section, to get educated opinions from a wide sprectum of players, not just from the regulars in the mod threads.

The goals of the easier research spells:

A) Give all nations some counters to any of the rush-threaths listed above, preferrably many different ones in order to make counter-countering a but more difficult.

B) Somehow make sure that paths and levels on the anti-rush spells are diverse enough to allow for enough options, no matter what nation you are.

C) Somehow try to make sure that the rush nations cannot get much benefit from these spells, for obvious reasons. This is an obvious problem when trying to come with counter spells against threat 2, the massed sacreds.

D) Keep the changes as global as possible. I really don't see any reason to lower a single spell because a weak nation X (and just nation X) could use it to fend off a rush. If nations X,Y and Z could use it, that's a different thing.


Some ideas to get juices going

Earth: Armor of Achilles - Should work against powerful sacreds.

Nature: Tangle Vines - Duh.