Weakest Nations in each Era Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

There is plenty of debate as to which nation is strongest, or even which nations are stonger. Usually I find that the strongest nation is the one that last beat me, but your mileage may vary. However, I think it's more interesting to contemplate which nations are underpowered. These are the nations that are weak enough that it is unlikely for them to be able to win the game. These are the nations that as a community we should ask the devs for changes to and create balance mods to address. But first, we should identify them. So let's talk about the candidates.

The Early Era.
In the early era, crossbows are virtually unheard of, so troops with medium armor and no shields can actually be pretty survivable. On the flip side, a lot of your enemies are going to be bringing one flavor or another of giant to the battlefield, so high damage weaponry is virtually required on at least some of your troops.

EA Ulm
Low magic, their supposedly big capital mage doesn't even have a regular random and basically isn't worth recruiting. Their main mages are dependent on having a 50% random come up, which means actually getting any of their promised path combinations happens only once in 32 recruits - and they have two separate mages that they have to do that with. And one of them is on the wrong side of two flaws in the autocalc - the thing where mage priests cost too much and the thing where you only get rebates for the first level of inept researcher, leading the worse caster to actually cost 30 more gold than the better one. Ulm's troops are basically piles of barbarians and they have subhuman magic resistance on top of that.

But... are they actually bad? They have a long list of stealthy warriors that cover multiple tactical roles and access to both effective stealthy leaders and stealthy mages. They can build a lot of pretty useful troops in wilderness areas, and their late game magic diversity is potentially pretty impressive - they could plausibly have an Earth 3 caster as well as a level 2 caster in five other paths by the end of year 3. They can at least potentially have a stealthy force of archers backed up by a stealthy mage casting Flaming Arrows and headed up by stealthy shield bearers. That sounds like something you can do something with.

EA Marverni
You will never see the full range of their theoretical magic, which means that your early plans for late game magic are deeply hypothetical at best. Their main mage is capital only, slow to recruit, overpriced, and his primary claim to fame is that he has two separate randoms - meaning that on average you will get the one you want in 16 tries, and you won't be able to really depend on getting the one you want until more like 30 tries - which in turn is five actual game years and over ten thousand gold on initial hirings alone. It isn't going to happen. Your secondary mages are not very powerful or diverse and are overpriced for being mage priests. Your archers don't hit very hard as you get slingers and javelins - not exactly the stars of the ranged attack world. And you're still expected to pay 17 resources for a line soldier, which makes it difficult to field a big line.

But... are they actually bad? Marvernian soldiers may cost a lot of resources, but they don't cost a lot of gold. They pay only 11 gold for a modestly elite and well equipped swordsman who will absolutely shred most of the tribals of his era. Your archers may be slingers, but they only cost 8 gold and they come with a shield, meaning that they can play superior arrow catcher for whatever indie shortbowmen you do get. They can also field berserkers and standards if morale is an issue. And while their secondary mages are expensive and crappy, their tertiary mages cost only 45 gold and have astral magic. This means that once they start mad castling their gold to research output is actually fairly enviable and their mid game communions are potentially frightening indeed.

EA Caelum
The Eagle Kings are highly dependent on Eagle Kings. Those are, unfortunately, capital only and slow to recruit. Even with the Eagle Kings, your magic diversity is garbage tier: you get A4W1E1D1. Your build-anywhere mages can only come up with A2W1D1, which is an uninspiring level of magic diversity for independents. It's pretty sad when you or an opponent could literally just find a magic site that has more magic diversity than your entire faction. Just to add insult to injury: your national summons are in a magic type that your mages cannot even search for, let alone natively cast. Your actual army is composed of people who are genetically bad at fighting, which is also a problem. Caelumites are like humans, but eat more food, take up more space on the battlefield, and are not as strong or tough. Caelian Infantry costs 10 gold and 16 resources, but loses decisively to independent heavy infantry or even barbarians.

But... are they actually bad? Caelum's troops naturally fly and the self synergy of being able to put up storms while your main battle casters are Air 2 is obvious. While their infantry is trash, it is highly mobile and crappy infantry where you need it is obviously worth infinity times more than excellent infantry where you don't. They have flying shortbowmen and flying casters who can eventually cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend, which is pretty exciting - especially in a battle where you get to pick the time and place. Also you get the Mammoth, which is an Elephant who is tougher than other Elephants. It doesn't really go with the mobility angle, but it does do decent expansion work in the early game when their strategic mobility advantages don't count for anything.

EA Agartha
Your magic diversity is E4F2W2D2, which sounds fairly decent. But it's really garbage tier in practice, because you're dependent on hiring three different expensive, capital-only, slow to recruit mage priests and getting the right randoms to come up in order to get it and you don't have any cross contamination between the paths. What good is it to have Death and Fire if you'll never be able to cast Banefire or forge a Flaming Skull because you don't have them on the same caster? Agarthans are inferior soldiers. They are bigger and stronger than humans, but between the fact that they are nearly blind and have terrible equipment, they regularly get swarmed and smacked down by even independent infantry units. While Agartha has elite troops and build-anywhere sacreds, these units cost 50 gold a piece and you're never going to be able to field many of them.

But... are they actually bad? Agartha got a big content drop in the last update, which gives them decent build-anywhere lab monkeys and mind blasters. They also have amazingly good national summons and start in caves allowing them to summon Cave Grubs as early as conjuration 1. They also have Troglodytes and very tough sacred Ancient Ones. While their basic troops are probably best thought of as siege engines more than actual soldiers, they have enough weird awesome crap that you might be able to make something out of that. A line of summoned lava children and umbrals backed up by sacred regenerating seal guards using mind blasters and independent shortbowmen for archery and troglodyte tramplers for shock is certainly a weird force, but it sounds a lot better than the pile of trash Agarthans that the faction looks like at first and second glance.

EA Vanheim
Your mages who aren't slow to recruit and capital only cap out at Air 2/ Blood 1. And they are expensive stealthy sailing mounted mage priest generals. Your basic blood mage costs 285 gold and only has Blood 1, making him basically too expensive to hunt blood slaves with. Your basic researcher costs 145 gold, requires a fort, a lab, and a temple, and only makes 7 research points. Your capital mages are both slow to recruit, and the Vanadrott is again saddled with a tiny amount of Blood that he's pretty much too expensive to even use for anything. Your Van leaders are so expensive for trying to do everything that aren't any good at doing simple basic things like research, site finding, and casting rituals. Your super secret capital unit is the Fey Boar who is basically a joke unit - 100 gold for a non-sacred fragile size-3 trampler whose claim to fame is that when it is inevitably killed it instead moves back to your capital where it continues to be a tremendous drain on your finances. You have one of the shortest army lists in the game, with only five soldiers that can be built outside the capital. None of your troops are archers, tramplers, possessed of heavy weapons, or heavily armored. And while every other era of Venheim/Helheim is justified primarily by having nearly invincible sacred cavalry that murders everything and excuses all shortcomings... EA Vanheim just doesn't.

But... is it actually bad? You may not have the sacred doom cavalry, but you do have build-anywhere glamour cav. That's pretty interesting. Indeed, what soldiers you have are actually pretty boss. 25 gold gets you an elite glamour infantryman, and 30 gold gets you a glamour infantryman with a defense of seventeen. The Dwarves may be capital-only and slow to recruit, but if you have even one of them you can make a Dwarven Hammer, and then your Vanherses can start cranking out Owl Quills for 3 gems a piece. It won't make your research good or even "not terrible," but it'll improve things a lot. And you don't need to find any magic sites at all to get this started - your starting gem production is perfectly geared to making an early hammer and then making owl quills for the rest of eternity.

