Ashdod is worthless now

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Triqui, I'd be happy to duel you, and I'll play Ashdod without an E9+ bless. We'll see how weak Ashdod really is. Hop on IRC to arrange it.

See, that's your second fallacious (and eepeen) post in a row.


Let's suppose (as hypothesis )you manage to win me with Ashdod. Would that show that Ashdod is fine? Not really, just show that you are (in hypothesis) a better player than me (or at the very least, that you think you are). That would proof absolutelly nothing. I'm sure Baalz could beat me with any nation, even if I use pre 1.92 Ashdod. That shows absolutelly nothing about Ashdod (or any other nation) balance.

Just like your post proofs nothing, but that people in internet argument fall to e-peen show-offs when they have no other point to argue, or the points they made before have been refuted in a way they cannot answer back.(IE: the stupid remark about Berserk unbreakable morale, which had nothing to do with what I was replying to: the fatigue)

Do you want to prove something about Ashdod balance? Fine, let's take a look in the next couple of months to every middle age game there is, that is played under CBM 1,92. Let's see if they win they fair share of victories. I doubt it.

@rdonj

If you're not taking a bless, there is absolutely no reason to recruit the sacred giant troops. Instead you rely on the non-sacreds in your roster. If there's no bless, it encourages you to build more early mages and you'll be able to hit higher levels of construction faster. It's hard to make them fatigue neutral without at least some level of earth bless though. And ashdod's sacreds/sacred commanders are very probably overpriced now, which could be fixed in a later version. I think they'd work better at 6 encumbrance as well, but this is really the first version of Ashdod that's not insane from turn 1

Fair enough, I change my stance from "ashdod is horribly overpriced" to "ashdod sacreds and sacred commanders are horribly overpriced". Which is kind of similar though, as the nation strength is their sacreds and sacred commanders. It's like if you remove Vans from helheim, or Jarls and sacreds from Niefelheim, and you say "hey, but they still can use everything else"

For example: you say that, without sacreds, they'll be compelled to buy extra mages for extra research. Sure. Except those are 200g non-sacred (for unkeep) mages with research 6. It's not like they are Bogarus or something, you know.

I'm not sure if they need to go down to encumbrance 6, or whatever. What I'm sure, though, is that 7 encumbrance for 150g and 88r is NOT a good deal. For that price, they suck. They suck hard. Sure, you can use the other troops in the roster. Bassically, the ones that don't suck. This doesn't change the fact they suck. Hard.

To repeat myself:
Yes, Ashdod with encumbrance neutral where way too powerful. Even if they were very expensive, they were very powerful. They needed a nerf. However, they nerfed them hard, but kept their insane cost. Most of the nations have *commanders* that are cheaper than Annakites. If you want to keep them with encumbrance 7, then they need a (serious) reduction in cost.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

See, that's your second fallacious (and eepeen) post in a row.

Let's suppose (as hypothesis )you manage to win me with Ashdod. Would that show that Ashdod is fine? Not really, just show that you are (in hypothesis) a better player than me (or at the very least, that you think you are). That would proof absolutelly nothing. I'm sure Baalz could beat me with any nation, even if I use pre 1.92 Ashdod. That shows absolutelly nothing about Ashdod (or any other nation) balance.

Just like your post proofs nothing, but that people in internet argument fall to e-peen show-offs when they have no other point to argue, or the points they made before have been refuted in a way they cannot answer back.(IE: the stupid remark about Berserk unbreakable morale, which had nothing to do with what I was replying to: the fatigue)

Do you want to prove something about Ashdod balance? Fine, let's take a look in the next couple of months to every middle age game there is, that is played under CBM 1,92. Let's see if they win they fair share of victories. I doubt it.

EA Agartha was virtually unplayable for years until CBM finally got around to buffing it. It still managed to win at least one game. And Ashdod is in better shape than EA Agartha ever was.

