I have a bone to pick with MA Ashdod Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

I apologize in advance for the content of this post, as it is a little rant-y. Maybe this is just the utter frustration talking, but I would love to hear an argument that Ashdod's sacreds, with an E9/N9 bless, are not legitimately and severely overpowered.

I can think of literally no unit or combination of units that can stand toe to toe with these monsters. Each one of them is a fully capable thug that comes streaming out five at a time from Ashdod's capitol every turn. Even ten of them seems completely capable of taking out anything but short of a super-combatant, and even then only high-grade super-combatants will do.

I'm getting so tired of seeing battle reports like these:

Ulm's forces were in addition to 35 points of province defense in a fortress territory - amounting to approximately 35 crossbowmen (with Arbalests), 20 battleaxe Infantry of Ulm (hit hard enough to fell giants), and 16 pike infantry of Ulm (repel giants very well). The actual forces in the territory included 38 Guardians, Ulm's special cap-only, hard-hitting infantry that are specifically equipped to take out enemy sacred units.

So a total of about 190 human units, a good majority of which are extremely well tailored to taking out giants and/or sacreds, against 14 Anakites, 2 Adons, and about 30 of what amounts to uselss chaff.

And of course the giants win, fairly handily. The forces of Ulm even managed to rout the forces of Ashdod, but it doesn't f!@#ing matter because for some crazy reason, in addition to their high HP, high Protection, high Magic Resistance, high Morale, incredibly high Strength, high Attack Skill, high Defense, moderately low encumbrance, and two attacks apiece, they are, on top of it all, Berserkers. So in exchange for 83 humans and 35 province defense I killed 8/16 giants and lost the fight. Hoo-freaking-ray.

Now I'll admit that I'm fairly new to this game and I don't have all the tricks learned yet, but from what I can tell I brought the best force I could in the best concentration I could to the most favorable province I could and I still got routed by a smattering of these giants. Did I mention that this is one of Ashdod's three armies, of similar size, that is currently moving through my territory?

I'm at my wit's end with these Anakites. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there some magical silver bullet that takes care of these giants that I'm just missing? The only thing I can think of is mass Destruction spam, which is all but impossible for Ulm to have in any mass 12 turns into a game. Please tell me that there's an easy way out of this, because at the moment I'm at my wit's end even thinking about dealing with them.

No, the sacred giants of the three Nephilim descendant are ridiculously OP. Sure they cost 100 gold, but they just don't die. They have NO weaknesses - high MR, protection, defense and heck, even magic weaponss, they just steamroll. Everyone takes an N9 bless with them, I've never seen a game where they aren't also regenerating. I'm considering, should I choose to administer a game, simply not allowing them to play and I hope CBM tunes them down if the devs refuse to.

I get that they make sense thematically - descendants of angels, etc... but they're brokenly OP.

(If you want a thematic way to start fixing them, start them cursed. After all, they are in terms of fiction.)

For Ulm, however - magma magic is you best bet. Bring out large numbers of your smiths, cast aim, and hit them with as many magma spells as possible.

Edited by: Taritu

As noted: magic is your general means of taking out giants.

However, as you are playing Ulm, you don't really need magic to beat Ashdod. Use the Guardians. They're cap only sure, but you can now recruit lots of them, and they have a ridiculously powerful item effect against sacreds (they will automatically AoE fatigue sacreds like Ashdod giants, which basically murders their ability to fight after two or three rounds). Against thugs, something like 15 guardians will guaranteed eat them up. Here, you didn't invest ENOUGH into guardians. Two thugs+chaff can beat the only 30 some you have. If you had more, well...

Ulm is probably one of the best anti-sacred nations in the game: you should by all means EAT sacred thugs and giants. Only Mictlan should give you trouble with the amount of sacreds they put out.

You basically spent too much money in all the wrong places. PD isn't a worthwhile investment normally, and pumping out guardians non-stop from your cap is far more advisable after you get your first few expansion parties going. All your other troops are meaningless in this engagement, and you don't have any mages to back up your forces. You can cast so much, from giants strength, swords of sharpness, destruction, maws of the earth, magma spells, etc. that you could be using.