EA Kailasa
Monkey troops are hit and miss at the best of times, and Kailasa has one of the shortest lists of monkey troops available. They don't get the elephants or the medium infantry, or the armorer archers. They have build-anywhere sacred troops, but their only priests are only H1 and capital-only besides. And just to rub it in, their sacreds require magical leadership and their casters who aren't capital-only have poor leadership. They can summon mage priests, but that requires a powerful astral mage and the best astral caster in faction is only a 2. Their sacred troops are very vulnerable to archery because they insist on protecting their groins with Awe rather than pants.

But... are they actually bad? Kailasa fields one of the only sacred archers in the game, and it has a precision 12 longbow. They also have two non-slow-to-recruit capital casters who both specialize in different kinds of magic from their build-anywhere casters. Their total magic diversity is E4W4S2N2, which is good magic diversity. And they can summon Air and Astral casters to make it even better. With an Air Bless under the belt, their build-anywhere sacreds are pretty resilient both in and out of melee. A Guhyaka may be size 3 and cost 30 gold, but he has 2 attacks and that's actually not bad at all.

EA Lanka
The other half of the monkey armies in the Early Era, they lack the Bandar Swordsman, the armored archers, and elephants of later eras. Also, while they have the monkey blood summons, they don't have the monkey astral summons. The big issue here is that the faction is a Turmoil faction. Your sacred troops and capital-casters have Chaos Power, which means that they shrivel up and suck if they are standing on Order lands. Order is very much better than non-order, so taking Turmoil is a bad choice most of the time. This means not only that factions who have to take Turmoil are at a disadvantage, but also that their neighbors are going to likely have Order (and likely have Order 3 at that), which will severely limit a Chaos Power faction's ability to invade their neighbors. Lankan elites are also Demons, which means that they are subject to banishment and all factions have halfway decent blasting spells to use against them from the beginning of the game.

But... are they actually bad? Lanka may be a turmoil faction that is supposed to cause unrest by hunting for blood slaves, but they do get a specific bonus for doing that. Further, their priests can raise hordes of monkey undead like they were Ashen Fields without the poploss. They have a deep list of national blood summons, and a lot of monsters in there are very powerful. Their sacred demon troops are brutally effective and synergize well with a lot of different blesses. Their build-anywhere Yogini is a great researcher, and the faction's overall magic diversity is strong. They also have access to numerous spells that create unrest causing events, allowing them to exploit Chaos Power even in enemy lands if they have a turn to prepare. If any faction has the tools to overcome the limitations of being a Turmoil faction, Lanka is the one.

EA Yomi
Yomi is another turmoil faction, with all the problems that entails. However, instead of having awesome sacred demons, they have non-sacred demons whole are merely kind of OK. The faction doesn't get access to parallel zombie and blood economies, they are just a regular faction with crippling economic problems. They are caught on the wrong side of the Inept Researcher bug, having multiple commanders with multiple levels of Inept Researcher even though the autocalc only gives you the rebate for the first level. The Dai Oni is stuck paying for 11 research points he doesn't actually have! The leadership situation in Yomi is extremely dire, with half of their soldiers requiring demon leadership, and all but one of their leaders who have any demon leadership being poor leaders who penalize the morale of their squads - which when combined with the fact that Yomi demons are already disorganized and generally cowardly is totally terrible. Half their forces are penalized severely for fighting in enemy dominion, and they are literally the worst dominion push faction in the entire game. They have terrible priests and no sacred troops to justify buying a decent dominion score for.

But... are they actually bad? Yes. Yomi are bad. Really, really bad.

EA Atlantis
Atlantis specializes in helmetless troops with no ranged weapons in an era where slings are plentiful. The deep ones have low magic resistance and low defense scores and no helmets, and I honestly don't understand how they are supposed to survive in any environment. Medium magic diversity of E4W4F2S1, but much of that comes from a slow to recruit capital-only mage who is crazy expensive. No national spells worth noting, and an egregiously terrible list of available pretenders.

But... are they actually bad? Atlantis starts in the water, and that means that they cannot be invaded effectively or at all by most of their potential opponents for a good portion of the game. They can build amphibious Holy 3 commanders who are really very tough, which lets them potentially seize a bunch of thrones quickly. Their Basalt Kings are potentially a pretty scary thug. While only one troop in the entire empire seems to think it is in any way important to wear a helmet in battle, that one unit is the Coral Guard and it's a heavily armed and armored elite shambler that you get for only 35 gold.

EA Rlyeh
Rlyeh's best mages can't leave the water without items their national casters can't even forge, and their best troops can't leave the water at all. What mages they have which can leave the water on their own lose magic paths for doing it, and they don't get any cost discount for this at all. Their soldiers are low morale or require magic leadership, and their amphibious leaders who provide morale bonuses don't have magic leadership and their amphibious leaders with magic leadership make the bad morale situation even worse for the slaves with their poor leadership trait. No one in Rlyeh seems to know what a shield is, and the faction's priests can't even move, let alone claim thrones.

But... are they actually bad? Yes. EA Rlyeh is actually bad. It is difficult to imagine them doing something that would result in them winning the game.

EA Pelagia
Pelagia is a nation of Tritons, and Tritons can't leave the water. There are only a couple of soldiers in their entire faction that are even capable of leaving the water, and they are weak and uninspiring. Their signature ability is to be able to convert water gems cheaply into Astral Pearls, but they have powerful water mages and don't have powerful astral mages, so I don't know why they would even want to do that. They can't build anything they care about in land forts, so even if they somehow got a beachhead onto the beach, they wouldn't be able to do anything with it.

But... are they actually bad? Yes. In terms of the bottom line of achieving victory, Pelagia is about the weakest faction in the game. They can't win the game.

EA Oceania
Oceania is a water faction, which means that they get shafted on good pretenders. Their army list is very short, having only five non-capital units in it. Their mages are weaker on land, but their cost is based on the higher levels in the water so your casters are on the wrong side of the autocalc's assumptions much of the time. Even the fact that the Capricorn has a fixed N4 and then a random that doesn't include Nature makes him cost more and not be as good as if he had something more normal like an N3/E1 and a random that included N as a possibility. Your priests are full aquatic, so you need to build amulets of the fish in order to be able to seize land thrones.

But... are they actually bad? Starting in the water is still a very good defensive advantage in the early game, and they can actually seize land thrones. Icthytaurs aren't great land troops, but they aren't terrible land troops either, and you can build them everywhere. Their troops are amphibious, and they have genuine medium magic diversity, whatever the cost.

What do people think? Do you think a nation I didn't mention is terrible? Do you want to defend the honor of a nation I did mention? Do you want to pile on and note other terrible things about a faction that I did mention? Next up, we'll get to the possibly dreadfuls of the Middle Era, and after that we'll crawl along to the Late Era and try to determine who is as bad in the later periods as Lemuria.

-Frank

The EA Atlantis one is particulary strange, since they have some of the strongest troop in the EA when correctly used ; you forget the very big thing they have a natural protection of 8 which mean they have, in effect, helmet (and most don't have a better protection on their chest !). You also don't say a word on the Mage of the Deep which is one of the most powerful non-StR, non-cap only mage.

The analysis of most seem to have the same kind of flaw, I.E. that they really don't go enough in depth to be really useable, while being in a very, very, very long list of laundry nation.

No clue how valid it is, but I like that you break down your reasoning and thought process. I'm not very good and I don't play EA at all, so i'll have to wait until MA/LA to chime in(although i'm sad to hear lemuria may be crap as I found them interesting)

I take that you give some candidates.
I dont know, i like all but yomi seem hard to play i choose them
water nations i dont care because they rarely participate in MP

Water nations rarely see play in multiplayer because they are generally very bad. Atlantis and Oceania may be able to win, but EA Rlyeh and Pelagia definitely can't. There aren't question marks over those factions, they are just awful. I'm not sure if Oceania is actually bad, and I rather suspect that EA Atlantis might not be - but EA Rlyeh and Pelagia are simply bad. In any case, I'm hoping to get other perspectives from people to hash out which factions have fatal flaws and which have flaws that can be worked around.

