Most powerful nation

[Xietor]

MA Pangaea is my favorite race, but I would not deem them the strongest even among the MA. MA Pangaea with a drain scale is a good counter to the astral races given Pangaea's high mr and hps. Stealth, blood, gorgon are very powerful.

MA Best nations

1. Pythium

2. Arcos

3. Vanheim(small to medium map)

[Meglobob]

This is a link to the perpetuality game. Showing individual nation status.

http://67.66.187.69/dominions3/Perpetuality_Scores.html

Now, what I want to know is why the EA nations did so badly? Alot of the very good players, myself included thought they would dominate, yet overall they have'nt. What happened?

[Kristoffer O]

Perhaps got whacked by paranoia

[Baalz]

Well, I think the thing to realize is that the outcome of this game is determined by a lot of things outside of nation selection and the sample set is not near large enough to draw conclusions.

Some players were ganged up on and killed before they ever had a chance
Some players started in poor positions
Some players had abysmal luck rolls regardless of their scales
Some good nations were played by novice players

And of course the converse of all that is true to

Some players started out with relatively little competition whether it was from the extra water provinces or non-agressive neighbors.
Some players found easy allies early
Some players saw good opportunities as one of their neighbors was easy pickings due to an unrelated war front.

The huge amount of noise (from the perspective of determining relative nation power) makes a sample size like this meaningless.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes you cant base too much "data" on only one sample.
But it is interesting and worth noting it. Now we need a few more.

There was also the data from my mega games (all AI's) which was abit easier to do since I could just set the game to continually host. Not worth alot by itself but it was handy in fixing some problems and getting some answers on how the AI fare against each other. Anyone can do that if they are curious.

SideNote: I really WANTED to say Pangaea (EA or MA) but the only reason I could think of was "because Im biased"

[Meglobob]

Baalz is correct the sample is small and all what he has listed had an effect on the game.

However, strong trends can still be spotted, especially as each age has 20+ nations in it.

2 such trends ermerged from the perpetuality game, one the dominance of water nations, effect. Easily solved, too many water provinces was the cause. Simple cause and effect.

The 2nd strong trend was the elimination of all but 3 EA nations from the game. Of those 3 not too be eliminated, EA Oceania and EA Lanka had stong advantages of being played by 2 very good players and starting locations. Did this help them avoid the fate of the other EA nations?

Its a very strong trend which leads me to believe, there is some ingame cause and effect going on. I would tentively put forward the higher protection values MA/LA nations have, better missile weapons in crossbows/composite bows/longbows and a strong trend of death magic in LA nations in particular.

I think basically, early on, the military forces of MA/LA nations has the edge on the battlefield over EA. This early edge carries on into the mid game and so on.

But its very hard to pin down, as its tiny when you compare 1 military unit vs another, but decesive when you have armies of 200 vs 200 in a large battle.

We will only have confirmation in Evermore, when/if it gets underway. It would not be surprising to see such a strong trend confirmed in another game.

[Xietor]

Lanka is insanely tough. I do not think K even had to breathe hard killing off his first few races.

While K is a very good player, Lanka is insanely tough. It is easily the best land race.

Has anyone saying otherwise seen those mandahas(sp). I mean autocast darkness and soul vortex? Come on! And the capital only sacreds are insane. Throw in the strong blood and air, and they are just brutal.

So no, I do not think lanka prospered only because they had a good player or location. EA caelum is tough, but they went head to head with ma pythium(the best ma race). And they lost a close hardfought war. EA Caelum walked all over MA Abysia 1st before fighting Pythium.

Pythium is a tough draw for caelum because hydras>Mammoths.

So i think much of it was match ups, location, and diplomacy.

[Szumo]

Well, i'm playing EA Pangea in Perpetuality, and i think me not being eliminated early was mainly because i took awake Gorgon as pretender - got over 1300 kills and helped immensely with early conquest, before dying in pretender duel.

Having Gift of Health up is a pretty nice bonus too.

[Xietor]

MA Vanheim actually defeated LA Pangaea, but before they lost their last province LA ermor stepped in and saved them, killing off vanheim.

So it would be misleading to think la pangaea > MA Vanheim
based on the perp game.

Not to disrespect any player's skill, but some races are still alive only because more powerful neighbors have been fighting amongst themselves and no one has gotten around to attacking them yet.

And some of it is matchups. MA Ctis is not a great race, but it matched up fairly well against LA Atlantis(leprosy, miasma), MA Oceania(Banelords > water troops on land), LA Man (Banelords, Wraith lords > castle bought troops).

EA Lanka was at a disadvantage fighting MA Ctis because he was the one storming castles, and I was the one defending them. Much easier to defend then attack for many reasons, not the least of which is you get to cast the spells 1st).

And some of it is pretender selection. Having an immortal pretender who has high death and can also cast banefire fighting in his own dominion is a decided equalizer.

[Kristoffer O]

> Has anyone saying otherwise seen those mandahas(sp). I mean autocast darkness and soul vortex? Come on! And the capital only sacreds are insane. Throw in the strong blood and air, and they are just brutal.

They do not autocast souls vortex, although they can probably cast it without much problems.

I have thought about making them unique and three in numbers. IIRC there were only three of them.

---

I imagine placement on map and war/alliances have greater importance than any other factor. EA nations are likely to be attacked in an all nations game as they have slightly weaker national units and have access to great magic powers later on. Thus prime targets in the early game. Or they might be percieved as powerful (helheim) early on and thus attacked by several frightened neighbours.

In MP it is dangerous to look dangerous Lanka might be a weak nation just by being strong