What's frustrating is you don't seem to actually want to play Ashdod to see if it still works. (I'd be willign to bet E10N4 still works, too, but it was never the sacred *troops* that really mattered). Which is why i offered to blitz. You specifically said:

Nop, they give you two options: that one, or losing incredibly fast.

Ok, so prove to me its lose incredibly fast if you don't use the sacreds. My offer was not an epeen argument, you literally said 'anyone who doesn't use the sacreds is going to lose'. Prove it. Put your money where your mouth is.

If instead you'd rather attack me then prove your claim, you're conceeding that you were wrong before. I wouldn't have even offered a blitz if you hadn't argued that doing anything but using sacreds was an autoloss.

Otherwise, there are other options, and thus Ashdod is probably fine. If a single one of their sacred options is not optimal in all situations, that's only a good thing. If its optimal in none, well, it'll get tweaked eventually. CBM balancing is an iterative process. But its clear to me at least this is solely a unit issue, not a nation balance issue.

---------------

You seem convinced that enc 7 is too much without being willing to play them. Considering net enc 2 is better than enc 5 for most troops, including Ashdod's nonsacreds (which work just fine!), this implies you don't actually understand the issues.

And berserk is an advantage. Those troops are fatigue neutral *until* they berserk, and then they don't run away once they do berserk. Horrors, they build up a little fatigue every round they attack *after* they berzerk. Its still less than the other sacred overall, because they have enough protection (18 with E9+) that putting some damage through that in the early game is hard.

The fact that you automatically dismiss them because they *eventually* become not-fatigue-neutral sort of demonstrates that you won't be happy until you have fatigue neutral broken giant troops. Since we know that's a bad idea, of course we're skeptical of your position.

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And the real point you seem to be missing is that Ashdod was never about armies of *troops*. It was about armies of thugs and SCs. Being non-neutral on fatigue is only going to really matter in large battles, at which point you'll be thanking your enemies for killing off your cash-guzzling sacreds so you can recruit more SCs.

The only impact of non-neutral fatigue via bless is that Ashdod needs to do some research before it tries to crush someone now, as opposed to just rushing people. This is a good thing

Zazzumite: excellent thug/light SC, self-blessing, frequently with good buffing paths (Summon Earth Power, ironskin/stoneskin/invulnerability, soul drain, potentially personal luck/body ethereal, etc...)

Adon: Excellent SC, self blessing, good buffing path. (E2 ones are the best, but S2 isn't much worse and F2 is ok eventually). 3 misc slots. Typical E9-10 bless with bracers of protection doubles up the +4 protection bonus from the bless, and the third misc slot lets you pack a pendant and AMA in addition to the bracer.

Base enc 7 can be cut with lower fatigue armor or shield (or both), and mitigated away with boots, summon earth power, and of course bless.

Even without a big E bless you can still drop them to fatigue neutral pretty easily.

And no, Adons are not overpriced. They're a recruitable SC chassis - how bad the armor is or isn't is irrelevant, you're just going to slap something better on them anyway.

When every commander you recruit all game except Talmai Elders is a viable SC, its time to start wondering why you bother with recruitable troops after turn ~12 at all.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

You seem convinced that enc 7 is too much without being willing to play them. Considering net enc 2 is better than enc 5 for most troops, including Ashdod's nonsacreds (which work just fine!), this implies you don't actually understand the issues.

Actually is you the one that do not understand the issues. First, having encumbrance 7 is not really a problem. Having encumbrance 7 in a unit that cost 150g 88r, and thus is going to be horribly outnumbered in any situation, is.
Ashdod giants often are incredibly low number armies. To beat chaff (specially, but not only, undead chaff), they need a TON of turns.

There are other high encumbrance units in the game. Centaur Cataphracts have encumbrance 7 as well. However, for the price you have 1 single Annakite that 2 two attacks, Centaurs do *eight* attacks. So the amount of rounds both armies are going to be fighting is not even close. In a combat where Centaurs get say, 30 fatigue, the Annakite get one hundred and twenty.

