Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[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).

[JimMorrison]

Twan said:
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).

Absolutely! That's exactly what I was trying to say. Rate them according to what you can expect them to have, which includes what YOU give them. If your whole strategy is banking on finding a territory you can recruit Cavemen (RANDOM example! ), then your rating of 5 can't account for how uncommon it is to fulfill your expectations. >.>

Though I find particularly interesting the few nations that can be played as peak competitors either with a strong dual bless, or without a major bless at all, like Hinnom. But that goes more to boosting Ease of Play, than the actual strength rating.

[fantasma]

Regarding Marverni against small elite armies:

Marverni has - besides slingers - cheap javelin throwers. There is the spell farstrike at zero research for druids and early thaumaturgy research has good anti elite spells, I think.

The best bet Marverni has is to come out with fast expansion and lots of gold and diplomacy to demonstrate that you will make the attacker pay hard for an early attack. If you have to dedicate mages to counter rushes you have partly lost already, but the attacker will not get far either.

I would rate Marverni as 3 4 4 but very difficult to learn.
What you field with what orders depends so much on the opposition. You have to learn communions to be effective. You need to research extremely fast, building lots of forts.
It's endgame really depends on what you do about SCs. Your only thug is the golem.

[Fal]

Having played Tir na n'Og in several MP games...

Early Game Strength 3 (poor infantry selection, no calvary, poor ranged troops, taking SC pretender is a bad idea)
Mid Game Strength 5 (Ri, Rain of stone + Fog warrior, many powerful battlefield spells)
Late Game Strength 2 (lack of powerful summons due to early focus on battlefield magic, lack of astral and death)
Ease of Learning (SP) 3 (not that difficult to learn, but takes skills to learn it right)
Ease of Use (MP) 2 (I find it hard to use this nation in MP, even harder to win with it).

[Gandalf Parker]

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

I do have a leaning in my own evaluations. I tend to play really large games, large maps, solo. And I tend to play more tactics than strategy. In other words, not so much pre-planning as counting on and being able to react favorably to random changes in the game.

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).

Not necessarily. Some of the best strategies for stealth armies involve splitting an enemies forces so that they cannot hit you with one massive army on one front. Forcing an enemy to invest more in defense than they normally would. Hiding your buildups, and even the locations of your castles. The strong ability to ally by being able to buildup in a safe corner and yet move thru your neighbor to assist them. Forcing an enemy to expend more on combat than you to reach you if you create a "moat" of strong independents. Not to mention the ability to play 3rd party by hiding a large army in the area where two other players are fighting in order to take advantage of a weakened position after one has expensively beaten down the other.

Also, there would be the strategy of guerrila rebels. Even after losing your home castle and provinces you can still be a strong enough player to affect the outcome of a game.

Also, the use of Pans wandering thru provinces dropping maenads each turn can be very effective. There is no "waste of a turn" there. Without ever becoming visible they create combats each turn testing the defenses of their opponent, forcing expenditure in defense, slowing the movement of armies, and gaining extremely detailed information on the enemy.

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).

That would be a different strategy than one which is built entirely around the ability to fly. Such as early detection of everyones location. Being able to "checker jump" to them. That would be taking every third province between you and them. Building up independents in only those sporadic locations. Hitting the enemy early, making it more expensive for him to reach you than it is for you to reach him (forcing him to fight thru independents such as jumping over all knight provinces as you approach him), being able to build up your army near him until you feel ready to take out all of the indep locations. Granted, this is a large-map strategy but it shows that every nation and every skill does have some use in some games.

Also, again, there is the ally benefit with a flyer nation. Being able to work around the limitation of "I cant move my armies thru his area to help him" by negotiating the taking of stepping-stone provinces thru his area.

Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think

What you say is definetly true. And would excellent for players to take into account depending on their playing style. Part of MY problem is that Im a very old-school hacker. I automatically tend to seek playing styles different than whatever most people are using.

Blessed nations are often played without a full strategy built around blessings. Not figuring in dominion is the largest lack I see. Particularly in charging forward beyond the range of their dominion (Im not saying that you do, just that I see it often). Altho people tend to rate it as a combat strategy, I tend to see it better used to bolster defensive armies. Particularly in a waiting game where the nations main strategy is research. Again, probably best in large games. Possibly mega-games where just getting past the "hump" of the initial build-up-and-charge players is an important part of your goal.

IMHO of course.

[thejeff]

Gandalf Parker said:
Also, the use of Pans wandering thru provinces dropping maenads each turn can be very effective. There is no "waste of a turn" there. Without ever becoming visible they create combats each turn testing the defenses of their opponent, forcing expenditure in defense, slowing the movement of armies, and gaining extremely detailed information on the enemy.

You've suggested this before and I still can't see how it's effective. The maenads lack a leader and thus autoroute. 1PD is enough to beat them. So there's essentially no defense expenditure, it doesn't slow army movement. You do get detailed info, but 300+ gold is a lot for an improved scout.
And the trail of maenads lets him know where your Pan is going. It should also only work in turmoil, or do they still get a few in enemy order dominion?
What am I missing?

[Gandalf Parker]

They still get a few. And granted it does work best in areas where you can move in and out of a players territory to avoid laying TOO exact a trail. Even in a players territory since it happens each turn, its still hard to gauge where the attack will occur next. The best tactic against it was to crank the PD in sporadic provinces in the area to try the level of being able to catch scouts.

Granted I havent tested this since the latest changes in maenads (I hate the new look) but it used to be that the berserker did have some balancing benefit against the autorout. On some random rolls it used to be that you could win. Sometimes both sides routed at the same time.

[thejeff]

Ok, I can see that. Against weak PD with archers or fliers, early hits could berserk a few maenads who might then beat the PD.

[DonCorazon]

I find it quite difficult to rate nations - there are too many variables.

1. I haven't come close to playing played every nation in MP and I think that is the real testing ground. Hard to imagine many people have played every nation in MP, given how long an MP game takes. But I suppose once you know how MP works you can study a nation's units and extrapolate as to how they will perform.

2. Some of those MP games have been with pros, some with noobs, others a mix. Doing well in a noob game may give you a false sense of confidence about how powerful your nation is.

3. A lot of how any game turns out will depend on pretender design, scales, finding indie mages, random events, diplomacy, a neighbor going AI, etc.

That said, the commentary on nation strength is quite interesting. My sense though is you can win with almost any nation using a mix of skill and luck as long as you have access to diverse magic. Magical diversity is the key as magic provides the tool box of counters, and counter-counters that help make the game fun and give it such a steep learning curve.

[Gandalf Parker]

I once posted a timeline something like this...
1) get Dominions, play the tutorial, play some solo games.
2) post that xxxxx nation is obviously way too powerful (ermor? ctis? ulm?)
3) play more nations and discover the misleading rock-paper-sissors balance of the nations
4) play all of the nations and discover that one of them kicks ***
5) post that nation xxxxx is way too powerful because you always win with it
6) try a multiplayer game and discover that everyone ended up with the same answer, but strangely with different nations. For some reason they play those other nations differently, and rather effectively.
7) eventually iron out the best stategies for you playing with your favorite nation. Back to kicking ***.
8) wander into a multiplayer game of an era different than you usually play, and lose badly
9) iron out the variables for your favorite nation in each era.
10) eventually discover that you really can kick *** with your favorite nations
11) stray into a multiplayer game of a totally different size or parameters
12) discover that map size, map styles, number of players, settings, etc all have quite abit to do with your ability to kick ***. SIGH and realize that it will take years more time for you to explore all of the possibilities