Expanded Nations Packs released!

[Renojustin]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Keep in mind that empire isn't a finished nation yet, and due to the whole "every mage that's worthwhile costs gems" mechanic it may have some fine tuning to do yet. But before the most recent version, empire has felt on the weak side if anything.

So the latest version of empire has fairly cheap level 2 mages in all paths save blood now. This is pretty much the big thing this nation has going for it, cheap diversity. The recruitable mages are absolutely useless except for research and summoning your real mages. So while you do get a lot of diversity, you are spending gems to have your mages that you can't spend elsewhere. So while it is cheap to get diversity, and a lot cheaper than many other nations get as far as access to non-national paths goes, this nation does have to keep investing because all of its mages are diversity mages. It is the main strength of the nation though.

On the other hand its army is hardly awesome. It's pretty mediocre, in fact. Pretty much anything you can recruit is more or less the bog standard of average, with only a few standout units. Marksmen due to being the cheapest and most massable arbalest-wielding guys ever are the biggest of these. Nothing else is really better than usable. Swordsmen are good arrow catchers, and their cavalry is decent. Tribute to order summons quite nice cavalry units, but they're gold inefficient compared to the recruitable knights, with the exception of the inner circle reiksguard. And flagellants are those same guys marignon gets, and that you get from random events, with the exception of a few more hp. Which, while they do work, are still not that amazing. The big benefit of them is that they're very, very cheap. Even greatswords aren't amazing, you really need the retinues to make them justifiable because they recruit/move so slow.

The mage system for Altdorf will be tough to get used to, and I can see neonates having issues with it. The gem usage seems to be right on, but at such low levels of research, they still seem very powerful. The ? mages themselves (no lab required) all carry useful battle magic lines, and at 60gp/3 research, all it takes to turn them from useful to very efficient is a +1 magic scale. I see most of the difficulty of the use of Altdorf in the proper use of their mages. Do you research, site search, or fight? The fact that they can do all these without much opportunity loss I think makes them very handy.

Their army is both diverse and extremely powerful. From excellent crossbows to the superb Swordsmen: 12gp 2-move heavy infantry (and they are in most respects HI), cheap heavy lance/full plate cavalry and big-hp Flagellants that get to do their devastating attacks significantly more often than even a normal Flagellant because they can survive... there's not a bad troop in the bunch, and more, they're SO, SO CHEAP. Given that it will take some production scales to take advantage of most of it, but even their 8g/8r dual-wielding, ambidextrous infantry is usable and effective. Production isn't even necessary between that, Generals (the Greatswords are free, mind you), and (oh my god 13/7) Marksmen. I cannot think of any non-mod nation that could beat them in a straight army fight. Add in Reiksguard Cavalry and it's just not fair; those basically do not die. Knights of the Rose were charging them to no avail; they are a wicked tool.

It's exactly as if someone thought, I want to min/max this army for gp expenditure and upkeep, while keeping everything about the specific unit types that makes them great... oh and add some armor, too. Not only do they get the job done in grand Empire fashion, they do it cheaper than almost anyone. I just figured that the mage system was in place in order to hobble them, but by mid-game the astounding diversity has got to help them more than anything. I can see them having more difficulty in the endgame where more ritual magic is being cast... but by then they've survived and thrived, and they can throw everything in the book at you, if not as much of it as a like-sized opponent can bring to bear.