Caelum vs. T'ien Ch'i

[Cainehill]

deccan said:
2) Caelum has a cheap for its price 3H priest. I mean 90 gp for a 3H priest is a really good buy. The closest thing I can think of is TC's "Minister of Rituals" at 100 gp. But the Caelum Version flies, is cold immnune, is stealthya and comes with a magic weapon (though admittedly that's not likely to be used much). Granted, Caelum has no 2H priest to recruit, but indy 2H priests can be recruited just about anywhere with just a temple for the standard price of 50 gp.

The 90 GP 3H priest isn't that great a deal. Consider the following:

Abysia:
2F3H, 200GP (over 50% more HPs, fire immune)
2F2B3H, 240 GP (90% more HPs, flying, fire immune)

Atlantis:
4H, 230 GP (300% HPs, amphibian, goo stats)

Pythium:
1A1W2S3H, 150 GP (same HPs, + great magic)

C'tis:
3H, 120GP or
2N1W1?3H, 190 GP (poison immune)

Arcoscephale:
1N3H, 110 GP (Magic andhealing)

Marignon:
1F3H, 110 GP (Magic and preaching bonus)

Pangaea:
1N3H, 110 GP (Magic, Awe, stealth, recuperation)

Vanheim:
2A1B3H, 280 GP (good magic, stealth, glamour, sailing, greatstats)

Jotun:
3H, 200 GP (350% HPs, cold immune, high-STR thug)

R'lyeh:
1S1?3H, 150 GP (300+% HPs, amphib, life drain, mindbLast)

Mictlan:
2B2?3H, 230-250 GP (variety of great magic)

Machaka:
3H, 90 GP

Looking at those priests, Caelum's doesn't look like it's particularly underpriced - its special abilities aren't that great, its stats aren't that great, etc. Other nations have Priest-3s that are more expensive, but cheap when you consider the magic or stats they get, and I'd _far_ rather have P3 mages than vanilla P3s, since you quickly build a stock of researchers who can call your pretender back in 1 turn if need be. With vanilla P3s, your pretender dies and _then_ you start buying them.

3) Caelum has what must be one of the best scouts in the game. It flies, resists cold, and costs exactly the same as the standard indy scout! It even has better armor than the standard scout!

None of which, except the flying, really means anything. A scout isn't going to be involved in fighting often, and while sneaking is immune to murdering winter anyway. It also requires enough resources that some fortified provinces might not be able to recruit one in a single turn, or won't be able to recruit any troops at the same time.

4) Caelum has what I think is a decidedly above average sacred troop for a very reasonable price in the form of the "Temple Guard". It even comes with a built-in magic weapon to break mistformed SCs and kill ethereal stuff, so you won't need a fire 9 blessing with them. They have a pretty good defense so it might be interesting to do a water 9 blessing with them. Sure, their defense is not in a league with Vans but then they are a long way from being as expensive as Vans and Vans sure don't have their armor.

Okay, they are resource intensive, but just because people usually take Sloth 3 as Caelum doesn't mean that they HAVE to.

Not resource intensive - incredibly resource intensive, as you can buy about 2.8 Vans for the same resources. And the Van isn't capital only, meaning that you can buy 10-20 a turn if desired and you have the gold. And the Vans have a strategic movement of 3, compared to the Temple Guard's _1_. You can't build Temple Guards in numbers, and if you do, you find it almost impossible to get them where they're needed.

When all's said and done, Caelum's advantages are immense. People say that Caelum's one big advantage is their cheap mages, but it seems to me that Caelum has above average everything else AND cheap, good mages to boot. A while back, Cohen was complaining about how Abysia was terribly underpowered because all their stuff is so expensive. I don't agree with him by the way, and other people have pointed out that Abysia's stuff is more expensive to pay for more hit points and fire immunity. Well, Caelum has flying, built-in magic weapons, and cold immunity, but unless I'm very much mistaken, it doesn't seem to me that Caelum is paying anything for all this.

Caelum's troops tend to have lower strength, lower HPs, and lower damage weapons than other nations infantry. (Ice Lance - damage 3, Ice Blade, D5, + 9 strength.) The magic weapons _only_ help against ethereal opponents, preferably low protection ones. Their troops are not above average, their priest isn't above average, their sacred troop is almost useless except on tiny maps.

The mages are above average, and their strategic movement is as well. (I think the flight might well be undervalued in their prices, but I don't think you can raise the prices much.) That's about it, imo.

[deccan]

Cainehill's points are all valid and I admit that I have a tendency to value skill (which Caelum has) more than HPs and strength, which may be wrong. However, even if I downgrade Caelum's troops and priests to merely "average and competent" instead of "above average", it still seems to me that Caelum has no obvious, glaring weakness. For example, I would still say that Caelum's troops are still better than, say, Tien Chi's mediocre ones, and isn't the mediocrity of Tien Chi's national troops supposed to compensate for their versatile mages?

Furthermore, Caelum has interesting specialist troops in the form of its Mammoths and the things that fly in storms. Those are not useful things in a general way, but they could be useful in the right kind of situation, and gives them an added versatility and ability to surprise, which I think should be considered quite valuable.

One Last point: I think that we shouldn't underestimate cold immunity + built-in magic weapons. The reason why so many national troops do so poorly against SCs even in large numbers is IMHO at least partly because of "Breath of Winter" + "Etherealness" + "Mistform". This makes Caelum's troops quite useful I think over the whole course of the game. Personally, I would value quite highly the ability to break mistform reliably. For example, in some previous tests I've run with AQs, I find that once an AQ's mistform is broken, it can be very easily killed by lifeless things.

Cainehill said:
Not resource intensive - incredibly resource intensive, as you can buy about 2.8 Vans for the same resources.

Heh, so you take Production 3, and pay for it by, er, not taking Order 3 since Caelum has no super-expensive stuff anyway unless you want to mass Mammoths or something, or is that blasphemous?

[Cainehill]

deccan said:
Cainehill's points are all valid and I admit that I have a tendency to value skill (which Caelum has) more than HPs and strength, which may be wrong. However, even if I downgrade Caelum's troops and priests to merely "average and competent" instead of "above average", it still seems to me that Caelum has no obvious, glaring weakness. For example, I would still say that Caelum's troops are still better than, say, Tien Chi's mediocre ones, and isn't the mediocrity of Tien Chi's national troops supposed to compensate for their versatile mages?

No, Tien Chi's Astral-1 mediocre mages counter-compensate for good troops in the default theme, and forced turmoil and lesser troops compensates for powerful mediocre flying mages in Spring and Autumn, who still have Astral-1 and tend to be gunned down by magic duel. Base T'ien C'hi has _GOOD_ troops - I've already written one post about this in the first section of this thread, I'm not going to repeat myself here.

Heh, so you take Production 3, and pay for it by, er, not taking Order 3 since Caelum has no super-expensive stuff anyway unless you want to mass Mammoths or something, or is that blasphemous?

And Production-3 still only lets them get maybe ... 3 or 4 Temple Guards a turn, max, and still no way of getting them to where they'd be useful. It would let them get Iceclads everywhere, but Iceclads tend to be useless against anything 14 protection or higher, not to mention that they keel over from exhaustion too quick.

[Graeme Dice]

deccan said:
Heh, so you take Production 3, and pay for it by, er, not taking Order 3 since Caelum has no super-expensive stuff anyway unless you want to mass Mammoths or something, or is that blasphemous?

One could always go with order 3, prod 2, cold 3, misfortune 2, magic 2, wizard's tower with a Nataraja with air 1 (empower quickly), water 2, nature 3. Or something along similar lines.