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

You killed over 1000 gold worth of enemy units in that fight. A fight in which the opponent has 2 capitol-only thug mages, and you have had no mages at all. You lost about 1400 gold worth of actual troops. If you invested the points Ashdod spent on a double-bless into economic scales, you should easily be able to keep trading at that ratio indefinitely. The big blow here is that you lost 35 Province Defense, which is nominally worth another ~600 gold. Super-blessed sacreds absolutely destroy Province Defense; that's their primary tactical advantage. So, if you paid for all the PD, you paid too much. If you got it free from events, then easy come easy go.

I don't think this is unique to Ashdod. I'm fairly certain that Vans, Lava Warriors, or Daoine Sidhe could have done the same thing. I think if you invest your gold into master smiths and war dogs, you should do okay.

Orionja wrote: The big blow here is that you lost 35 Province Defense, which is nominally worth another ~600 gold. Super-blessed sacreds absolutely destroy Province Defense; that's their primary tactical advantage. So, if you paid for all the PD, you paid too much. If you got it free from events, then easy come easy go.

I had a lot of income and there's not much else to spend your gold on as MA Ulm, especially when you only have your capitol to produce units. This was also intended to be PD to support the main bulk of the Guardians and crossbowmen I was sending in.

The problem, in my eyes, is that I have to bring 2500g+ of units to even have a chance to kill 1000g of giants, and even then they still win the fight.

This is really more an issue with all "super-sacred" nations than with Ashdod's giants in particular. Niefelheim, EA Mictlan, Vanheim, etc, all have sacreds that are mostly immune to conventional weapons with a N9/E9 bless. The deal is, you fought with zero mages, and, well, trying to beat them with your own troops will be an uphill battle.

The upside to all this is, that, as OrionJA said, your economy is almost certainly much stronger than theirs, and what's more, production of Anakites will never scale up; you only get one capitol, after all. On the other hand, you can build as many goddamn crossbowmen as your (hopefully multiple) forts can pump out.

Frankly, with the units in the battle report I think that battle is probably winnable with some scripting tricks. Anything to break up the line of giants would probably let your guardians wipe 4 to 5 at a time. The Xbows are a liability, as they'll hit your unshielded Guardians without doing much damage to the enemy. PD might also be a liability, if it contains arbalests, and even if it doesn't it needs to be carefully managed so it either absorbs an initial attack (probably better done with units as they can be scripted) or to fill in behind Guardians after the Guardians die (the PD will be more effective when the enemy has fatigue).

Also a single Strength of Giants caster (E2 mage with gems) could probably win the battle.

Edited by: The_Demon

Magic is a lot less effective against Annakim than other giant: they have high MR.

Overall I really do think they're OP, and more so than any other dual bless nation. There are no other sacreds I fear nearly as much as them, not even Jaguar warriors.

Taritu wrote: Magic is a lot less effective against Annakim than other giant: they have high MR.

Overall I really do think they're OP, and more so than any other dual bless nation. There are no other sacreds I fear nearly as much as them, not even Jaguar warriors.

Most magic doesn't USE MR. Ulm isn't heavy Astral, so it's not a problem. All the Earth/Fire spells don't care about MR, bar blindness.

Taritu wrote: Magic is a lot less effective against Annakim than other giant: they have high MR.

Overall I really do think they're OP, and more so than any other dual bless nation. There are no other sacreds I fear nearly as much as them, not even Jaguar warriors.

Most magic doesn't check MR. It's Ulm. You have iron darts and iron blizzard and earth meld. None of which check MR. The main magic that checks MR is astral. And Ulm has blood.

MA ulm does not have blood. However, point taken.

Don't be casting Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard. It won't scratch the giants. You want to be casting Earth Grip/Meld/Maws and Armor of Achilles/Destruction. And Earth Might/Strength of Giants.

@Incomp,

I'm surprised to see EA Mictlan on your list. Jaguar Warriors have many advantages, but I don't think "immunity to conventional weapons" is one of them.

Edited by: Orionja

Don't really see the problem. Make shit that murders, and you murder them just fine. Tons of other counters too...

