High Bless rush strategy :(

[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).

[WraithLord]

I really like the idea of holy cost, even better then switching bless on when pretender arrives.

[Nerfix]

I'd dislike having bless only when the pretender arrives as it would essentially make Awakening functions useless. But variable Holy costs would be good.

Or then tweaking the uber units themselves like Vans. They'd own even if blesses were toned down because Glamour is amazingly powerful.

[JaydedOne]

I like variable Holy costs as well.

From my standpoint, I'm still experimenting before deciding what is and isn't useless. I do know that heavy bless strategies have been decidedly effective, much moreso than my rainbow mage or beautiful scales strategy. I haven't tried an Awake SC/rainbow Pretender strategy (and wouldn't go with an Awake blessing strategy) but my sense is that they just wouldn't be as effective as leaving the Pretender out of it for the 24 or so turns and getting the 150 points.

After all, breaking down the math, a rainbow mage will only get about 12 searches, probably more like 10 depending on map layout, before the dormant gods awake. Even on a high settings map, that's not going to mean a huge gem income difference. A SC pretender might grab a few provinces at indy setting 5, but I'm again not sure that they're worth passing up on the scales or having an army of super-blesses that will be more effective than he will come the mid-game.

I don't know. My concern is that I'd probably take bless strats about 90% of the time from my current experience and I'd probably take Dormant/Imprisoned about 95% of the time. To me, those ratios are too high.

[SelfishGene]

I'm not uber enough to tell whether Hellheim is "overpowered"; they're extreme easy to use, it's true.

However, as capital only, the number of sacred troops you can produce as part of your army starts to get smaller and smaller in proportion to the number of troops in your empire as the game progresses - and they have to come from your capital to the front lines.

Also, many bless nations have some fairly junky magic skills. Hellheim has a hard time researching now that sages have all but disappeared.

This doesn't mean, though, you can't rush a human player and have completley conquered him in less than 10 turns, which rather sucks for the receiving player. EA nations are generally much more powerful than their LA counterparts and other nations can use things like Body Etherial ect to improve their own Sacred troops, as well as have (probably) a much more robust research base.

But i'd agree with the observation that Hellheim is one of the - if not the - most powerful EA nation w/re to it's national troops.

[PhilD]

SelfishGene said:
I'm not uber enough to tell whether Hellheim is "overpowered"; they're extreme easy to use, it's true.

However, as capital only, the number of sacred troops you can produce as part of your army starts to get smaller and smaller in proportion to the number of troops in your empire as the game progresses - and they have to come from your capital to the front lines.

Helheim has two sacred troops: the Helhirding, which is a stealthy cavalry, and the Walkyrie, which is flying, and slithgly cheaper. Only the Walkyrie is capital-only, and the flying (they also have the Dis as a flying, mage, priest commander) means they can get to the front line when you need a fast-moving raiding troop. Each is only 12 Resource, so Sloth 3 doesn't hurt too much.

This, combined, is why I think Helheim is so good for a bless - they have two great sacred units, and one of them can be recruited en masse.

[Graeme Dice]

Twan said:
So... Why not giving a different holy cost to some units ?

I'd personally rather see the gold cost of units be made appropriate to the power of those units. Wind riders are one of the better examples. You pay 125 gold for a unit that's clearly inferior to a valkyrie, which only costs 60 gold. A non-sacred black knight costs 60 gold, while a sacred Van, with better attack, defense, glamour, and stealth + 30 only costs 70 gold. A living pillar has minor resistances to the elements, yet costs almost the same as a Van, but with 56 resources instead of the Van's 12, and will be killed easily by any of the many nations that have access to S2 mages.

[Manuk]

well. in dom2vans were overpowered too. In a MP With just a fire 9 blessing I could stand like 10 turns of war against the two biggest nations and just gave up tired of just holding.
In Dom3 you will need like twice as much army to take out a helfheim force commanded by the AI and they sometimes don´t even bring priests to bless their units. That means that they are still overpowered. Just nerf them or give them at least a weakness.
Making them more expensive would do tough.

[Nerfix]

Glamour is an ability that's IMO worth +20-30 gold to cost. Super sneaking AND great combat bonuses. On EA Van/Hel also have pretty decent equipment too.