The Middle Era.
Generally a fairly balanced mix of independents, meaning that you are likely to have to face every kind of unit from heavily armored cavalry to naked barbarians while expanding.

MA Ermor
Definitely a difficult faction to evaluate. The computer is uniquely incapable of dealing with the Ashen Fields. Raw unit numbers rise rapidly which makes the AI overestimate the difficulty of invading them, and the computer is just generally incapable of properly supplying their armies in a lifeless hellscape, causing their forces to starve and disperse shortly after invading an Ermorian nightmare world. But human players don't have these limitations. Ermor is rightfully hated by human players because they are bad for the local economy, and humans have no problems working out strategies to supply their forces or remurder large numbers of trash undead - which is pretty much what Ermor is going to field because the Ermorian player doesn't really get to choose their recruits.

But... are they actually bad? MA Ermor can expand quickly and they have a lot of gems to play around with. Ermor is not limited to rushing in like the tide and watching their forces get repelled again and again by men of faith and skill. They can have their pretender whip up some summoned backbones for the army or sprint for the Burden of Time - likely getting it in play before anyone has the means to dispel it.

MA Man
Man is a faction composed of mostly human troops with average equipment led by witches who are capital only, old, frail, slow to recruit, and have poor magic diversity. Man's magic is pretty bad and they fall on the wrong side of how the autocalc figures things so they pay a lot for what casters they do get. The soldiers of Man don't field any weapons or armor you wouldn't find on indie humans of the era, and nothing is really more than slightly elite.

But... are they actually bad? Many of their units are slightly elite, and often don't pay much if anything for it. Honestly, who really cares what your nominal spearmen do, when you have build-anywhere move 2 Longbowmen with a precision of 12 for only 12 gold? Man's expansion is fast, and they don't need to take a lot of losses doing it. If the Witches are overpriced and not all that good, well they also don't really need to recruit any of them for the first couple of years. Man has good knights and great archers, and that can be enough to conquer a lot of territory.

MA Ulm
Back in Dominions 2 and 3, Ulm was one of the worst factions. Terrible army, terrible casters, terrible faction. And they really haven't changed much on paper. They have magic diversity that is so bad that even if we counted their percentage randoms as full random picks, they'd still have garbage tier magic diversity. Really. It's that bad. There troops are mostly humans with normal morale and subhuman magic resistance who use normal infantry weapons and crawl slowly about the battlefield until they break the enemy (who then gets away because of the slowness) or they do (and then get slaughtered because of the slowness). There's very little depth to the army and even less depth to the mage core.

But... are they actually bad? While Ulm's units have changed little since Dominions 3, the rules have changed a lot. Pikes have gone from a low end weapon to a top tier weapon. The fact that they have access to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing weapons is now actually important. High encumbrance units just don't seem to die as badly in close combat - possibly because line formations end fights in less actual turns and possibly because the new hit location rules favor high protection more than low fatigue. But regardless of the 'why' the 'what' is that a line of Black Plate Pikeneers is a fearsome sight that can basically crush most opposition with few losses. The computer is wholly unable to contain the awesome that is the pike formation, and at least against the AI MA Ulm is pretty much the game on easy mode.

MA Machaka
Machaka has an army that is largely composed of what are essentially Lion Tribe indepedents. Their stuff is way too expensive for what it does, and what it does isn't usually all that impressive. Their low end combat caster is one the wrong end of the Inept Researcher bug, and their only really economical researcher is capital only. They have numerous fancy flavors of priest, and none of them are worth the truly spectacular amount of gold the game wants to charge you for them. Their giant spider riders cost a lot of money because they get a second life as a giant spider, but those giant spiders have animal level magic resistance and aren't worth much once enemies get the right kind of magic.

But... are they actually bad? The Machaka Hoplite may be the worst Hoplite, but the other Hoplites are pretty darn good. Being a faction that makes large numbers of shortbowmen isn't a bad thing if you happen to have ready access to fire mages powerful enough to open with a Flaming Arrows enchantment. Magic diversity in the faction is actually medium, and they have easy access to F3E3N3D2. Honestly, my gut still says this faction is unfinished and underpowered, but mostly because their stuff seems overpriced. Why are they paying 10 gold for what is basically an independent shortbowman? As a national troop, it seems like it should be getting a boost in eliteness or affordability or both.

MA Agartha
Agartha has no archers, and the closest thing they have is a javelinist who costs 50 gold and is capital only. Overall magic diversity is the upper end of garbage tier: E4D2F1W1, and half of that is only to be found on a slow to recruit, capital only caster. The faction is supposed to rely heavily on special conjured statues, but their Marble Oracles are so overpriced that it's hard to imagine how that's supposed to work.

But... are they actually bad? MA Agartha got a substantial boost in the last update. No longer are they bereft of units that hit hard in close combat, and Ancient Ones act as standard bearers. The army holds the line a lot better than it used to. While the Marble Oracle is still massively overpriced, Agartha has a lot of low level summoning options that are very good. Troglodytes, Attentive Statues, and Magma Children are all easy to acquire and quite good at doing jobs that Agarthans aren't good at themselves. I'm not sure, but the latest upgrade of MA Agartha might actually be enough to make it not weak.

MA Caelum
Caelians are just as worthless as soldiers in the middle era as they are in the early era, only now crossbows and longbows are more in style, making a pile of 10 gold shortbowmen even less exciting relatively speaking. Mammoths haven't gotten any better, and ice lances are just as inadequate as they were in ages past. Magic diversity is still poor.

But... are they bad? MA Caelum is probably the best Caelum. Magic diversity is poor, but it's not garbage tier anymore because the primary caster gets A4W3S1D1. And more importantly: that High Seraph can be built in any castle, meaning that MA Caelum can field a very large number of high end casters, even if they are slow to recruit. If any era of Caelum isn't terrible, this is that era.

MA Pelagia
With only a modest revamp of EA Pelagia, all the old complaints carry over in full. This faction cannot win the game. Full stop.

But... are they bad? Yes. MA Pelagia is the worst faction of the era. While many factions might have difficulty winning the game, Pelagia simply can't do it.

MA Oceania
Oceania goes to the middle era with pretty much everything they had in the early era plus a couple of expensive upgrade options. I'm not actually convinced that paying 15 gold to upgrade a 30 gold Icthycentaur to an Icthycentaur Cataphract is worth it, but at the limit of infinite play skill such an option can only help. But all the previous complaints pretty much still apply (except obviously for the thing where they only have 5 troops). Casters are still overpriced, troops are still a bit clumsy on land, forts on land still don't make good things.

But... is it actually bad? MA Oceania seems like a modest improvement on EA Oceania. Pretty much the same thing but with slightly more troop options. So however close EA Oceania is to being middle tier, MA Oceania is almost by definition somewhat closer.

If you want to make an argument for why some other middle era faction is in fact terrible, I'm all ears. If you have anecdotes to discuss whether any of the factions I've mention are or are not very weak factions, I'd love to hear that too.

-Frank

I would argue against EA Kailasa being weak The benefit of avoiding the plague of StR that hit most other nations cap only mages is pretty huge. Not that much changed about Kailasa from dom3 where they were considered at least decent. But now they can can now field twice as many Yaksha and Yakshini relative to other nations top tier mages.

I'd remove them from this list.

Exact opposite reasoning for someone like Marverni. They were considered at least somewhat weak in dom3 even with non-cap only druids. They haven't changed much otherwise, but not what used to be a recruit anywhere mage has now become cap only and StR. They're not Pelagia weak, but its hard to construct a logical argument that ends with them as strong.

I'd say a theme that runs through a lot of these weak nations is that in Dom3 they were 'big mage' centric. Big mages took a huge hit across the board, and any nation that fell in that category, but didn't get any requisite changes to the nation otherwise, took a huge hit.

Edited by: Torgoni

EA Yomi: You forgot to mention that they have DEMON SAMURAI. that is like +10 points of coolness.

