Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[MaxWilson]

quantum_mechani said:
The problem is, your ratings seem to be largely based on the strength of Ea Ulm/Marverni/C'tis regular troops, when that tends to not be all that relevant when in an EA early game fight. You can have troops far better for the price as similar indies (ulm archers and c'tis elite warriors come to mind), but they can still be shredded by a few properly blessed helhirdlings or niefel giants. If you remove mages from the equation, these nations have almost no chance in such a situation.

I also strongly disagree about Ulm's forge bonus wearing down with time. The late game revolves around thugs and SCs for the most part, and while there is little worthwhile to forge early, you are pouring maybe even the majority of your gems into it by the late game.

That's why Helheim and Niefelheim are 5s in the early game. There really aren't many normal troops that can stand up to them at all--you NEED mages to fight them. Edit: I've revised my early-game rating of EA Ermor to reflect this. Their troops are solid but can't compete with Helheim and Niefelheim.

Ulm's forge bonus is like a 50% boost in gem production relative to just hammers. That's non-negligible, but considering how little their mages can actually forge it seems more a midgame issue to me than a true lategame strategy. By the time people are throwing around Tartarians and Seraphs, how much does it really matter that Ulm can forge Earth Boots for 5 gems instead of 7? The lack of high-level mages and poor Astral/Death, unmitigated by access to good thug chassises, seems to me a serious weakness.

Not that that has to stop Ulm. As noted several times elsewhere (including by yourself), the endgame ratings are iffy anyway because there's a good chance you can leverage a strong beginning into a good ending, and you can diversify your magic with indies or your pretender.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Indeed, there's always the "can" and "potential" factors. It's interesting when you isolate them down to their core, the "ease of play" takes a severe hit when you start to see that pretender choice is severely limited based on the needs of the stock nation, and that not taking the right pretender, will ultimately leave you noncompetitive. By the same token, all of the severely path limited nations can benefit greatly from various mage recruitment sites, but you never know what you're going to find, and for example I find it disheartening and almost insulting (in a lighthearted way) when every game I play an aquatic race, I find one of the sites (or 2, or 3) that let you train water mages.

And by the same token, while you can assume that you will find at least ONE special site of some kind, maybe it's a Conj bonus site but you're a blood nation, or it just lets you train mages of a path you already have, there's so many variables.


Hopefully in the next few days, more people feel emboldened to post their ratings here. Remember there are no wrong answers, just maybe some that aren't thought all the way through, no one will hate for those, though they may ask you why you think that way.

[quantum_mechani]

MaxWilson said:


That's why Helheim and Niefelheim are 5s in the early game. There really aren't many normal troops that can stand up to them at all--you NEED mages to fight them.

Ulm's forge bonus is a 33% boost in gem production relative to just hammers. That's non-negligible, but considering how little their mages can actually forge it seems more a midgame issue to me than a true lategame strategy. By the time people are throwing around Tartarians and Seraphs, how much does it really matter that Ulm can forge Earth Boots for 5 gems instead of 7? The lack of high-level mages and poor Astral/Death, unmitigated by access to good thug chassises, seems to me a serious weakness.

Not that that has to stop Ulm. As noted several times elsewhere (including by yourself), the endgame ratings are iffy anyway because there's a good chance you can diversify your magic with indies or your pretender.

-Max

Well let me put it this way, if Marverni rates a 4 in troops, what could possibly rate a 1? I agree that helhiem and niefelhiem are in their own tier, but there is a whole range underneath them, largely revolving around the power of their sacred troops.


As far as the late game rating, the reason why for the most part I would not put much stock in it specifically because access to high astral/death is the sort of thing easily fixed by anyone. An additional 25% forge bonus (stacked with hammers and maybe even forge of ancients) on the other hand is one the very few things a nation can off that can't be reproduced. And it's hardly just earth boots, those smiths can get to probably half the most important bits of SC equpment- fire shields, marble armor, frost brands, boots of flying, resistance rings (also very important to protect against flames from the sky), etc. Anyway, my point was less how outstanding they are later, but just that they hardly go down hill.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. A fair point. 4 is probably too high for Marverni's troops considering the competition. "Adequate" = 3 is probably more appropriate, since their elites (Ambibate nobles) are not deficient but not unusual outstanding for elites.

Of course, that means Agartha has to go down to 2.

-Max

[Zeldor]

There is really a reason why only experienced people's opinions should make the real ranking. Even if there aren't so many opinions.

Marverni probalby scales 1-2 in troops That's as challenging as expanding with just LA Bogarus armies.

