Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

JimMorrison · #1 July 14th, 2008, 04:09 PM

Take your tim Xi.

It seems this will be a work in progress for some time.

And Jeff, I do agree with that somewhat. But some people's favorites, they will still tell you to *always* take an awake SC because their early troops are awful. I'm not looking for people to just pick nations to bash to round out the curve, just to look at things fairly so that the numbers have relevance. Truthfully, I would like to see very few nations at 1 or 5. But with a 5 point scale, that's kind of sticky, originally I was going to do 1-10, and I think a lot of people's 5's would end up as 8 or 9 if I had done so, but I was convinced this would get more input..... oh the humanity!

And Wrana, just bear in mind, a big part of that really is the Ease of Learning. Like Caelum for example, I think is very hard to learn how to use properly. At least for me, I tried them twice with such terrible failure, it took a third and very concerted effort, once I new the game a lot better, to finally tackle them and learn how to effectively leverage their strengths. And they're not even a nation like Yomi/Shinu where it's hard to discern where the strengths actually lie - you can see them, but making them effective is just not a simple thing.

Wrana · #2 July 14th, 2008, 05:20 PM

Agree. You can subtract 1 from "ease of learning" for nations which caused such controversy.

Actually, I'd suggest you do it routinely for nations causing much discussion - if there is that much disagreement, than they are surely not so easy to learn after all!

Gandalf Parker · #3 July 14th, 2008, 06:24 PM

Good point. That is probably the best way for me to voice my pert peeve. Its not that the player is missing the point, its that the nation is not one of the easier ones to learn how to play.

Speaking of which....
in testing out things about PD I came across something I had not realized. Did you know that those stupid little monkeys that some people hate have a scout with +50 stealth? They are able to get thru PD of 125 (the max I can test easily by my present method). Most stealth troops are stealth of 0, most national scouts are stalth +10, Caelum scouts are +15, Pangaea +20, and Vanheim +35 (all early era).

For those who dont know, most of the things on a units info display will give more info if you click it.

Ming · #4 July 14th, 2008, 06:55 PM

I enjoy this thread very much but I also have difficulty myself in summarizing various nation's strength at different periods. I think there might be danger that different people mean very different things by their ratings.

For my part the greatest difficulty I have in rating these nations (aside from being relatively inexperienced in general and ZERO experience in MP) is that often one can make conscious trade-offs in the timing of a nations strength through different pretender designs.

Take Bogarus for example, most players will take an awake SC pretender to overcome its weak starting troops, at the expense of its late game strength - which it can probably manage without help from its pretender. On the other hand, few would take an awake pretender on nations with strong sacreds. So should one compare the early game strength of Bogarus with an awake Dom10 Wyrm with dual bless nations without the benefit of an awake pretender as opposed to a straight forward comparison?

It is even more complex for many of the nations in the middle. How one spend the design points and when the pretender awakes have major bearings on the strength of a nation at various periods and can be tailored by the player.

If the ratings are accompanied by some references to the Pretender choice it might clarify matters somewhat.

Xietor · #5 July 14th, 2008, 07:01 PM

The reason i gave top rating to Ctis in the Midgame, is their research and income are second to none. They should be the 1st nation to have banelords, constr 6 gear, shadow blast etc. to supplement their admittedly weak national troops.

Ctis mages are good early with skelly spam. Their main weakness is Wolven Winter that a prudent enemy casts before every battle with them.

Shinuyama is a 4 late game for me because they get every mage at every castle, and their mages can cast banefire, which has no resist. Ghost riders and earth attacks are easy for them as well.

Zeldor · #6 July 14th, 2008, 07:18 PM

Ming:

Of course not. We are talking about NATION strength. PoD will add +1 or +2 for early game for every nation. The fact that some nations must take one says a lot about their early game weakness.

JimMorrison:

Still, getting average rating seems like not a best solution. As I said we have many unexperienced players here. Some really outragous ratings should be ignored [or maybe even all ratings from people like that, so they stick to what they know], for example giving Bogarus anything over 3 for early game [even 3 is shady]. We want it to make guideline, especially for new people and we cannot pollute results like that.

Amhazair · #7 July 14th, 2008, 07:45 PM

Ah, but then who decides what is an outrageous rating? If you look just at the ratings that have been submitted so far you can see (for example) me giving EA Yomi an early game rating of one, and EA Oceania a mid game of one too, while QM gives both of those 3. I'd say the difference between average and abysmal is quite big and yet the veteran player and recognized balance expert QM soundly disagrees with my opinion. Now, I could go out on a limb here, and say that obviously QM had temporarily taken leave of his sences when rating those nations, but that seems a dicey supposition at best...

