Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[Corwin]

SelfishGene said:
EA Hellheim and Vanheim units should lose glamour and stealth; Hellhirdrings cost +40.

ME Vanheim has stealth +10, glamour (25 stealth) only on scouts and maybe one or two units. Vans cost +40(ish).

LE Vanheim has stealth and glamour. Van cost +40.

No, IMHO it is definitely overkill. Removing glamour AND stealth AND increasing cost by more than 50%??

I think raising cost of vans/herdlings for Helheim and MA Vanheim by 50% would go long way toward helping tone down their sacred. At 115gp per unit, it will be significantly more difficult to recruit large armies of sacred cavalry. Especially so in the beginning. Slower beginning means less territory, means less money to hire more sacred, et cetera.

Removing glamour would take out the most interesting thematic feature of Vanheim line of nations. I am much more in favor of balancing these nations through cost.

And as I said earlier, Midgard should be left alone. It is clearly much less powerful than Helheim and MA Vanheim. I also agree with Indigo - I forgot to mention that in Midgard vans are capital only, which is indeed a very big difference vs MA Vanheim, in addition to their other several relative weaknesses that I have mentioned in earlier in my post.

I also agree that all van-style sacred cavalry should be capital only for all Ages, for the balance purposes, even if it would be less thematic for MA Vanheim.


When nerfing it's important not to go too far. 50% cost increase for already expensive unit is a big change, no matter how you look at it. If needed it could always be tweaked more with future patches.

[Teraswaerto]

Increasing resource costs seems necessary, like Inigo Montoya said. It may not make much difference balance wise, but should be done anyway, in addition to any other changes.

For example, the 12 resource cost of Helhirdings seems so low when compared to the norm as to be a bug.

[Edi]

It seems like there is something of a consensus on the issue of sacreds needing to be capital only but non-sacred cavalry could be recruitable everywhere. It'd be just a matter of adding one more unit to the roster and adding it to the problem nations as well as tweaking the costs of the sacreds.

I think that would make most people happy while retaining all of the thematics of the nations in question.

Edi

[Corwin]

Teraswaerto said:
Increasing resource costs seems necessary, like Inigo Montoya said. It may not make much difference balance wise, but should be done anyway, in addition to any other changes.

For example, the 12 resource cost of Helhirdings seems so low when compared to the norm as to be a bug.

Actually it may have a significant impact on balance. To get F9/W9 bless one of the first scales that tend to go is productivity. As of now everybody plays such strategy with Van/Helheim with Sloth3, since there is no much need for higher resources.

If resource cost of sacred cavalery would increase, it would be impossible to hire many sacred units in the capital on high Sloth settings.


That being said, I do not oppose resource increase for Helheim and ME Vanheim that Inigo suggested. Perhaps some combination of resource and money cost increase might be the best solution.

[Ozymandias]

I sort of like the idea of making Van capitol only and adding a Mounted Vanir Hirdman unit to ME Vanheim. Alternately, I think that a twenty to thirty gold price increase on Van and Helhirdling wouldn't be an excessive nerf. Both would likely be too much. Restricting Van to capitol only would likely mean that at least some ME Vanheim players would switch entirely to the nonsacred cavalry, and probably field a really souped up Allfather again. Increasing the cost wouldn't change the way Vanheim plays much, but might bring them in line with other nations expansion speed.

In any case I really really don't want MA Vanheim to take the sort of heavy handed beating that the Vampire Queen got when the dom 2 forum raised a similar fuss about her. Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

[Corwin]

Ozymandias said:
I sort of like the idea of making Van capitol only and adding a Mounted Vanir Hirdman unit to ME Vanheim. Alternately, I think that a twenty to thirty gold price increase on Van and Helhirdling wouldn't be an excessive nerf. Both would likely be too much. Restricting Van to capitol only would likely mean that at least some ME Vanheim players would switch entirely to the nonsacred cavalry, and probably field a really souped up Allfather again. Increasing the cost wouldn't change the way Vanheim plays much, but might bring them in line with other nations expansion speed.

In any case I really really don't want MA Vanheim to take the sort of heavy handed beating that the Vampire Queen got when the dom 2 forum raised a similar fuss about her. Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

Whenever we talk about "vans" money and resource cost increase, it's important to keep it contained to MA Vanheim and Helheim, since same "van" units are also used in Midgard. However Midgard, as all people here seem to agree, is certainly do not need to be nerfed, since it is clearly much weaker than either Helheim or ME Vanheim.

Perhaps it will be better to have 2 different van units - one for EA/MA, which should be toned down, and one for Midgard, which should be left alone since nerfing it would seriously hurt the nation which is not overpowered in the first place.

[Baalz]

I like PDF's suggestion about removing the van's sacredness, but I'd take it a step further and suggest that you just wipe out the sacredness altogether. You've still got a really good unit, but it's the bless effects that put them over the top. This seems like a good way to ballance them and isn't anti-thematic. They should definately cost more resources to...

[SelfishGene]

There is some love for LA Midgard. I don't know why it's any less prone to spamming then other nations in the early game.

If the Van (under all it's various names) is imbalanced, it's imbalanced in LA as well.

[B0rsuk]

Ozymandias said:
Vanheim was my favorite nation in dom ppp; it would be terrible if they ended up as awesome flavor text on otherwise unusable and overpriced units.

I know Dominions2: SC's and Dominions3: F9W9, but Dominions:PPP ? What does PPP stand for ?

[Corwin]

SelfishGene said:
There is some love for LA Midgard. I don't know why it's any less prone to spamming then other nations in the early game.

If the Van (under all it's various names) is imbalanced, it's imbalanced in LA as well.

Not really. Have you played Midgard in MP?
Read the earlier posts by me and Inigo, it states several reasons for it. You have to consider the nation as a whole when making any changes to its untis, or you will end up with broken and unbalanced nations.