[Twan]

Some more :

LA Atlantis 4 3 3 4 3 (cheap sacreds and/or Dagon pretender + amphibiousity allow fast expansion in all directions, but nation become weaker in mid-late game due to weak mages and lack of diversity out of capitol, nation remain capable in endgame as capitol ones are tough and have correct death levels + access to interesting water-death summons)
LA Mictlan 4 3 4 1 2 (bad learning note due to the sacrifice dom ; nation is strong in early game due to its sacred and in late with summoned demon uniques and unlimited slave income ; nation is weaker in midgame as blood researchs/hunting take a moment to pay)
LA Patala 4 4 3 4 2 (elephants allow good expansion, mages are very powerful for late age, and magical economy is excellent, with easy forge of both hammers and clams - nation looks harder to play in MP due to the vulnerability of nagarishis against magic duel)
LA Arco 2 3 3 4 2 (heavy elephants slow your expansion compared to ME ones, they remain as useless in mid-late game due to poor MR and aren't really harder to kill or better as you will have a 2 or 3 time smaller number of them -except if you sacrify a lot of points in production, but so you'll have bad other scales-, correct other troops and very diverse magic allow a rather good mid-late game, but the nation is far to be dominating -the loss of one astral level on the best mages is an heavy price for more nature and a weak access to death ; also 8hp and low def sybyls are easily killed by a simple earthquake ; I prefer by far ME for Arco)
LA Ulm 2 2? 4? 1 ? (started several games with this nation which seem to have a rather good potential with its vampires and spawned wolfs, mix of heavy and stealthy troops, sacred and anti-sacred units etc... but I find it very hard to play, handicaped in research, and too much relying on its pretender)
LA Caelum 4 3 3 3 3 (a medium nation, with good mammoth based expansion, but the lose of astral access is a big price for more death, and the nation is more capitol dependant than in other eras)
LA Chelm 3 3 2 4 2 (longbowmen as less usefull in LA due to more heavy indies, rather good troops and diversified magic give the nation a good midgame potential, but mages are not really powerful especially for late game)

[MaxWilson]

By the way, a quick test shows 23 F9W9 Helhirdlings get consistently pwned by the equivalent gold-cost of indy slingers. Marverni's slingers are slightly more expensive but still work better than the warriors, so if you get in a war with Helheim go for the cheap troops.

-Max

[krpeters]

Sombre said:
A 4 for MA Ulm in MP? I would think they're one of the hardest to learn to use effectively and require quite a lot of micro, with loads of forging, necessary troop buffs etc.

I don't know about MP, but in SP, MA Ulm is very easy to use and very effective up to the midgame (which is as far as I play). Recruit a "wall of steel" (soldiers with tower shields), lead them with a dwarven smith, have him forge a pair of earth boots, script him to cast earth power, and watch him obliterate AI chaff armies with blade wind and magma eruption.

Compared to most other strategies this is positively easy!

[MaxWilson]

Zeldor said:
There is really a reason why only experienced people's opinions should make the real ranking. Even if there aren't so many opinions.

I tend to agree, but to a certain extent that's Jim's problem. I'm a "2" on experience at best and he's welcome to disregard my ratings.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Zeldor said:
There is really a reason why only experienced people's opinions should make the real ranking. Even if there aren't so many opinions.

Marverni probalby scales 1-2 in troops That's as challenging as expanding with just LA Bogarus armies.

My roommate actually devoted several days of spare time to playing around with Bogarus (he loves all things Russian). He got a pretty efficient system going for expansion after a few tries. In a sense, I would say some of these nations who are considered weaker, it's less a nation strength issue, and more of an "ease of learning" issue. Unfortunately, a low ease of learning is usually a direct effect of a particular nation having less viable strategy options, whereas one big reason a nation would rate highly there is not just because they are strong, but because they have the tools that you can do reasonably well plugging in YOUR strat, rather than having to learn exactly how that nation plays, in order to prosper.

And also bearing in mind that's why the ease of learning is referenced to SP (learning speed for beginners) while the "ease of use" is referenced to MP, where different factors come more into play. Taking that dual bless Helherdings vs indie slingers comparison, maneuvering small groups of extremely powerful units is much EASIER to do, than to effectively mount an army of hundreds of slingers. And while you are massing up the worst troops in the game, Helheim is taking territories to skew the balance of power. If you take territories with the slings, you will likely have significant attrition while he only randomly loses a troop here and there.

Perhaps it would be best if SP and MP had their own strength ratings in addition to the ease of learning and ease of use. But it would all get rather complicated, and it's hard enough to get people to submit ratings. And besides, you long term vets who are hanging around here didn't peer pressure your old friends to submit ratings, so I had to solicit less informed players (like myself, I WILL post soon, it might wait til after my Luck tests though), and whose fault is that?