You cannot beat Jomon ninja

Kailasa came down on the wrong side of some major rule changes in Dominions 4. First of all: base leadership is really important now. And Kailasa does have an admirable commander in the Bandar Commander. But he has never been able to lead the build-anywhere Guhyakas, and he still can't. And while the Guru has always been able to lead 25 Guhyakas and still can, that's now a terrible option because his leadership bonus is set by his poorleader quality. That's a red flag for me. Second: the ramp up of mid and high tier research costs really kicks Kailasa where it hurts. Even Kinaras are a level 6 Conjuration, and you have to build a booster if you want to cast it with your native casters. In Dominions 3, getting to Construction 6 for Starshine caps and Conjuration 6 for Kinaras to lead and bless your secondary armies was no big deal. But in Dominions 4, that's a really really big deal and the game could even be decided before you get there. That's another red flag for me. And of course: Kailasa more than any other faction excelled at making clam economies - they had a caster who could natively make a hammer, a caster who could natively make a clam, and of course vast armies of Gandharvas and Siddhas to make with the pearl income. Clam economies simply don't exist in Dominions 4, so there's that.

I am not committed to the idea that Kailasa is bad now, but there are a couple big red flags going up that make my theorycraft senses tingle that Kailasa is probably a lot worse than it used to be. I could be wrong. After all, blesses changed substantially and Kailasa can now make better use of the major bless of Air, Fire, Death, Nature, and Blood. So they do have that going for them.

-Frank

So what on the leadership? You'll have Yakshas and Yakshini coming out of your ears compared to other nations top tier mages. Ferry them around with those guys. And if they're otherwise occupied, Guhyakas are moral 13 to start so its not exactly like a moral malus of -1 is going to cripple them. So what if your toting them around with Gurus and Yogis? I generally think that the talk of leadership being more important than it used to be a bit overblown compared to reality. Or if you must, just put an apsara with each squad for the standard. Problem solved.

I wasn't even considering clam economies, never even played in a game in which they're were part of the ruleset, that was a long time ago.

Sure, Kailasas will play differently than they did in dom3. They're no longer going to be the late game powerhouse lead by rudras, kinaras, all the nice astral summons, and if you want to include them - clams. You have to start seeing them as an early game threat powered by nicely blessed sacreds and a shit ton of top tier mages. Yaksha have always been one of the better thugs in the game, use them as such and realize you have twice as many of them as the other nations have of they're cap only mages - you can take a bit more risks.

It's harder to get to research levels above 4, but you'll have great research compared to many since you can pull a cap only mage every turn. So what can you get at level 4 and below fairly easily?

Go for level 4 alteration, level 4 construction, and level 3 conjugation. What do you get
For your yakshas: Summon EP, stoneskin, iron skin, temper flesh, destruction, curse of stones, elemental fortitude, construction 4 and all its goodies, blade wind, etc.

For your yakshinis you get Liquid body and quicken self.

These make for some nasty little thugs to go along with all the other nice things they do for you (like destruction), that comes with these same research levels. Having 2x as many of these guys is a huge advantage.

Edited by: Torgoni

' protecting their groins with Awe rather than pants.' Yeah, that...hurts, as does them being magic being.

Also, I never read before of EA Van being a weak faction, surprised to see them here. I can see how the boars are a bit..underwhelming. Would be nice if they had more of a nice, they're flavourful(..and that's not just a pun on them providing a supply bonus).

Edited by: TheZonk

Frank, thanks for writing up these "tourist brochures" for some of the EA and MA nations. It is nice to have some high-level overviews, sitting side by side, with a consistent set of evaluation criteria applied. Quite useful for people broadly thinking about game balance.

Torgoni wrote: So what on the leadership? You'll have Yakshas and Yakshini coming out of your ears compared to other nations top tier mages. Ferry them around with those guys. And if they're otherwise occupied, Guhyakas are moral 13 to start so its not exactly like a moral malus of -1 is going to cripple them. So what if your toting them around with Gurus and Yogis? I generally think that the talk of leadership being more important than it used to be a bit overblown compared to reality. Or if you must, just put an apsara with each squad for the standard. Problem solved.

I wasn't even considering clam economies, never even played in a game in which they're were part of the ruleset, that was a long time ago.

Sure, Kailasas will play differently than they did in dom3. They're no longer going to be the late game powerhouse lead by rudras, kinaras, all the nice astral summons, and if you want to include them - clams. You have to start seeing them as an early game threat powered by nicely blessed sacreds and a shit ton of top tier mages. Yaksha have always been one of the better thugs in the game, use them as such and realize you have twice as many of them as the other nations have of they're cap only mages - you can take a bit more risks.

It's harder to get to research levels above 4, but you'll have great research compared to many since you can pull a cap only mage every turn. So what can you get at level 4 and below fairly easily?

Go for level 4 alteration, level 4 construction, and level 3 conjugation. What do you get
For your yakshas: Summon EP, stoneskin, iron skin, temper flesh, destruction, curse of stones, elemental fortitude, construction 4 and all its goodies, blade wind, etc.

For your yakshinis you get Liquid body and quicken self.

These make for some nasty little thugs to go along with all the other nice things they do for you (like destruction), that comes with these same research levels. Having 2x as many of these guys is a huge advantage.

What Pretender would you go with? I went with a A9S4D4, Dom9 O3S2H3L0M0 Imprisoned Destroyer and it seemed to work alright. I mainly spammed the longbow sacreds as I've never done something like that before, but I'm just not entirely sure they're worth it. You need to constantly set up meatshields for them and they don't kill too fast, which leads to lots of units (albeit mostly non-sacred) being replaced in the early game.

I'd be interested to see how you use the faction.

I've been playing around and I actually really like a great white bull. Seems a bit weird but it's actually pretty awesome.

E4N9 Awake. Dom 8. O3 S3 H3 M2 D1. The bless is mainly for your thugs, but it's also pretty nice on Yavannas and Guhyakas. Go straight up alteration to level 4, then construction to level 4. The bull does most of your expanding, but you can also send out Yavannas as desired. You get out of the gates blazingly fast in just about everything. At construction 4, alteration 4 each one of your Yakasha is a very potent thug with just a shield and a ice brand. With SEP and the alteration buffs your bull is an absolute terror within your dominion. After that its a bit situational - keep going up alt for the mother oak, conj for your national summons, evo for blade wind/earthquake, thaum for astral goodies, etc. Depends on who you're fighting.

I don't think the longbow sacreds are really worth it. They just don't kill fast enough. I say go for a bless that's good for your melee sacreds and your mage/thugs/summons. In my opinion N with minor E really fits the bill here. The major N bless is great on all of your stuff.

Edited by: Torgoni

id agree that yomi needs tweaks for sure. my thoughts on the matter.

i think that chaos power needs more tweaking overall. tanking your primary gold scale has a ripple effect across your entire game not just the malus that comes from fighting in everyone else's order provinces. more then even chaos power needing tweaking id call for chaos recruitment changes. its not a downgrade in costs its a rebate that has zero effect upon how many you may recruit this turn, nor does it do anything to offset your upkeep after tanking the primary gold scale.

as far as yomi i feel that a huge problem is everything outside of bandits being undisciplined. the little bakamono are useless as always but not being able to script your archer one is horrid. every single oni minus the crappy little guy and the AO-Oni being able to be tricked by real players using arrow catchers is in my eyes the same as just handing your opponent a minimum of 3 free turns in combat. morale i dont think matters as much as the demons outside the crappy little guy have 14 or 15 morale. sure a 2 morale penalty hurts(1 squad on your oni generals) but its far from game breaking.

just thought id drop my thoughts on my favorite faction and what i feel cripples them. turmoil in general coupled with 0 scripted troops.

