Broken Nations

[Nerfix]

Corwin said:

EA Van troops are not so good IMHO. They don't have van soldiers, and their only sacred troops is kindof weak and costly.

What are you talking about? EA Van sure as heck has Van troops. They get that purple clad infantry and the sacred Vanheres. Sure they aren't the mounted terror of later ages but can own stuff just as well.

[Corwin]

Nerfix said:

What are you talking about? EA Van sure as heck has Van troops. They get that purple clad infantry and the sacred Vanheres. Sure they aren't the mounted terror of later ages but can own stuff just as well.

You said it yourself - they don't have mounted sacred troops of late Van or Helheim, the kind of troops that make these nations so powerful. I didn't mean that EA Vanheim is weak, but as far as qualtity of sacred troops go, you have to agree that vanhere soldiers are not even close to mounted van/hel sacred troops. And their survivability is much lower due to none-blessed def 12.

[Cainehill]

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.

[Endoperez]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.

The two "clones of Vanheim" have VERY different national troops from both each other and from the MA Van we knew as base Vanheim in DomII. Whole nation of stealthy glamour units, instead of just one, sacred, mounted Vanir plays very differently than the old Vanheim.
Vanheim and Helheim aren't copies of each other, either. Helheim has cavalry, Valkyries and flying commanders for the latter but no Sailing, as well as different magic.


I also disagree about your notion of less variety. Vanheim with Midgård and Helheim themes is just three nations, with only one of them in play at once, against EA Helheim or Vanheim, MA Vanheim or LA Midgård.

EDIT: EA Vanheim DOES have cavaly, but it isn't sacred. Other poster's comment confused me.

[Morkilus]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.

This makes no sense to me. You complain about loss themes and the coexistence of two themes in the same sentence? EA Vanheim doesn't really have an analog, but I'd rather have a new vanheim PLUS the old Helheim theme than not. I'd rather have both Iron Faith and Black Forest rather than the current mishmash. It's not like there is a nation that didn't get made because of Vanheim; we are getting another EA nation in an upcoming patch, and who knows what else.

[Truper]

Cainehill said:

WTF? We lost themes and variety, and then in EA we essentially get two clones of Vanheim? Feh.

Nonsense. In Dom2 there were 17 playable nations. Of these, 13 had themes, to a total of 23 themes, making for a grand total of 40 different nations. Dom 3 has 49 playable nations. In addition, given the changes to the random magic system, and the lesser powers of indy mages, the nations of Dom3 actually play differently throughout the game, rather than rapidly becoming quite similar to each other. Furthermore, how adding a scad of new spells, summonables and magic items to the game results in less variety is mysterious.

[Cainehill]

Truper said:

Nonsense. In Dom2 there were 17 playable nations. Of these, 13 had themes, to a total of 23 themes, making for a grand total of 40 different nations. Dom 3 has 49 playable nations. In addition, given the changes to the random magic system, and the lesser powers of indy mages, the nations of Dom3 actually play differently throughout the game, rather than rapidly becoming quite similar to each other. Furthermore, how adding a scad of new spells, summonables and magic items to the game results in less variety is mysterious.

Dom3 has at most 21 nations that can be chosen to play in any one game, unless someone mods or does a special map file. Dom2, there were 17 nations, with only some having _special_ themes, giving as you say, a total of 40 nations that could be chosen in _any one_ game.

One benefit of those special themes was that when you were playing against, say, Pangaea, you didn't know right away which of three very different Pangaea's it might be. (Instead, we have global enchantments to recreate a few of the themes, which has its own serious drawbacks and flaws.)

Even without those special themes : a number of the themes available to _ANY_ nation made significant changes to how that nation might play. For instance, the way any nation with sacred troops might go underwater with their sacreds via Water Cult. Or try to specialize in constructed units with Golem Cult.

Other themes simply gave minor tweaks that made subtle differences while helping to keep from wasting more than 25 points in pretender design. Since we no longer have castle choice (which used to give 20 point increments), _and_ we no longer have themes.... And a lot of us had commented on our desire to see some themes for Machaka, or to be able to combine non-special themes (Water Cult, Golem Cult, etc) with special themes.

Instead, we lost themes. We even lost Last of the Tuatha, and Machaka (which many people enjoyed, and were waiting patiently for a special theme or two for) is _ONLY PLAYABLE NOW IN ONE ERA_!!!!

As far as adding scads of other things - _please_ don't put "scads of new ... magic items" in one sentence? We certainly didn't get scads of new magic items.

Instead, we got aging. Feh.