Glamour post 3.08

[Jazzepi]

Shovah32 said:

The majority of effective strategies require very specialized tactics to deal with - if they were easy to deal with they wouldnt be effective. Your chaff and archers wouldnt have been particularly effective against most good E9N4 sacreds(they have reinvigoration, high protection and regeneration - all things that counter chaff and archers) and would probably have been ineffective against a number of other things. A group of ulmish infantry with flails backed by a couple of elephants/black knights would also probably have broken through a group of chaff and archers, does that mean MA Ulm is overpowered and should be banned?.

You cant honestly expect a group of archers to do alot against high protection, regenerating troops with shields and a horde of chaff was also a mistake as superior mounted troops(with naturally low encumberance) with higher stats, regeneration(to heal and lucky damage you inflict), reinvigoration(you cant just wait for them to get worn out) and higher stats(1v1 they will destroy chaff) can keep fighting almost indefinitely against weak troops.

Oh please, then enlighten me to what MA Argatha is suppose to do against the vans. As I said, the chaff was a part of a greater strategy. The idea was to earth meld them, so their defense would be abysmal, and just let the chaff wail away on them. I also researched my way to destruction.

Jazzepi

[atul]

Depending upon the research levels, a group of Sentinels can keep W9F9 blessed Vans put for several turns while indy archers and Golem Crafters casting Magma Bolt deal with the damage part (Ench4/Evo3, Attentive Statues (Ench3) might also work). I don't know how well that would work in the field or how cost-effective it'd be, but at least you can make Vanheim player regret ever storming your castle.

[Gandalf Parker]

Jazzepi said:
Oh please, then enlighten me to what MA Argatha is suppose to do against the vans.

Dominions isnt nation-to-nation balance. Its rock-paper-scissors balance. MA Agartha should use other nations against Vanheim.

And what about the statue and sentinel spells? HOw do they hold up against vans?

[Jazzepi]

I summoned a ton of statues. They were great, but the problem wasn't holding off the vans. I built tons of heavy infantry. Heavy infantry does a great job of "holding them off" and the statues are really no different than the infantry. Neither one deals any damage to the vans because of their low attack values, and the van's high defense coupled with high protection.

So what ends up happening is that your meele guys couple with the vans for several long turns. The vans have their reinvig, high protection, high defense, high attack skill, high morale and multiple attacks. They simply break your heavy infantry through morale and fatigue, while your archers are unable to do any damage. See, the whole problem here isn't being able to stop the vans cold in their tracks. The problem is /actually damaging them/.

Honestly, I didn't try magma bolts, but I was busy trying to research up to destruction to blow the armor off the Vans, and get the AoE version of earth grip (earth meld). See, the other part of massing chaff was that if I blew the armor off the Vans, then the huge amounts of light infantry would have no problem wearing down their high defense skill since it's -2 each time they try to defend against an attack.

Just so you know, I ended up "winning" with diplomacy by offering to forge Emor in the game, who had been rather buddy-buddy with me since the beginning, whatever they wanted if they'd simply lay siege to the capital. So Van was weakened by our fighting, I mean he would have killed me in the long run, but he was definitely weakened, and Emor came in and pooped all over his capital.

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

atul said:
Depending upon the research levels, a group of Sentinels can keep W9F9 blessed Vans put for several turns while indy archers and Golem Crafters casting Magma Bolt deal with the damage part (Ench4/Evo3, Attentive Statues (Ench3) might also work). I don't know how well that would work in the field or how cost-effective it'd be, but at least you can make Vanheim player regret ever storming your castle.

I just want to make this perfectly clear. I massed over 150+ indy archers and they were completely useless. I was sad I wasted the money on them against the vans.

Jazzepi

[Beorne]

This thread is starting to become like the other ... nobody says all nations should be perfectly balanced, every different nation has its own strength / weaknesses and so on. Is simply impossible to balance something with so many variables like dom3. But Van is much more difficult to deal with than any other.

[Gandalf Parker]

It used to be Rlyeh, and before that Ermor. If Vanheim gets nerfed further then it will be someone else. There will always be one that is harder than any other.

Altho I will agree that the gap seems to be abit much in the case of Vans. A few saved combats with masses of archers against Vans might help convince the devs to whittle it down abit more.

[Shovah32]

You said you researched destruction? With it cast on the vans they should be alot more vunerable to your arrows. I know its probably quite far away but if you can research up to magma eruption those vans should drop like flies. Your sacred statues should take very little damage from the spell(cast by golem crafters with summon earthpower) and with its high damage and AoE it should devastate those vans(with or without destruction). Umbrals should be very effective due to their ethereality(as the vans lack F9) and high health and could provide a very good shield for your archers after you cast destruction(again due to high health and ethereality).
A marble oracle with a shadow brand, charcoal shield and some other protective items(lucky pendant would be good. A ring of tamed lightning would be great if at-all possible) should also be able to hold out almost indefinitely against E9N4 vans(0 enc and with blacksteel full-plate should have around 30 protection).

There are probably about a number of other ways but those are just some suggestions, hope they help.

ps: I too hate it when i waste alot of money(bought a load of tribal indy archers and had to fight MA Ulmish knights...).

[Jazzepi]

One thing to note is that I got rushed by a Vans player. I didn't even have a second castle up by the time they were trying to stomp across my border. All these suggestions are great and appreciated, but most of them require level 4+ in multiple schools of magic which isn't terribly realistic for the early game.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

Its also not very realistic to expect an easy counter to a strong, double(well one and a half) blessed sacred as a nation with as poor troops as MA agartha(generally regarded as one of the weaker MA nations-particularly their recruitables) but whatever floats your boat. In most cases when your rushed by superior blessed troops all you can really do is hold them off until you get some decent magics(unless you have elephants or some other unit that can counter them).

Its a generally accepted fact that getting rushed by a bless nation such as vanheim/mictlan can spell disaster for most nations who arent prepared with a strong early game(with a bless/SC pretender ect), for example in the nuance game its currently turn 10 and im already sitting on the bandar log capitol, having conquered all their other provinces with my legionaires supported by a couple of blessed shadow vestals(who did very little of the work).