Grossly, insanely different PD strengths

[Lord_Bob]

By this argument, Tir, Man, Eriu, caelum, machaka, and EA MICTLAN are weak nations. Somehow, I don't think that they are all that weak.

This is an example of the "lower standard" of reasoning to which proving me wrong is held. Mictlan has quite acceptable PD. It has 3 Warriors per point. Each Warrior has decent morale and a hide shield to stop arrows. They also have a tribal king to Sermon Of Courage them. Sure, they can be beaten up by heavy infrantry, but they won't route easy and you'll have to kill most of the 60 to do it. Worse, after 20 they get Jaguar Warriors. In a typical game these Jaguar Warrior are Dual Blessed and will kill more than their number in heavy infrantry. Their counter, archers, work very poorly versuses Hide Shielded Mictlan Warrior.

Mictlan PD starts out "ok" and then goes to "frightenly deadly".

The statement that the Machaka are considered a "weak nation" is correct. In fact, it is held by most of the people reading the board. Including those who disagree with me. Another player even made a point of mentioning how bad Machaka PD is. So yes, quite, they are considered weak.

Caleum is able to dispatch flying attackers to retake any captured province from a central location. One of these forces can protect 15 or more provinces with three movement. A nation that doesn't have to have an army "adjacent" to the captured province to attack and retake it obviously has a nice advantage in retaking provinces. Also, the speed with which Caleum can move forces around make large scale raids very hard... without defeating their army first. Nations of Fliers are a poor comparison.

MA Man PD is poor, better by far than Monkey PD, but poor. Of course they also get a Bard, an actual spellcaster who can cast a morale booster before battle and nature spells throughout. But yes, MA Man PD is weak. Score one point. They also have not won a single game, but I believe that is because they completely lack magic diversity.

The other nations are new, and I'm not going to create a game just to check them.

[NTJedi]

Lord_Bob said:
Another player even made a point of mentioning how bad Machaka PD is. So yes, quite, they are considered weak.

During DOM_2 I originally enjoyed Machaka, but the weakest PD is more noticeably painful on my favorite type of maps(LARGE). Today I still joke that Machaka PD can be killed with tennis balls.
One benefit of these discussions on PD has made me realize DOM_4 should allow gamers a way to upgrade the PD via one or more of the following research, gold/gems, new -/+scale, building type, etc. This would add another layer of depth for gamers.

[llamabeast]

I don't think Machaka is a weak nation. I like them. Also I've won an MP game using Man (although I didn't bother to submit it to the Victorious Nations thread since it was only a 4-player game).

[NTJedi]

llamabeast said:
I don't think Machaka is a weak nation.

Machaka is okay probably categorized as below average, but their PD has been agreed by many to be the weakest in the game. Did I mention their PD dies from tennis balls?

[llamabeast]

But they have awesome battle magic and powerful hoplites and spiders. I agree their PD is quite poor.

[Lord_Bob]

Man also has stealth units, Wardens of Avalon. These are very tough, and go along way to Raiding/Counter-Raiding.

So the situation is "the same" except that Man PD is stronger and they have Raider/Counter-Raiding units.

Did you have a bless on your Wardens?

The Monkey's have Atavi. Atavi with a Protection of 1 DO NOT go a long way to fixing the problem.

If Markata were given stealth, this would fix the problem. Actually.

[thejeff]

You're, again, completely missing the point of bring up Man.

It has nothing to do with Man's PD or Man's raiding ability.

Man and the monkey nations are the same in and only in that neither has won a MP game here.

[Tichy]

But everybody knows that if you put Markatas together in groups they get all chatty and excited and start grooming each other, gossiping, losing their cute little bows and rooting for the losing team. Charming, yes. Stealthy?

[Agema]

I don't really get this. Some nations have clearly inferior mages. Some have clearly inferior sacreds. Some have clearly inferior summons. Why is PD such an issue?