Newbie Game EA (Running)

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It definitely is possible to beat a 'heim bless but to do so you have to devote your nation just to doing that. So, if you prepare for the bless, you will lose, because other nations will outgrow you or out-research you; if you don't prepare, you will lose, because you will get overrun by the bless-heims. I won't guarantee every nation has a good defense against them, but all the few that I've looked at so far do.

Basically I think Glamour is just too good to have on a recruitable unit, and the defense 19 on the Helhirdings is pretty huge. Normal troops will simply not hit them. You *must* use magic. Neifelheim bless works a little differently, of course.

One of the things that makes Heim blesses so strong is the relative lack of constraint on the Holy resource. Compare a Helhirding or Vanhere to a C'Tis serpent dancer or sacred serpent. The bless is the same, and C'tis has plenty of priests, but you are just not going to make the bulk of your army out of sacreds with C'Tis because you will not have enough holy points. With the heims, and their high-quality, high-cost sacreds, you can make almost your entire army sacred.

I do think the 'heims are a little too strong but they are obviously not the only way you can build a strong nation, Tien Chi is dominating this game magically for instance. But then, they were also fortunate enough to not have a starting position right next to a bless rusher.

[FrankTrollman]

I do think the 'heims are a little too strong but they are obviously not the only way you can build a strong nation, Tien Chi is dominating this game magically for instance. But then, they were also fortunate enough to not have a starting position right next to a bless rusher.

Uhhh.... our first war was with Helheim. They paid us 200 gold for a cease fire when we killed 20 of their Helhirdings.

The Great Catsby has Spoken.

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Never mind, I was right the first time

[RamsHead]

I must point out that I, as Helheim, have not used a dual bless strategy unlike *cough T'ien Ch'i and *cough Ulm who are *cough allies *cough. Excuse me, I seem to have a tickle.

[Stryke11]

Let's not forget that even without glamour, Neifelheim is also using a bless rush to devastating effect.

Ironhawk. I'd enjoy playing another newbie game if the 'heims were disallowed or neutered, but also I think for a newbie game, a bigger map with some more breathing space would be nice, too. I never expanded enough to get comfortable, and it was just my bad luck to land in the middle of the map surrounded by other nations. Not to say a bigger map would guarantee more space and time for buildup, due to random placement, but it would hopefully give newbies like me who don't know bless strategy from greek and who need some living space to get the ball rolling.

I have considered that playing some "blitz" games with experienced players would build up my strategies and knowledge base in a hurry, but I don't even know how to get involved in one of those or how it works.

Just an OT and random idea, too: Ermor has sacred units that are heavy cavalry and recruitable non prophet priests who (iirc) have the three candles to mass bless, so maybe a dual bless would work for NF Ermor. Has anyone tried this? I assume since no one has mentioned it before that there is probably some reason why it wouldn't work. I kinda like Ermor as a nation and would prefer to learn how to make them great, at least for MP, then switch to an easier nation.

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One reason the 'heims bless so well is free points from cold scale which can go right into pretender magic, and low resource to gold ratio on their sacreds so they can take sloth too.

For the same reason, Ermor's not an ideal bless nation because it needs to buy expensive scales. The sacred heavy cavalry will be resource limited if you take sloth, plus Ermor likes neutral temp so can't take a bunch of temperature points, leaving the points for a bless in short supply.

Niefelheim bless works differently, but all the ingredients are there: Plenty of design points and high-cost, high-quality sacred troops that don't take a lot of losses in combat.

[Ironhawk]

Stryke11 said:
Not to say a bigger map would guarantee more space and time for buildup, due to random placement, but it would hopefully give newbies like me who don't know bless strategy from greek and who need some living space to get the ball rolling.

I explicitly chose a tight map for your first game so that you all could get experience. If you all had had 20 provinces to yourselves, wars would have taken forever (if they started at all). Whereas here, pretty much every player has fought one war, if not two. This will be invaluable experience, going forward.

This said, I had already planned on making the 2nd newbie game on a larger map. So you could take your combat knowledge and add long-term magic and strategy to it.

I have considered that playing some "blitz" games with experienced players would build up my strategies and knowledge base in a hurry, but I don't even know how to get involved in one of those or how it works.

Its pretty simple to get involved in a blitz game. You just go to the dominions IRC channel and ask if anyone there wants to blitz. Look at this thread for more details

The Dominions IRC Channel

In particular, DominionsFan gives a link to a web client which you can use for free and instructions on how to use it towards the bottom.

[Shovah32]

As ironhawk said, just go to the dominions IRC channel (its simply called dominons) and, if there are any players there some-one will probably be up for a blitz. They can also give helpful advice for playing and making strategies.

[FrankTrollman]

RamsHead said:
I must point out that I, as Helheim, have not used a dual bless strategy unlike *cough T'ien Ch'i and *cough Ulm who are *cough allies *cough. Excuse me, I seem to have a tickle.

We have a what? You've seen our troops, and we've seen yours. Your units have a larger bless bonus in two categories than ours...

-Finger Pointing is Hilarious

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The server will be down for a few minutes while I monkey around with it. If you happen to be caelum and are trying to play your turn, just sit tight.