HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[Tifone]

Mmh, personally (and it could be weird I admit ) I'd prefer something new and strange to balance Hinnom (of course if the devs decide it should be done), something like the Shattered Soul trait was for tartarians.

Hinnom already has the distinctive trait Baalz talked about but it seems it isn't decisive to balance the great strength this nation has in... well, possibly almost any field. ^^

As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

[Ming]

Hinnom is NOT necessarily an easy nation to maximize its potential, precisely because it has so many awesome ways of overcominging its enemy. However, one doesn't need to unlock its full potential to do well with Hinnom. Even a simple strategy will work. I like Hinnom's complexity but dislike its being so powerful.

I think one way of reducing the power of Hinnom without changing its complexity is to drastically weakens its PD. It might be thematic too. A population that needs to sacrifice their own to pacify their rulers would need a lot of persuation to stand up and fight for them when they are not around.

[Ming]

Tifone,

High defense units could cause Hinnom some problems, especially since the Hinnom chariot is not as awesome as its stat might suggest. However, it is more an annoyance as opposed to a glaring weakness as Hinnom's sacreds have two attacks and Dawn Guards' doom sword provides an attack bonus.

The main weakness IMHO is that there are various pitfalls that a careless Hinnom player could fall into and shoot their own foot. In the hands of a good player Hinnom is difficult to counter. At least I have not found one yet (but I am working on it )

[Xietor]

They were one of the 1st races to die in kingmaker. The problem with nations that are tougher than others is they better be tough enough to fight uphill(2 v 1).

[Ming]

Xietor,

I agree that 2 vs 1 is a VERY powerful way of nerfing a strong nation.

[Baalz]

In case anyone is curious, I played a duel with QM yesterday, Hinnom vs Niefelheim. I used the build and strategy laid out here, which I think is pretty much a worst case scenario for Hinnom (well, anybody really) outside of being ganged up on. A good scales build optimized for long term potential set upon by a dual blessed Niefelheim at the hands of a very good player with nothing else to focus on. How many nations can do anything in such a situation other than rolling over and showing their belly?

I lost, but it was quite a squeaker and I don't think either of us would be sure which way it'd go if we did it again. Even with being rushed by Niefelheim in year one with heavy pressure kept up the whole game I managed to get up 5 castles (one was a freebie with the Castle Arcanum magic site) and had a reasonable chance of pushing back for a win until I conceded in the last half of year 3. Again, how many nations can you name that could do that well in this situation? As QM put it with only a little tongue in cheek, Hinnom is probably overpowered merely because they didn't insta-collapse in that situation.

Anyway, my conclusion is that in Hinnom you've got a nation that's in the same league as the very best early game nations - which steadily gets more powerful as the game goes on. I never got to lay any of the really nasty stuff in this guide down, being heavily raided so early I couldn't get a blood economy going, having no access to cold resistance my SCs were neutered, and blood stones don't really help much in such a game...

[MaxWilson]

Tifone said:
As I always say I wouldn't like this game to became PERFECTLY balanced - it would be boring as hell - but with proper use this nation seems able to steamroll almost everything ^^ My suggestion of a "Guide" or at least some tips about which weaknesses one could exploit (in the positive meaning) to beat Hinnom was not entirely ironic

Isn't "How To Beat Hinnom With X" going to be heavily derivative of the Nation X guide? From Baalz' guide, I get that Hinnom has great expansion and good blood magic, with good Astral magic for endgame strats. Lots of their strength is the carryover from a good early game combined with the ability to do something with that strength later on (better than, say, MA Oceania or MA Man). They do have fairly weak mages--Baalz suggests Hellpower for getting around that and it's a good suggestion--and Dawn Guards are far from the only excellent recruitable unit, but if you want to beat someone playing Hinnom the way Baalz suggests you're going to need to leverage your own strengths instead of merely exploiting Hinnom's theoretical weaknesses.

Let's put it this way: Lanka and Mictlan can both use the Horror-spam tactic to kill SCs, and they can do it BETTER than Hinnom because they're better at blood-hunting. Does that make Lanka unstoppable? Edit: er, wait. No they can't. I'm AFG but I think Send Lesser Horror requires S as well as B. If so the Send Lesser Horror tactic would be restricted to Bogarus, Abysia, and maybe a few others. (Possibly an Abysia/Lanka alliance?) Anyway, a lot harder than I thought.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Baalz said:
In case anyone is curious, I played a duel with QM yesterday, Hinnom vs Niefelheim. I used the build and strategy laid out here, which I think is pretty much a worst case scenario for Hinnom (well, anybody really) outside of being ganged up on. A good scales build optimized for long term potential set upon by a dual blessed Niefelheim at the hands of a very good player with nothing else to focus on. How many nations can do anything in such a situation other than rolling over and showing their belly?

Hmmm, interesting. Hinnom's heat preference undoubtedly helped hold off Niefelheim because all their sacreds are cold-powered--a different early-game power like Helheim might have fared better. And, Hinnom still lost.

Nevertheless, an interesting datum.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Ming said:
I think one way of reducing the power of Hinnom without changing its complexity is to drastically weakens its PD. It might be thematic too. A population that needs to sacrifice their own to pacify their rulers would need a lot of persuation to stand up and fight for them when they are not around.

It might also be a good idea to reexamine the resource cost of Dawn Blades and/or the gcost of Dawn Guards w/rt similar units of other nations. The thing that comes to mind there is def 16 / base defense 13. I suspect they're pretty okay (Kala-Mukhas cost 65 and are sacred) but it's worth looking at, since I believe KO assigns unit abilities before gcost/rcost.

-Max

[Ming]

I just took a look at Hinnom vs. Niefel (inspired by Baalz's post). What struck me immediately is that Hinnom's starting army is roughly twice as strong (or at least would have cost about twice as much to recruit) as Niefel's! No wonder I have always found it worthwhile to gamble and sent Hinnom's starting army out on turn one (I use normal indie setting)! This is a very great advantage. Second, my inspection confirmed my suspicion that Hinnom's units do not seem to be particularly underpriced.

Based on the above I think

1. cutting Hinnom's starting army by half and

2. replacing its PD by 1 Horite per point from 1-19 and 0.5 Horite Champ + 0.5 Horite Hunter per point from 20+, as well as giving Qedesim as its additional leader at 20 instead of Kohen (Horites don't see much action otherwise as they are very expensive goldwise).

should be sufficient to cutting Hinnom down to size without changing its dynamics very much.