Why no love for Caelum?

Boron said:
nice attempt .
and who leads the fiends of darkness and is stealthy ?
there is no item to make a leader stealthy .

There's the - Black Heart? - blood item that turns a leader into an assassin.

mictlan + abysia don't have stealthy leaders who can fly .
furthermore the mictlan scout has 0 ldrship
the abysian slayer has 0 stealth too .

of course abysia has flying armies with the demonbred .
but they are not stealthy

I don't know Abysia so well, and was under the impression that Demonbred was stealthy. But I speak from experience when it comes to BF Ulm, who can launch massive stealth raids using Vampire Counts leading Fiends in the air, and Rangers on the ground.

that is true of course for caelum too but they have stealthy flying scouts + stealthy preachers so this is a big advantage .

the main difference between abysia + caelum :
caelums mages are not capitol only .

furthermore summoning fiends with blood earlygame is time consuming : only 1 per mage summonable .
so your research suffers and you can only use your capitolonly mages for that as abysia .

so abysia has to spend a demonbred per flying army + use blood for this

caelum has only to spend a cheap mage who is not capitol only .

so who can do this easier earlygame ?

abysia can field midgame 2 or 3 scary devil flying armies but only 2 or 3 .

caelum can midgame attack every low protected province with stormbinders mentioned combo .

sure the 1 mage attack doesn't hold the territory . but that is not his purpose .
as long as that forces your opponent to keep significant amounts of garrison/countertroops at home it is a big success already .
furthermore you just need to tax every this way captured province to 200%.

repeat that a few times and your enemy is economically broken
prevents recruiting , taxing and bloodhunting .
so only the gemincome is left

Only if the victim sits there and passively accepts that sort of attack. As Arryn pointed out, he will - or should - be hitting back in ways that suit HIS strengths, not playing to Caelum's

and the knowlegde that caelum can do this forces caelums neighbors to madcastle + keep significant defense forces at home .

You're stating theory as though it's happening in real games. In practice I don't see this happening, and would see it as precisely the wrong reaction to the Caelum threat.

the only other races which can do similiar things are the ones with spies so ulm + marignon + tien chi with the unrest command .

Apart from the ones that I mentioned and you ignored

BF Ulm
Ermor (Dusk ELders & raise skeletons)

The Caelum player also has to worry about defending his own territory if he wants to be able to afford to maintain all these Seraphs. More to the point he needs a strategy that's a bit more complex than relying on a single tactic for defeating PD. It's not that I don't think it sounds strong; it's just that it isn't the whole story, and anyway doesn't seem to me to be grounded in much real MP experience.

[Pickles]

Quoting Mark the merciful

There's the - Black Heart? - blood item that turns a leader into an assassin.

It turns a stealthy leader into an assassin

You're stating theory as though it's happening in real games. In practice I don't see this happening, and would see it as precisely the wrong reaction to the Caelum threat.

well put - a tendency of the pregame analyser as opposed to the experienced player

"Ermor (Dusk Elders & raise skeletons)"

Ctis empoisoners D1

Any flying or stealthy wizard who can spam stuff.
Or someone with spammer items - infernal protection maybe or bottle of water not sure how strong these are in practice.
Given boots this is quite a choice

It's not that I don't think it sounds strong; it's just that it isn't the whole story, and anyway doesn't seem to me to be grounded in much real MP experience.

Money on PD is a dubious investment anyway IMO as it gets knocked over too easily - just in routine battles. I might have already mentioned that I am reluctant to spend on anything other than field forces though.
Still I lack much MP experience particularly against good military players in even fights. People who make you think rather than just choosing power strat #3 or whatever.

Pickles

[Vynd]

I think the real reason that Caelum was Banned from some games is because Norfleet was primarily using Caelum after they took the VQ away from Ermor. Some people didn't want to play against him, and they were probably hoping this would keep him away.

[Stormbinder]

Vynd said:
I think the real reason that Caelum was Banned from some games is because Norfleet was primarily using Caelum after they took the VQ away from Ermor. Some people didn't want to play against him, and they were probably hoping this would keep him away.

Not in my current game (Throne of Heavens) You see, it Banned both Norfleet and Caelum nation, but for absolutely unrelated reasons. (it is played on Zen's modification of Cradle Of Dominion map)

I general I would not want to see Caelum nerfed, although it may very well be most powerful nation in MP atm. Still all races are not equal, it's a a life.

But I would certanly like to see some changes to False Horror spell, currently 10 fatique Air1 spell. The situation where just 4-6 false horrors from 1 100gp quickened seraph commander can rout 20+ PD of other nations just doesn't seem right to me, in combination with Caelum's ability to strike anywhere. IMHO changes to False Horror's fear aura or to spell cost would be very good. And Caelum would still be terrific raider even with reduced Fasle Horror's efficiency.

[Cheezeninja]

ALL i've seen so far is speculation and observations from an outside point of reference, many of the people arguing for the nerf have even admitted that they have played Caelum either infrequently or not at all. How can you be arguing for the nerfing of a nation, or even a spell, that you havn't even used in depth? All your seeing is the strengths without seeing the weakness's. Until someone can put forward hard evidence that Caelum is winning too many of its games i believe a nerf would not only be premature, but downright stupid.

note: I agreed with the VQ nerf, and i still do. Because if you looked at the games going on at the time a very large percentage of people were taking the VQ, even for nations that should not be thematically taking them. Once you get to the point when everyone is gravitating towards a single strategy because of its effectivness, then it might be time to impose a nerf to maintain balance and diversity. Frankly this is not the case with Caelum. In the starting game Posts i see, rarely if ever is Caelum the first nation selected, and i most definetly do not see everyone gravitating towards a false horror strategy during the playing of the game.

[PvK]

I too haven't heard anything that would make me afraid of Caelum per se. I will admit I have not had extensive experience with them, but I will also say that all of the experience I have had with them, has seen them getting pretty well steamrollered. Once I saw a Caelum AI lead in battle by a Manticore beat a Pangaea AI after a while, but that's not saying much. Incidentally, it then headed straight for my home Mictlan province with two armies, which looked scary at first, but my Mictlan had no problem dealing with them quite quickly. In MP I have seen Caelum troops fire ineffectively at a smaller force of armored troops and then rush in and die to (and fly from) them in close combat.

I can see how raiding fliers are useful and a threat, but not that threatening a one. In general I'm not afraid of Caelum, especially if I have good forces with lightning protection.

PvK