Nation builds to smash EA Heims in teh phace.

[dirtywick]

Heh, I don't really know what they were thinking with Helheim at a glance. Give everyone glamour and make them cheap and good? I mean, they've got some oddball path combos on some of the mages, but they're hardly useless with access to both death (good enough to forge boosters too) and blood (Storm Demons, Devils, and Demon Knights are realistic and empowering them to do that isn't a big deal as they won't die of old age). I guess I'm not seeing what their downside is for having such strong national troops. Definately one of the stronger nations.

[curtadams]

I think the Vanheim set always had really strong national units. It's just that in Dom2 supercombatants and mage armies were so dominant it didn't much matter. Now that magic's been seriously toned down 20 defense units which usually ignore the first hit or two due to glamour are just killer.

[Graeme Dice]

Stryke11 said:
It's too bad it needs to be like that, that you have to choose a specific race and specific magic path to be able to compete against another specific race - at the expense of sucking against every other race.

None of the pretenders described so far could be honestly said to "suck" against every other race. If they can deal with F9W9 Helhirdings in the early game without magical support, then they are also likely to be able to deal with just about anything that can get thrown at them.

[Ironhawk]

Foodstamp said:
I think maybe some of the drastic changes in the game were not tested enough when going from Dominions 2 to Dominions 3. The two changes that I think have had a huge impact on this situation are the double income changes and the sleeping/imprisoned pretenders freeing up points.

Ummm... Actually we tested it fine. The first words out of my mouth when I saw the Imprisoned option in the beta were: "Blesses will be insanely powerful. Who cares if your pretender is imprisoned?? Your troops will be unstoppable! He could never arrive, for all they would care."

But, as with many things that I, and other beta testers brought up, it was ignored. The fact is simply this, guys: The Dominions devs just dont play MP enough. They dont understand imbalance like a MP-player understands it. For goodness sake they didnt even know what "skelly-spam" was until I knocked them over the head with it.

It is up to the modders to balance Dom3 for MP.

[Shovah32]

You could also fight fire with fire and go with a mictlan bless.

F9W9B4 imprisoned Moloch
Order 2
Sloth 3
Heat 3
Death 2
Misforune 2
Drain 2
Dominion 10

You have -6% income in provinces with your dominion but you have cheap, massable, quickened sacreds with +2 strength and flaming weapons. You also have a very mean SC (amazing attack and defense, can cast quickness and fireshield_ once your god is awakened and equiped. Jaguars(high strength, big sword) could swarm giants and either them or eagles (transforms on death vrs multiple attacks and flying) could probably (for their cost) outnumber and slaughter the glamour units. Remember that even your most expensive sacred costs less than most of their troops and that you can get 5 eagle warriors per helhirdling.

Also, prophetising your starting warlord will give a very thug capable commander (in lvl 1 friendly dominion he has 25 health, 21 prot, 20 strength, 22 attack and 13 defence with his basic equipment)

[Foodstamp]

Ironhawk, I apologize, I don't mean the beta testers did not do a good job, I just figured the double income was a last minute addition because it has such a huge impact on the game and it looks like the units were not balanced to compensate.

If you guys did not have the ear of the developers on these issues, beta testers are hardly to blame. Dominions 3 plays stellar as a single player game because in that arena, balance does not really matter.

To get back on topic, the Mictlan setup looks really nice. I am amazed that your able to achieve all those spell picks and high dominion. Definetly going to check out that setup!

[WSzaboPeter]

Nice builds. I may add, that pushing your heat dominion in Niefelheim's lands might be a bit difficult. Niefelheim's cold dominion expands BEYOND the dominion of the pretender God (icy winds, see manual 114), and chanses are that Van/Helm/Nief-elheim will have huge dominion, since they need it to recruit sacred troops as early and as much as they can.
I think Caelum's evocation based strategy might work very well.

[Foodstamp]

WSzaboPeter is right, forgot about the cold spread of Neifelheim. I wonder how that affects a very strong hot dominion though. Would it even the temperatures out to a no heat/cold scale, or does it affect the enemy dominions without bias, changing them all to extreme cold scales?

[Endoperez]

Foodstamp said:
Ironhawk, I apologize, I don't mean the beta testers did not do a good job, I just figured the double income was a last minute addition because it has such a huge impact on the game and it looks like the units were not balanced to compensate.

I understand that the income change wasn't tested any more than the income change of DomII. The terrain change made everything different, and there was much less gold around. The game went to a direction the developers hadn't intended (towards SCs). For the third game, further changes were made.

Unit balance is pretty good. There are few offenders, yes, but it's usually more about RESOURCE, not gold, costs. And even more often it's about the special abilities (Strength of the Spring vs Glamour).

I'm not sure how much I can say, but Awakening mechanic was changed, several times. And consensus was VERY rare. Some of the opinions expressed in the old threads might have changed since, after we've become more familiar with the game. Since I've started spending time on #dominions IRC channel, I've found out that many balance discussions take place, and have taken place, that are barely mentioned here in the forums.

IMO, the developers DO play Dominions, and don't play it any less than majority of the Dominions users (although perhaps less than the majority of the forum-goes here) - but they don't play blitzes, where balance problems are QUICKLY noticed, OFTEN mentioned. If it takes two games to understand that there's a balance problem, it will take at least a couple of moths of normal play.

[Shovah32]

If its their dominion your worried about then dominion 10 abysia is probably the way to go. To my suprise i found (about 30 seconds ago) that you can take a dual bless, dominion 10 abysia without going too badly on your scales with this:

Scorpion King
Dominion 10
Imprisoned
F9E9
Order 2
Prod 1
Heat 3
Death 3(try to use your anointed of rhuax to avoid age problems)
Misfortune 2
Drain 2

This will give you fire resistant (immune to that evil bless), 21 prot(nearly immune to helhirdling attacks, berserk vans and strong niefels would cause damage), almost never tiring (enc6 reinvig 4) sacreds with 2 attack 18 flaming morning stars(thats taking weapon penalties into consideration) at strength 19 (so a total of 25 with the morning stars damage). They also have a fireshield (6ap damage) and +3 berserk, these are truely evil creatures (and the reinvig is very useful on your mages)