Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[Xietor]

I am glad KO is not fooling with Man. Hopefully I will get motivated and finish my Kingdom of Avalon Mod and actually get
someone to test them in a mp game setting.

Sort of a beta test to some of the numerous suggestions. If the changes stand up to a good mp test, maybe some could be considered.

[Gandalf Parker]

I totally agree on the "same is boring". I hate games that balance the multiplayer aspect by creating matching armies that simply wear a different colored coat.

Hence the problem with some "fix" requests. Saying that a nation needs xxxxx for a fix might be considered step one. Then comes the problem of creating that fix in a way that fits the nation in question. If we just wanted to toss units around between the nations then we can do that easily enough with mods. Kristoffer isnt likely to do that without his usual amount of heavy researching. If he cant find a thematic match, then Im guessing the "much needed fix" is unlikely to occur.

Lesson to be learned: dont just say it needs it. Make an effort to pitch it thematically. And along the same lines, remember that you are making a request, not placing an order.

[Xietor]

One reason people want Ulm and Man to be decently strong, is we identify with those races.

Most players' 1st races are Ulm and Man. We grew up with Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Knights, so it is natural to gravitate to those when you start playing.

Until you meet a banelord. oh, love at 1st sight!

[thejeff]

I completely agree that "same is boring". It's however annoying when any suggestion of balance issues is met with dismissal by such arguments. Especially when no one has suggested making all the nations the same.

A bunch of thematic suggestions were made in the last thread this came up in. No need to hijack this thread further by repeating them here. It sounds like Xietor trying to incorporate some of them into a mod. I don't play with mods much, there's too much in the base game I haven't really seen yet, but I look forward to this.
There were several mods improving Ulm before the patch changed them. Most of the changes didn't come from them though.

[Wrana]

Though relatively new, particularly in MP, I have something to say on the following nations:
EA Ulm 4 4 2 4 2 (as said, lack of uber-sacreds in EA, + low MR; no Astral, Blood, weakish Death. But troops are good enough & forge bonus quite good).
EA Helheim 5 4 4 4 2? (sacreds, though I don't use uber-bless, but common troops are strong, too; good Death magic, weaker Blood; in MP stealthy armies are more difficult to use properly)
EA Sauromatia 5 5? 5? 4 4? (strong overall, poison archers & Hydras can replace sacreds quite well; better Blood/Death than previous, + Astral)
EA Tien Chi 4 4 5 3 2? (good troops, great versatility of mages; good summons; learn to use any variation of mages can take a lot)
MA Tien Chi 4? 5? 5? 3 2? (as above except less mages variability & less summons)
MA Shinuyama 3? 4 4? 2 2? (no sacreds & difficult to get military machine going - need scales; variable mages can be a pain to learn)
LA Bogarus 4 4 4? 2 ? (their troops are actually not bad and mages give good versatility; Dominion kill is an option I think they should excercise; plus ability to hurt enemy economy - this could make a strong mid to late game. I still think they should be 2 nations, though.)

[JimMorrison]

Xietor said:
I also like the fact that not all races and spell lines are equally powerful. WOW recently bowed to its vocal minority and gave the evil races "paladins" just so everything could be identical. Identical is boring.

Since I used to be addicted to that drug, I have to comment, for sake of veracity. The Horde (evil WoW races) did NOT want paladins. Facing the wall of rejection and ignorance they were getting from the devs, eventually the pleading did change to "fine, then just give us paladins.....". But what the Horde wanted, was simply for shamans to not suck horribly compared to paladins in the same raid encounters.


Taking the analogy back here again, I don't think anyone here wants all the nations to be vaguely similar. There is just a feeling that some weaknesses and drawbacks are more crippling than others, and some strengths and bonuses are less useful than others. One of the points of this thread, was to help highlight problems. So rather than people running around smacking about "MA Man is weak", and yada yada, if 10 people all rated MA Man at 4/4/2 for the power ratings, or 4/3/2 or whatever, then this would directly show that there is a widely accepted problem in their late game specifically.

By pinpointing the weak areas of the weaker nations (and conversely, any nation rating too highly, might use a small tweak down in some way), allows the discussion to then become more focused, and useful. So if we say MA Man has late game issues, then we can start to look for late game specific solutions, such as new national summons, perhaps a special nation specific Nature evocation of some sort. Also I had the thought that if they are seen as great woodsmen and "rangers" as a whole, their national troops could thematically receive a mobility increase, specifically boosting all national units +1 to their map move, and being more liberal with FS/MS so that later in the game as mobility becomes ever more important, their less relevant troops can at least be present.

