HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[WraithLord]

@Ming, thanks for elaborating. I find your reasoning to make perfect sense hence I agree making dawn guards capital only is not preferable for balance purposes.

@Tifone, it does fit the rules.

I think maybe a possible balancing act, besides raising price across the board is to make this nation's temples cost more, maybe 50% more, maybe even a thematic reason for that could be found.

[Tifone]

Mmh, personally (and it could be weird I admit ) I'd prefer something new and strange to balance Hinnom (of course if the devs decide it should be done), something like the Shattered Soul trait was for tartarians.

Hinnom already has the distinctive trait Baalz talked about but it seems it isn't decisive to balance the great strength this nation has in... well, possibly almost any field. ^^

As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

[Ming]

Tifone,

High defense units could cause Hinnom some problems, especially since the Hinnom chariot is not as awesome as its stat might suggest. However, it is more an annoyance as opposed to a glaring weakness as Hinnom's sacreds have two attacks and Dawn Guards' doom sword provides an attack bonus.

The main weakness IMHO is that there are various pitfalls that a careless Hinnom player could fall into and shoot their own foot. In the hands of a good player Hinnom is difficult to counter. At least I have not found one yet (but I am working on it )

[Xietor]

They were one of the 1st races to die in kingmaker. The problem with nations that are tougher than others is they better be tough enough to fight uphill(2 v 1).

[Ming]

Xietor,

I agree that 2 vs 1 is a VERY powerful way of nerfing a strong nation.

[Baalz]

In case anyone is curious, I played a duel with QM yesterday, Hinnom vs Niefelheim. I used the build and strategy laid out here, which I think is pretty much a worst case scenario for Hinnom (well, anybody really) outside of being ganged up on. A good scales build optimized for long term potential set upon by a dual blessed Niefelheim at the hands of a very good player with nothing else to focus on. How many nations can do anything in such a situation other than rolling over and showing their belly?

I lost, but it was quite a squeaker and I don't think either of us would be sure which way it'd go if we did it again. Even with being rushed by Niefelheim in year one with heavy pressure kept up the whole game I managed to get up 5 castles (one was a freebie with the Castle Arcanum magic site) and had a reasonable chance of pushing back for a win until I conceded in the last half of year 3. Again, how many nations can you name that could do that well in this situation? As QM put it with only a little tongue in cheek, Hinnom is probably overpowered merely because they didn't insta-collapse in that situation.

Anyway, my conclusion is that in Hinnom you've got a nation that's in the same league as the very best early game nations - which steadily gets more powerful as the game goes on. I never got to lay any of the really nasty stuff in this guide down, being heavily raided so early I couldn't get a blood economy going, having no access to cold resistance my SCs were neutered, and blood stones don't really help much in such a game...

[MaxWilson]

Baalz said:
In case anyone is curious, I played a duel with QM yesterday, Hinnom vs Niefelheim. I used the build and strategy laid out here, which I think is pretty much a worst case scenario for Hinnom (well, anybody really) outside of being ganged up on. A good scales build optimized for long term potential set upon by a dual blessed Niefelheim at the hands of a very good player with nothing else to focus on. How many nations can do anything in such a situation other than rolling over and showing their belly?

Hmmm, interesting. Hinnom's heat preference undoubtedly helped hold off Niefelheim because all their sacreds are cold-powered--a different early-game power like Helheim might have fared better. And, Hinnom still lost.

Nevertheless, an interesting datum.

-Max

[Baalz]

Baalz said:
In case anyone is curious, I played a duel with QM yesterday, Hinnom vs Niefelheim.

I was playing around with this over the weekend to see what I would do in such a matchup in the future and came up with another couple things I thought should be added to the guide.

Hinnom lacks access to water magic, which makes fighting Niefelheim SC to SC pretty difficult, but even being giants your troops don't hit hard enough to bring down dual blessed Niefels. I actually think this matchup won't be all that uncommon for Hinnom, given the extra attention they'll probably be receiving. So, what to do....

Birch boots give 50% CR which is a great start and something to start using immediately at con-2. Elemental armor will get you the other 50% you need, but unless you get lucky with the 10% random on a Ba'al, you'll need to empower to forge it. This isn't so prohibitive as it sounds at first, you've got strong fire and earth incomes, and you can empower (different mages) with either of them to do this. Since Thau-2 and site searching are going to be very early targets, you should have a solid gem income. Elemental armor and birch boots make an excellent choice for Ba'al even if you're not fighting Neifel.

Next up, Se'ir. I glanced at these guys before writing the guide and dismissed them as OK summons in a nation with lots of excellent other options. They've got a claw, claw, gore attack and 16 str, 28 hp and 7 protection and you summon 8 for 33 bloodslaves. What I didn't realize was they also have +4 berserk, are holy, and are demons. If you have a blood bless (as I suggested), cast blessing, blood lust, then blood letting they now each have 3 attacks at 28 damage and 17 attack. They're size 3, and that right there should be enough to swarm over neifels in anything short of cold-3, but if you can punch up to con-7 you can also cast a very easily castable weapons of sharpness, and you've got air mages to cast arrow fend against the obvious counter.

Trust me, it's sickening how fast these guys carve through any human sized troops even without the weapons of sharpness. With it, I don't see them having much trouble taking out any SCs in the game.

[MaxWilson]

Tifone said:
As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

Isn't "How To Beat Hinnom With X" going to be heavily derivative of the Nation X guide? From Baalz' guide, I get that Hinnom has great expansion and good blood magic, with good Astral magic for endgame strats. Lots of their strength is the carryover from a good early game combined with the ability to do something with that strength later on (better than, say, MA Oceania or MA Man). They do have fairly weak mages--Baalz suggests Hellpower for getting around that and it's a good suggestion--and Dawn Guards are far from the only excellent recruitable unit, but if you want to beat someone playing Hinnom the way Baalz suggests you're going to need to leverage your own strengths instead of merely exploiting Hinnom's theoretical weaknesses.

Let's put it this way: Lanka and Mictlan can both use the Horror-spam tactic to kill SCs, and they can do it BETTER than Hinnom because they're better at blood-hunting. Does that make Lanka unstoppable? Edit: er, wait. No they can't. I'm AFG but I think Send Lesser Horror requires S as well as B. If so the Send Lesser Horror tactic would be restricted to Bogarus, Abysia, and maybe a few others. (Possibly an Abysia/Lanka alliance?) Anyway, a lot harder than I thought.

-Max

[Amhazair]

MaxWilson said:
Let's put it this way: Lanka and Mictlan can both use the Horror-spam tactic to kill SCs, and they can do it BETTER than Hinnom because they're better at blood-hunting. Does that make Lanka unstoppable? Edit: er, wait. No they can't. I'm AFG but I think Send Lesser Horror requires S as well as B. If so the Send Lesser Horror tactic would be restricted to Bogarus, Abysia, and maybe a few others. (Possibly an Abysia/Lanka alliance?) Anyway, a lot harder than I thought.

Mictlan has very nice S/B priests too. They do share the capital only recruitment with all their other high priests (W/B, N/B, F/B) but you'll probably have a fair number of them in any case.