Balance on small maps

[WraithLord]

@alexti, I want to point out that the example you give isn't neccessarily a rule. You picked up for your example one of the best bless nations in dom. This alone is not enough to conclude that dominions now plays like a main stream "rush" game. If tests and/or players experience would indicate that *all* nations with ubber bless are unstoppable rush machines then that would have been something else.

As for example you gave, maybe an awake SC with access to fire resistance (or inherent fire resistance) and high prot. would have fared better?

I'm not saying that bless isn't a better strat. in dom-III then it was in dom-II, may very well be that it is, I'm saying that there may be specific counters available for different nations to deal with them.
If someone would do the research and find no such counters, well then, I hope to devs will introduce some, to keep dominions interesting.

[DominionsFan]

Problem is that some nation's sacred troops are just extremely good. Best example is Helheim's Helhirdings. Not the blessings are causing the problem, but some imbalanced national sacred troops. They are just much better than the other national sacreds.

[alexti]

WraithLord said:
@alexti, I want to point out that the example you give isn't neccessarily a rule. You picked up for your example one of the best bless nations in dom.

Not true, Helheim is somewhat easier to counter because they are not that numerous. Against Mictlan things would go much worse - you have only so many lightning bolts. And you can't really call a strategy viable if it will only work against one particular blessed nation. What are you going to do if you don't know whether you're going to meet Helheim or Mictlan?

WraithLord said:
This alone is not enough to conclude that dominions now plays like a main stream "rush" game. If tests and/or players experience would indicate that *all* nations with ubber bless are unstoppable rush machines then that would have been something else.

So far that appears to be the case and those from beta team had quite a bit of time to come up with something.

WraithLord said:
As for example you gave, maybe an awake SC with access to fire resistance (or inherent fire resistance) and high prot. would have fared better?

Pretender SC will just allow you to defend one province while the enemy takes everything else. And have you tried it? All those plans require research either for casting or for forging and that's again hit the same problem with research speed.

WraithLord said:
If someone would do the research and find no such counters

I think that most experienced Dom players have tried and I'm sure if somebody has found a good approach we would read about it (or about encountering it in a blitz )

This thread is just in hope that somebody would post the working plan.