Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[mivayan]

B0rsuk said:What does PPP stand for ?

Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders

[B0rsuk]

mivayan said:

Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders

Oh, come on. You know I'm being overly sarcastic.
Was there anything particularly overpowered in Dominions:PPP ?

[Strages Sanctus]

Massive armies of flying monkeys raised on prune juice

[Ozymandias]

PAir Elementals, POrder, & Patrolling maybe?

[B0rsuk]

Oh, now I remember something. I heard there was an 'Attack Commanders' order. I remember someone mentioning you were required to have a staff of storms just to keep your mages alive.

[Ozymandias]

I just discovered that indy Crystal Amazons have defense 19 sacred flying cavalry, so Van and Helhirdling aren't the only sacreds with that kind of defense. I'm starting think that a modest price increase for Helhirdlings and Van of both eras is sufficient.

[curtadams]

I'm still fond of the idea of changing Glamour so the images go away when the *images* get hit. It makes sense and cuts back on the Defense-Glamour interaction which is a big part of the problem. You might still need to bump up the cost a little.

Capitol-only + high resource cost sacred is an excessive fix because sometimes a bad location can leave you starved for resources in your capital. It's used, effectively, for Marignon and seems too effective - has anybody every seen a really effective double-bless Knights of the Chalice strategy? A better approach to the low resources cost would be to reduce the armor. If that approach is taken, it should be tried with no other fixes because cutting the armor alone might make them vulnerable enough to missles. That + another nerf is a big risk of overnerf.

Generically I'd like to see some weakening of the units rather than just increasing the cost. Fundamentally, when you have some units which are virtually impossible to harm by many nations well into the game (and tough even after than) it's very hard to have a fair cost.

[BigJMoney]

Baalz said:
I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether. You've still got a really good unit, but it's the bless effects that put them over the top. This seems like a good way to ballance them and isn't anti-thematic. They should definately cost more resources to...

This is exactly the solution I proposed many pages ago, but my posts are so long that little details like these are hard to extrapolate.

I think this is a fair and thematic difference. "Vans move forth into the world, but lose their holiness by making a pact with men." All while the Valkyries remain faithful and become the only sacred unit available to MA Vanheim.

I think this would work. If this seems too unbearable to the devs and most others in the community, then consider simply giving Vanheim an inherent weakness, and make it thematic. One minor thing would be to take away their Cold1 nature, but that doesn't seem like quite enough to me.

=$=

[Reverend Zombie]

BigJMoney said:
If this seems too unbearable to the devs and most others in the community, then consider simply giving Vanheim an inherent weakness, and make it thematic. One minor thing would be to take away their Cold1 nature, but that doesn't seem like quite enough to me.

=$=

Heat vulnerability?

[PDF]

Baalz said:
I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether. You've still got a really good unit, but it's the bless effects that put them over the top. This seems like a good way to ballance them and isn't anti-thematic. They should definately cost more resources to...

I support this idea, in fact it's just a plain better idea than mine, and solves elegantly the issue IMHO