I would say:
Bless strategies *should* work. But perhaps not as well as they do right now. Also there is no effective 10 turn counter to the initial bless rushes, whereas this doesn't specifically turn the entire game into a game of blessings, it does however allow heavy sacred nations an alternative to standard groundpounder/archer troops.
However, it does create a very real balance issue especially in the EA, but not limited to it, and due to the nature of magic in the Dom3 world.
Reasoning: Magic is now weaker than it was in Dom2, so solutions to such problems like turn 8 quickness/flaming weapon (or just quickness or flaming weapons is often enough) are few and far between. Especially with nations that are lopsidedly designed.
Also this doesn't account for it's psychological impact on nation design (you have to have a plan if your a near a rusher) if your nation has no viable alternative to stop or hold steady against such a strategy, you can only trust to luck to save you from being in a 3 province rush.
A good example of this is EA Arco. While the nation has it's strengths, it's fun, and a different style of play, you will not be able to handle Mictlan, Ermor, Vanheim, Helheim, Sauromatia and to a lesser extent: Pangaea and Kailisa if they play a heavy blessing strategy.
My feeling in this particular case is that that most of the nations who benefit most from the blessings have cheap medium/heavy cavalry whose size limits the use of trample. Which is a half-strength of the EA Arco theme.
However, EA Arco's problems are not just their own, but they span different parts of the game and troop/pretender usage in a competitive enviroment (one where you have to be prepared for some heavy bless strategy).
Back to the heart of the matter: While this is true with any game, most have alternatives or at least ways of handling such early game strength. While Dragons and Monsters can give you an early game province lead, when it comes to fighting sacreds with powerful blessing, the swarm has now rendered early half-SC's and incompletely equipped/poor slot pretenders very inneffective to use as a counter.
My own personal feelings is this isn't just one factor but many including:
Dormant/Imprisoned bless mechanic (2 outta 3 ain't bad! Blessing/Scales or Pretender/Blessing) Hello Dragons!
Order Scale overeffectiveness (1 Scale can get you 240 points with minimum early or midgame impact, thanks!) Gold is King.
Lesser spells imbalanced in terms of new combat/troop effectiveness (see Water Path, Fire Darts, etc - so that even lesser mages [with 1 path or 2 in different paths] can't effectively kill/weaken/synergize to cost the opponent their weight in gold, so you are stuck with researchers or last ditch use)
Invididual sacred units being hyper cost effective while the nation sees no real weakness for it (See Sauromatia, *heim's)
Same ol' problems (Raise Skeletons, Blade Wind, Bad efficency on Magical Trinkets/Lesser items, Spell AI is a poor team player, Gem standard on Summons is way off (See Drakes and Vine Ogre arguments), Ease of Bootstrapping non-nation/pretender paths, Superpowerful Globals and their counterpart the "Man I spent 60 gems on this?"
All in all, balance is fun to discuss, harder to impelement. This is probably why IW has taken such a positive stance on Modding
3.5 cents
Re: Balance on small maps
Hybrid Mode
