Yet another new person with a question...

[HoneyBadger]

So, your argument is that new players playing Dom3 right out of the box should already be somewhat educated, and know their way around the Forums?

You'll run into just as much trouble from Wolf Tribes, barbarians, and calvalry, with Niefelheim, as you will elephants with Tien Ch'i. Tien Ch'i, however, can deal with elephants by making chariots, which are size 4, and then killing them with archers. This should be a little more obvious, I would think, than trying to find a solution to innumerable little guys with daggers, lances, 2 handed swords, etc (it's a lot easier to educate yourself about your own equipment, than it is about the enemy's stuff). And again, it's a lot more forgiving than Niefelheim, where you can pretty easily lose a 500 gold unit, which may not be easily replaceable, with the wrong scales.

Ok, so assuming that you do start playing as Niefelheim, and haphazardly manage to be successful: How much are you actually learning? How many other Nations play like them? There's very little integration of forces, and almost no National spells. The "best" Blesses are very specific, you won't learn much, if anything, about integration of forces, their mages and priests are powerful, but you won't be doing any Communing, or any mass spellcasting. If, per your argument, the new player is gonna go for a "big flashy unit", they're gonna get a SC Pretender, which is one of the worse picks for Niefelheim, and obviously doesn't work all that well for a lot of strategies. You're also not learning a whole lot about province defense, except that Niefelheim hasn't really got any, and the ecomony of the game is decidedly skewed. You might learn about Forging, but spending multiple turns lovingly equipping your Niefel Jarl with a full suit of (the wrong) magical gear is not going to be very useful at all, in competive play. If all you're building is Niefels, you're not gonna learn a whole lot about building castles in an efficient way, are you? You're also going to have a fairly tough time dealing with fire, poison, and shock damage, and not really understand why, because HULK SMASH. Fighting in the water, as you mentioned, is gonna be a long, long way off, if you ever get there. Oh and Independents? They're gonna die from all that cold, so you're gonna learn that, but that's about it.

[Squirrelloid]

The point to playing nieflheim first is to learn how to script and how to order units around and how to use the UI, not how to strategize.

Learning the mechanics of the game is different than learning the strategy of the game. Nieflheim is easy enough to be successful with so you can focus just on learning mechanics and not worry about the nation.

[sector24]

I can only reiterate what I already said. My first game was more about understanding the interface and the game mechanics. What are afflictions, what's old age? How much upkeep do my soldiers cost? What's the difference between attack and precision, what's fatigue? Can my army take out 50 light infantry? 10 knights? In my first game I didn't even know you could click on a guy's weapon to see its length and damage, there would be no way to know whether I should recruit more archers, pikemen or glaive wielders let alone what armor to give them. The stuff you're talking about I didn't even attempt until my 3rd or 4th game.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

My first game was actually with EA Agartha. I played with pretty low difficulty, toned the indies down to make expansion easier. And god I cursed over how incredibly hard the game was. I refused to give up and eventually little by little I managed to fortify and start turning the wave. It took forever but I won in the end.

I kept asking myself "If these underworld giant badasses are so hard to win with, how is it even possible to play a human nation?"

Oh man, that's great. Congrats for sticking that out, I can't even imagine how painful that must have been. Funnily though, when I was playing the demo, my ea agartha game was the first I had a chance of winning (I played on glory of the gods... yeah, that was never going to end). Although in hindsight, my strategy was remarkably awful

[HoneyBadger]

You can do all of those things with EA Tien Ch'i, Squirreloid. Probably better, since you have more units to order around (and they're simpler and more straightforward than Niefels), and you can learn the UI more easily, because more of it is actually useful to you.

And while you're learning that, you're not also picking up "bad habits" from a Nation that has a particularly narrow way to play successfully ("narrow" in that there's still a lot of--often confusing--options, but not many successful ones).

[Foodstamp]

I don't see how Honeybadger can possibly argue that Niefelheim is unforgiving. IIRC he played them in the 1st mega game with a triple bless and all negative scales.

[HoneyBadger]

And how well did I do with that, before I got Domkilled, Mr. Ghost King I had to kill not once but twice?

(I daresay I'm a better player now, than I used to be, although I'm still not very good--If I had my choice of Nations now, I think if I were going in another huge game like that, I'd go in as Yomi.)

Niefelheim is a really fun Nation to play, don't get me wrong. They're one of my favorites, thematically.

We're not talking about theme here, though.

[13lackGu4rd]

HoneyBadger, my point is that you should never estimate new players as being completely clueless. the tools and information are out there for the taking, it's up to the individual to find and make full use of them. also, actual game play is required to connect the theories you can read about with the practice of actual game play, and how much of the theory actually works for you.

EA TC can and will lose to indies if you're coming from a completely clueless attitude, there's only so much you can produce in order to outproduce 3-6 AIs... with Niefelheim you can easily do that because you don't rely on masses but on small groups of quality groups that suffer much less attrition damage.

as for what you learn from it. the first game is not about strategies, communions, etc. those are far more advanced things. the first game is to get a clue on what the game looks like, the actual visuals, scripting, etc. now, obviously if you're not winning you'll give up a lot faster than if you are, so it's advised to take a strong simple nation instead of a weaker more complex nation. you don't want Niefelheim, fine. take Mictlan/Lanka/Sauromatia/Hinnom. dual bless(or more) works well for all of these nations, and you don't even need to delve into blood to win against the AI. show me an AI army that can effectively stop an army of 100 Jaguar Warriors lead by a High Priest of the Sun(to Divine Bless them) with a proper Mictlan blessing. show me an AI army that can deal with Sauromatia's sacred cavalries with the proper bless, or even mass Androphag Archers without any bless. same goes for Lanka and of course Hinnom. there's a reason why these nations are consider the "EA Powerhouses". they're all very simple to play and completely steamroll the AI without doing anything complicated(battle magic scripting, communions, heavy reliance on blood, etc). sure, these nations, played by a skill player, are completely terrifying, but you don't need to unlock even a quarter of their true potential in order to steamroll the AI and learn the very basics of actual game play.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

You can do all of those things with EA Tien Ch'i, Squirreloid. Probably better, since you have more units to order around (and they're simpler and more straightforward than Niefels), and you can learn the UI more easily, because more of it is actually useful to you.

And while you're learning that, you're not also picking up "bad habits" from a Nation that has a particularly narrow way to play successfully ("narrow" in that there's still a lot of--often confusing--options, but not many successful ones).

What could be simpler than never needing to script anything except attack and still be able to clobber AIs?

[fantasma]

This burns down to the fact that different people have a completely different approach to the game.

Some people never read manuals and start right out, eventually looking things up when they have to. Some are the opposite and have read the whole forum before buying. And so it is with nations. Some feel comfortable stomping around with few tough guys, to others this does not appeal at all (too costly per unit makes some people squeeze), for example. To some it is probably very intuitive to research evocation immediately and wait until fireball is online before even starting expanding, others would not touch the magic system at all until their 5th game, I guess.

Honeybadger and 13lackGu4rd, for example, appear to approach things completely differently. So, please, accept that each has his own style to approach new things and, in the end, there are lots of good advice in the thread, but which are more familiar to one's style remains for the original poster to decide. There is no simple best beginner's nation.