Edited by: deathnor

FrankTrollman wrote: EA Ulm
Low magic, their supposedly big capital mage doesn't even have a regular random and basically isn't worth recruiting. Their main mages are dependent on having a 50% random come up, which means actually getting any of their promised path combinations happens only once in 32 recruits - and they have two separate mages that they have to do that with. And one of them is on the wrong side of two flaws in the autocalc - the thing where mage priests cost too much and the thing where you only get rebates for the first level of inept researcher, leading the worse caster to actually cost 30 more gold than the better one. Ulm's troops are basically piles of barbarians and they have subhuman magic resistance on top of that.

But... are they actually bad? They have a long list of stealthy warriors that cover multiple tactical roles and access to both effective stealthy leaders and stealthy mages. They can build a lot of pretty useful troops in wilderness areas, and their late game magic diversity is potentially pretty impressive - they could plausibly have an Earth 3 caster as well as a level 2 caster in five other paths by the end of year 3. They can at least potentially have a stealthy force of archers backed up by a stealthy mage casting Flaming Arrows and headed up by stealthy shield bearers. That sounds like something you can do something with.

EA Ulm has other advantages. Their troops have both Forest and Mountain Survival, and you can recruit a good commander with the same attributes out of any mountain or forest. EA Ulm is therefore an actual map-move 2 army.

Troop diversity you already mentioned, but I'll just elaborate and say they get good shield/sword infantry, a lot of dual wielders, archers, archer/medium infantry, and a sacred that was born to kneecap giants. They may in fact be the most diverse human army in EA, with the added advantage of resource-producing smiths that makes recruitment bottlenecks less pronounced.

EA Ulm's real problem though, is the lack of things to cast beyond level 4 magic. They get to cast a lot of stuff in Alteration 4, Enchantment 4, and Construction 4, but any higher and they run into issues.

I think the best way to play them is to leverage on an early midgame push - get to Alt4/Ench4/Con4 fast (using your non-fort Shamans to help bootstrap research a little) before trying to knock out some neighbors who are still finishing their own critical research paths. This isn't a big window however, and I suspect that a lot of "testing" actually makes this window smaller because the tests are on blitz games with fast (not normal) research.

EA Marverni
You will never see the full range of their theoretical magic, which means that your early plans for late game magic are deeply hypothetical at best. Their main mage is capital only, slow to recruit, overpriced, and his primary claim to fame is that he has two separate randoms - meaning that on average you will get the one you want in 16 tries, and you won't be able to really depend on getting the one you want until more like 30 tries - which in turn is five actual game years and over ten thousand gold on initial hirings alone. It isn't going to happen. Your secondary mages are not very powerful or diverse and are overpriced for being mage priests. Your archers don't hit very hard as you get slingers and javelins - not exactly the stars of the ranged attack world. And you're still expected to pay 17 resources for a line soldier, which makes it difficult to field a big line.

But... are they actually bad? Marvernian soldiers may cost a lot of resources, but they don't cost a lot of gold. They pay only 11 gold for a modestly elite and well equipped swordsman who will absolutely shred most of the tribals of his era. Your archers may be slingers, but they only cost 8 gold and they come with a shield, meaning that they can play superior arrow catcher for whatever indie shortbowmen you do get. They can also field berserkers and standards if morale is an issue. And while their secondary mages are expensive and crappy, their tertiary mages cost only 45 gold and have astral magic. This means that once they start mad castling their gold to research output is actually fairly enviable and their mid game communions are potentially frightening indeed.

The problem with your good troops here is that they cost more resources than EA Ulm, but you don't get resource bonuses from Smiths. And almost insultingly, their troops only get forest survival and not mountain survival. EA Ulm, I think, can only be put on the cusp of "goodness", so the worse mages and worse troops definitely put Marveni in the bad pile. That said, I think some tweaks to the Druids can make them good enough.

EA Caelum
The Eagle Kings are highly dependent on Eagle Kings. Those are, unfortunately, capital only and slow to recruit. Even with the Eagle Kings, your magic diversity is garbage tier: you get A4W1E1D1. Your build-anywhere mages can only come up with A2W1D1, which is an uninspiring level of magic diversity for independents. It's pretty sad when you or an opponent could literally just find a magic site that has more magic diversity than your entire faction. Just to add insult to injury: your national summons are in a magic type that your mages cannot even search for, let alone natively cast. Your actual army is composed of people who are genetically bad at fighting, which is also a problem. Caelumites are like humans, but eat more food, take up more space on the battlefield, and are not as strong or tough. Caelian Infantry costs 10 gold and 16 resources, but loses decisively to independent heavy infantry or even barbarians.

But... are they actually bad? Caelum's troops naturally fly and the self synergy of being able to put up storms while your main battle casters are Air 2 is obvious. While their infantry is trash, it is highly mobile and crappy infantry where you need it is obviously worth infinity times more than excellent infantry where you don't. They have flying shortbowmen and flying casters who can eventually cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend, which is pretty exciting - especially in a battle where you get to pick the time and place. Also you get the Mammoth, which is an Elephant who is tougher than other Elephants. It doesn't really go with the mobility angle, but it does do decent expansion work in the early game when their strategic mobility advantages don't count for anything.

Caelum's problem is more of figuring out how to get their troops to expand properly; the mages are pretty ok for midgame Evoc spam.

EA Vanheim
Your mages who aren't slow to recruit and capital only cap out at Air 2/ Blood 1. And they are expensive stealthy sailing mounted mage priest generals. Your basic blood mage costs 285 gold and only has Blood 1, making him basically too expensive to hunt blood slaves with. Your basic researcher costs 145 gold, requires a fort, a lab, and a temple, and only makes 7 research points. Your capital mages are both slow to recruit, and the Vanadrott is again saddled with a tiny amount of Blood that he's pretty much too expensive to even use for anything. Your Van leaders are so expensive for trying to do everything that aren't any good at doing simple basic things like research, site finding, and casting rituals. Your super secret capital unit is the Fey Boar who is basically a joke unit - 100 gold for a non-sacred fragile size-3 trampler whose claim to fame is that when it is inevitably killed it instead moves back to your capital where it continues to be a tremendous drain on your finances. You have one of the shortest army lists in the game, with only five soldiers that can be built outside the capital. None of your troops are archers, tramplers, possessed of heavy weapons, or heavily armored. And while every other era of Venheim/Helheim is justified primarily by having nearly invincible sacred cavalry that murders everything and excuses all shortcomings... EA Vanheim just doesn't.

But... is it actually bad? You may not have the sacred doom cavalry, but you do have build-anywhere glamour cav. That's pretty interesting. Indeed, what soldiers you have are actually pretty boss. 25 gold gets you an elite glamour infantryman, and 30 gold gets you a glamour infantryman with a defense of seventeen. The Dwarves may be capital-only and slow to recruit, but if you have even one of them you can make a Dwarven Hammer, and then your Vanherses can start cranking out Owl Quills for 3 gems a piece. It won't make your research good or even "not terrible," but it'll improve things a lot. And you don't need to find any magic sites at all to get this started - your starting gem production is perfectly geared to making an early hammer and then making owl quills for the rest of eternity.

Vanheim is more of "bad compared to other Heim nations" as opposed to being "bad"

EA Lanka
The other half of the monkey armies in the Early Era, they lack the Bandar Swordsman, the armored archers, and elephants of later eras. Also, while they have the monkey blood summons, they don't have the monkey astral summons. The big issue here is that the faction is a Turmoil faction. Your sacred troops and capital-casters have Chaos Power, which means that they shrivel up and suck if they are standing on Order lands. Order is very much better than non-order, so taking Turmoil is a bad choice most of the time. This means not only that factions who have to take Turmoil are at a disadvantage, but also that their neighbors are going to likely have Order (and likely have Order 3 at that), which will severely limit a Chaos Power faction's ability to invade their neighbors. Lankan elites are also Demons, which means that they are subject to banishment and all factions have halfway decent blasting spells to use against them from the beginning of the game.

