Early Age Civs

[Amhazair]

The 'chart' idea sounds potentially intresting. Speaking for myself however, (and I'm assuming here that people consider me a veteran, with a couple of MP wins under my belt, even though I still think of myself as relatively new. Must have something to do with how vast this game is. ) I would only feel comfortable rating nations I played myself (not including those I played in SP when I was still very new.) And perhaps a couple I waged long wars against and thought about playing in MP. Which would amount to maybe a dozen nations.

At that rate compiling a comprehensive chart might be somewhat slow going.

[JimMorrison]

Well, I would probably expand the chart to 5 ratings:

Early Game Strength
Mid Game Strength
Late Game Strength
Ease of Learning (SP)
Overall Ease of Use (MP)

I think the spread of these 5 attributes would give players a good road map for developing their gameplay as much as is possible before entering into MP. I'd also be tempted to list any path that the nation has national mages with higher than 3, and listing what their highest blood mage is.

Anyone else have any thoughts on a 1-10 scale vs a 1-5 scale? I suppose I can see the merits of either, so I will look for a little more input on the matter.

[thejeff]

Highest blood mage is less important than cost of cheapest blood mage. If you've got enough hunters, blood's easy to boost. If all you've got is 500gp B3's, you'll never have enough slaves to matter.

[MaxWilson]

In my experience 1-5 scales tend to illicit better information than 1-10.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Well I mostly just thought that highest trainable Blood would serve sort of as a benchmark for the relative perceived Blood power of that nation. Obviously a skilled player can start a blood economy out of nothing, but this chart is more intended to serve as a development aid for new players, not a quick reference for the more seasoned (though I am sure some will be curious as to the results).

[Sombre]

I think a category for 'Content Quantity' or something similar would make sense - add up the total number of national recruitable units, commanders, summons and spells each nation has. Some starting players want to pick a nation with less/more national stuff to play with. Different people have different reactions to seeing Bandar Log's Conjuration and Blood research trees.

[MaxWilson]

While you're at it, have the contributors rank themselves on a scale of 1-5 for experience. I'd mark myself 2, "pretty raw."

The forum "rankings" don't correlate well with skill at the game, nor does the amount of trivia you know about unit stats and bugs. Unfortunately.

-Max