HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[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

[Amhazair]

MaxWilson said:
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.

Mictlan has very nice S/B priests too. They do share the capital only recruitment with all their other high priests (W/B, N/B, F/B) but you'll probably have a fair number of them in any case.

[thejeff]

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.

[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.

[WraithLord]

As much as I think of it the more I come to believe that the nation doesn't require balancing. Yes its powerful, no its not overpowered in the only sense that matters, MP - so If for example, in then next N EA games Hinom would have <10% of the victories, I'd say its rather balanced.

I mean, given that there are what?- 17 EA nations? Normal win dist. should give each nation ~6% average wins. I'm willing to bet (based on intuition) that Himom will not start suddenly winning many MP games.