No more MP for Hinnom?

[hunt11]

The buffs suggested seem like it would do the trick, with them Hinnom would still be a good nation, but it will not be too good.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im glad to see that KO is looking into this and Im very glad to see the players making suggestions. I wish that I could also but truthfully I just could never find them fun to play. There never seemed to be much thinking in deciding what they should do. There didnt seem to be much specialty-use units.

The most thinking was putting my archers to the left of the battlefield (to avoid hitting my own men) and setting them to fire at archers. Setting my tramplers to the right (bottomof the placement screen) of the battlefield to avoid trampling my own and setting them to hold and attack rearmost. Then setting my infantry in the middle behind the mercs and set to hold and attack closest.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

Now I wonder a bit about Ashdod. THey have been discussed a lot less, but they are portrayed as almost Hinnomish in power. The Zamzummim and summons are mentioned, but I have less to go on here.

I guess they have been less common in MP games?

Some things I consider:
- Lower PD, not horites though
- Fewer starting troops
- Chariot nerf (possibly size, possibly something else that might affect other tramplers as well)
- Dawn Guard +5g to original cost level.

Not sure about this, but I had an idea of switching Melqart and Ba'al blood magic lvl. Might need a slight rewrite of descriptions and events.

Main objective of nerf: reduce initial expansion power.

Sorry, I know I said I'd write a guide but I haven't gotten Ashdod in a game yet and I can't "get inside the head" of a nation until I've played them against people.

On your ideas I think they're all good, though I agree with others that nerfing tramping in general would have very wide reaching side effects that are a bit hard to assess the scope of. Reducing the size seems best, given the size of the other giants and the fact human chariots only increase the size by one.

A couple other ideas -

Remove Hinnom's ability to produce their best research & combat mage without a lab. Either change the mechanic which allows this, or give them a set path. It's kinda cool that other nations can recruit a weak mage if they haven't gotten a lab up yet, it's pretty much an exploit that Hinnom can crank out battle/research mages with no need to ever put up a second lab until it's convenient. Or maybe make those guys cap only? *That* would be a pretty big nerf.

Perhaps add a minor unrest effect to complement the population eating? Thematic and a tiny amount would go a long way towards reducing their ability to bloodhunt. Even a tiny amount would make it so you could really only use two blood hunters per province, thus cutting down their blood income by 1/3rd.

[OmikronWarrior]

On the question of Tramplers, I always beleived the best way to "nerf" them would be force repel checks on sufficiently long weapons (say 12 length of weapons in the square). They'd still be fine for expansion, but would give players a non-magic option for countering them with out lots of mages.

[K]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Remove Hinnom's ability to produce their best research & combat mage without a lab. Either change the mechanic which allows this, or give them a set path. It's kinda cool that other nations can recruit a weak mage if they haven't gotten a lab up yet, it's pretty much an exploit that Hinnom can crank out battle/research mages with no need to ever put up a second lab until it's convenient.

This is the idea I would support. Giant nations tends to be balanced by the fact that while individually they are more powerful, they are a greater investment to build.

By letting them pump out good research mages without a lab and/or temple, you are basically funding their troops (an advantage no other giant nation can claim).

I also think that the Shaman they get seems like an oversight from the design process. He adds Death to an already diverse nation and seems designed just to let people climb the death ladder and/or make Flaming Skulls.

Also, their starting army is awesome. Cut that back to something reasonable and their early rush is extremely blunted. As far as I can tell, Hinnom's starting army is the only one in the game that can take a province a turn for the first ten turns.

[HoneyBadger]

You know, the Devs themselves have even stated that they assumed balancing problems would be taken care of by the modding community, so I wonder why more people don't try to create MP friendly versions of Nations? Where's the great shame and doubt in this? There's good, easy access to in-game graphics now, so Hinnom will look the same, and it's a lot faster and easier than waiting for the off-chance that one of the Devs *might* someday play a Nation you think is unbalanced, and *might* rebalance it in a way that satisfies you.

Sure, you'll get the same arguments and hassles about how it's still not balanced, but once the work of actually recreating the vanilla nation is done, making adjustments becomes a fairly simple process that anyone can do.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im of the same opinion.
Except that Im hoping for the AI complainers to mod more AI friendly nations.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, yeah, you and I both share a love of the SP game. I keep hoping the Devs will gift us with a magical bundle of tools that we can, at the very least, unpack and put into play. It's a faint hope, though.

There is some work being done on making the AI more challenging in the Mod forums, by Edratman. From what I've read, he seems to have the right idea about what needs doing to make it better-atleast as far as preventing the AI from suiciding itself.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

You know, the Devs themselves have even stated that they assumed balancing problems would be taken care of by the modding community, so I wonder why more people don't try to create MP friendly versions of Nations? Where's the great shame and doubt in this? There's good, easy access to in-game graphics now, so Hinnom will look the same, and it's a lot faster and easier than waiting for the off-chance that one of the Devs *might* someday play a Nation you think is unbalanced, and *might* rebalance it in a way that satisfies you.

Sure, you'll get the same arguments and hassles about how it's still not balanced, but once the work of actually recreating the vanilla nation is done, making adjustments becomes a fairly simple process that anyone can do.

While this is a great theory, there are a couple of problems with it. First being that we've only even been able to properly use mod nations in MP games for a couple of weeks, so it's not as if everyone's mindset is geared towards that. But I think the major hurdle is that most people are going to be a bit leary about mod nations that they haven't experienced before. I mean, consider the body of effort that has gone into at least making a case for balancing Hinnom - to expect that sort of undertaking for a mod nation may be a bit fanciful. So it's likely that a lot of people (other than the most experienced, who are either 100% confident in themselves, or who can assess the mod nation at a glance) will continue to have a generally fearful perspective on the unknown. Obviously, you could release a mod version of Hinnom that was declared "toned down" or "weakened", but even if people acknowledged it were true, I bet you more often than not if someone said they were implementing that mod, no one would want to use the player nerfed nation.

I'm not saying no one will ever include player modified vanilla nations, or that no one would ever select that particular mod nation, only that there is a bit of a gap between where we are now, and that being commonplace on either end.

But also, it seems to me that everyone is pretty comfortable with there being "some" discrepancy in power. I mean everyone acknowledges that Lanka and Niefel are powerhouses, and they usually get picked fast, but they're within a certain variance that is acceptable, because they CAN be taken down with a joint effort, and often are as a result. Because of that, it does seem reasonable to ask for them to be brought within that range of variance so that perhaps they might be considered very strong, but not entirely unfairly so. And not necessarily to expect it to be this grand sweeping fine-tuning. A few increases in resource/gold cost, maybe a certain unit made capital only, a tiny change to starting army, and voila, you have surely brought the nation more in line with their expected performance.

[Edratman]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Im of the same opinion.
Except that Im hoping for the AI complainers to mod more AI friendly nations.

There are two mods available for AI friendly nations, EA Improved Computer Opponents and MA Improved Computer Opponents. Each mod improves the six nations with the lowest number of MP victories.