High Bless rush strategy :(

[Arameyan]

Hi all,

I wonder how to beat high bless strategy in MP. It seems that blessed elites like F9W9 Vans and N9 Niefel Jarls are very powerful in small to medium maps. Are they balanced?

Even when knowing it at the beginning of the game, I appear to me that its hard to duel theses strats. Maybe a Super Early-game SC pretender?

I know all strategies have weaknesses. With N9 jarls you can take D9 (another bless strat...) to cripple them (or spam stellar cascade), but is it really a weakness?

In the long run other strats (summons, battlefield magic, etc) can match the Bless one. My point is just that High Bless strat is really esay to use and effective at the firsts turns of the game.

Last point: Dominions is the best game in the world (besides Chess and Poker) and I'm a huge fan.

[DominionsFan]

Good question. High bless strat is excellent in 2-4 player blitzes for sure, and to be honest it is a must have also, since everyone using some high bless strat in blitz games.
It is impossible to survive a high bless rush with a non high bless design in the first part of the blitz.


In long term games [hosted on big maps], the high bless strategy is not that important imo. It can help a lot, but you might want to spend your design points elsewhere in those long games.

[Shovah32]

Bless strats are very strong and popular, especially on small maps. F9W9 is a common bless used with units like vans, it makes them extremely hard to hit and have great damage potential. Bless strats are very powerful and easy to use but each has a weakness, alot of sacreds cant take damage leaving them open to AoE spells like falling fires/frost, the tougher sacreds are either so poor at damage that they can just be swamped or so expensive that a few decent mages/crossbow groups can slaughter them (especially astral mages) even with low research.

In the long run, if your bless dosnt let you take out some-one else asap you can get left behind because your poor scales will leave you behind in gold, allowing the enemy to out mage and therefor out-everything you by mid-late game.

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFan said:
Good question. High bless strat is excellent in 2-4 player blitzes for sure, and to be honest it is a must have also, since everyone using some high bless strat in blitz games.
It is impossible to survive a high bless rush with a non high bless design in the first part of the blitz.

Impossible? As a simple example, C'Tis in every age wouldn't have a hard time (Well, possibly where they are weakest in the middle age), since they don't take any significant losses while expanding, and only need to research to enchantment 3 to be able to deal with the sacred troops of any nation. Pythium certainly isn't going to use a level 9 bless effect, nor would Caelum, Machaka, R'Lyeh, Arcoscephale, or Man.

[Truper]

Skelly spam is not going to save C'tis. There are going to be too many sacred troops. Bless-rush strats in Dom3 work much better than they did in Dom2, for 3 reasons.

1. The amount of gold available means bless-worthy but expensive troops can be available in quantity.

2. Because research costs have increased significantly, magical counters become available much later than they used to.

3. Extra design points are available from imprisoned pretenders. This means that additional blesses or better scales can be added to a Dom2 bless strat.

Right now, I find uber-bless strats by certain nations to be annoyingly powerful. I need to play some more long-term games before I can say more than that - although I want to

[Graeme Dice]

Truper said:
Skelly spam is not going to save C'tis. There are going to be too many sacred troops.

I just ran a test game against myself between C'Tis and Helheim on a 20 province random map, and I can see what you're saying. Even though it only takes 8 turns to research enchantment 3 with a magic 3 scale, that doesn't make up enough difference to keep F9W9 helhirdings from overruning your lines.

[Nerfix]

Well EA Vanheim/Helheim are sickeningly powerful anyway. Glamour on nearly all units FTW!

On bless strats, they can be very, very powerful for some nations like Niefelheim, the Vanic nations, Mictlan (those OzeLOLs are in perfect synergy with the classic W9/F9 bless) and Marignon. Late Atlantis also seems to get nice bonii from taking a smitter of Air bless and then taking some other bless to lvl 9. Pity Arssartuts are capital only. And there are propably a lot more examples than I can even count.

Other nations don't benefit from it nowhere as much, MA Ulm being the prime example with no bless troops at all.

Isn't 9F,9W hideously expensive anyway? There's no God chasis with both water & fire, so your eco will most likely take a hit. IMO in Dom3 you cannot afford to sacrifice the economy as in Dom2, in this the new version plays pretty much like Dom:PPP did.

How about this to counter the 9F,9W vans:
-Abysia with a 9F bless: you are inmune to their fire attacks, but they are not to yours.
-Any SC god with high protection and some fire magic: take the field, cast fire resist, fire shield and either evocations or attack.
-Niefelheim with a Dom8 10e,4n,2f cyclops (dormant): 6ap can barely touch 25 prot, even with the fire vulnerability on the Jarls. Once the god awakens: forge fire resistance gear and stomp the little vanir.
-Any water nation: just stay in the water until ready, negating the rusher's advantage.
-Anybody else: go for direct damage spells (evocations) or mr based spells (tahumaturgy), alternatively field tramplers: trampling always deals 1 point of damage on Dom3 and cancels the mirror image, and it's not like elephants are that more expensive than vanir anyway. If possible, buf the tramplers with stuff like berserk or luck (body ethereal useless vs the magic attacks).

[Nerfix]

It is, and I've been mostly using just plain F9 or W9 for those "F9 W9" nations.

Actually, that's a lie. As Mictlan I used Imprisoned F9 D4 B4 Smoking Mirror. Perhaps not the best strategy, but those OzeLOLs, Jaguar Warriors etc etc etc sure tore through stuff, and I even had decent scales from what I remember.

I don't think I've ver used W9/F9, not even in Dom 2 because I'm so leery to take bad scales unless I'm playing AE Ermor.

[Endoperez]

Wendigo_reloaded said:
How about this to counter the 9F,9W vans:
-Any SC god with high protection and some fire magic: take the field, cast fire resist, fire shield and either evocations or attack.

Many of those are also bless strategies, or limited to a certain nation... But this one is easy. Cyclops is immune to fire! Of course, Helheim can eventually forge a Vision's Foe, but that'll take too long for an early raid.

Earth Meld can be nice. I haven't yet gotten to test it properly, but it shuts the Vanir down, and lowers their defence. The manual states that Earth Grip shuts a creature down until it makes a STR + 2d6oe roll that exceeds 22. For even a 14-str Van, that's 8 or more. Unfortunately, it seems that it isn't an opposed roll with two 2d6oe, one on each side. In that case, the chance of a Van succeeding would be just few percent. Now, it's probably something like 50% chance.