Quote:
Ming said:
A2. Hinnom's current starting army is about twice as strong as anyone else's. This is almost as good as starting with a free awake pretender. I think this goes a long way in making Hinnom overpowered.
A3. Hinnom's PD is the best in the game. This is similar to A2 above.
A4. Hinnom is relatively forgiving to a players' strategic mistakes simply because it is currently so powerful. Otherwise Hinnom is actually quite difficult to play well. There are many ways of making mistakes (eg. hiring too many Rephaim in the early game) and a players needs to be disciplined and carefully weigh his many viable options to be fully effective. For this reason its effective strength is usually weaker than its theoretical strength.
B. Pretender Design
In my view Pretender design is critical to a nation. It often defines a nation and can make or break it. I have found the following design to be sensible but please remember it has not been tested in MP.
B1. Magic Path
If one wish not to hire too many Rephaim in the early game than some bless is essential to make every one of them count. A fire bless is needed to make it more effective against high defense enemies. Earth and nature blesses are needed to survive (and prevail) while greatly outnumbered. so F4E4N4 would be a minimum. N6 would be nice if one can spare the design points, but it is more a luxury than necessarity.
B2. Scales
B2(i) Sloth 1 Growth 3. You can consider this a crop-out. Sloth 1 helps to ensure that you don't get too many Rephaims out too early and G3 mitigates the impact of pop eating later on. Together they almost (but not quite) eliminate pop eating as a handicap.
B2(ii) Heat 2 should be the standard although Heat 3 can be considered.
B2(iii) Magic one is minimum (and maybe the best choice) as Hinnom's cost effective researchers are all R4 only.
B2(iv) Order and luck is somewhat interlinked and is a difficult decision. Luck 3 is very tempting because Hinnom's heroes are almost as strong as some SC pretenders. However, that might not leave enough points for high order (which would reduce your lucky events anyway) and one really is relying on one's luck. Ultimately I think it comes down to player preference. Personally I would have order3 luck 3 and forget about N6. Maybe that is only because in one test game I was so lucky to get 2 heroes in successive turns in the first year!
From the above I use a Dom5 F4E4N4 O3S1H2G3L3M1 imprisioned Scorpion King but it is by no means definitive. I am sure other choices would also work. Lord of Rebirth is definitely a contender as it opens up the death path.
C. Early game strategy
I would focus on Hinnom's non-blood strengths in the early game and would be using very few (if any) blood hunters in the first year. Its research speed is already below average and no need to hamper it further by diverting mages to blood hunter (not to mention having more pop eating Rephaim!). Send the starting army out blind on turn one and get a leg up on early expension. Avoid farms on this turn so as not to run into a hord of knights (you might still win but it is not worth the losses. With sloth 1 you need resource more than gold at the begining anyway). You can either make your scout into a prophet straight away or wait until you have a Baal. Either way you should have a second army out taking indies without loss by turn 3 and a third one by turn 5. Use indies as screens against the really tough indies and/or combine your armies to minimize loss.
It is important that you try to keep losses of your sacred troops to zero (or close to it). With sloth 1 scale you only get 3 or 4(if you are lucky) replacements per turn. While a dozen sacred troops behind a 20 PD beat back repeated attacks of 100-300 strong without loss against the AI in a test game, such would not be possible against your wily opponents. Against human opposition you would need to back them up with battlefield magic ASAP. This is another reason why I would de-emphasise blood magic in the early game.
Build 800G castles quickly to speed up your research. You can recruit Dawn Guides, which is a very effective unit is its own right, to suppliment your sacreds in these castles. For 40G you get 14 attack, 16 defense, and 24 damage. This is one of the best non-sacred troop in the game and the reason you can afford to take sloth1.
Don't forget the Avvite horn blower either. you won't have a large army and breaking down castles will be a problem without these (That was the mistake I made the first time I tried Hinnom). Have a handful of them following your conquering army around to shorten the length of sieges significantly.
That's all folks (read Baalz's guide for comments on the other areas of playing Hinnom).
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Sorry ming, Overall I disagree quite a lot. Some points:
A2. Agree completely.
A3. Close enough I won't argue.
A4. Agree
B1. The correct number of sacred to build in the early game is ZERO. These units cost WAY to much for rapid expansion.
B2. Scales.
+3 +3 +3 +3 (-1) (+1 or +3).
Hinnom needs production for ALL its units. Very resource intensive. And it needs $. In contrast, it really doesn't need design points very much.
Heat. Go all the way to +3. Sure, it will hurt you (a little). It hurts everyone else more. Secondly, hinnom will almost always have weak dominion. So it wont hurt you that much.
Luck. Misfortune 1. Or even two. Your primary researcher has the ability to cancel negative events. Use it.
Sure, Hinnom national heroes are incredible. Sure, you cut the chance from 3% to 2%. Who cares? You don't *need* them. They're cool, they're neat they're eye candy till the late game. And by then you'll have them.
Magic - player call.
B2. Hinnom has access to most paths. It lacks water, has poor death access. I prefer looking at a dormant rainbow pretender, something like 2 2 2 4 4 0 - with 4's in death and nature, to be able to cast globals. I prefer crones and enchantresses.
C. I ignore blood hunting completely early game. Don't exacerbate pop eating problems, plus it is a question of focus.
Research path:
Con 2; for thistle maces. Enchant -3? For haste. Haste REALLY increases the effectiveness of your tramplers. After that my personal preference is con 4 to start SC contstruction and thau-2, for communion. Probably then blood, just for aid to communions.
I predominantly just use blood in crafting. Hinnom can be perfectly ok in blood hunting - its just a question of *focus*.
I would include 1 hornblower in most units - as I believe they provide a standard bonus. But they really are unnecessary, if you follow my construction plans. 30 or so tramplers, with a few dawn guard mixed in have sufficient strength to seige a lot of castles the turn the province is taken.
However, I do agree that you cannot build enough castles. Baalz missed iirc that you get cheap castles on both hills and forests.
Yes, you need them for building commanders (usually researchers) - but you also need them for income.
Oh, and don't forget to build around 3 acha at some point. Set to heal, they will cure most afflictions in the province.
The tramplers are fairly fragile - so I keep a steady stream of moving wounded ones back to a healing station and advancing fresh ones to the front. No dead heading that way.
Don't forget to use PD. Many people tap out PD at 20 or so. With the giants, in choke provinces, its cost effective up to 30 or 35.
Lastly, you have a Giant priest.. named Karen or Karel something like that. Usually a MUCH better buy than the commanders.
You don't care about leadership - you're going to be ferrying 10-20 troops not 100's.
But the advantage is they have strat move 3 - perfect with the tramplers 3!!!. And they preach and blood hunt. What more could one want. Never without a useful order.
Just one thing. Be careful on scripting. They have a censer or some such thing which causes disease. What you DONT want is that unit getting anywhere near your expensive, units.
So script Holdx5 and cast spells. And keep him (and his disease clouds) well away.
Voila.
Re: HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING
Breakout Champion!
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