All right then, you might answer. There is indeed a big difference between 1 and 3, but let's rate it as 'barely acceptable' After all, we can hardly disagree with QM the balance guru, so I would like to discount your 1's, but you (that would be me, to keep things simple.

) are starting to build a bit of a reputation of your own, so I can't just discount your opinion like I'd do if you were a newer player.

So here we have it, everything between 1 and 3 is then an acceptable rating. But then comes along another guy and he claims *gasp* that Dai Oni with a right bless are awesome expanders, not much worse than the best this game has to offer, and he rates the Yomi early game a 4. Now me, having rated Yomi a 1 for early game would obviously think that this guy has been smoking to much crack lately, and might feel his 4 should be discounted. But, says you, QM felt them worth a 3. (we're talking about the great QM here, remember. (not that I want to make him feel uncomfortable or anything

) ) And if QM felt them worth a 3 it's only reasonable that some other random guy thinks them a 4, right? ...

I could go on being wordy for a while, but I think you might be starting to get my point by now...

Zeldor · #8 July 14th, 2008, 07:53 PM

Amhazair:

Well, one experienced player is not enough. I was rather talking about obvious examples. You just need a scale to fit all nations. And then you can discuss if that nation suckss or it can get to so-so or even average with appropriate tactic [no counting awake SC].

And if Yomi deserves 1 I don't know. You'd have to compare them to Marverni, I think they are the real ruler of 1 point for early expansion in EA. I don't have MP experience in that age, beside blitzes.

P.S. I should do smth else than spamming forums, heh, way too much free time recently.

Kristoffer O · #9 July 15th, 2008, 05:35 AM

Quote:

Amhazair said:
Ah, but then who decides what is an outrageous rating? If you look just at the ratings that have been submitted so far you can see (for example) me giving EA Yomi an early game rating of one, and EA Oceania a mid game of one too, while QM gives both of those 3. I'd say the difference between average and abysmal is quite big and yet the veteran player and recognized balance expert QM soundly disagrees with my opinion. Now, I could go out on a limb here, and say that obviously QM had temporarily taken leave of his sences when rating those nations, but that seems a dicey supposition at best...

All right then, you might answer. There is indeed a big difference between 1 and 3, but let's rate it as 'barely acceptable' After all, we can hardly disagree with QM the balance guru, so I would like to discount your 1's, but you (that would be me, to keep things simple.

) are starting to build a bit of a reputation of your own, so I can't just discount your opinion like I'd do if you were a newer player.

So here we have it, everything between 1 and 3 is then an acceptable rating. But then comes along another guy and he claims *gasp* that Dai Oni with a right bless are awesome expanders, not much worse than the best this game has to offer, and he rates the Yomi early game a 4. Now me, having rated Yomi a 1 for early game would obviously think that this guy has been smoking to much crack lately, and might feel his 4 should be discounted. But, says you, QM felt them worth a 3. (we're talking about the great QM here, remember. (not that I want to make him feel uncomfortable or anything

) ) And if QM felt them worth a 3 it's only reasonable that some other random guy thinks them a 4, right? ...

I could go on being wordy for a while, but I think you might be starting to get my point by now...

Recently beaten by Amhazair as Yomi, I can agree that they are perhaps not very strong (when confronted with LA black centaurs

). The kingmaker setting might be a problem since LA nations are not supposed to meet EA one. But centaurs are there in both eras. I might blame my scales as well. I imagine they were not optimal. I dislike optimal scales. But i got some early money events that enabled me to get additional dai onis. Dai Onis are good vs indeps, but not that strong vs high morale blessed troops. I imagine it would have gone better if I had not chosen to attack Amhazair. My other choice was ashdod, and I didn't want a giant-daioni matchup, and I dislike peace

I would probably place Yomi 2 early game, since they are a bit unflexible at start. They have the dai oni, but everyone knows that and they can be countered by clever players. Troops etc are also inferior vs human players. Banishment is not used by indeps to the same extent.

Gandalf Parker · #10 July 14th, 2008, 07:23 PM

Early vs Late game comparisons also come into play in other ways. Some of the MPers live almost entirely on small-map few-player blitz style games. While this can be a way to get a quick rating of whose strategy can beat whose, it can give a very focused view of nation ratings.

Even in test-games for the beta group this became apparent. Testing the AIs. I would run games with all of the nations on AI and auto-process a turn every few minutes for days. And then run the same games over and over to take into account factors such as which nation landed next to which other nation, and special events early in the game affecting outcomes. Eventually I could give a general answer as far as early death, early game leader, mid-game leader, late game leader. But map sizes (tiny, small, mid, large, huge, epic) also had a drastic impact. Not to mention other settings people like to alter in a games parameters.