HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[Renojustin]

Right, giants walk right through poison arrows. And that's without regeneration.

[JimMorrison]

Nono. If you have enough Androphags, unless the quantity of giants is overwhelming, it becomes a huge issue fast.

It has to do mainly with the "poison damage on hit" mechanic, where even all the arrows that do not do damage, add poison damage to the target.

That combined with the fact that there is only 1 giant per square, and not many of them altogether, means that they will all be taking a lot of hits in each volley.

For example I'm playing a game as Fomoria right now, and I DO have an N4 in my bless, and a few dozen Androphag Archers almost stacked enough poison on one of my forces to rout it by the time I got through their blockers. It was enough to kill 2/8 of my commanders, and similar proportion of my other sacreds in the force, and I haven't been losing many men otherwise. If the person hadn't gone AI, and I was facing a human player, I'd be in some trouble from those guys.

[MaxWilson]

So it's because all the poison hits the same giant, thus negating the high-HP advantage (3x HP, 3x the poison arrows)? Hmmm, okay, that's plausible.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Precisely. You get 100 Androphag Archers in one place (not entirely hard to do, only 6 resources apiece) and you need a LOT of giants, or a LOT of chaff to be able to get them before you take some painful losses.

Now, you could always go 8N-10N on your Hinnom bless. Not sure if that is considered optimal from other considerations, but if you regen 10/turn or something, then those poison arrows really need to work hard to overcome that.

[Ming]

I wasn't thinking about the poison archers actually when I made my comment.

Hinnom has ready access to poison ward (Ench4) which would protect it from the poison arrows.

I was thinking of the likes of Oiorpata. They are only slight;y worse than a Van but cost 50G. Fortunately (for other nations) both poison archers and oiorpata are capital only, forcing the Sauromatia player to make a "hard" choice. The Warrior Queen could also cause Hinnom problems and is recruitable everywhere. It is against these troops that Hinnom might find its chariots useful.

Even though I believe that Sauromatia is Hinnom's #1 threat, I believe Hinnom as it stands would still have an edge against Sauromatia (but I could be wrong). The picture might be different if Hinnom's starting army and PD is nerfed.

[konming]

Pison archer/hydra combo is painful, esp. with a few poison immune warrior socceress mixed in.

[Baalz]

Heh, no, there's no way androphag archers are a big threat to Hinnom for one reason - they've got recruitable SCs with easy poison immunity. Maybe you'll blunt the first attack, but at the point they start being a real annoyance Hinnom will just teleport a poison immune Ba'al (after perhaps stalling a bit for the research) in on any concentration of androphags. Or they can cast arrow fend. Or catch you with a hasted chariot charge squishing straight through to the archers. Hinnom has a *whole* lot of flexibility - don't count on them marching straight towards you with stuff that didn't work in the last fight.

[JimMorrison]

O.o I never really saw Oiorpata as worthy of a big bless (partly because of cap only). Is it mostly due to the obscenely large charge attack they can get off once in the battle if you W9 them? Seems like it would be easy enough to have a screen of lance breakers in front of your actual giants, if you knew who your opponent was. It's much harder to effectively protect yourself from 100 Androphag Archers.

[Ming]

JimMorrison,

A strong bless would benefit non-capital leaders as well as capital-only troops, making it worthy of consideration.

Baalz,

I think a Hinnom-Sauromatia match-up would be very interesting, as both nations have many options (but Hinnom has more) and they need to keep shifting and second-guessing the other player. However, Sauromatia has a weaker start which could prove decisive.