Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[Hoplosternum]

Thank you all for these. They are great. As I suspected Jomon should be down at the bottom and it is on quantum_mechani’s list. No one else has even thought it was deserving of a rating

In fact on quantum_mechani’s list it’s joint worst with MA Agartha. And while I know you can’t really get worse than worst, and I of course am no where near as experienced as QM, I have to quibble at his high rating of 2 for ease of use MP

I can’t think of a slower starter or a power that has more difficulties leveraging its advantages than Jomon. While Jomon’s shortcomings can be overcome in SP where the pressure to get off to a good start is less and you have a bit more time to develop its national summons (which have no synergies with its national mages – they can’t summon or even look for the needed gems for the decent ones).

Consider – your starting army is bad featuring just 20 units, 10 of which are the hopeless shieldless spear infantry the Ashigari. It will struggle to take a 5 strength indie province and likely to take serious losses doing so.

Your national troops are very resource intensive yet lack shields or especially high defence or protection. They do suffer from high encumbrance though They are, to be fair, fairly hard hitting. This combination means it is tough to even keep your weak starting army up to its original strength never mind expand it. Even if you splash out on Prod 3 - thus spending 240 more points than most of your opponents in this area - you are still struggling to build more than 5 not very good units per month at the start and perhaps double later on.

There is no bless strategy you can play as its Sacreds are Capital only, hard to mass (too resource intensive) and they are basically just encumbered, shieldless, heavy infantry whatever bless you add.

You have no synergies with most of your national troop summons or any of the Thug summons you get.

You absolutely need an awake SC and yet you need to add paths to any choice to have access to your national summons. Most SCs are expensive to add paths too. Plus the best fit choice – the Prince of Death – isn’t available to Jomon. You can give up on the summons of course but then your mid/late game suffers.

Your mages are good researchers / all rounders. But they need Communions to do much in combat. And Communion use is one of the harder Dom 3 skills to master. Plus they need to empower to be able to make the astral rings. They are not sacred either – not that you can afford a bless – but this also adds to long term costs and off sets the reasonable purchase price. None are specialised enough to create the better boosters or cast decent summons and global spells.

No blood or death and weak astral means you have to work hard to overcome this for the late game (and the need for an awake SC means you can’t easily use your pretender to get around this).

I am not saying there are no nice things about Jomon. There are. But I can’t think of a less easy to use power in MP. Quantum_mechani has rated it higher than LA Pythium for ease of use in MP. Yet they have Sacred Hydras for the early game, not everyones cup of tea, but they will get you through the early stages. Even if you don’t pay for a bless Hydras are still a decent, if expensive, build for early expansion. And as many of your mages are sacred even a moderate bless lives on after you have ceased to use the Hydras.

Meaning you have choices for your Pretender. You can take an awake SC for a quicker start or an Angel summoner for your fantastic (as opposed to Jomons decidedly average) national summons later. I know the last rating is not meant to be how good the powers are, but how can LA Pythium be considered more difficult to play in MP?

[quantum_mechani]

Hoplosternum said:


In fact on quantum_mechani’s list it’s joint worst with MA Agartha. And while I know you can’t really get worse than worst, and I of course am no where near as experienced as QM, I have to quibble at his high rating of 2 for ease of use MP

Well, as I said in my notes, I rated ease of use for how difficult it is to get the most out of the nation- for some nations the most is not all that much. Mostly the low difficulty rating was because there is really only one troop you need to consider recruiting (longbow samurai).

[chrispedersen]

I couldn't agree more max.

People widely consider slingers worthless, and airblesses as well. Vanheim's strength is its glamour ability

Slingers are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get rid of that. Which is why I believe that air blesses, situationally, rock.

Especially since they are effective with a partial bless.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.

But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.

I have no trouble with the ratings in general. After all, saying that such a race rates low isnt necessarily wrong. If most people playing that nation are likely to come out low then its a truthful statement. Im just glad that it can be balanced with a difficulty of learning rating.

[quantum_mechani]

Gandalf Parker said:
Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops.

This comes off as a little derogatory towards people where prefer smaller and quicker games. Which is aside from the fact that almost any competent blitz player will tell you that relying on masses of armored troops is one of the classic missteps of people new to multiplayer.

[Twan]

Gandalf Parker said:
I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.

But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.

I think you should give notes, if you think some nations are over or undervalued in this thread, as the goal is to take into account as many players opinions possible before giving a final note.

Anyway I also think according to your post that you'd value too much some situationnal abilities or ignore their drawbacks.

Sneaking is a good example. With stealth armies you lose one turn or more before the moment you effectively take an ennemy province. It's not a bad skill, but a secondary one, if you use stealth with all yours armies you'll just be beaten by nations able to do normal moves and take your provinces (or re-take in one turn the provinces you reached in 2 or 3 with your stealth forces). It has nothing to do with blitzes, it's even more true for big games with good number of provinces, where economy matters. Having stealthy units may worth +0,5 point for midgame note, as having a sneaky raiding potential with nationals is good, but doesn't worth one / five by itself (except if you have really good high stealth thugs or sacreds, probably with glamour).

Flight is different, as it allows to strike every turn, and behind ennemy lines it's a real advantage. But the quality of flyers is often problematic to the point flyers nations often prefer to use them only as support for their non flying troops. I probably value caelian fly one point, but caelum also lose one for the global quality of troops (out of mammoths justifying a good early game note).

Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think (at least in my notes ; many nations having 4 or 5 in EG would desserve a 2 or 3 without bless). Some other nations may succeed with a bless but it hasn't to be valued as what they can do with an awake pretender or good scales is about the same (ie : I assume that LA Atlantis will have an awake pretender + a simple bless, or an inferior/non-awake pretender + a strong bless, or good scales instead of a bless allowing to recruit more ice armor troops, in the three cases the nation desserve about the same good early note).