HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[Baalz]

thejeff said:
The other thematic way of weakening them might be to boost the HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING part. Especially the eating your own troops part.

I haven't played with them much, but it sounds like it's more of an annoyance than a real handicap at this level.

The biggest drawback is that all your blood hunters eat your population, which actually makes excessive blood hunting a good deal harder. I'll need to play around with them more, but my first impression is that this alone is enough to keep them from rivaling the real blood champions like Mictlan and Lanka...I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

Regarding horror spam, EA & LA Mictlan can do it with an astral booster - which generally requires con-6. MA Abyssia (don't remember off the top of my head the other eras) can do it with no booster on 25% of their cap only warlocks, the rest need boosters. There's an important opportunity cost here though, as demonbred are also cap-only so it's either/or and only a 25% success rate if you're hoping for horror spammers. Hinnom can cast it with 33% of their Ba'als, which you have absolutely no reason to not recruit every turn you can afford one. Bogarus I don't know off the top of my head, do they have a B2S3 reliable mage? Outside of possibly Bogarus, Hinnom has a much stronger lesser horror spam potential than any other nation, and a *much* stronger greater horror potential - B3S4 mages aren't easy to come by.

[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.

[MaxWilson]

Ming said:
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.

It might also be a good idea to reexamine the resource cost of Dawn Blades and/or the gcost of Dawn Guards w/rt similar units of other nations. The thing that comes to mind there is def 16 / base defense 13. I suspect they're pretty okay (Kala-Mukhas cost 65 and are sacred) but it's worth looking at, since I believe KO assigns unit abilities before gcost/rcost.

-Max

[Ming]

I just took a look at Hinnom vs. Niefel (inspired by Baalz's post). What struck me immediately is that Hinnom's starting army is roughly twice as strong (or at least would have cost about twice as much to recruit) as Niefel's! No wonder I have always found it worthwhile to gamble and sent Hinnom's starting army out on turn one (I use normal indie setting)! This is a very great advantage. Second, my inspection confirmed my suspicion that Hinnom's units do not seem to be particularly underpriced.

Based on the above I think

1. cutting Hinnom's starting army by half and

2. replacing its PD by 1 Horite per point from 1-19 and 0.5 Horite Champ + 0.5 Horite Hunter per point from 20+, as well as giving Qedesim as its additional leader at 20 instead of Kohen (Horites don't see much action otherwise as they are very expensive goldwise).

should be sufficient to cutting Hinnom down to size without changing its dynamics very much.