Ashdod is worthless now

[rdonj]

Ashdod has been hit pretty hard by nerfs, and not necessarily always in ways I would have preferred. But they haven't been nerfed into worthlessness. You just have to evolve your tactics around the new changes. You can still make them fatigue neutral with just a girdle of might, and that wasn't a bad idea before anyway. So you just need a bit of construction research and the willingness to spend some gems. Honestly the fact that niefelheim still has just 4 encumbrance is ridiculous though, jarls were much sillier IMO. Anyway, you're not going to be able to use ashdod the same way anymore, but think of that as a challenge to improve your playing ability. From what I've heard you have certain habits for playing the same way every time, with a brute force approach. But there is a lot of subtlety in the game to learn, and if you try to stretch out a bit more, you may find a way to work around the issues you have with Ashdod's sacreds. With the support from the zamzummites and some of their other things, plus gearing your sacreds to at least some modest degree, you should get a much better performance out of them.

[Valerius]

It looks like the difference is the Anakite armor encumbrance was increased from 2 in CBM 1.84 to 3 in CBM 1.92. Doing a quick check it seems like prot 12-14 armors are generally 2 encumbrance, prot 20+ are 3 encumbrance and prot 16-17 can go either way. For example, Aby's troops have a prot 17, enc 2 plate hauberk but Pan's centaur cataphracts have prot 17, enc 3 centaur barding.

Of course for commanders you can get around this by swapping out their armor and/or adding reinvig gear but the troops are stuck with it. Given its OP history Ashdod doesn't get much sympathy and I'm assuming this was a deliberate nerf so that even with an assumed E10 bless they could be tired out more rapidly than when they had a total encumbrance of 6 under 1.84 (though to be fair Hinnom's [commander-only AFAIK] prot 17 Dawn Armor still has an encumbrance of 2).

Originally Posted by rdonj

Honestly the fact that niefelheim still has just 4 encumbrance is ridiculous though, jarls were much sillier IMO.

I can even live with the jarls, it's those damn skratti sending everyone to hell that gets me.

[ghoul31]

Originally Posted by rdonj

. You can still make them fatigue neutral with just a girdle of might,.

I was wiped out on turn 15. You can't make a girdle of might that early. Their sacreds are ridiculously expensive, 150 gold 88 resources, and commanders are 500 gold 83 resources. So you can only make 1 or 2 troops a turn.

And the troops aren't even that good. They have 13atk, 16def, 18prot. The only thing that saved them was being able to make them fatigue neutral.

Now after about 10 rounds, they fatigue out and become worthless.

[rdonj]

There's more on their roster than just sacreds though. Bshanites and Gileadites aren't awful, and can help prevent your other giants from being swarmed. Plus you have access to 7 gold slingers which can help a lot in weeding out chaff. Ahiman Anakites are a lot less appealing now though, you should probably buy the sheshai now instead if you want the sacred soldiers. Or to ignore them altogether.

[earcaraxe]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Ashdod has been hit pretty hard by nerfs, and not necessarily always in ways I would have preferred. But they haven't been nerfed into worthlessness. You just have to evolve your tactics around the new changes. You can still make them fatigue neutral with just a girdle of might, and that wasn't a bad idea before anyway. So you just need a bit of construction research and the willingness to spend some gems. Honestly the fact that niefelheim still has just 4 encumbrance is ridiculous though, jarls were much sillier IMO. Anyway, you're not going to be able to use ashdod the same way anymore, but think of that as a challenge to improve your playing ability. From what I've heard you have certain habits for playing the same way every time, with a brute force approach. But there is a lot of subtlety in the game to learn, and if you try to stretch out a bit more, you may find a way to work around the issues you have with Ashdod's sacreds. With the support from the zamzummites and some of their other things, plus gearing your sacreds to at least some modest degree, you should get a much better performance out of them.

i would like to back up rdonj's opinion about niefel jarls being even stronger. i would like to see cbm nerfing them in some way.