Ashdod is worthless now

[PriestyMan]

you didnt test them before the game started?

[elmokki]

"Oh god, why didn't CBM remove flagellants! I made a bless for them and lost the game!"

[Admiral_Aorta]

remove all nations except mictlan so no one accidentally picks a bad one

[ghoul31]

Originally Posted by elmokki

"Oh god, why didn't CBM remove flagellants! I made a bless for them and lost the game!"

flagellants are a lot more useful than ashdod's sacreds now

so you fail

[ghoul31]

Originally Posted by Admiral_Aorta

remove all nations except mictlan so no one accidentally picks a bad one

with cbm, there aren't supposed to be any bad nations. So you fail also.

[samoht]

I would like to thank everybody who has posted in this thread. I have been kept entertained all weekend.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

You seem convinced that enc 7 is too much without being willing to play them. Considering net enc 2 is better than enc 5 for most troops, including Ashdod's nonsacreds (which work just fine!), this implies you don't actually understand the issues.

Actually is you the one that do not understand the issues. First, having encumbrance 7 is not really a problem. Having encumbrance 7 in a unit that cost 150g 88r, and thus is going to be horribly outnumbered in any situation, is.
Ashdod giants often are incredibly low number armies. To beat chaff (specially, but not only, undead chaff), they need a TON of turns.

There are other high encumbrance units in the game. Centaur Cataphracts have encumbrance 7 as well. However, for the price you have 1 single Annakite that 2 two attacks, Centaurs do *eight* attacks. So the amount of rounds both armies are going to be fighting is not even close. In a combat where Centaurs get say, 30 fatigue, the Annakite get one hundred and twenty.

I don't know what else can I do. I'll reiterate:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

And berserk is an advantage. Those troops are fatigue neutral *until* they berserk, and then they don't run away once they do berserk. Horrors, they build up a little fatigue every round they attack *after* they berzerk. Its still less than the other sacred overall, because they have enough protection (18 with E9+) that putting some damage through that in the early game is hard.

It's an adventage. It's an adventage absolutelly unrelated to what we were discussing, though. You made a remark about "they have encumbrance 5". I quoted you and said that they were berserkers. I suppossed that you understood that I was talking about the fatigue. Obviously you didn't. My fault, I guess.

The fact that you automatically dismiss them because they *eventually* become not-fatigue-neutral sort of demonstrates that you won't be happy until you have fatigue neutral broken giant troops. Since we know that's a bad idea, of course we're skeptical of your position.

see, yet another fallacy (strawman's). I understand it's much easier for you to argue a point that I *did not* say, than the ones I actually said, but it's not really very usefull.

I already said that the nerf was needed. The problem is that CBM forgot to change the cost of the giants proportionally to the nerf. Pre-nerf, they were an incredibly expensive (as in: twice everything else) unit with an incredibly power. Now they are just incredibly expensive.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

Actually is you the one that do not understand the issues. First, having encumbrance 7 is not really a problem. Having encumbrance 7 in a unit that cost 150g 88r, and thus is going to be horribly outnumbered in any situation, is.
Ashdod giants often are incredibly low number armies. To beat chaff (specially, but not only, undead chaff), they need a TON of turns.

There are other high encumbrance units in the game. Centaur Cataphracts have encumbrance 7 as well. However, for the price you have 1 single Annakite that 2 two attacks, Centaurs do *eight* attacks. So the amount of rounds both armies are going to be fighting is not even close. In a combat where Centaurs get say, 30 fatigue, the Annakite get one hundred and twenty.

I don't know what else can I do. I'll reiterate:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

Its not 7 effective encumbrance. What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless. You want to talk about strawmen, why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Regarding Berserk: they're still fatigue neutral until they berserk. Berserking isn't some automatic reaction to being in combat, it requires they take damage. Through protection 18 after E10 bless. And even after they berserk they're going to build up fatigue rather slowly. So yes, I'm well aware of the fatigue, my point is the benefits of berserking vastly outweigh, and it will probably be multiple rounds of combat before they even start berserking in the first place, and until they do they are in fact fatigue neutral.

Way to ignore that commanders are where Ashdod's game has always been, btw, which invalidates your entire side of the argument. The only reason Ashdod uses recruitable troops is expansion - a task for which its units, all its units, are still perfectly good.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Its not 7 effective encumbrance.

REally? My game is bugged then, becouse it says 7

What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway

So you agree with my previous statement, they have 2 ways to play, E10, or losing. Don't you? Becouse you said it otherwise a couple of posts ago. It's hard to follow your "reasoning" with that much flip-flop.
So, please, let be clear:
Is Ashdod a "you must play as this, always, with no other option, period" nation?
If so... is this effect stressed with CBM 1,92?
If so... wasn't the entire point of CBM to make more *options* viable, instead of reinforcing the "good ones", or strippping away things?

, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless.