But... are they actually bad? Lanka may be a turmoil faction that is supposed to cause unrest by hunting for blood slaves, but they do get a specific bonus for doing that. Further, their priests can raise hordes of monkey undead like they were Ashen Fields without the poploss. They have a deep list of national blood summons, and a lot of monsters in there are very powerful. Their sacred demon troops are brutally effective and synergize well with a lot of different blesses. Their build-anywhere Yogini is a great researcher, and the faction's overall magic diversity is strong. They also have access to numerous spells that create unrest causing events, allowing them to exploit Chaos Power even in enemy lands if they have a turn to prepare. If any faction has the tools to overcome the limitations of being a Turmoil faction, Lanka is the one.

I think Lanka can work with a very early switch to a Blood economy. I've done test games wherein I can stop recruiting troops by the end of year 1 and rely mainly on summons from hereon out.

FrankTrollman wrote: MA Ermor
Definitely a difficult faction to evaluate. The computer is uniquely incapable of dealing with the Ashen Fields. Raw unit numbers rise rapidly which makes the AI overestimate the difficulty of invading them, and the computer is just generally incapable of properly supplying their armies in a lifeless hellscape, causing their forces to starve and disperse shortly after invading an Ermorian nightmare world. But human players don't have these limitations. Ermor is rightfully hated by human players because they are bad for the local economy, and humans have no problems working out strategies to supply their forces or remurder large numbers of trash undead - which is pretty much what Ermor is going to field because the Ermorian player doesn't really get to choose their recruits.

But... are they actually bad? MA Ermor can expand quickly and they have a lot of gems to play around with. Ermor is not limited to rushing in like the tide and watching their forces get repelled again and again by men of faith and skill. They can have their pretender whip up some summoned backbones for the army or sprint for the Burden of Time - likely getting it in play before anyone has the means to dispel it.

MA Ermor I think has potential; but the problem is that the toxic dominion causes grand coalitions to be formed against Ermor. It's more of a metagame issue I think.

MA Man
Man is a faction composed of mostly human troops with average equipment led by witches who are capital only, old, frail, slow to recruit, and have poor magic diversity. Man's magic is pretty bad and they fall on the wrong side of how the autocalc figures things so they pay a lot for what casters they do get. The soldiers of Man don't field any weapons or armor you wouldn't find on indie humans of the era, and nothing is really more than slightly elite.

But... are they actually bad? Many of their units are slightly elite, and often don't pay much if anything for it. Honestly, who really cares what your nominal spearmen do, when you have build-anywhere move 2 Longbowmen with a precision of 12 for only 12 gold? Man's expansion is fast, and they don't need to take a lot of losses doing it. If the Witches are overpriced and not all that good, well they also don't really need to recruit any of them for the first couple of years. Man has good knights and great archers, and that can be enough to conquer a lot of territory.

MA Man's mages actively make me cringe whenever I look at them due to their cost and lack of stuff to do with them. I really think they need some mage-fixing, no matter how good their army may be (which I think is still worse off than Ulm's)

MA Ulm
Back in Dominions 2 and 3, Ulm was one of the worst factions. Terrible army, terrible casters, terrible faction. And they really haven't changed much on paper. They have magic diversity that is so bad that even if we counted their percentage randoms as full random picks, they'd still have garbage tier magic diversity. Really. It's that bad. There troops are mostly humans with normal morale and subhuman magic resistance who use normal infantry weapons and crawl slowly about the battlefield until they break the enemy (who then gets away because of the slowness) or they do (and then get slaughtered because of the slowness). There's very little depth to the army and even less depth to the mage core.

But... are they actually bad? While Ulm's units have changed little since Dominions 3, the rules have changed a lot. Pikes have gone from a low end weapon to a top tier weapon. The fact that they have access to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing weapons is now actually important. High encumbrance units just don't seem to die as badly in close combat - possibly because line formations end fights in less actual turns and possibly because the new hit location rules favor high protection more than low fatigue. But regardless of the 'why' the 'what' is that a line of Black Plate Pikeneers is a fearsome sight that can basically crush most opposition with few losses. The computer is wholly unable to contain the awesome that is the pike formation, and at least against the AI MA Ulm is pretty much the game on easy mode.

The real thing that puts MA Ulm over the top to "goodness" is the smith resources. Black Plate Pikeneers aren't scary in small numbers, but Ulm can mass them in large numbers thanks to the Smiths + Production + Production bonuses. And due to low gold costs it lets them keep recruiting Smiths. Lategame magic diversity will undoubtedly be an issue, but for the early and midgame I think Ulm can lay claim to having the best army of the age simply because their stuff is both good and easy to recruit.

I like Lanka as well. Imo, if Chaos Power ever get improved they'd be right up there in no time. I once had a game where the three provinces next to my capital had indie priest recruits. I rushed temples there, then recruited priests every single turn, moving them into my capital. The result was massive armies of undead in my capital, which I summoned Mound Kings to lead with a short dip into enchantment. That + blood summons was very promising.

Torgoni wrote: I've been playing around and I actually really like a great white bull. Seems a bit weird but it's actually pretty awesome.
E4N9 Awake. Dom 8. O3 S3 H3 M2 D1. The bless is mainly for your thugs, but it's also pretty nice on Yavannas and Guhyakas. Go straight up alteration to level 4, then construction to level 4. The bull does most of your expanding, but you can also send out Yavannas as desired. You get out of the gates blazingly fast in just about everything. At construction 4, alteration 4 each one of your Yakasha is a very potent thug with just a shield and a ice brand. With SEP and the alteration buffs your bull is an absolute terror within your dominion. After that its a bit situational - keep going up alt for the mother oak, conj for your national summons, evo for blade wind/earthquake, thaum for astral goodies, etc. Depends on who you're fighting.
I don't think the longbow sacreds are really worth it. They just don't kill fast enough. I say go for a bless that's good for your melee sacreds and your mage/thugs/summons. In my opinion N with minor E really fits the bill here. The major N bless is great on all of your stuff.

Sounds fun, I'll try it.

Edited by: Unahim

The Late Era
The Late Era is full of crossbowmen and heavy cavalry. You will be asked to fight independents with heavy armor and to survive hails of armor piercing archery during basic expansion.

LA Arcocephale
Arco is basically Arco, but this time around your capital mage is overpriced, slow to recruit, and not good for much outside a smattering of magic diversity in sorcery paths. The Sibyl is certainly no replacement for the Oread, and yet there she is. The Sibyl is stuck paying through the nose for Nature and Holy paths that you don't give a crap about because the Priestess already has that covered and you're building her for the healing that the Sibyl doesn't even do. Slingers weren't that great in the Early Age, and in the Middle Era they were embarrassing. In the Late Age they are a joke.

But... are they bad? The promise of LA Arco is that they give you a better army in exchange for your weaker magic. And the barded war elephant goes a long long way towards making that a reality. Besides, the Mystic and the Arco Priestess are still good, and you still get them. Hoplites are still good, and you still get them.

LA Pythium
In Dominions 3, LA Pythium was an afterthought nation made in a late patch that never actually gelled. They technically had access to every kind of magic, but in practice they were basically hiring independent heretics that were too costly to justify using as your main mages. Plus, when it comes down to it having access to all the magic doesn't matter much if you can't use any of the magic particularly well. Moving into Dominions 4, the basic rubric is pretty similar - Pythium needs to get three different mages and get the right random flip on each one to unlock a level 2 in three different paths. Their best path goes all the way up to a three, if they get the right random on an overpriced capital-only mage priest. Their heretic mages have been hit with Inept Researcher, which means that they are on the wrong side of the Inept Researcher bug, paying for 1 to 3 points of research they don't actually get.

But... are they bad? Certainly the rules have changed in some pretty important ways. The mystery cultists no longer need forts to build. They may be poor researchers and overpriced, but you can churn them out anywhere with just a lab. And they aren't the only ones. You don't need a fort to build legionnaires. Legion troops are good troops, and you can make them wherever you want. And the new mechanics for poison resistance made hydra troops way better and less likely to kill your army on accident. And you do get sacred hydras, which are cheaper now in exchange for being limited recruitment.

