Balance on small maps

[WraithLord]

I have made a short experiment as follows:

Pretnders:
Arco:
Virtue, D-6, order 3, sloth -3, heat -0, growth -3, luck -0, magic -2. A6,E4. Awake.

Van:
Blue dragon, D-10, order 3, sloth -3, cold -3, death -3, misfortune -3, drain -2. W9,F9. Imprisoned.

Default settings.

Turn 1
Arco:
Recruit 9 peltast. Virtue to research. Myrmid. Champ prohpetize.
province count: 1.

Van:
Recruit 2 vanhere, 1 vanherse. prophetize vanherse.
province count: 1.

Turn 2
Arco:
Recruit Myrmid Champ and 2 peltast. Invade two provinces - 1 with virtue, 2 with first army.
province count: 1.

Van:
Recruit 2 vanhere, 1 vanherse. Prophet Vanhers invade one province.
province count: 1.

Turn 3
Arco:
Captured two provinces. one adjacent to Van. In this province set defense to 20 and move army. recruit in all provinces. Virtue to search province.
province count: 3.
Van:
Recruit 2 vanhere, 1 vanherse.
Capture province, plague strike and half pop. are dead.
Invade Arco province with main army and a lightly defended indie province with Vanherse and vanhere.
province count: 2.

on turn 4 Van army is defeated. The Vanherse survived but most of their troops died. Arco took medium casualties. In this battle the Virtue was untoucheble and killed Vans units with impunity.

Of course Van could have focused on defense but Arco would have invaded them with increasingly bigger armies.

Now, this experiment doesn't suggest that bless isn't useful. Only that even on small maps its possible to counter if one set in mind that he's going to face a bless heavy nation.

[Endoperez]

mivayan said:
Sure, that is a point. Perhaps the blitz playing population is a small percentage of the dom3 buyers. But settings cant fix it, unless we gain a setting like 'disable L9 blessing untill the pretender is awake / out of prison'.

Settings can't unless something is changed. As I posted earlier in this thread, Helhirdlings are only slightly more
expensive than other sacred cavalry that is clearly inferior to them (even if Rejuvenation is a nice ability). Increased price, as an example, and perhaps lower def and/or loss of stealth, could help. These can be changed in mods. That drastic changes aren't probably needed.

Endoperez said:with both gold and res at 250%, both Van and Helheim can produce 10 sacred units/turn, WITH Sloth 3.

More like 6, since they cant afford higher dominion, but it doesn't matter.

Fire 9, Water 9 and Dominion 10 CAN be done by both Vanheim and Helheim, thanks to Father of Winters who starts with Water 2, Dominion 3 and for whom new paths cost only 50 points.

Fall in the First Year, or turn 8, I had 8 Helhirdings in the first expansion force, 10 in the second (they lost one) and 14 in the third. I only took Misfortune 1, and lucked out in getting a hero to lead the third group, otherwise I'd only have had 12 in that one. 30 Helhirdings with F9W9 on turn 8 is bad enough.


You did a nice job explaining why arrows won't work against Glamour. I don't like the result, but you presented them well.

[alexti]

WraithLord said:
I have made a short experiment as follows:

Pretnders:
Arco:
Virtue, D-6, order 3, sloth -3, heat -0, growth -3, luck -0, magic -2. A6,E4. Awake.

Van:
Blue dragon, D-10, order 3, sloth -3, cold -3, death -3, misfortune -3, drain -2. W9,F9. Imprisoned.

Default settings.

You take unnecessarily bad scales with Van and it hurts you. Take Father of Winters, imprisoned, F9W9 Dom6, Order+3, Prod +1, cold 1, death 1, misfortune 3, drain 3.
Don't recruit vanherse on the first turn, you don't need extra commander yet, just vanheres (likely 5). Prophetise scout. Next turn add vaheres to starting army and send them together with prophet to conquer. After that you should be able to recruit 6 vanheres and 1 vanherse or vanjarl every second turn. You won't be losing any vanheres, only minor losses will come from your starting army. When you meet Arco, you'll defeat them easily, losing only your easily replaceable starting troops.

You can vary starting scales a bit. Dom 10 is a bad decision, at high end scale one extra vanhere doesn't worth 100 design points. Something in 6-8 range is reasonable.
If you don't play for uber-rush you can swap drain 3,cold 1 for drain 2, cold 2, for example.

[alexti]

Twan said:
But I'd like to see this choice as a new one. Something like :
- dormant 125pts
- dormant out of this plane (no bless) 150pts
- imprisoned 200pts
- imprisoned out of this plane (no bless) 250pts (or even 300 as no bless during 36+ turns is a real handicap)

25 points won't make a real difference, in worst case it will cost one scale step, in the best it will just be use for leftover points. But maybe it might work with something like 50-150 for dormant and 85-250 for imprisoned.

[Twan]

I've proposed it as a design option not changing too much the game, not as a way to force everybody (even on big maps) to take awake gods or gods without blesses for 36 turns, like it would be the case with normal imprisonment giving less than 100 points.

For the balance problem on duel maps, a simple game setting "no bless effects" (or "no level 9 bless effects"), or a player agreement not to take ***heim nations, are IMO the best answers. Changes affecting the balance in all kinds of games should IMO be done only if heavy blesses strategies (or ***heim nations) are proven overpowered on big maps too.

[WraithLord]

@alexti, I will try your modification and see how better Van will fair. Though on a small map an awake SC isn't negligible. For example to virtue is very strong against small groups of vanhere because their chances of actually striking at her are low.

Also I could take better scales for Arco as well. Giving up E4 for the virtue (not that useful until alteration research) and take high prod scales, what will allow me to produce myrmidons or chariots (trample!) instead of peltasts.

Again, this is just an example, I tend to agree to the usefulness of blessing, but I think it can be countered. But if so much evidence from experience says otherwise, well then I'm probably wrong

[alexti]

WraithLord said:
@alexti, I will try your modification and see how better Van will fair. Though on a small map an awake SC isn't negligible.

The difference from awake SC comes just a bit too late. You need to get some research done to make it really work vs blessed troops (for example, Alt-3 and Con-2). Easry research may the answer to the problem. I haven't experimented much yet with easy research.

[alexti]

Twan said:
I've proposed it as a design option not changing too much the game, not as a way to force everybody (even on big maps) to take awake gods or gods without blesses for 36 turns, like it would be the case with normal imprisonment giving less than 100 points.

With blessed strategy dormant/imprisoned is essentially free design points. I think that the idea of dormant/imprisoned was to allow more interesting strategies by permitting pretenders with various magic ability (for later game casting, acccess to magic paths, forging and summoning, or uber SC) at the cost of slower research and expansion in the beginning. In Dom2 rainbow pretenders were pretty weak - dormant/imprisoned are certainly make them more attractive. Bless strategies were already powerful in Dom2 and current dormant/imprisoned status just give them huge boost.

For example, I see no good reason not to play bless strategy with dormant pretender with many nations on any map (not necessarily uber F9W9, but one high bless or few minor blesses, depending on the nations and what magic paths need to be covered).

[WraithLord]

The more I think about this the more I come to like the idea of tying bless potency to the pretenders arrival. Doesn't necessarily have to be all or nothing (no bless until pretender arrives) rather a few steps of increasing bless potency reaching full potency upon arrival.

[DominionsFan]

Uber bless strategy will be still available even with an awaken pretender. Truper's suggestion is excellent, just adjust the settings before you start the game, if you want to "nerf" the bless strategies.