Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[rdonj]

No, they're not naturally AoE, they're just 8 ap damage to a single target. They would, however, be far better if they could reliably get precision increasing spells cast on them. So making Dai Oni have a higher chace at A2 or the national precision spell could be useful. But I'm almost not sure it's worth it for only three shots anyway.

[Irishmafia2020]

I mostly play Ashdod, and they are very powerful in contrast to some A.I. nations. However, I usually play with the $$ and resources at 75% of normal, and the giants are expensive in that case. I can't recruit my biggest guys until I have captured the provinces surrounding my home city, and by then I am usually expanding with mercs and AOR chaff. That suggests to me that the easiest and most balanced way to nerf Ashdod is to increase their big units initial price in resources/money. That way the player must make an early game choice between a SC strategy, or a more conventional strategy. A good player could still be very successful with Ashdod even so, since they have some excellent units otherwise. Their scouts are giants, and they can be outfitted with a crown of command (50 command) an ethereal robe, a skeleton necklace (skeleton spam) a decent weapon, a magic boosting item, and boots of the behemoth (trample) to go with their army of 50 woodsmen each and literally wreak special-ops havoc behind enemy lines. Don't even get me started on how dangerous their Uber-mages are (the 400 gold guys) with their guaranteed level 3 magic + 1, 80 unit leadership, and 50 HP....

[TwoBits]

Eh, Yomi is fine the way it is. Once you realize that it's all about the Dai-Oni (one of the best forging/ritual/combat casting units in the game - don't waste your time trying to turn it into an SC), and that all the other commanders/units are only there to support and protect it, Yomi is a powerhouse. Even the seemingly pathetic 1 Air comes in brutally handy (I'll just mention Rain of Stones for one thing).

But since I'm playing LA R'lyeh at the moment, that's the most troubling 'nerf' I see. R'lyeh "free-spawn" cost up-keep? Huge news to me - I totally did not think so (although I'd been wondering why my upkeep budget has been so high - didn't think I'd had that many Starspawn and mindflayers on the payroll)!

Do all of LA R'lyeh's "free" spawn cost upkeep? If so, how much? If not all, which ones?

And I can totally see how the new change will cripple them badly. Instant starvation and disease on a massive scale. No money at all (as it is, I haven't bought a new mage Starspawn in months, as my upkeep has been consuming well over 50% of my income for some time now - upkeep for so-called free-spawn?). Will your fanatics desert?

"Well, we do like the Dreams, but we like getting paid more, Cthulu F'taghn (just not any time soon)."

Rather than wiping out their population, I think a better "nerf" for R'lyeh would be tweaking their magic paths. Decrease their Astral and increase their Water? Or how about this - change their Earth random to Fire (or even Air)? Yeah, that will give them easier access to all those "acid" type crossover spells, but will eliminate their native ability to forge Crystal Amulets and Shields - without those two boosters (outside of Pretender forging), their goes their 'first turn' Master Enslave. That, or some other tweak to their current crazy Astral ability should be the way to go.

Just making their Dominion more deadly will just make them into another Mictlan, meaning a race that will have to contain their crappy dominion to a limited area (outside of which they'll presumably try to play like MA R'lyeh), but without the ability to blood-sacrifice and what not.

It will ruin all the insane fun that is LA R'lyeh!

[Endoperez]

Some of the R'lyeh freespawn cost money, some don't. I think the only ones that cost anything are the same ones you can recruit from coastal castles, as is common for various summoned things that are also available for recruitment (trolls, Yaksha/Yakshini for MA/LA Bandar, etc).

This just in:
* Ujigami, Mori-no-kami, Kenzoku.

[konming]

All non-void freespawn (those mad *** ones) cost money. They do not cost much, from 1/15 to 2/15 per turn, but it multiplies. No they are not the ones you can recruit from coastal provinces.

[Tifone]

I like Twobits ideas. Rising the killerdom at Ermor's level seems to be a little unthematic, tweaking their strong paths goes better to me. Also, we don't really have a nation heavy on acid spells and wouldn't it be temathic with these alien monstrosities?

[HoneyBadger]

Yomi isn't fine the way it is.

Once you've realized that it's "all about the Dai-Oni", you're free to start to question why that is, or why it should be, all about a single Capital-only commander unit. If nothing else, that's boring, and Yomi's too cool thematically to be built around a single, boring, tactic-I won't bother to call it a strategy, strategies are complex, overarching plans, that require a bunch of elements to come together and work.

Yomi might be "fine" in the sense that it's possible to win a game or two with them, but there's not a whole lot of different ways to do that. The Dai-Oni, just for one narrow example, looks like an SC and walks like an SC. Either they should *be* SCable, or there should be good SC access for this Nation. Big giant demon kings in Samurai armour *not* being good SC chassis is rather confusing and frustrating for anyone trying to play them. Their Oni generals don't even make top-of-the-line thugs.

Yomi's also not "fine" in the sense that they're a demon Nation with no demon summons. There's just something wrong about that. I don't think they even get demon heroes, just some psycho cannibal human guy. Maybe they do, but nothing too special.

Surely, it's reasonable to expect that there have to be other types of demons wherever the Yomi demons come from, and it's just as reasonable to expect that they could be either brought to the surface with applicable rituals, or bribed to fight for Yomi with gems-however you want to imagine the process works. Or occasionally, a unique demon crawls through the Yomi "gate".

It's a really cool Nation, with great graphics, interesting types of demons, and a fun part of history and mythology to draw ideas from, but it's just not where it should be, in terms of gameplay.

It's the exact same situation with EA Aboleths. They have 1 fantastic unit-that's also not SCable-a few ok but not spectacular units, and the rest are marginal. And they don't have *any* National summons, which again is strange, considering that they're a very unique Astral Nation.

They don't even get the Void Gate, like the rest of R'lyeh, which would go a looong way towards making them competitive. I know it's not quite "thematic" for them to have it, but it wouldn't sacrifice the theme to give them some sort of "proto-void", or something.

For that matter, both of these Nations remind me of R'lyeh, without the Void Gate, except that both R'lyeh MA and LA get better recruits than Aboleths.

Oh and I'll second Tifone's idea, I'd love to see an "acid nation", but if it's going on a Vanilla Nation, I'd like to see it applied to Aboleths, who are even more monstrous.

[rdonj]

Just out of curiosity, why don't people think Dai Oni make good SCs? Their stats are fairly decent and they have the ability to cast summon earthpower, soul vortex, and phoenix pyre all naturally. I admit I don't have much experience with SCs but isn't that a fairly strong combination?

[Tifone]

AFAIK people do think they are. They have, as you said, nice stats, and are very self buffable and fully equippable.
But they are middle game SCs... very expensive and you can't use them early without researching buffs and better weapons (armor!) for them - unlike Jarls i.e., they don't have an inbuild aura that kills people of whatever.
In the early game, you just get a big, expensive and encumbered guy with a big knife to hit one enemy a turn while getting swarmed.

[Trumanator]

Their main problem out of the box is the horrible armor they have. Its not the prot, its the encumbrance. That is pretty easy to fix though. Other than that I don't really get it either.