Ultimate Nation Balance Mega-Kawaii Answer-Question 105%!1!1

[Vicious Love]

Ugh. I've been starting too many topics recently, and this one seems kind of like an appeal to the obvious. Hesitated a few minutes, for fear of spam, then went ahead with it anyway. I'm living the dream, gentlefolk!

The purpose of this thread is simple enough: To take comprehensive census of players' opinions of game balance between the different Dom II nations/themes, debate the findings thoroughly, then pass our conclusions on to KO and JO and glare at them until they patch the game for us. Ingrates.

I realize there's been plenty of mention of various nations/themes being overpowered/underpowered on these Boards, but it seems to have all been in the form of off-topic remarks and fire-and-forget "Mictlan suxX0rz" threads. I'm hoping something as revolutionary as a poll(!) on the internet(!!) will give players( a chance to settle the balance debate once and for all, or at least until the next patch.

Speaking of which, my particular approach to game balancing and nerfing(Which you do not endorse by supporting this poll or purchasing this product and/or service. For external use only) is to change NOTHING about the game's present unit/spell/miscellaneous national perk mix. It may not be entirely balanced, but it has STYLE.
Ashen Empire Ermor is, in my opinion, virtually indestructible, because that's what the restless dead legions of Armageddon are like. They always win. Instead of nerfing them to get smaller legions or weaker individual troops, and thereby crampin' the aforementioned STYLE, the theme should be made more expensive. If you think it should be nerfed at all, I mean.

The point being, game balance is entirely a metagaming thing, and should be restricted to metagaming means. If a non-impossible-difficulty AI or non-scenario-based-handicapped/overpowered player chooses Ashen Empire, they'd have to weaken their pretender to afford it. By outrageous cosmic coincidence, Hoburgdorf would be the only faction with a Fire-9 Air-9 Earth-9 Nataraja on their side.
Ermor would still be Ermor, hoburgs would still be completely and utterly useless, but game balance would be preserved. Which isn't nearly as fun as three players teaming up against one Ermor player with a +200 point handicap, but that's an entirely different point.

Anyway, I've been abusing my own thread by going on about how to nerf, rather than whether to nerf. Signing off, and hanging my head in shame.

[Vicious Love]

Eeep! Halted, truncated, and interrupted! Had to rush through this, only posted the complaints I've read most frequently on these fora, plus one of the two new themes. Sorry, shall remedy it as soon as can get wid a computer. Either way, the discussion still stands.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:
Ashen Empire Ermor is, in my opinion, virtually indestructible, because that's what the restless dead legions of Armageddon are like. They always win. Instead of nerfing them to get smaller legions or weaker individual troops, and thereby crampin' the aforementioned STYLE

No, Ashen Empire Ermor is NOT virtually indestructible. In fact, Ermorian legions really suck it hard. Sure, they're totally expendable and sprout out of the ground in ever-increasing numbers, but run them into any real opposition, and it's quite likely you'll lose them all with less than handful of kills to show for it. A single SC can slay them by the hundreds at practically no risk to himself. Longdeads, soulless, and ghouls are dog doody. They ALREADY are individually weaker than normal units by far. I regularly lose a few hundred undead at once to a drive-by priesting of composed of cheap $50 priests. Stupid frickin' priests. Soul Gate Ermor trades off the really wimpy but absolutely enormous legions of the dead for somewhat less numerous, but more effective, ghost legions, that suffer from ubiquitous 0 protection and fold over and die to anything with magic weapons. In both cases, Ermor's national mages are somewhat narrow in focus, with only Dusk Elders having but a single random pick. This is made up for in part by a pretender that can afford to burn a lot of nation points on magics, but you can't be everywhere at once.

Take it from me, the board's resident Ermor fanatic: Ermor is not as impressive as everyone would have you believe. I like them anyway, though.

[Kristoffer O]

That was a strange poll. Most of the themes generally considered unbalanced were not available for voting and I found myself being a commie!

At the tenth of April (when I can inspect the strange results) the thread will probably be dead, buried and forgotten. Perhaps this is for the best

[Peter Ebbesen]

I definitely prefer Soul Gate over Ashen Empire. Slightly less micromanagement due to the reduced troop numbers, and the increased magic resistance on all troops means that enemy priests need to work much, much, harder on the banishments. It also makes Solar Brilliance less of a killer.

Even so, the casualty reports are staggering.

[Teraswaerto]

IMO, the only nation that seems "overpowered" is Pythium. Mictlan and Tien Chi are perhaps weaker than the average, but not by much. Some themes, like S&A and Carrion Woods, are quite weak though.