I am not sure if this has been done before but I have started to go through the multiplayer games listed in the forum to see which powers are most often chosen to be played in each age.
I am not sure that this information is of any use other than interest and of course it is not complete yet.
People do not always pick the most powerful nation (in their opinion) but from the data there are certainly some nations that are far more popular than others and few that are extremely unpopular. And I am sure that I am not the only one who has wanted to join a game but seen that the nation I wanted to play (and often my 2nd, 3rd and 4th picks too) had already gone. So I am interested to see if people in general pick the power nations (Good double bless nations, nations powerful in astral or blood etc.) or if any other trends would appear.
So far I have only looked at the first three pages of the multiplayer forum, but I intend to continue on and go further back. This sample includes many of the newbie games set up by Llamabeast and others in the New Year. I have made no distinctions between newbie games and those with more experienced players.
Apart from Blitz style games (which are completely excluded from these numbers) I have also excluded some other games from the analysis. This is because what I am interested in is people’s choices. So where the choice was very limited I have excluded the game. So the following types of games were excluded:
1) Games that had the nations assigned randomly to the players. Obviously the players made no personnel choice in this case on which nation to pick.
2) Games that included nearly all the nations in an age. The people choosing last would obviously have little choice and many people will play if the time/game is right regardless of what nation they have. But I am interested in who people want to play. There was no hard limit here. The eras have different numbers of powers and many LA games exclude Ermor and R’lyeh as well so limiting choice.
3) Games that were not yet full up. As these may be added to the data later I have not included these.
4) Games that spanned multiple ages. There were few of these in any case and I think they make the game play quite differently. The advantage of certain LA nations is their magic diversity or of EA nations is their armour or better bows that is lost if you play against other era nations where they can become merely average or even bad in those areas in comparison. Plus my analysis was on an age by age basis so these would have messed this up
There were games that I have included but the options may change people’s picks. I do not think any changes the game radically enough to fundamentally influence the nation choices. Some make nations more viable but I don’t think that players are purely power gaming when choosing nations. These include the following:
1) Significant mods such as CBM and Epic Heroes. Apart from Worthy Heroes games with mods seemed rather rare. CBM mod certainly makes a lot of changes and could make some nations more interesting or powerful (LA Pangaea for example by restoring the Carrion Woods). But it does not radically alter the nature of many nations, perhaps only LA Pangaea? It tweaks rather than balances the nations in most cases as it does not radically affect magic paths on national mages or drastically nerf or boost national troops.
2) Research speeds and indie strengths. Both can change the game and make some choices better or worse. But there were few of these and the changes were not extreme in most cases. Indie 6 rather than indie 9 etc. Hard rather than Very Hard research.
3) Team games were included unless they failed on one of the above four tests (which most did fail on). Some nations can be weak on their own but be far better in multiplayer, specifically those that have slow starts wcan be shielded to a degree in a team game. But not all team, games even place the teams together so I am not sure how significant this would be so I have included them where possible.
4) Games with mod nations. I have not included the mod nations themselves in the numbers and these games were rare. But I do not think a mod nation in the game drastically changes which nations others will pick. No more than the presence of other sea or blood nations (in particular) influences a player’s selection of another. So I have included the none-mod nations in the figures.
5) Games with a small amount of exclusions or certain picks. Especially the LA games that ban Ermor and R’lyeh, but there were some games that insisted on a certain number of sea nations etc too. While these obviously influence the picks (or none picks) of these nations they probably don’t affect the choice of the other 10 or so other nations so I have included them all.
6) I have included the ‘new’ nations such as Bogarus and Hinnom. Although in some cases these were not available when the games started. So especially with these the figures are suspect. Sometimes they could not be picked and then once they could be everyone wants to try them.
Games included and the results to follow....
Multiplayer - which nations are being chosen?
Some of the results surprise me a little, including the fact that 5 of 7 LA games allowed Ermor and R'lyeh. 
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