Balance on small maps

[DominionsFan]

Uber bless strategy will be still available even with an awaken pretender. Truper's suggestion is excellent, just adjust the settings before you start the game, if you want to "nerf" the bless strategies.

[alexti]

DominionsFan said:
Uber bless strategy will be still available even with an awaken pretender. Truper's suggestion is excellent, just adjust the settings before you start the game, if you want to "nerf" the bless strategies.

Uber-bless with awaken pretender will mean really bad scales, which would mean somewhat limited ability to produce sacred troops quickly. So overall, it will become much less dominant strategy.

What uber-bless would you suggest with awake pretender?

[quantum_mechani]

alexti said:

What uber-bless would you suggest with awake pretender?

I'd try f9w9 Mictlan, ME Ermor, Van/Helhiem/Midgard, or e9n4 Pan.

The problem with blesses is many fold, first there is the option of imprisoned pretenders, as mentioned. Then there is the also mentioned slower research/more gold. But those aside, there are still some nations with sacreds far above the rest.

[alexti]

I'm looking at F9W9 father of winters Dom 6, order 2, sloth 2, cold 1 everything else -3 (maybe sloth 1 cold 2 would be better?) for Van/Helheim/Midgard. It doesn't look anywhere near as strong as with dormant pretender. Initial start will be slower and even if the first neighbour is successfully overrun, I think that the further game is not going to be easy. Facing someone like Caelum at turn 15, even having twice as many provinces doesn't look promising. I think it's better to take F6W9 or F4W9 - blessed troops will still be very good, but it will allow sort of reasonable scales with some future prospects.

For Pan E9N4 is a good strategy, I don't consider it an uber-bless. Giving their weakness in magic they must have something

Mictlan F9W9 looks pretty good (they can easily take sloth-3 and they don't even need high order). Dominion has to be somewhat lower, but with non-capital sacred it's not a big problem. But that's Mictlan - no matter how you play it, it's going to be very strong

[quantum_mechani]

alexti said:
I'm looking at F9W9 father of winters Dom 6, order 2, sloth 2, cold 1 everything else -3 (maybe sloth 1 cold 2 would be better?) for Van/Helheim/Midgard.

I can't see why you would not go full order and full sloth. My build would have order 3, sloth 3, cold 2, drain 2, all else minimum. If you need faster expanding, try a e9w9 cylcops that can expand from turn 2.

For pan, it may not be as unbalanced looking at the whole nation, but it is a far better option than most else you can do with them, particularly early era. And it is still very suffcient for an early rush.

And saying Mictlan is good no matter what is like saying balance of any kind is pointless.

[KissBlade]

Awaken really doesn't hurt too much of most of the imbalanced bless strategies. If anything it hurts the nations that can make an effective uber bless without teetering in the imbalanced range.

The REAL tweaking needs to happen around the order/magic/luck area ...

[WraithLord]

There's a second thread running about the bless balance. In this thread Twan has made a suggestion I really like - why not give holy units different costs according to their strength. vanhere for example can have a holy cost of two which well reduce their number by 50%.

[alexti]

quantum_mechani said:
I can't see why you would not go full order and full sloth. My build would have order 3, sloth 3, cold 2, drain 2, all else minimum. If you need faster expanding, try a e9w9 cylcops that can expand from turn 2.

That's a good idea. I was taking Order 2, Sloth 2 to have faster initial expansion, but with Cyclop you solve it, even it gets killed, not a big deal.

quantum_mechani said:
And saying Mictlan is good no matter what is like saying balance of any kind is pointless.

No, I'm just saying that traditionally Mictlan was always very strong nation. In any case, it's good to have something for newer players...

I don't think there's a big problem if 1 or 2 nations are super-efficient with uber-bless, I'm concerned that half or more nations are best played with uber-bless.

[DominionsFan]

alexti said:

Uber-bless with awaken pretender will mean really bad scales, which would mean somewhat limited ability to produce sacred troops quickly. So overall, it will become much less dominant strategy.

What uber-bless would you suggest with awake pretender?

All dual bless builds are available with an aweaken pretender. Yes you will have to take misfortune/slot/death, but it usually doesnt matter too much in the first 20 turns. Until turn 20 you can easily beat 1-2 players, if they had no bless build.
Like I said, Truper's suggestion should work perfectly.