LA Lemuria
While Lemuria has pretty much no problems with the computer as the AI is structurally incapable of dealing with a freespawn/poploss nation in any form, Lemuria isn't that difficult to take down for human opponents. Spirit troops aren't really very good, and basic disembodied spirits are pretty much just weak chaff. Lemuria needs magic, and you can't get the research you need to fight human opponents or the magical backup for your armies that would make said research actually useful by paying 50 gems for a Grand Lemur. That is simply not happening, especially not at the default magic site rate for the Late Era of 35.

But... are they bad? I'm pretty sure Lemuria is bad. They don't have a lot of options and it's too easy for human players to take them down by any of a number of means long before Lemuria can get their research act together to even pretend to have anything to do about it. This faction takes too long to develop. If there is a silver lining to this faction, it's that your immortal wraith thugs are, while overpriced, extraordinarily powerful. A Wraith Consul is a pretty good late game thug chassis and you start with the ability to cast it. Or you would if they didn't cost 25 gems that you can't afford because you need site searchers and researchers and the Consul is neither of those things.

LA Jomon
Life in the era of ubiquitous crossbows as a nation of shieldless medium infantry is necessarily going to be difficult. Jomon is supposed to make something of their ability to search at level 2 in 7 paths (AEWFNSH), but this relies on them getting double randoms to come up right, and their randoms are from five paths rather than four. It takes an average of 25 mage recruits to find someone who can properly search in one of your paths. And they cost 165 gold a piece, this is not a small investment. Their actual high end is the sea dragons, but in order to get that they need to conquer the seas. Did I mention their lack of amphibious troops? Well, they don't have amphibious troops, meaning that they might literally be waiting for a national hero to show up to lead their armies into the water. Needless to say, this can very plausibly not happen over the course of the entire game. Jomon soldiers cost a lot of resources (their archer costs 25) and none of them see fit to carry a shield. In an era when anyone who wants can field an army of crossbowmen, it's a big deal.

But... are they actually bad? Jomon clearly can't be played without Productivity 3, but they do get well armed longbowmen for only 11 gold. And their Ashigaru have a length 5 weapon and only cost 8 gold each. It's not like they can't expand, and samurai archers are much tougher than indie crossbowmen. Once you get some indies with shields as arrow catchers and indies with crossbows as a firing line, the Jomon soldiers can fill nice roles in a battle. And while it might take a lot of recruitments to get the whole breadth of Jomon magic, Jomon magic has a lot of breadth. E3N3F2A2W2S2H2 before you get into the water and uncover the sea dragons. That's excellent magic diversity once you get it all together. And your national casters can summon Dai Tengu who will bootstrap you to Air 3, and the Kami will bootstrap you to 3 in all the other paths if you summon enough of them. Given enough time to dick around, Jomon can have magic diversity that other factions can only dream of and an all-arms force of soldiers capable of winning major battles.

LA Agartha
LA Agartha was one of the best factions in Dominions 3. Unfortunately, they fell on the wrong side of some pretty major rules changes. The Dominions 3 faction was largely based around one caster: the Ktonian Necromancer. He was a powerful build-anywhere mage and also provided the three kinds of leadership that LA Agartha needs to move their armies around. Well... in Dominions 4 unit limits were given to leaders, meaning that a Ktonian Necromancer can only field two units before penalties start appearing. Remember: Agartha needs three different kinds of leadership because their armies are composed of magic beings, undead, and regular units in an all-arms force, so a two unit cap really hurts badly. But that hardly matters, because the Ktonian Necromancer has been made capital-only and slow-to-recruit, so they may as well not even exist in most instances and their inability to actually lead the armies of Agartha into battle anymore is irrelevant. Agartha is instead asked to use their lesser casters to lead their armies, and that is like watching the keystone cops in action. Their build-anywhere priest is supposed to bless their sacred troops i think, but he is way too expensive and can also only lead 5 of them at a time. Even simple expansion forces need like 3 leaders because of non-overlapping magisteria.

But... are they actually bad? Agartha's leadership situation is indeed terrible, but their troops are actually very good. Steel crossbows and men with kite shields are valid things to bring to a battle whether it's a simple expansion conflict or a major confrontation. Agartha also got a major content drop in the last update which among other things gave them a build-anywhere alchemist who is a master of acid evocations. This jumped the faction's magic diversity from poor to medium by itself, as well as substantially speeding Agarthan research.

LA Caelum
LA Caelum has poor magic diversity and their main caster is capital only and slow to recruit. It's kind of like if Early Era and Mid Era had a baby with all the problems of both. Caelumites are still bad soldiers, and now ubiquitous armor and crossbows make Caelum's archers feel small in the pants. Return of the raptors is simply a bad faction.

But... are they actually bad? Yes. Return of the Raptors is a bad faction. Even their new special troops just use regular steel armor and weapons. And not even especially good steel armor. The Iron Crows wear scale armor, which wasn't special or high tech in the Early Era. Getting it in the Late Era as your new innovation is simply insulting.

LA Bogarus
The armies of Bogarus are bad. The Peshti are basically just indie human infantry and the Voi are worse than that. Bogarus also has cavalry, but they aren't particularly exceptional. They can build cavalry in provinces without a fort, but it's not even mediocre cavalry, it's just plain bad. We're talking about cavalry that doesn't even have a lance and still costs 25 gold a unit bad. If you were really desperate to pay 25 gold for a precision 10 composite bowman, the Black Hood might matter, but that's obviously an extremely niche occurrence. The infantry archers of Bogarus bring shortbows and have a precision of 9. It's a joke in the era. It would be a joke in any era, and in the late era it is funnier than it would be in most others.

But... are they actually bad? Bogarus certainly isn't much of a military threat, but their magic is truly exceptional. The Startsy of course are well known as powerful mages, making 25 research and having significant magic diversity by themselves. But the Bogorussian mage corps is both broad and deep, delivering specialist battle mages in several flavors as well as a truly exceptional basic researcher (155 gold gets you 17 research points per turn), and dedicated blood hunters. It all adds up to only medium magic diversity (S3F2A2B2E1D1), but it's sorted and resorted in several ways that make it more useful than the raw numbers would indicate. And of course, it's backed up by a turbo research system which is pretty impressive.

LA Rlyeh
With the rise of the sleeping god, Rlyeh has become a popkill nation. Their dominion causes freespawn to arise, gives you free leaders from time to time, and drives leaders without void sanity insane. Unfortunately for Rlyeh, these freespawn leaders are insane and can't be counted on to act. Even worse, your freespawn are divided into mindless magic beings and low morale and decidedly not-mindless normal beings. This creates something of a leadership crisis as you need magic and normal leadership while your freespawn leaders don't reliably have sufficient amounts of both - and you have another leadership crisis coming where you are going to have to leave commanders behind because they need to shout at the stars or perform heretic preaching or some damn thing so I hope you brought extras on important invasions. Now when I said "freespawn" I meant that you didn't pay anything to have them show up, but they actually do cost upkeep - which is economically painful considering that your tax base is collapsing from the popkill. You can get them killed of course, but not all of the spawn are amphibious - some are restricted to the land or the water and then you're stuck with them. Your main mage is slow to recruit, capital only, and very expensive, and your second biggest mage doesn't have Void Sanity so you'll want to avoid him where possible. Your third biggest mage is an overpriced mage priest mini-thug, making him less than ideal for research or battle magic.

But... are they actually bad? Rlyeh's troops may be terrible and hard to herd around, but you don't actually pay anything to hire them. You can and do still use the gold economy to put together powerful mages, and they are really very powerful. You have access to void summons, which are random as heck but top out at giving you near doom horror levels of mythos monsters. Your dominion can be used as an effective weapon, as it kills population and drives commanders insane in other peoples' territories as well. Your madmen will declare themselves to be prophets from time to time, so you actually have a load of guys who can claim thrones, and there are only a couple of factions in the entire era who can even invade you in the early game (and since Atlantis and Mictlan are rightfully feared, there's no guaranty anyone else is going to support them in doing so). Your starspawn can pull a lot of teleportation shenanigans, and you can move very large armies very long distances in very short times in the late game. While your research may stumble and your logistics is an actual nightmare, it seems that the Dreamlands have several means at their disposal to actually win the game - at least potentially.

