High Bless rush strategy :(

[WraithLord]

I really like the idea of holy cost, even better then switching bless on when pretender arrives.

[Nerfix]

I'd dislike having bless only when the pretender arrives as it would essentially make Awakening functions useless. But variable Holy costs would be good.

Or then tweaking the uber units themselves like Vans. They'd own even if blesses were toned down because Glamour is amazingly powerful.

[JaydedOne]

I like variable Holy costs as well.

From my standpoint, I'm still experimenting before deciding what is and isn't useless. I do know that heavy bless strategies have been decidedly effective, much moreso than my rainbow mage or beautiful scales strategy. I haven't tried an Awake SC/rainbow Pretender strategy (and wouldn't go with an Awake blessing strategy) but my sense is that they just wouldn't be as effective as leaving the Pretender out of it for the 24 or so turns and getting the 150 points.

After all, breaking down the math, a rainbow mage will only get about 12 searches, probably more like 10 depending on map layout, before the dormant gods awake. Even on a high settings map, that's not going to mean a huge gem income difference. A SC pretender might grab a few provinces at indy setting 5, but I'm again not sure that they're worth passing up on the scales or having an army of super-blesses that will be more effective than he will come the mid-game.

I don't know. My concern is that I'd probably take bless strats about 90% of the time from my current experience and I'd probably take Dormant/Imprisoned about 95% of the time. To me, those ratios are too high.

[SelfishGene]

I'm not uber enough to tell whether Hellheim is "overpowered"; they're extreme easy to use, it's true.

However, as capital only, the number of sacred troops you can produce as part of your army starts to get smaller and smaller in proportion to the number of troops in your empire as the game progresses - and they have to come from your capital to the front lines.

Also, many bless nations have some fairly junky magic skills. Hellheim has a hard time researching now that sages have all but disappeared.

This doesn't mean, though, you can't rush a human player and have completley conquered him in less than 10 turns, which rather sucks for the receiving player. EA nations are generally much more powerful than their LA counterparts and other nations can use things like Body Etherial ect to improve their own Sacred troops, as well as have (probably) a much more robust research base.

But i'd agree with the observation that Hellheim is one of the - if not the - most powerful EA nation w/re to it's national troops.

[Graeme Dice]

Twan said:
So... Why not giving a different holy cost to some units ?

I'd personally rather see the gold cost of units be made appropriate to the power of those units. Wind riders are one of the better examples. You pay 125 gold for a unit that's clearly inferior to a valkyrie, which only costs 60 gold. A non-sacred black knight costs 60 gold, while a sacred Van, with better attack, defense, glamour, and stealth + 30 only costs 70 gold. A living pillar has minor resistances to the elements, yet costs almost the same as a Van, but with 56 resources instead of the Van's 12, and will be killed easily by any of the many nations that have access to S2 mages.

[Manuk]

well. in dom2vans were overpowered too. In a MP With just a fire 9 blessing I could stand like 10 turns of war against the two biggest nations and just gave up tired of just holding.
In Dom3 you will need like twice as much army to take out a helfheim force commanded by the AI and they sometimes don´t even bring priests to bless their units. That means that they are still overpowered. Just nerf them or give them at least a weakness.
Making them more expensive would do tough.

[Nerfix]

Glamour is an ability that's IMO worth +20-30 gold to cost. Super sneaking AND great combat bonuses. On EA Van/Hel also have pretty decent equipment too.