Let's not ask that MA Man play like any other nation, but request it be added to in a meaningful way that makes it a stronger opponent in the late game. Then let's take that philosophy and extend it to other nations.

A theoretical example - nations who are weak in the early game might benefit from adding +1 DEF to their national troops, or +1 PRE for their ranged units. It's not that you just grab them and say "what are they weak at, let's fix it", but rather to ask what are they strong at, and see if that can be turned into something that can be relied upon more. One thought I had for early game weakness, is to give a potentially useful low level summons. EA Agartha has Rhuax Pact for example, which gives them 5 Magma Children for 2 F gems, and only takes Conj 3. These units are not singularly powerful, and don't make an "I win" strategy alone, but they are a powerful tool in their arsenal - and they are one of the only nations that gets an early national summon worth burning gems on. A number of nations could get their early game improvement simply by buffing the low level summons that they already have, preferably not by making them stronger (too easy to make them too strong), but by increasing the number per cast, or gem cost efficiency to make them a viable option.

[Tifone]

A really nice and important post JimMorrison. Even if my opinion surely doesn't count, I'd like to express my agreement with every single word you said

[Hoplosternum]

I agree a good post JimMorrison.

I don't think many people are calling for nations to be made all alike. Or even that they are all balanced.

But tweaking a few things. Be they minor cost or stats changes or a minor but useful national summons or spell hardly does this.

[Zeldor]

JimMorrison :

I will repeat myself - many nations are unbalanced because of unbalaned magic paths. Take look at some:
Astral:
- Mind Hunt to kill non-S nations unless they are lucky and diversify
- Magic Duel to kill low level S nations or non-S that get lucky and diversify into some S magic
- precision 100 spells that are not affeced by many things like Darkness
- Enslave, Master Enslave
- Communions
- Wishing
- Teleportation
- Golems

Death:
- all undead spam
- life after death
- tartarians and other good SCs/thugs
- Darkness

And what other paths get?
Nature:
- Charm: ha, ha, with that range? If you mass huge amount of probably cap only mages you can stop 1-2 SCs if he isn't expecting that
- Mass Regen: to die slower? in end-game battles end fast anway

Earth, Fire, Air get some nice spells. But how many nations can really cast them? Well, astral nations mostly. You just get communion and cast them. Other nations need expensive boosters, putting additional gems, wasting turn to cast a buff like phoenix power... I don't think anyone would complain if Man had N6 mages, well, probably even N20 mages wouldn't make it powerful enough. Nut at least crones wouldn't massively die of old age every winter with growth3.

[JimMorrison]

I don't know what you're repeating Zel, but I didn't state that I felt that "all nations are differently created equally". What I did say, was that I feel that arguments that lean towards suggesting something like giving all nations access to Astral, are not a productive line of reasoning.

As I was saying, since the consensus is that MA Man starts out strong, but has no strong options in the late game, that we understand the basic problem. You can enumerate all you want on the relative benefits of other paths, but you're not suggesting a solution, unless it is to give them access to Astral or Death, which is the sort of request I was specifically trying to avoid.

Now, if high end Nature magic had a couple of choice spells/summons added, or perhaps there were a couple of options added just as nationals for Man, it could go a long way to bridging the gap. Also, pursuing the line of reasoning I had about adding FS to all Man troops, they could be given a top end BE, some sort of Grasping Weeds or something that causes a small amount of damage each turn, and impedes the movement of any unit which lacks FS.

Obviously it can be stated that for various reasons, Nature is one of the weaker paths in late game. Fine, we get that. Just try to come up with some creative solutions to the problem - creative, thematic, easily implemented solutions. The Grasping Weeds spell I just described could help, but obviously it's not enough to compete meaningfully with the other options, so more is needed. Our Devs thrive on inspiration, not on argument. We're simply past the stage of "proving" a disparity, the point is made, now find something that will spark interest in getting the problem actually solved.

Personally, I'd prefer to put some more effort into getting help for the nations who are soft in the early game. There will always be more creative solutions to a late game weakness, than an early game weakness. But this forum has been stuck on MA Man for over a month now, let's get something solid and put that puppy to bed.