Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[Lingchih]

Yes, Ashdod needs a nerf too, but I think the devs know this. They are just looking for more info on how over-powered Ashdod is. Your post should help.

thanks

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Probably not too well, since EA Ulm doesn't have any units with that ability.

Irrelevent (as you know). Single Age mod allows any age to face any age.

Elephants and mammoths are size 6, so hinnom chariots could never trample them. Niefel giants are size 5 and I don't believe size 6 hinnom chariots could beat them via trampling - size 6 vs size 5 and they're quite a lot worse, particularly against cold aura blessed units that are 1 to a square.

That would be a pretty major boost, changing flames from inaccurate spray to laser precise magic missiles.

Yomi needs a big boost. Personally I agree. I'd rather see the area of effect increase, rather than the precision - but I don't think that happens.

But the precision algorithm is seriously whacked. Routinely you will hit something 30degrees or 45 degrees away from where you were aiming. I'm not an archer. Never have been, never will be.
But I can damn sure do better than a 45 degree variance. Routinely.

[rdonj]

Keep in mind that that would basically be like giving them aoe crossbows that can't be stopped by shields. I don't think that would be terribly fair, especially after you got wind guide researched and your opponent realized that arrow fend won't stop the flames anymore.

[konming]

They are fire based, so anything immune to fire won't be affected. Fire drake has this ability for ages, and no one thinks too highly of it.

[rdonj]

That's because fire drakes cost a lot of gems, and losing that many gems isn't fun. But I think they're underrated, personally. Look at it this way, what if all Aka-oni could cast the fireball spell, for no fatigue, 3 times in every battle. Would that be fair?

Personally I would favor the precision boost. They would be pretty worthwhile with a bit better precision without being 25 gold mini-mages with limited immortality.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Lingchih

Yes, Ashdod needs a nerf too, but I think the devs know this. They are just looking for more info on how over-powered Ashdod is. Your post should help.

thanks

I don't know if I'm advocating for a nerf or not. Part of the fun of strategy games is identifying the "best" strategies and getting to exploit them: in this case it was pretty obvious that a good bless benefits Ashdod way more than an SC pretender because they already have recruitable SCs, and almost everything else follows from there. I might just be advocating that if you play with Ashdod, you will need to create custom "Super Impossible" AIs to play against (give them lots of extra gems, research bonus, etc.) in order to make it fun. "Nerfing," to me, is more about MP and I don't have any data on how Ashdod plays in MP. I suspect they're going to be gold-hungry, and will have a little bit of trouble getting early research started because Adonim take a couple of turns to recruit until you get Resources up (thus preventing you from recruiting *two* mages). The single-Adon expansion parties are also a little brittle and perhaps susceptible to ambush. Somehow, people manage to stave off Niefelheim, and with no cold aura I expect an Ashdod rush to be less frightening than Niefelheim but perhaps on par with Lanka or Helheim.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Personally I would favor the precision boost. They would be pretty worthwhile with a bit better precision without being 25 gold mini-mages with limited immortality.

Recruitable anywhere, at that. I think Yomi could use a boost but making Throw Flames AoE would be huge. I should probably do it for the AI in my games, though, just for fun and flavor. I already gave them furs to boost their Prot to 10 (and Encumbrance to 5).

-Max

[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....

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Recruitable anywhere, at that. I think Yomi could use a boost but making Throw Flames AoE would be huge. I should probably do it for the AI in my games, though, just for fun and flavor. I already gave them furs to boost their Prot to 10 (and Encumbrance to 5).

-Max

IIRC they are already AoE. I was just advocating making the AoE larger. This is one of the reasons that I think Yomi is advocated to be played wrong. Even so, yomi still has mage path problems. Aka... switch yomi's national mage to a2, or give them a demonic precision spell equivalent to windguide.. and you'd see a quantum improvement.

[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.