HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[WraithLord]

Awesome guide. I have tested Hinom in SP and came with close conclusions but your guide covered all the points I've misses, which is great

I've taken a W9, E4 bless with dragon and good scales, the bless makes Rephaim and Melqart expand like crazy.

I've used regular scouts/commanders for blood hunting and it worked well but I think using three Kohens with SDR will yield many more slaves.

Ba'al is ridiculous, I couldn't come up with enough ways to use them.

Your suggestion of using lesser horrors is very useful.

I think 1v1 this nation is top tier in game if not first place. How it would stand in MP is totally another issue though. I'm against changing something drastic in order to balance them, if anything the dawn guards could be made capitol only or the nation can get a 10-15% price increase across the board.

[Ming]

WraithLord,

If you make the dawn guards capital only, the optimal strategy for the nation becomes less complex. The power of the dawn guards make it possible to deviate from taking P3.

[WraithLord]

I'm afraid I'm not quite following. Dawn guards are resource intensive (in absolute terms - require 30 or 35 resources), so how come their power makes it possible to deviate from P3?- they practically beg for high production.

Another idea to reduce their strength is not allow recruiting of Ammi w/o labs.

[Tifone]

Mmh, Ammis not needing a lab to be recruited fits the rules perfectly i think... It's because they just have random picks right?

[Ming]

My reasoning is as follows:

IMHO the key advantage of P3 is to allow you to recruit as many capital-only sacreds as possible as you will very soon find that you'll run out of funds much faster than resources as you expand and build new castles. If one take a lesser production scale, one will end up with less of those awsome capital sacreds but more doom guards (recruited outside of the capital). That is not necessary a poor trade-off if the extra design points can be put to good use - partly because one will run out of supplies very quickly (not to mention pop loss) if one concentrate on the capital only sacreds.

[WraithLord]

@Ming, thanks for elaborating. I find your reasoning to make perfect sense hence I agree making dawn guards capital only is not preferable for balance purposes.

@Tifone, it does fit the rules.

I think maybe a possible balancing act, besides raising price across the board is to make this nation's temples cost more, maybe 50% more, maybe even a thematic reason for that could be found.

[Tifone]

Mmh, personally (and it could be weird I admit ) I'd prefer something new and strange to balance Hinnom (of course if the devs decide it should be done), something like the Shattered Soul trait was for tartarians.

Hinnom already has the distinctive trait Baalz talked about but it seems it isn't decisive to balance the great strength this nation has in... well, possibly almost any field. ^^

As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

[Ming]

Tifone,

High defense units could cause Hinnom some problems, especially since the Hinnom chariot is not as awesome as its stat might suggest. However, it is more an annoyance as opposed to a glaring weakness as Hinnom's sacreds have two attacks and Dawn Guards' doom sword provides an attack bonus.

The main weakness IMHO is that there are various pitfalls that a careless Hinnom player could fall into and shoot their own foot. In the hands of a good player Hinnom is difficult to counter. At least I have not found one yet (but I am working on it )

[MaxWilson]

Tifone said:
As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

Isn't "How To Beat Hinnom With X" going to be heavily derivative of the Nation X guide? From Baalz' guide, I get that Hinnom has great expansion and good blood magic, with good Astral magic for endgame strats. Lots of their strength is the carryover from a good early game combined with the ability to do something with that strength later on (better than, say, MA Oceania or MA Man). They do have fairly weak mages--Baalz suggests Hellpower for getting around that and it's a good suggestion--and Dawn Guards are far from the only excellent recruitable unit, but if you want to beat someone playing Hinnom the way Baalz suggests you're going to need to leverage your own strengths instead of merely exploiting Hinnom's theoretical weaknesses.

Let's put it this way: Lanka and Mictlan can both use the Horror-spam tactic to kill SCs, and they can do it BETTER than Hinnom because they're better at blood-hunting. Does that make Lanka unstoppable? Edit: er, wait. No they can't. I'm AFG but I think Send Lesser Horror requires S as well as B. If so the Send Lesser Horror tactic would be restricted to Bogarus, Abysia, and maybe a few others. (Possibly an Abysia/Lanka alliance?) Anyway, a lot harder than I thought.

-Max

[Ming]

Hinnom is NOT necessarily an easy nation to maximize its potential, precisely because it has so many awesome ways of overcominging its enemy. However, one doesn't need to unlock its full potential to do well with Hinnom. Even a simple strategy will work. I like Hinnom's complexity but dislike its being so powerful.

I think one way of reducing the power of Hinnom without changing its complexity is to drastically weakens its PD. It might be thematic too. A population that needs to sacrifice their own to pacify their rulers would need a lot of persuation to stand up and fight for them when they are not around.