Early Age Civs

[MaxWilson]

Best for SP or MP? In SP (I don't play MP) Niefelheim is probably the strongest, but I avoid them because I hate water magic. Marverni is strong too (although the mages are ruinously expensive). Helheim is quite strong with very thuggable commanders. Atlantis is also strong.

-Max

P.S. Edratman has a point. Some nations are very strong if you micromanage them properly. I guess what I meant is that Niefelheim is the most straightforwardly-strong. Just take a good bless, build a few Jarls, and go kill your closest neighbor. Marverni has excellent (gemless) battlemagic--again, that's about hassle-free magic at least as much as powerful magic. Blood magic is potentially great on the battlefield, I just hate carrying around blood slaves. And I'm uncomfortable with sacrificing virgins--I usually take growth over death because I want to feel benevolent towards my subjects. Anyway, Lanka has great troops and strong blood magic.

[JimMorrison]

You know what might be interesting? If some of the more experienced players around here contributed to a chart, based on their own perceptions of the different nations. Basically rating on 1-10 scale the strength of each nation in early, mid, and late game. Then again on a 1-10 scale for ease of playability, with LA Ermor being the only 10, and EA/LA Mictlan somewhere around a 2.

If anyone thinks that such a table would be abused to pick easy win races, I'm not so sure. Players who have been here very long already have a pretty good feel for the game. However, used properly, this chart would help struggling or beginning players pinpoint nations that cater to their competence or weakness. I know that I would have loved such a thing when I first started. Initially, I labelled some nations as nearly unplayable, such as Caelum, because I just didn't realize they require a solid understanding of the combat system to use effectively.

If that idea isn't shot down too handily by the old men of the forums, I may start another thread, and would even be willing to collate the data. Might even be arsed to learn enough about forum coding to make it look all purty.

[Electro808]

i must just think of abysia as strong cause they keep owning me in sp games, i have no idea why. i keep beating all the other civs until they come along.

they seem to have very high armour and low defence, any tips on how to counter this? in my current game i am formoria(sp?) and i killed both agartha and ulm without losing a battle but now abysia is attacking me and i'm losing battles.

And to MaxWilson: i mean MP.

[Ferrosol]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Sauromatia as strong?
the best archers in the game period strong death mages blood access and low level magic in spades. Sure they might not be giants but they have damn near everything else.

[Darkstone]

Is there something wrong with ThunderStrikes and Shadowblasts?

[JimMorrison]

A large part of it is probably their heat aura, tiring your troops and making them easier to crit. Depending on your pretender choice, you may have multiple options, but I'd guess if you are very far into the game, and they are very big, you won't have a lot of time to develop something new.

So summons who are immune to fire, magic items for melee commanders that give FR (hard for you to make, mostly), and heavy evocation barrages (if you have a pile of Sorceresses and/or Kings at your capital). Sometimes in SP if the comp gets unruly in what is still basically the "mid-game", your most viable option is a researcher rush to squash their main armies. It's unbelievable (when you first see it) what 20 battle mages spamming thunderbolt can do to 400 heavy infantry.

[Zeldor]

JimMorrison:

Yeah, I think experienced players pretty much know what nations are good. 1-10 is too much, 1-5 would be enough. But I surely wouldn't say LA Ermor is extremely easy to play. Or that EA/LA Mictlan is the hardest.

[JimMorrison]

Well that's part of the point, that not everyone will agree. That's why rather than have opinions tossed around here and there, I thought why not collate and average out the different perspectives, to give these newcomers a more complete and accurate base to draw from?

And just to note, I am basing this more on SP, because that is where newer players will cut their teeth. As far as LA Ermor goes, they were my first win against all Mighty AI, and I just walked through the game with almost no complications whatever. EA/LA Mictlan have been very hard for me to pick up. Between no dominion spread from temples, and the thusly heavily enforced blood magic reliance, these nations require more thought and management for a newer player, than most other nations. Again, as I said, these are just my own perspectives on it, but having a central repository for these opinions could possibly help sharpen the learning curve for new players, keeping them interested in the game, and getting them ready to dive into MP more quickly.

[thejeff]

On the other hand, even for beginners, if you remember to blood hunt a little and sacrifice, with a good double bless Mictlan will roll over almost any AI opposition.
If you really didn't want to mess with blood, you could probably get by with just one priest sacrificing the capital blood slave income.

It's a good nation to learn how impressive sacreds can be.

If you're playing more competitively, both blood nations and LA Ermor become micromanagement hell in a decent sized game, so few experienced players would call either easy to play.
Both are quite powerful.

I like the poll idea though. Strength will be pretty easy, especially broken down into early/middle/late game.
Easy playability would be harder to grasp: Make it clear that you mean ease to learn or something similar. It may not be ratable. Is it easier to figure out how to equip thugs to fight different foes or to set up a blood economy or to manage communions?
It may be easier to list for each nation the things you'd have to master to do well with it.

[Amhazair]

The 'chart' idea sounds potentially intresting. Speaking for myself however, (and I'm assuming here that people consider me a veteran, with a couple of MP wins under my belt, even though I still think of myself as relatively new. Must have something to do with how vast this game is. ) I would only feel comfortable rating nations I played myself (not including those I played in SP when I was still very new.) And perhaps a couple I waged long wars against and thought about playing in MP. Which would amount to maybe a dozen nations.

At that rate compiling a comprehensive chart might be somewhat slow going.