I don't know what else can I do. I'll reiterate:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

And berserk is an advantage. Those troops are fatigue neutral *until* they berserk, and then they don't run away once they do berserk. Horrors, they build up a little fatigue every round they attack *after* they berzerk. Its still less than the other sacred overall, because they have enough protection (18 with E9+) that putting some damage through that in the early game is hard.

It's an adventage. It's an adventage absolutelly unrelated to what we were discussing, though. You made a remark about "they have encumbrance 5". I quoted you and said that they were berserkers. I suppossed that you understood that I was talking about the fatigue. Obviously you didn't. My fault, I guess.

The fact that you automatically dismiss them because they *eventually* become not-fatigue-neutral sort of demonstrates that you won't be happy until you have fatigue neutral broken giant troops. Since we know that's a bad idea, of course we're skeptical of your position.

see, yet another fallacy (strawman's). I understand it's much easier for you to argue a point that I *did not* say, than the ones I actually said, but it's not really very usefull.

I already said that the nerf was needed. The problem is that CBM forgot to change the cost of the giants proportionally to the nerf. Pre-nerf, they were an incredibly expensive (as in: twice everything else) unit with an incredibly power. Now they are just incredibly expensive.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

Actually is you the one that do not understand the issues. First, having encumbrance 7 is not really a problem. Having encumbrance 7 in a unit that cost 150g 88r, and thus is going to be horribly outnumbered in any situation, is.
Ashdod giants often are incredibly low number armies. To beat chaff (specially, but not only, undead chaff), they need a TON of turns.

There are other high encumbrance units in the game. Centaur Cataphracts have encumbrance 7 as well. However, for the price you have 1 single Annakite that 2 two attacks, Centaurs do *eight* attacks. So the amount of rounds both armies are going to be fighting is not even close. In a combat where Centaurs get say, 30 fatigue, the Annakite get one hundred and twenty.

I don't know what else can I do. I'll reiterate:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

Its not 7 effective encumbrance. What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless. You want to talk about strawmen, why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Regarding Berserk: they're still fatigue neutral until they berserk. Berserking isn't some automatic reaction to being in combat, it requires they take damage. Through protection 18 after E10 bless. And even after they berserk they're going to build up fatigue rather slowly. So yes, I'm well aware of the fatigue, my point is the benefits of berserking vastly outweigh, and it will probably be multiple rounds of combat before they even start berserking in the first place, and until they do they are in fact fatigue neutral.

Way to ignore that commanders are where Ashdod's game has always been, btw, which invalidates your entire side of the argument. The only reason Ashdod uses recruitable troops is expansion - a task for which its units, all its units, are still perfectly good.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Its not 7 effective encumbrance.

REally? My game is bugged then, becouse it says 7

What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway

So you agree with my previous statement, they have 2 ways to play, E10, or losing. Don't you? Becouse you said it otherwise a couple of posts ago. It's hard to follow your "reasoning" with that much flip-flop.
So, please, let be clear:
Is Ashdod a "you must play as this, always, with no other option, period" nation?
If so... is this effect stressed with CBM 1,92?
If so... wasn't the entire point of CBM to make more *options* viable, instead of reinforcing the "good ones", or strippping away things?

, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless.

That's like saying the jaguar warriors have effectively 6 attacks becouse everybody would play them with W9. No, they don't. I've seen people being creative and not using W9F9 jaguars, you know. Not everybody plays like you (fortunately), that's the fun part of this game.
Having a unit that "requires" a bless not to be good, but to be viable, is a ultimate flaw. Encumbrace 7 in a unit that have an attack/gold ratio of seventy five gold and 44 resources per attack pretty much make any non E9 bless completelly unviable. Yes, we agree on this. No, we don't agree this is "working as intended"

You want to talk about strawmen,

I think you don't know what a strawmen fallacy is...

why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Becouse I thought the beauty of this game was being able to play very differently each game. I don't see any excitement in playing Ashdod twice in a row if I'm "forced" to play some specific bless. That said... they have encumbrance 7. Period. If you want to live in a bubble where they have encumbrance 2, fine, then they cost 150 gold, 88 resources, and 6 full scales. Wow. That's pricey.

