No more MP for Hinnom?

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by WaltF4

Which particular national strengths and weaknesses would you be exploiting in the early game?

Kail's Awe

Hinnom's lack of high moral units, and often disuse of sacreds (which will generally have the highest base moral that boosted even more when blessed).
and if Kail is not using an Air bless... Hinnom has no missile unit that can be mustered in any significant amount.

[Lingchih]

Kailasa did little against Hinnom in Kingmaker, other than repel him. Lanka did most of the work. I believe Hinnom's mistake in that game was building too many chariots. He relied on Chariots for everything, rather than recruiting his national SCs.

I lost early in that game because I figured Hinnom could hold against Lanka, so I attacked Lanka. Two turns later, Hinnom was dead.

[Kristoffer O]

Hinnom will likely be nerfed with next patch. They do have several strengths, but I never had any grip on how they would turn out in practice. There has been lots of discussions regarding their strengths and weaknesses (quite few) and I have plans for their correction.

Baalz guide, as well as the following discussions have been quite informative, and I thank you all for participating.

Now I wonder a bit about Ashdod. THey have been discussed a lot less, but they are portrayed as almost Hinnomish in power. The Zamzummim and summons are mentioned, but I have less to go on here.

I guess they have been less common in MP games?

Some things I consider:
- Lower PD, not horites though
- Fewer starting troops
- Chariot nerf (possibly size, possibly something else that might affect other tramplers as well)
- Dawn Guard +5g to original cost level.

Not sure about this, but I had an idea of switching Melqart and Ba'al blood magic lvl. Might need a slight rewrite of descriptions and events.

Main objective of nerf: reduce initial expansion power.

[llamabeast]

Nerfing tramplers in general would be great, in my opinion. Elephants have always been a bit crazy.

[Baalz]

Sauromatia I think is a bit of "in theory this could work". Once you get reasonably good players (on both sides) trying to counter what each other is doing I don't think Sauromatia really has much of a chance. Hydras don't even come close to countering Baals if you use them right. Flesheater axe (berzerk) + snake ring (poison immune) plus some other cheapish cons-4 gear and Hinnom is basically fielding a nearly unstoppable SC every turn *very* early which Sauromatia doesn't really have anything to address. Hinnom is a very strong research nation, and cons-4 + alt-3 + thau-3 are not very high bars to have teleporting SCs who can be configured at the lab specifically to whatever Sauromatia is fielding, then drop in on them before they can move while your normal (chariots & dawn guard) troops continue to expand in every direction twice as fast as Sauro can match. Not to mention the other thing people seem to overlook because it seldom comes up - Hinnom has such broad magic diversity + strong research that they can pretty easily bring any spells they need to the party if you do manage to counter their strong suit. You don't like my SC counter to hydras? Ok, how about spamming some blade wind into those hydras & poison archers? Or casting arrow fend and paralyzing the hydras? How about both? Whatever the most devastating counter you can come up with - Hinnom can very likely do it, and do it well.

Neifelheim in a very early dual (triple) bless rush is going to give anybody a hard time, but I can't think of anybody I'd rather have in that situation than Hinnom with a strong heat-3 dominion. Neifel's a very one dimensional power, and even fully optimized in a best case scenario (not including ganging up on somebody) I wouldn't give a triple blessed Niefel rush more than a 50% chance of succeeding against an unprepared, good scale Hinnom with an imprisoned pretender (assuming equal skill levels).

[AreaOfEffect]

For the most part I have always found the price of the trampler to be fair. Most of the weaknesses of the elephant and Hinnom chariots don't warrant a higher gold cost in my opinion.

I do however find them too easy to amass in large numbers during the early game, which often upsets most of their weakness at this point. Nothing follows the rule of critical mass more faithfully then tramplers. Gold costs in my opinion aren't much of a barrier as huge quantities can be had at great personal cost. So if anything, I'm in favor of resource increases over gold increases.

[Psycho]

I feel that nerfing elephants would nerf nations which are weak as it is like Caelum or Arco

[Xietor]

What would la arcos do without elephants? my god(: No national summons. In kingmaker i am being raided by angels(la marignon), and Bandar Log's national summons. Take away elephants then make those sirrush cost water gems or something besides s gems, or give them some anti thug ability(an affliction causing attack, arm loss or something).

Something else that needs nerfed is the ghost rider leader. he is basically unkillable by pd.
You can kill all of his men but he fights on to the last hp and causes fear. Now I have used that to my advantage many times, but he needs toned done slightly. Maybe take his fear away or make him not ethereal.

A level 35 pd should have at least a chance at stopping him. Maybe ea abysia's can since they get mages and fire aura, but not your basic shinuyama, arcos pd that is strong but not magical.

[konming]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Sauromatia I think is a bit of "in theory this could work". Once you get reasonably good players (on both sides) trying to counter what each other is doing I don't think Sauromatia really has much of a chance. Hydras don't even come close to countering Baals if you use them right. Flesheater axe (berzerk) + snake ring (poison immune) plus some other cheapish cons-4 gear and Hinnom is basically fielding a nearly unstoppable SC every turn *very* early which Sauromatia doesn't really have anything to address. Hinnom is a very strong research nation, and cons-4 + alt-3 + thau-3 are not very high bars to have teleporting SCs who can be configured at the lab specifically to whatever Sauromatia is fielding, then drop in on them before they can move while your normal (chariots & dawn guard) troops continue to expand in every direction twice as fast as Sauro can match. Not to mention the other thing people seem to overlook because it seldom comes up - Hinnom has such broad magic diversity + strong research that they can pretty easily bring any spells they need to the party if you do manage to counter their strong suit. You don't like my SC counter to hydras? Ok, how about spamming some blade wind into those hydras & poison archers? Or casting arrow fend and paralyzing the hydras? How about both? Whatever the most devastating counter you can come up with - Hinnom can very likely do it, and do it well.

Neifelheim in a very early dual (triple) bless rush is going to give anybody a hard time, but I can't think of anybody I'd rather have in that situation than Hinnom with a strong heat-3 dominion. Neifel's a very one dimensional power, and even fully optimized in a best case scenario (not including ganging up on somebody) I wouldn't give a triple blessed Niefel rush more than a 50% chance of succeeding against an unprepared, good scale Hinnom with an imprisoned pretender (assuming equal skill levels).

The thing is, short of a berserking baal, everything up to const6 gear I put in a baal does not help him from running away every single time when facing 4 hydras. And I do mean a lot of times. Teleporting those baals deep in enemy land facing hydra is a certain way to quick death from running. Heck, one baal who was supposed to cast call horror ran away from the first horror he summoned (no, the horror was not attacking him, he just panicked from seeing the horror he summoned). And hydras did not even need to do any damage to the baal, not that they couldnot with 9 attacks 16 damages or above, but the baal ran away 50% of the time coming into contact with hydras.

[Sombre]

I'd quite like to see def stat (not including parry from shield) have more of an impact on trampling. That way tramplers would be a bit worse and light infantry with virtually no armour, plus light cavlary, would be a lot better.