[triqui]

Originally Posted by kianduatha

But doesn't having enc-5 Ahiman Anakites pigeonhole Ashdod into having an E10N4/6 bless far more than enc-7 giants does?

Not in my opinion. Encumbrance 5 is hard, but other troops have it. On the other hand, encumbrance 7 is absolutelly undoable. If you have encumbrance 7, you need reinvigoration no matter of what. Maybe not E10, but at the very least E6-

triqui, I presume part of your fervor about this is because you are currently playing Ashdod and are in a war with MA Ermor?

Not really, I already lost that war. And encumbrance 7 was not involved in the defeat, as I passed on the Annakites and built the berserkers ones instead. My defeat was a combination of a worthy foe, 2 stalls due to llamaserver problems (that affected me but not my foe), and Apostacy spell.

However, I recognize that I got surprised when I saw encumbrance 7 on the giants (never played them with 1,92 before that). I don't think Ashdod is gimped, though, I was leading the game until I got crushed by comunion+Apostacy. As I said in my very first post, Ashdod is not a bad nation, and is not the weakest nation in the roster, that for sure. But the 150g88r sacreds are, in my opinion, left dead with the change. They are atrociously expensive for what they can do, in my opinion.

And why did it fall out of favor? Because the people taking thug-based blesses were winning perhaps?

Sure. But is that related to sacred units? Or to the fact that thugs and SC are the best options available for most nations? E9NX increase thugs effectiveness by a big margin. W9F9... does not. Plus the nerf to some of the sacred units (namely, Vans) also had something to do with it.

Niefl Giants do not work with any blesses beside E9+N4+. Unsurprisingly, they are also size 5 giants with good defenses and few attacks. Would you like to complain about that too? The alternative to E9+N4+ is to *not use* Niefl Giants and use Jotun Skinshifters instead.

Niefel Giants have several difference to Annakites. First, they are cheaper (as in much cheaper). Second, they don't have encumbrance 7. Third, they have a frost aura that can help them to kill masses of troops (Except cold inmunes). So no, they are not in the same case than Annakites trying to kill chaff with 75 gold per attack ratio. Plus, in my opinion, Niefleheim would need a nerf more than Annakites did, but that's matter for another discussion.

And on Sauromatia in particular - there may have been guides which suggested other things, but in practice E9N4 was so ubiquitous that the Gorgon pretender was nerfed specifically because of Sauromatia

The fact it fly, has a decent fighting chasis, and, maybe, it petrifies everything that attacks them also had something to do with it. Actually, in my opinion, it was the other way around. It's not that Oiorpatas benefit from E9N4 more than they'll do from, say, W9B4 or whatever. The thing is they ended having that bless, becouse Gorgon was so awesome that nobody else used other chasis. And once you are pigeonholed to a Chasis that has Earth and Nature, it makes a lot of sense to have a E/N bless. There were cheap ways to get E9/N4 with other pretenders. People used the Gorgon becouse of the chasis.