High Bless rush strategy :(

[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.

[SelfishGene]

Helhirdings can be recruited out of any fort? That's probably your problem right there. I can't check till i'm out of work.

Mictlan might be overpowered if they could recruit Eagle Warriors out of any fort as well. Eagles are some of the best sacred troops in the game. Indeed, because they can fly and have two attacks, if they were not capital only, they might well be the best.

[solo]

Yes, any fort.

[Daynarr]

SelfishGene said:
Helhirdings can be recruited out of any fort? That's probably your problem right there. I can't check till i'm out of work.

It's already reported as fixed for the next patch.

* Helhirding only recruitable from site (and double display removed)