Regarding Berserk: they're still fatigue neutral until they berserk. Berserking isn't some automatic reaction to being in combat, it requires they take damage. Through protection 18 after E10 bless. And even after they berserk they're going to build up fatigue rather slowly. So yes, I'm well aware of the fatigue, my point is the benefits of berserking vastly outweigh, and it will probably be multiple rounds of combat before they even start berserking in the first place, and until they do they are in fact fatigue neutral.

Which is moot point, becouse it's not what I was talking about. You should try to read what I'm saying and answer to that. Poor strawman is too busy.

Way to ignore that commanders are where Ashdod's game has always been, btw, which invalidates your entire side of the argument. The only reason Ashdod uses recruitable troops is expansion - a task for which its units, all its units, are still perfectly good.

Would you had read what I've already said (or would you comprehend it, if you already read), you would had noticed that I've said several times already that is not that Ashdod is worthless, or overpriced, but that *Annakites* are.

I'll quote myself. I'll bold the relevant parts, to make reading comprehension easier:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

I already said that the nerf was needed. The problem is that CBM forgot to change the cost of the giants proportionally to the nerf. Pre-nerf, they were an incredibly expensive (as in: twice everything else) unit with an incredibly power. Now they are just incredibly expensive.

I don't think Ashdod is "worthless". They aren't the worse nation in the roster, not by a long shot. However, the OP is right in one thing: that 2 extra encumbrance is hurting them, badly

Encumbrance neutral Ashdod giants are too powerful.
150g88r units with 7 encumbrance are too weak.

Hope the bolding helps with the attention deficit.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Its not 7 effective encumbrance. What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless. You want to talk about strawmen, why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Okay, time out.

You overstate the case considerably; That none of the top players in Lamaserver MP games would play a nation like Ashdod in MP without an E10 blessing, or E9 at the very least, because every single one of them plays from the same rulebook where thugging is concerned and compete in an environment where not going mighty men is a sign of insanity - does not in any way, shape, or form imply that nobody playing Ashdod with CBM would play them without a big earth blessing.

Some people might play them in SP games, some in MP games that don't operate by the usual Lamaserver dynamics and player culture, and there are bound to be some who play Ashdod with only a medium size earth blessing or perhaps none at all - and it might be neither stupid nor suboptimal in the games they play, be they SP or MP.

- As an example, in the circle of friends in which I play MP, while the common CBM guides are useful to anybody needing to learn a new nation and we direct new players to read the guides on this forum, they often make assumptions about playstyles that just aren't valid, and the players are a bunch of devious backstabbing bastards with a real-world approach to diplomacy and typically 1-2 decades of experience playing really long-term board and computer games, a niché in which Dominions fits perfectly, so one thing with the other, people often try out unusual nation setups (by Lamaserver standards) and more often than one would expect they succeed over "no-brainer" choices from this forum.

That's not because they are objectively better than the setups and strategies typically discussed in this forum and played by in the Lamaserver games - if such setups were used in a Lamaserver game where the majority of players were Lamaserver veterans, they would probably lose - I'm just pointing out that a cutthroat competitive MP environment does exist where they make sense.

All this to say: For the love of god, don't take what is "the only sensible way to play a nation competitively on Lamaserver" as being the same as "the only way anybody sane would play a nation" and don't denigrate those who quite correctly point out that the changes made to balance one playstyle (that happens to be the favourite Lamaserver style for the nation in question) significantly hurts another playstyle.

Now, for the whining of the OP, feel free to heap scorn, but for triqui pointing out the details of his issue... Surely he doesn't deserve that.