High Bless rush strategy :(

[WraithLord]

I find this thread's discussion disturbing.
Bless strat. was already very powerful in dom-II and I would have hoped that in dom-III it would be toned down, not up.

Having ubber bless become a no-brainer is not fun.
But, I'm still not convinced it is indeed so.
For starters, its a good thing that few nations have a lot to gain from bless strat. Secondly, there are counters to ubber bless, though I digress that most are available through research which is now harder.

I think that adding some obvious counters and limitations to bless might bring more diversity to the game. I like the idea of "dispel" bless by priests and/or mages. Also it would be nice to have a single target spell that causes damage or fatigue or something negative to a blessed unit, and also larger scale versions of this spell.

EDIT,

I also like the idea of having the bless effect tied to Pretenders arrival, so each season closer to its coming will add this much to the bless effect, gaining full effect when the god arrives.

[okiN]

One simple way of severely limiting the feasibility of strategies relying solely on bless would be to make Divine Blessing a H4 spell.

That might be a bit too extreme, though...

[DominionsFan]

WraithLord said:
I like the idea of "dispel" bless by priests and/or mages.

Well than what would be the point to take a bless strategy at all? Everyone would script their priests and/or mages to dispell it anyways. That would just make the blessings almost useless. Or..yet another example: Player A is scripting his priest to dispell the blessing in all turns, Player B is scripting his priest to cast blessing in all turns.
Which player would win the bless/dispell battle? You would be forced to cast these things only with those priests. Definitely not good.


I don't see any problem with the blessings. On small map they are indeed very useful, however just blessings won't decide the game, only if an "uber bless nation" like helheim or vanheim is rushing the enemy early in the game. If the game is on 'till turn 20-25, the blessings won't be that important. They are very useful of course.
Anyways blessing is what making the sacred troops better than the normal troops, and it is totally ok. Don't forget that you use up lot of design points to take dual+ blessing. Often you have to use an imprisoned pretender and/or misfortune/drain etc.

[WraithLord]

Your point makes sense. So long is blessing don't become a no brainner for large maps as well.

[dirtywick]

If they decided to have dispelling of blesses, MR would even it out so the dispel doesn't work every time.

[Boron]

WraithLord said:
Your point makes sense. So long is blessing don't become a no brainner for large maps as well.

Only time will tell.

Drain 2 gives you only -1 rp.
Misfortune 3 is rather harmless too, usually it doesn't hurt you enough to make you lose the game. 1 out of 10-20 of your games you might die because of the misfortune 3 events.

Most sacreds are only useful for the earlygame, but there are clear exeptions, those nations with very useful sacreds, preferably not capitol only.

Mictlan, Vanheim and Helheim fall in this category. To a lesser extent Tien Chi S&A and some of the Ape Nations too.

If they manage to kill 1-2 players in the first 25 turns of a game their additional castles and extra terrain let them recruit enough mages to overcome their research disadvantage from drain 2. Some bless nations can also take magic 1.

And Mictlan blesshordes can get out of control, because they can spend their blood on jaguar fiends which are excellent if you have a high micromanagement pain tolerance (which i obviously lack though ).

Mictlan might very well manage to use their bless troops well till the lategame, Vanheim and Helheim too because they are sacred and thus still perfect raiders.

And finally there is Niefelheim. In earlygame the niefel giants are very useful, in midgame you can then also use niefel Jarls with equipment.

In earlygame good blesstroops dominate, but in midgame they can still dominate if you support them with battlemagic or other tricks and in lategame they can still be useful if you buff them with battlefield wide enchantments or for raiding.

[alexti]

Stealthy blessed raiders is a major advantage in longer games. The one who has more efficient raiders often win. I don't mean that it's a no-brainer win, but with 2 strong players facing each other, better raiders is a huge advantage.

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
Drain 2 gives you only -1 rp.
Misfortune 3 is rather harmless too, usually it doesn't hurt you enough to make you lose the game. 1 out of 10-20 of your games you might die because of the misfortune 3 events.

Heh. I'd argue that misfortune 3 isn't harmless - actually I haven't done any games yet with less than luck-1, but people have been posting about having almost won a game, only to have knights/barbarians/etc arrive in sufficient force to cost them the game. Luck/misfortune is much more on a par with how it is with CB mods, perhaps even more so.

Most sacreds are only useful for the earlygame, but there are clear exeptions, those nations with very useful sacreds, preferably not capitol only.

This has always been the case, but the increased gold has made it possible to get a _lot_ of those blessed troops. All nations starting with a decent-to-good fort in their capitol also means that even resource intensive, capitol only, sacreds, can be produced in reasonable number even with sloth doesn't help either. (I've been able to recruit 5-6 sacreds requiring 30+ resources while going with sloth 2-3 - I'm typically gold/dominion limitted rather than resources.) It's nice that all nations seem to start with a decent fort in their capitol, since forts can't be chosen at dominion creation, but....

In earlygame good blesstroops dominate, but in midgame they can still dominate if you support them with battlemagic or other tricks and in lategame they can still be useful if you buff them with battlefield wide enchantments or for raiding.

And certain blessings will _always_ dominate as things stand, regardless of early/late game. F9 or D9? Equip sacred thug commanders with multiple attack weapons. W9, N9? Faster thugs, thugs that heal and take fewer afflictions?

Dom2 took a while for the unbalances to really show, but Dom3 both has more experienced / creative players from day one, and also seems to have greater imbalances in some ways (blessings, scales, certain nations not getting heroes (and most heroes once again being nearly worthless), early mercs, etc. Wish I wasn't working so much now, or I'd try to do at least a Heroic or CB pretender mod myself, since the game desperately needs them. (Oh, and fixed versions of the maps that came with the game, sheesh!)

[B0rsuk]

WraithLord said:
I think that adding some obvious counters and limitations to bless might bring more diversity to the game. I like the idea of "dispel" bless by priests and/or mages. Also it would be nice to have a single target spell that causes damage or fatigue or something negative to a blessed unit, and also larger scale versions of this spell.

I don't like the idea of explicit counters. Remember what happened to Celestial Masters ? It's not like their astral magic cripples the game balance, but they suffer a lot from magic duel.
If you add explicit counters/spells against blessed/holy units, you'll see a disturbing trend: people will either use bless9, or no bless at all. Because mildly strong bless will just invite hard counters.
You could refine these explicit counters by making them proportionally strong depending on bless effect strenght, but I still don't like the idea. I'd prefer counters come naturally, or prerably - bless is switched on when pretender arrives, but I already said I like it.

About bless dispel: it would be a 'who-has-more-priests' fight. It would look very silly.

[Twan]

About adjusting the game (IF heavy blesses are proven unbalanced even in long games on big maps -IMO a good awaken SC taking provinces since turn 2, a rainbow mage able to complete the nation ability to find/use all gems, an imprisoned pretender with very good scales, may all qualify for an equal long term utility-) another idea : in most cases heavy blesses are only problematic with uber units. Nobody had a problem with a bless strat using subpar cheap units like sacred serpents of C'tis or flagellants, nor with a capital only, slow and ressource heavy unit like heart companions.

So... Why not giving a different holy cost to some units ? If a van is proven 3 times more useful than most sacred units, just give him a holy cost of 3. Then rushes with the best sacred would become impossible (as even with dominion 10 you can recruit only 3 sacred / turn before making a second castle or 10 temples), but an heavy blesses strat stay possible, to give some interessant capacities to weak/ressource heavy sacred (and eventually try a rush strat with them... with good chances of failure) or for mid/long term (if you can spend 3x more time making an army of uber sacred, or if you have access to sacred summons not restricted by dominion).