The New Hinnom Nation

[Twan]

You don't need a double 9 bless or a combat god with this nation, non sacred troops are good enough for initial expansion (then thugs are the main force).

A double 6 bless, or a single 9 or a triple 4, allow very good scales, considering you'll also take heat 3. And you have also fortune tellers recruitable everywhere to help support high misfortune if you want a better bless. Finally as you'll never have ressources or money to recruit 5+ sacreds a turn you can take a low dominion too (but an high one can be interesting to spread your good scales, and protect your nation only having bad preachers).

You can even use the national pretender chassis for flavour (who has pathcost 60) and still have an interesting triple bless for your thugs.

(I'm currently playing with : imprisoned Son of the Fallen, Order 3, Prod 2, Heat 3, Growth 3, Misf 2, Magic 1, dom 4, earth 4, nature 6, blood 4)

[MaxWilson]

Are fortune-tellers actually cost-effective? Don't they need to be in every province to reduce bad events there?

-Max

[Aezeal]

they do but you usually only really care about bad events in good provinces.

[LDiCesare]

Although they are capitol only, the sacreds have strat move of 3, and access to astral magic means Gateway is possible for them in the late game.
As for blood magic being inexistant in battle magic, that's not entirely true: Hellfire, Hellbind heart, the various Call Horror spells are all usable. Hellfire in particular is nice with a Blood 3+ mage.

[Baalz]

blood rain, leech, bloodletting, rush of strength, hellbind heart, summon imp (haven't really used hellfire much) and later go to hell, blood vengeance, rush of strength are all top shelf battle magic if you use them properly. Life for a life, sabbath slave/master, reinvigoration are all niche, but very useful. Several other blood combat spells are quite useful in small niches (call horror, hellpower, etc.)

How many other paths have that many good combat spells? Blood isn't used much in combat, not because of lack of good spells, but because of the pain of managing blood slaves. Heck, just look at how widely used the inferior (other than the need for blood slaves) versions of the spells I list above are:
terror/panic
strength of giants
drain life
charm (hellbind heart - much better because it's easy to spam with cheap mages)

[Aezeal]

I think it means that if you have luck and one of the 2 "useable" priests there will be procreation events.

[Xox]

Hinnom is strong. As strong as Neifleheim? I don't think so. And the color and theme is a thing of beauty. Good work guys.

Also the pop eating effect has complicated and long lasting ramifications that won't be clear til we have seen it go though at least a few mp games.

Every new nation gets attacked by people who want to nerf it. Even Bogarus got a lot of calls for a nerf when it first came out. And as far as balance that is just plain ridiculous, Beyond ridiculous with the likes of Ryleh and Ermor in the Late era.

Every new nation should not be underpowered and I think we have a wide spread here in these three new nations.

Also, if anything these conversations highlight the need for boosting some of the weaker nations who never win mp games like Arco all eras, early Ryleh, maybe abysia somemore, etc..

[K]

Baalz said:
blood rain, leech, bloodletting, rush of strength, hellbind heart, summon imp (haven't really used hellfire much) and later go to hell, blood vengeance, rush of strength are all top shelf battle magic if you use them properly. Life for a life, sabbath slave/master, reinvigoration are all niche, but very useful. Several other blood combat spells are quite useful in small niches (call horror, hellpower, etc.)

How many other paths have that many good combat spells? Blood isn't used much in combat, not because of lack of good spells, but because of the pain of managing blood slaves. Heck, just look at how widely used the inferior (other than the need for blood slaves) versions of the spells I list above are:
terror/panic
strength of giants
drain life
charm (hellbind heart - much better because it's easy to spam with cheap mages)

It's not that Blood doesn't have battle magic, it's that it doesn't have real battle magic. Combine the fact that even with flyers bringing in tons of blood slaves to battles you still have massive fatigue and a huge cost in slaves, it isn't good enough to qualify as real battle magic.

For example, compare ten other casters in a big battle and ten blood mages with slaves in a battle, and you'll see:

1. The blood mages cast about half as many spells per battle because they keep passing out.

2. The blood mages spent 100 slaves doing it.

3. Arrows and battle spells sometimes kill your slaves, thereby turning your blood mages into expensive infantry.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't niches. Claws of Coctyus and its fiery brother are one of my favorite things to do to another player's SCs and god (mostly for the morale breaking), but that doesn't mean it's a viable combat tactic for regular play.

[Aezeal]

it isn't?