Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[Wrana]

Of course, you are perfectly free to post that Bogarus has 1 for early game. Though it would be nice if you also posted other stats for it... Maybe even with longer comments?
Considering Bogarus army I should point out that while their voi infantry are unimpressive - but these are MILITIA! In stats and cost both. And on militia duty, i.e., to absorb damage they perform admirably due to better armor. Their cavalry, on the other hand is something else again. Actually, they are the only nation afair that has horse archers with Pre 10... Once you have massed these, the early expansion against indies is piece of cake. Rushing is something else again, surely, but to stop the rush, the same horse archers can be applied and their mobility allows to concentrate them. Maybe their early game isn't 4, but I already saw it being assessed too low...
Considering MA Tien Chi - I actually had the largest territory in the current game during initial expansion. Of course, part of it was due to SC Pretender, but few turns ago I have actually put him on research duty just to have something to do with my other armies... So it seems that I at least can expand with those troops fast enough.
Shinuyama has excellent Kappa which can be massed fast and excellent Dai Bakemono. Bandits/Bakemonon-Sho are excellent in absorbing enemy fire/lances. What else do you need? With Kappa I expanded through independents with hardly a scratch - and they can cripple enemy elites to stop rushes as well. THey are costly, of course, and Dai Bakemono, as I said, require time to amass.
To Amhaizair:
Yes, of course, I assessed the nations I'm better familiar with, including the ones I'm trying MP with currently. I'm not familiar enough with late game which is the reason for ?? there. As an aside, I would probably assess Agartha - especially MA - as 1-2 for early expansion, but I did not play it so may not know some tricks...

[Zeldor]

Wrana:

We are talking about certain age. Do you think there are worse expanders than Bogarus in LA? IF not they deserve 1, someone should get there so we can put others in 2,3,4,5. We cannot give every nation 3, and some others 4 and 5. Of course they can expand, but they are worst at it.

[JimMorrison]

Indeed. If the lowest score you give for anything is a 3, you may as well score on a 3-7 scale and I'll just manually subtract 2 from all your scores.

Not that it has to average out, that for every 5 there is a 1, that would be silly - but it IS a curve, 1 is the worst, 5 is the best. Everything else, falls in between. I think 5 is a bit restrictive, as there is a lot of grey area between "average" and "WOW" for 4 to cover, but it's all we have for it, so of course some will go in 5 who aren't quiiiite as strong, and some will go in 3 that are just a touch above the average.

Please also remember not to focus TOO much on whether or not they can defend against a rush, or how hard it is to play them to their strengths - MP readiness and SP intuitiveness are taken care of by the other 2 ratings, and people need to keep that in mind.

[thejeff]

Do bear in mind that it may be perfectly reasonable for someone to not give low ratings in a specific area. Most here aren't rating all nations, just those they're most familiar with, so if they prefer to play nations with a strong early game, it's not unlikely all the nations they know well enough to rate will get a high score.

[Wrana]

Well, it's possible, of course, that I rate some nations too high if I get the inpression I know how to play them. But I think that the nations I assessed are a good example of the "area between "average" and "WOW"" that you mentioned.
And I said that Agartha is an example of early game rating of 1-2 with their Pale One troops. Maybe EA Marverni is another such - I didn't play them and when I met them in MP, I advanced against them quite successfully despite being new in it. About EA Arcoscephales I don't know currently (didn't try them in MP - their infantry is worse than hoplites, but they have chariots, so maybe 3 for early game...
And if you want an algorythm to change my assesses, than it would be more like "subtract 2 than multiply by 2, subtract 0-1 randomly" - or you would get Helheim early game at 5, which is definitely NOT what I meant!

[Xietor]

For now I will only rate 3 of my top MA Nations. I am not rating ease of learning and ease of use, just the early, mid, and endgame strengths.(i will add others until it is complete)

Pythium 3 5 5
Ermor 5 4 4
Ryleh 3 4 5
Shinuyama 2 4 4
Ctis 3 5 3

[JimMorrison]

Take your tim Xi. It seems this will be a work in progress for some time.

And Jeff, I do agree with that somewhat. But some people's favorites, they will still tell you to *always* take an awake SC because their early troops are awful. I'm not looking for people to just pick nations to bash to round out the curve, just to look at things fairly so that the numbers have relevance. Truthfully, I would like to see very few nations at 1 or 5. But with a 5 point scale, that's kind of sticky, originally I was going to do 1-10, and I think a lot of people's 5's would end up as 8 or 9 if I had done so, but I was convinced this would get more input..... oh the humanity!

And Wrana, just bear in mind, a big part of that really is the Ease of Learning. Like Caelum for example, I think is very hard to learn how to use properly. At least for me, I tried them twice with such terrible failure, it took a third and very concerted effort, once I new the game a lot better, to finally tackle them and learn how to effectively leverage their strengths. And they're not even a nation like Yomi/Shinu where it's hard to discern where the strengths actually lie - you can see them, but making them effective is just not a simple thing.

[Wrana]

Agree. You can subtract 1 from "ease of learning" for nations which caused such controversy. Actually, I'd suggest you do it routinely for nations causing much discussion - if there is that much disagreement, than they are surely not so easy to learn after all!

[Gandalf Parker]

Good point. That is probably the best way for me to voice my pert peeve. Its not that the player is missing the point, its that the nation is not one of the easier ones to learn how to play.

Speaking of which....
in testing out things about PD I came across something I had not realized. Did you know that those stupid little monkeys that some people hate have a scout with +50 stealth? They are able to get thru PD of 125 (the max I can test easily by my present method). Most stealth troops are stealth of 0, most national scouts are stalth +10, Caelum scouts are +15, Pangaea +20, and Vanheim +35 (all early era).

For those who dont know, most of the things on a units info display will give more info if you click it.

[Ming]

I enjoy this thread very much but I also have difficulty myself in summarizing various nation's strength at different periods. I think there might be danger that different people mean very different things by their ratings.

For my part the greatest difficulty I have in rating these nations (aside from being relatively inexperienced in general and ZERO experience in MP) is that often one can make conscious trade-offs in the timing of a nations strength through different pretender designs.

Take Bogarus for example, most players will take an awake SC pretender to overcome its weak starting troops, at the expense of its late game strength - which it can probably manage without help from its pretender. On the other hand, few would take an awake pretender on nations with strong sacreds. So should one compare the early game strength of Bogarus with an awake Dom10 Wyrm with dual bless nations without the benefit of an awake pretender as opposed to a straight forward comparison?

It is even more complex for many of the nations in the middle. How one spend the design points and when the pretender awakes have major bearings on the strength of a nation at various periods and can be tailored by the player.

If the ratings are accompanied by some references to the Pretender choice it might clarify matters somewhat.