That's like saying the jaguar warriors have effectively 6 attacks becouse everybody would play them with W9. No, they don't. I've seen people being creative and not using W9F9 jaguars, you know. Not everybody plays like you (fortunately), that's the fun part of this game.
Having a unit that "requires" a bless not to be good, but to be viable, is a ultimate flaw. Encumbrace 7 in a unit that have an attack/gold ratio of seventy five gold and 44 resources per attack pretty much make any non E9 bless completelly unviable. Yes, we agree on this. No, we don't agree this is "working as intended"

You want to talk about strawmen,

I think you don't know what a strawmen fallacy is...

why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Becouse I thought the beauty of this game was being able to play very differently each game. I don't see any excitement in playing Ashdod twice in a row if I'm "forced" to play some specific bless. That said... they have encumbrance 7. Period. If you want to live in a bubble where they have encumbrance 2, fine, then they cost 150 gold, 88 resources, and 6 full scales. Wow. That's pricey.

Regarding Berserk: they're still fatigue neutral until they berserk. Berserking isn't some automatic reaction to being in combat, it requires they take damage. Through protection 18 after E10 bless. And even after they berserk they're going to build up fatigue rather slowly. So yes, I'm well aware of the fatigue, my point is the benefits of berserking vastly outweigh, and it will probably be multiple rounds of combat before they even start berserking in the first place, and until they do they are in fact fatigue neutral.

Which is moot point, becouse it's not what I was talking about. You should try to read what I'm saying and answer to that. Poor strawman is too busy.

Way to ignore that commanders are where Ashdod's game has always been, btw, which invalidates your entire side of the argument. The only reason Ashdod uses recruitable troops is expansion - a task for which its units, all its units, are still perfectly good.

Would you had read what I've already said (or would you comprehend it, if you already read), you would had noticed that I've said several times already that is not that Ashdod is worthless, or overpriced, but that *Annakites* are.

I'll quote myself. I'll bold the relevant parts, to make reading comprehension easier:

The problem is not having encumbrance 7. The problem is the combination of encumbrance 7, with being absolutelly unable to kill opposing armie in less than a gazzillion fighting rounds, becouse of the incredibly high cost per attack ratio. They cost 150g88r.

I already said that the nerf was needed. The problem is that CBM forgot to change the cost of the giants proportionally to the nerf. Pre-nerf, they were an incredibly expensive (as in: twice everything else) unit with an incredibly power. Now they are just incredibly expensive.

I don't think Ashdod is "worthless". They aren't the worse nation in the roster, not by a long shot. However, the OP is right in one thing: that 2 extra encumbrance is hurting them, badly

Encumbrance neutral Ashdod giants are too powerful.
150g88r units with 7 encumbrance are too weak.

Hope the bolding helps with the attention deficit.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Its not 7 effective encumbrance. What you don't get is no one played them without an E10 bless anyway, so their effective encumbrance is *2*. No one is going to use that unit without a big earth bless. You want to talk about strawmen, why are you talking about using a sacred who is obviously going to have an earth bless without factoring in the earth bless. Ignoring the earth bless is why you don't understand why these troops are just fine as is.

Okay, time out.

You overstate the case considerably; That none of the top players in Lamaserver MP games would play a nation like Ashdod in MP without an E10 blessing, or E9 at the very least, because every single one of them plays from the same rulebook where thugging is concerned and compete in an environment where not going mighty men is a sign of insanity - does not in any way, shape, or form imply that nobody playing Ashdod with CBM would play them without a big earth blessing.

Some people might play them in SP games, some in MP games that don't operate by the usual Lamaserver dynamics and player culture, and there are bound to be some who play Ashdod with only a medium size earth blessing or perhaps none at all - and it might be neither stupid nor suboptimal in the games they play, be they SP or MP.

- As an example, in the circle of friends in which I play MP, while the common CBM guides are useful to anybody needing to learn a new nation and we direct new players to read the guides on this forum, they often make assumptions about playstyles that just aren't valid, and the players are a bunch of devious backstabbing bastards with a real-world approach to diplomacy and typically 1-2 decades of experience playing really long-term board and computer games, a niché in which Dominions fits perfectly, so one thing with the other, people often try out unusual nation setups (by Lamaserver standards) and more often than one would expect they succeed over "no-brainer" choices from this forum.

That's not because they are objectively better than the setups and strategies typically discussed in this forum and played by in the Lamaserver games - if such setups were used in a Lamaserver game where the majority of players were Lamaserver veterans, they would probably lose - I'm just pointing out that a cutthroat competitive MP environment does exist where they make sense.

All this to say: For the love of god, don't take what is "the only sensible way to play a nation competitively on Lamaserver" as being the same as "the only way anybody sane would play a nation" and don't denigrate those who quite correctly point out that the changes made to balance one playstyle (that happens to be the favourite Lamaserver style for the nation in question) significantly hurts another playstyle.

Now, for the whining of the OP, feel free to heap scorn, but for triqui pointing out the details of his issue... Surely he doesn't deserve that.