Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[DrPraetorious]

If you are going to propose altering the game, write a mod that carries your alterations, that's all I'm saying.

It's true that you can't nerf glamour directly - but you can nerf all the units that *have* glamour - I recall lowering their protection was proposed at one point. You can make them cost more gold. You can lower their combat stats. You can make them trade their light lances for swords or axes. There are all sorts of things you can try doing, and we can load up the mod and see how it affects the various sources of complaint.

Personally, I don't think anyone has made a persuasive argument that the glamour rushers are stronger positions than the other double-bless rushers - Abyssia is my favorite, by I think a double-blessed Niefelheim is probably the strongest, and Niefelheim has some of the best (if most expensive) magic even in the early era. Since I find the argument that glamour troops are uniquely broken (as opposed to the other double-bless rushers) unconvincing, I'm not inclined to code this up myself.

Now, the counters to these nations are more obvious, perhaps, than the counters to glamour, but they are every bit as capable of early expansion - in SP I've always expanded faster as Neifelheim with a 9N dragon than as Helheim with a 9W dragon.

On the subject of making light infantry irrelevant - a spell with a large area of effect that does ~3 damage is less of a threat to light infantry (since they usually live) than existing spells like falling foo, let alone blade wind.

On the other hand, it is death to vans (since they almost always lose their images,) and you can legitimately put it earlier in the research tree, especially as a national spell.

So if you're worried about vanheim's rush, as opposed to other rushes, you can fix that by giving a low damage area of effect spell to the nations most vulnerable to the rush - which probably isn't Caelum, but Caelum has other problems.

If, on the other hand, you are concerned about rushers period, see my original post.

BigJMoney said:Finally, let me throw a bone of discussion back into the pit

I've seen blade wind and archers mentioned as a counter to Vanheim. When I originally asked the question that embodies this thread, it was if Vaheim needs nerfing, in general. You see, I don't pick F9W9; nor do I rush. I choose Air magic for Vanheim. Not only does an A10 bless give high air shield to my Vans, but it also gives me the spell that turns the entire world stormy for the mid/late game. This further reduces the effect of missiles against me. So, as you can see, my sacred troops are never afraid of missile counters. That is easily prevented by Vanheim.

=$=

Play nice, children!!

I think making glamour ineffective against all kinds of ranged attack would do a great deal to balance the issue. I don't think they are overpowered in general, though overpowered when played as heavily blessed nations since they don't really have to sacrifice enough for the amount of power they gain in the early game.
Also, one kind of cookiecutter defense that works against pretty much everything is also unbalanced. There needs to be some weakness to offset that.
And no, increased costs are no such weakness, since troops that are lot better at surviving will recoup those costs very, very quickly.

[BigJMoney]

Since my post was long and I had less obvious statements to make, Dominions does not effectively have 50 nations. It only has 17- that can be compared to each other at one time. Thus, if Vanheim is unbalanced, it is potentially unbalanced x3. I imagine you to be excitedly dancing around with the number 50 as if that fact alone makes a valid point, when it's irrelevant. But, I'll admit, nobody had commented on that point yet.

And if you don't cease with the "but the problem can be worked around" arguments, it may drive some of the people in this thread to jump out a window to their deaths, or get banned for flaming. Offering unlikeable workarounds instead of arguing ideas will offend people. Nixing Vanheim from multiplayer is a lazy, unimaginative and undesirable workaround -- not a solution. As DrPraetorious stated, it should be just fine for there to exist nations which have powerful strategies that are easy to make use of, as long as they are ultimately well-balanced with other nations' powerful strategies. You can have your cake and eat it too, NT. You seem to think that for there to be easy nations for newbies to play that it requires the game to be unbalanced; which is false. Look at the Mortal Kombat series of games as an example.

=$=

[Edited for sharpness]

[NTJedi]

Dhaeron said:
The game is meant to be balanced on medium sized maps. On postage stamp maps rushers have to be better, because otherwise they'd be weaker on larger maps.

...

The problem is that some nations are in effect Rockscissors.

The game should have a few nations which are both rock&scissors because the game is not MP only. Balance is a major issue when the races/nations are limited to about 11 choices, however Dominions_3 has over fifty nations and more coming with patches. I would hate to see a patch delayed because the developers are worried of releasing a nation which doesn't meet balance expectations.
This balance discussion revolves around games which involve Vanheim/Helheim and there are many ways to not include them in the game or mod the changes for these nations. Bug fixes are more important in our upcoming patches than providing balance for less than 8% of the total nations available in the game.