Edited by: FrankTrollman

Since I am a rather new player, I won't give any actual advice on gameplay, but you might want to add, that EA Agartha actually doubles as a somewhat useable underwater nation (The only recruitables that can't go underwater being the Troglodyte and The Troglodyte Lord).
A rather sad downside is, that they can only spawn in a cave, if the map has that sort of province (figures ). I wouldn't use this faction on a map without caves at all and most "old" maps never got those added, so with only vanilla maps I'd be stuck with... I guess Valanis and randoms? On a map like Valanis however, I'd like to think, this faction has great potential, especially, if there are no other dedicated underwater nations.

I am playing MP with EA Vanheim right now. I wouldn't go into the details but they are at least average. To begin with, vanhere is good.

Thoughts on domkill/Ma ermor/La lemuria-

I wonder how much of an issue the domkill dominion is. Two other domkill races come to mind, but don't show up on your lists(ashphodel and LA R'yleh I believe). Do players routinely gang up on them as well, or is the Dom kill + tanked scales part of the reason Ermor and Lemuria get extra special hate?

MA Ermor- My only thought is that they seem to have enough flexibility to maybe work outside of their obvious metagame issues(and i wonder about how much an ermor player really needs to push dominion sometimes, but meh). You've got actually good sacred troops, and god knows you'll have enough points for a bless, and it seems like ok natural magic diversity with some of the better national summons in my experience(I suck and vs AI so i know it means little, but wailing ladies seem nasty). I think it helps that technically you don't NEED to make your pretender have death to work. It may be the only realistic option in the end, but empowering a mage to 3(they start at 2) gets you access to anything you'd need anyways, so maybe there's something there that can be worked with?

LA Lemuria- The more I've messed with them the more I have to say I agree. I got the brilliant idea to attempt the above strat with lemuria and see if I could get away with a 0 death pretender and then just empower one of my natural D2 mages up later. Except of course lemuria has no starting D2 mages and I'm an idiot. In fact it was at this moment I realized lemuria is the first race i'd ever played that didn't even start with a scout. It's odd to me that Ermor is sitting on a stealthy D2 mage who can make other mages for 12 gems, and lemuria gets a non stealthy sacred priest for a starting toy(which is even more weird when I think about it because normal shadows can stealth?).

Their summons seems pretty awful(Shade beast is passable, but seems hard to get in threatening numbers, and apparitions just seemed designed to make sure the guy who kills you loses as well?), and they lose everything that helps ermor branch out(no powerful sarcred units...in fact really no powerful units at all, and 0 national spells outside the starting recruits). I mean it feels odd since almost every other race has their "chaff" their "average units" and then they've got a smattering of elite/unique. Even MA ermor. I feel like Lemuria is missing the elites and instead of getting unique they just made ALL their units ghosts and called it a day(and what the hell happened to the Calvary? We can get undead horses but not ghost horses?)

The only real things of note that I can even think to screw with are that 1. every single national summon is sacred, so an earth bless will help the mages(and since everything floats as well earthquake would be nice?) 2. Every non mage unit has something like 80+ leadership which seems to imply they're simply ONLY supposed to swarm(as opposed to MA ermor's mixture of blob's and elite's?), and 3. 2 of your mages and one of your commanders are immortal which means......you don't care about mind hunt? I dunno.

I just don't see how they can survive with their entire army being weak to banishment and magical weapons, and no major upside to offset that?

Edited by: Eji1700

Yeah, lemuria are pretty bad. The immortality on their mages makes me think they could be used as thugs, but they're so expensive and vital to research or reanimation that you don't really get the chance to thug them out. They're really good at expanding, but as soon as you meet a human player you're basically just waiting to get killed(and of course other players will tend to team up on you because of your dominion). I think reducing the cost of the mages would help a lot, but even then they really need some better units. Maybe there should be spectral lictors and knights? It is odd that they don't get those anymore. It's a shame because lemuria are extremely cool in concept.

I'm not reading your stuff as gospel, but it's nice to have some presumably good player's opinions on these things. Noobs appreciate, I'm sure.

An as of yet unfinished anecdote about MA Ermor:
Ermor fights its neighbour, no one really cares. Ermor casts burden of time. Fastforward some turns and Ermor has gone from top3 biggest to smallest still 'living' faction in a game of (initial) dozen. That's all because BoT launched a more or less global anti-Ermor campaign.

Now I know that nations can rebound after a bout, but with BoT people are in it for the kill. Also Ermor was bordering a nation with access to both powerful S and H magic, which I believe are (along with W) the best undead counters. So in other circumstances the anti BoT gangup might not have had the punch it now had due to those counters.
Of course a powerful harmful global isn't unique to MA Ermor, but it's able to get its global of choice out a lot earlier than anyone else would. However, should it?

I would argue that in that case it was bad play from Ermor to aggravate everyone else by casting BoT. But would it have faced some amount of aggression regardless of BoT, due to Ermor's popkill? Would BoT been more effective if Ermor had been more able to hold the fort, either through some geographical bottleneck, better play or less strong anti-undead neighbour?

My point is, there was no powerful anti-Ermor rhetoric before burden of time. They were just another nation in the game before that. It was Ermor's early access to and use of burden of time that turned the game from "everyone do your best" to "everyone kill Ermor". It was this coalition that Ermor couldn't fight back with it's troops and magic. Is Ermor's metagame weak, or is its metagame weak against high H/S/W neighbours?

I don't think Jomon is all that weak per say. It just feels like most of their troops cost 1-2 resources too much. Shieldlessness hurts a lot and expanding with them is pretty slow untill you get some kind of arrow catchers. It feels really difficult to amass a good enough expansion force.

Some of their national summons are pretty bad for their cost and/or are so tied to their home provinces that they don't have much real utility.

The thing about Ermor is that they really have no compelling reason to not cast the Burden of Time. From a metagame standpoint, players who have seen what that spell does (and it is ugly) are probably going to go into the game under the assumption that the Ermorian player is going to cast it and if he says he isn't going to cast it that he is lying. About the only thing I could think of for the Ermorian player to do to keep the coalition from forming against them early is to convince people that they can be bribed to not cast it. I think you might be able to convince a table full of people that paying you a few gems every couple of months in exchange for you not putting up the Burden of Time is less costly to them than you putting up the Burden of Time and forcing them to march their armies halfway across the world into the heart of a frozen hellscape to shut it down.

Once a player has seen what Ermor can do with Burden of Time, there's really no reason to not treat the Ashen Fields as anything other than a dangerous terrorist from the beginning of the game. My reading is that Ermor's only way out of everyone declaring a war of annihilation on them is to convince their neighbors that they are a terrorist who can be negotiated with. Hence demanding ransoms. It says something about how pariah that nation is that I am seriously suggesting that players attempt to adopt the relationship of extortionist and victim with the other players in order to improve their diplomatic position.

Anyway, I don't put Ashpodel or Rlyeh into the same category for a couple of reasons. The first is that Ashpodel and Rlyeh are heavily plugged in to the gold economy, which in turn means that the assumption that they are going to set the world on fire as soon as they get some thaumaturgy research just isn't there. The second is that they are in fact plugged into the gold economy and can field early game researchers and armies as well as investing in late game magic diversity stuff. It's just a lot easier for Rlyeh or Ashpodel to pull a curveball like putting out some crystal mages or enchantresses. And of course, Rlyeh is under water so an early invasion of Rlyeh is out of the question for most potential opponents. Ashpodel really isn't all that bad a neighbor to be honest.

-Frank