Lords of Civilization

[Wokeye]

Wow, those Lords are insane! 5 map move?!?

[atul]

One thing about this game I love is the occasional "up yours" attitude jokes by devs, like this wishable Grigori thing. Anyway, unless it's meant to be real gangsta, one "the" is mistyped as "tha" in the description.

[MaxWilson]

I don't think it's a joke so much as an attempt by KO to prevent Wishing of that unit without requiring code changes from JK. Pure pragmatism.

-Max

[Zeldor]

I think it is worse idea to have uber powerful SCs only for few races.

[atul]

Well if it was due to pure pragmatism the description wouldn't be like that. It can't be that I was the only one to find that one humorous.

[WraithLord]

I'm not sure I agree from the standpoint that I prefer a more diverse game. Exact balance in the way of making the exact same strategies available to all nations is boring.

This is what bothered me with tartarians, that come end game everyone will rush to spam them.

As for super SCs available to Hinom - the nation is very powerful that's evident but it has its weaknesses. And most important, in an MP game sometimes being too strong is a disadvantage (the gang up on the leader syndrome).

Bottom line, I opt for more diversity in the gameplay even if some nations get situationally stronger than others.

[Zeldor]

But when you take a look there is really very limited amount of SCs available. And most of them are not available for most of the races. Just few nations have thugs and national SCs, which is really big factor later. And usually nations with strong magic get access to good SCs, making their advantage even bigger.

That B9 Hinnom ones are really very powerful. And they are given to a race that is probably one of the strongest in EA now. And access to them isn't extremely hard for them, while other ones tend to be harder to get.

[Twan]

Actually, I fear mp balance has been forgoten for this patch.

The new nations (at least the EA and MA ones) seem to have been balanced against Amos angels, or I don't know what, not (most) other vanilla nations. If they are not rushed in the very first turns (they may have a vulnerability before they finish their initial expansion, as their base units are expensive, but as soon they have gold and gems income to recruit their thugs or best mages each turn and forge some gear, they are clearly excellent).

Their theorical problem (gluttony) is laughable for thugs nations, as commanders never starve (like other giants, they just need troops for sieges, and expandable indies can do the job).

Then they have no problem I can see for start (4 or 5 sacreds with a good bless or 10 giants of any kind can take about anything), nor in mid-late game with 18 MR recruitable thugs with 50 FR and 3 misc slots, and sages to mitigate their research weakness, nor probably in endgame with rather diverse magic, access to some of the best paths, and the best national summons in the game.

There may be 4 or 5 nations arguably as good but I see none better.

In general I think thugs nations should have crappy magic to compensate, I wonder why several* of them got the most powerful paths for endgame, astral, death, blood and correct mages when some nations have no thugs nor good mages, nor good access to any of the powerful paths (Man as always).

Now of course, I've not tested them in MP yet, so I may be wrong on their strength, but I can't find where is their weakness (capitol dependance ? Man is also very capitol dependant).

* another example is Utgard, which is clearly in my "4 or 5 nations arguably as good" list -people just don't realize how much it's an excellent nation, because the 2 others are the free spawn nations dominating the late age- but at least jotun thugs have bad MR