Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[MaxWilson]

Actually I find that slingers and such are pretty decent for expansion. Marverni's slingers have shields, which means they win missile duels. You'll still need ground troops (slingers are kind of like arty spells in that they have trouble finishing off the last few survivors) but missile troops are not bad at all for expansion. I haven't done this with Marverni slingers recently, but when I first tried LA Agartha I consistently had problems expanding until I forgot about my blessed blindfighters and did expansion with crossbowmen and cave drakes. Marverni slingers are ten times easier to mass than LA Agarthan crossbowmen. So anyway, I don't think massing up slingers is banking on the "worst unit in the game." Slingers are much better than Wind Riders, for instance. (Also note that if he "randomly loses a troop here and there", probably because someone doesn't get blessed or gets out of formation, it probably costs as much as "significant attrition" for me. 1 Helhirding = 9 slingers.)

Do note that missile troops scale better than melee troops. 5 F9W9 Helherdings would probably cream their gold-cost equivalent in slingers. That does tend to steepen the learning curve because you have to learn when you have "enough". One thing to do to get a feel for "enough" is to leave an PD 1 border territory so that when he attacks it, you can simulate a battle against his forces by Shift+U placing your own army's equivalent units directly on the battlefield. That's how I do most of my testing. It's not perfect but it's a lot less tedious than playing out test games.

One more note: Helheim is clearly stronger in the early game than Marverni. They have better troops, more strategic options (because of stealth), better intel (because of flying stealth troops), etc. I just don't think Helheim's troops deserves a 5 to Marverni's 1 or 2. Cost matters.

-Max

Edit: fixed math.