[Villan]

DrPraetorious said:

Personally, I don't think anyone has made a persuasive argument that the glamour rushers are stronger positions than the other double-bless rushers - Abyssia is my favorite, by I think a double-blessed Niefelheim is probably the strongest, and Niefelheim has some of the best (if most expensive) magic even in the early era. Since I find the argument that glamour troops are uniquely broken (as opposed to the other double-bless rushers) unconvincing, I'm not inclined to code this up myself.

Glamour rushers are still good late game because opponents can't see them on map, and they are great raiders. Niefelheim or Abyssia aren't, so it can be argued that they actually do trade early game power for late game power.

[NTJedi]

BigJMoney said:
Since my post was long and I had less obvious statements to make, Dominions does not effectively have 50 nations. It only has 17- that can be compared to each other at one time. Thus, if Vanheim is unbalanced, it is potentially unbalanced x3. I imagine you to be excitedly dancing around with the number 50 as if that fact alone makes a valid point, when it's irrelevant.

Not irrelevant... even from your statement Vanheim is only one of seventeen nations during an era. So all this noise over one nation when so many other nations are available. It's like a sultan complaining one of the 17 girls in his harem are fat instead of enjoying the other 16. If vanheim is so highly desired as a "MUST HAVE" for gaming a small mod can be made available for the multiplayer gamers.

BigJMoney said:
Offering unlikeable workarounds instead of arguing ideas will offend people. Nixing Vanheim from multiplayer is a lazy, unimaginative and undesirable workaround -- not a solution.

I have provided other optional suggestions besides nixing Vanheim from multiplayer. Heck if desired I'll even create the Vanheim nerf mod for the multiplayer gamers. No reason for the developers to take away time working on patches to NERF wack a powerful nation which any gamer can do in a MOD. Fixing bugs/crashes should be the primary focus of the patches, adding new nations and new content a close second not balance tweaking stats/units of nations.

BigJMoney said:
As DrPraetorious stated, it should be just fine for there to exist nations which have powerful strategies that are easy to make use of, as long as they are ultimately well-balanced with other nations' powerful strategies. You can have your cake and eat it too, NT.

Thus that's why we have Helheim.

BigJMoney said:
You seem to think that for there to be easy nations for newbies to play that it requires the game to be unbalanced; which is false. Look at the Mortal Kombat series of games as an example.

It does not require the game to be unbalanced, however it does help. Whether you examine the nations individually since they can be all played on the same game(see Gandalf) or whether you examine the nations by era... it's less than 8% of the nations available. The developers can spend their time more wisely fixing known bugs instead of tweaking one or two nations that gamers can MOD on their own.

[UninspiredName]

Consider the following situation. The Pantokrator, in all his un-vanished glory, was added (By the devs, of course) as a pretender for, let's say Mictlan. They have a lot of sacreds. Pantokrator had 10 in every magic path, cost 0 points, and started with a Dominion Strength of 4. Don't even get me started on attributes. This would, naturally, be ridiculous, but one pretender counts for much less 'of the game' than the 2% Vanheim does. That pretender could be easilly banned, but many out there prefer to allow all options if possible. Why is it that parts of the game that unbalance it are our problem? Also, say that people did ban Vanheim. Turning the nation into something balanced would, effectively, be same as adding another nation, though it would take less work. And it makes the game feel more solid overall.

At one point in this thread, more than once, both sides have told each-other that, if they don't like change/the way things are, just make a mod. However, only true modding masterpieces could ever be as in-step with the rest of the game as something the developers created. Really, though, when it all comes down to it, it needs to be seen what the majority is. If only two people dislike Vanheim, they can't very well tell everyone else to make a mod. Unfortunately, it's much harder to tell here whether most prefer mods or not.

I haven't ever used, or experienced a Vanheim rush, though it ticks me off in principle, so I'll leave arguing whether or not it's actually unbalanced up to you lot. Still, if it is unbalanced, there's little reason for the developers not to fix it.

[Gandalf Parker]

regular moderator warning
The devs are interested in this thread. So please do not endanger it. Discuss the subject, do not discuss each other.

[Foodstamp]

If the devs are watching, please consider introducing very effective counter units to underperforming nations instead of nerfing the nations in question!

[Gandalf Parker]

If the devs agree with that assessment then Im sure they will consider it.