Some hint about early nations to ban to skilled players?

[Endoperez]

Arrows poison even if the arrows are parried by shields. Shields are the simplest counter to hordes of archers.

Originally Posted by WingedDog

I'm quet happy for you. Now tell me what chances does unexperienced Marveni player have against, say, experienced Helheim one?

Unexperienced loses vs experienced. However, there is a good guide for Marverni, which covers early game tactics against different enemies, magic research for early game and how to utilize teleporting battlefield mages.

[Gandalf Parker]

This will not be settled easily Id guess.
There are always discussions about too powerful, or too easy, or automatic win, etc etc. But when it comes down to selecting, no one seems to agree on what ones they were talking about. So I tend to disregard such conversations.

IMHO any experienced player with the nation of this choice would fall into the category you want. And any inexperienced player wont matter what nation they get.

Some options that have been used are:
randomly assigning nations
randomly building the gods, scales, and then randomly assigning nations
having everyone turn in a god build then redistributing them

Or lately there have been two mods created which allows everyone to play against each other using exactly the same nation and god choices. A single nation cloned many times.

[WingedDog]

sum1lost
I give up, you are right.
My point was if an experienced player is in the game with newbies, he shouldn't choose the rush nation, but the nation it takes some time to bring to power.

Arrows poison even if the arrows are parried by shields. Shields are the simplest counter to hordes of archers.

I thought it was a feature. Poison cloud making arrows.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by WingedDog

sum1lost
I give up, you are right.
My point was if an experienced player is in the game with newbies, he shouldn't choose the rush nation, but the nation it takes some time to bring to power.

I thought it was a feature. Poison cloud making arrows.

It's a feature, all right. LA Ctis has something similar, only they are slingers.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Psycho

It's a feature, all right. LA Ctis has something similar, only they are slingers.

Except poison slings are specifically intended to be poison cloud weapons. They work quite differently from poison arrows. See their shorter range, lower accuracy, lack of real mundane damage, poison cloud secondary effect, lasting cloud, description in the unit description etc.

KO said the arrows were intended to poison only on dealing damage. The description on one of the poison archers talks about this too.

I don't really see there's a discussion here.

[HoneyBadger]

Make 'em play aboleths, that'll teach 'em.

[Aezeal]

Personally I'd say the Heims, Sauromatia, Hinnom and Lanka and maybe mictlan. If the other players (the nubs) then take one of the nations above and read the respective guides well it might be a game with a somewhat even start. (though experience will be the deciding factor in mid/end game.. I'd advice the nubs to go pretty heavy on a bless and then pretty heavy on a rush on their most experienced neighbour )

[MaxWilson]

I'd say let them have any nation they want, but start the newbies off with an extra SC and some magic items. The newbies will probably lose eventually just because the experienced ones know more tricks but they'll have fun being powerful at the beginning, and will be more willing to play again so they can use the tricks themselves. All you really want to avoid is the newbies getting steamrollered early on, and that means they need an SC or a bless or both.

-Max

[vfb]

You could also use pretender points for handicapping. Something like: the 2 experienced guys have to have 200 points left over at pretender creation time, the experienced guy needs 100 left-over points on his god, and the newbs get to use all the points. That might not be enough though.

[Agema]

I don't think there's that much you do to stop an experienced player absolutely trouncing an inexperienced one, but Max and VFB's suggestions look pretty good to me. I might lean to Max's, because the inexperienced ones should learn a lot and as that disadvantage declines, their start-game advantage will become progressively less useful.

But yeah, restricting a few nations for the experienced ones might be a good idea as well.