Was this a duel or a multiplayer game? One of the things that balances super-sacreds in multiplayer is that the Anakites may be amazing at taking land, but they're terrible at taking forts. That means other players have time to intervene before Ashdod can actually finish anyone off. If it's a 1v1 though, they may indeed be able to shut you down before you can get a counter going.

Although blunders with my movement and bad prioritization of research have been a major factor, I'm currently experiencing the effectiveness of Destruction spam from master smiths (who can cast it with Summon Earthpower) first-hand: take out protection and Guardians kill Anakites so fast that regeneration doesn't amount to much.

Considering you actually fielded only normal troops without magic support, this battle didn't even go that bad. Might even be close to worth the sacrifice in terms of attrition.

As many have already mentioned, the keys are buffing your troops, debuffing the enemy, and replace the PD and arbalests with more guardians and mages.

That's not to say that Ashods sacreds aren't extremely powerful and hard to win against, I haven't actually seen enough dom4 play yet to say if they are OP or not. But in Dom 3 unmodded Ashdod was indeed a bit much, not impossible to beat 1on1 but certainly one of the strongest nations in the game.

In dom3 Ashdod was banned more ofthen than LA Ermor. It was banned in almost every game.

To echo others this wasn't actually a terrible loss for you (in abstract) since the giants actually cost much more than just gold. That 9x9x bless is insanely expensive in terms of raw income over many turns. But your example still shows how great the giants are because while I believe you can beat them handily with MA Ulm you are almost tailor made to do so. Other nations don't have the options you do and would find it much harder.

Man, look at all these people trying to defend what is blatantly overpowered. Earth meld? Really? Against high strength units? Guys, Ashdod needs the nerf hammer. Period. You don't even need an E9 bless with these guys, since they start with natural protection. So even an inefficient player is beating you with Ashdod. The answer to balance isn't "everybody just needs to gang up on them, it's fine".

High strength helps you escape earth meld, but you are still stuck for a full turn of having pretty much no def and getting whacked with weapons. It also disrupts lines of giants so they can be surrounded, since some have to stop and free themselves.

Gaslov wrote: Man, look at all these people trying to defend what is blatantly overpowered. Earth meld? Really? Against high strength units? Guys, Ashdod needs the nerf hammer. Period. You don't even need an E9 bless with these guys, since they start with natural protection. So even an inefficient player is beating you with Ashdod. The answer to balance isn't "everybody just needs to gang up on them, it's fine".

I have killed dragons and tarrasques with Earth meld. Saying it's inefficent against earth meld is ignorant. And they are perfectly killeable with the right setup (and the investment for it, 'cause dual blessed giants are more or less forced to be able to kill more than their worth in unit given the sacrifice to build them), and like all cap only sacred they are hard to replace.

You have forgotten about their fire resistance Yeah, they're ridicolous, even though I think the top sacred costs like, 90+ resources. I wonder if putting a maxrecruit limit on it of 1-2 would make sense too?

Btw, as others have suggested - the armor destruction spells might be a good idea. I was actually afraid at first that Anakim Armor would count as 'magic' so immue to that, but it gets destroyed just fine.

Gaslov wrote: Man, look at all these people trying to defend what is blatantly overpowered. Earth meld? Really? Against high strength units? Guys, Ashdod needs the nerf hammer. Period. You don't even need an E9 bless with these guys, since they start with natural protection. So even an inefficient player is beating you with Ashdod. The answer to balance isn't "everybody just needs to gang up on them, it's fine".

Bless rush, and related strategies, have always been a First Order Optimal Strategy. It's simple, has a strong skill:power ratio, and is reasonably easy for a new player to pick up and do well with. That's where the complaints seem to lie, but in a MP-driven game, FOOSs are an essential part of the game, to ensure an interesting and engaging experience at all skill levels. The Noobtube in the CoD series, for instance, or Bronzodia in League of Legends.

Other nations and strategies require more finesse to use, from learning battlefield scripting, familiarizing yourself with and utilizing the magic system, and tailoring your strategy to meet the challenges from your neighbors and immediate threats, but are allow you to develop past this initial stage of bless strategy reliance.

Each of Ashdod's sacreds cost a whooping 115 gold, are cap only, and have heavy resource costs (48/91), while their best mages/thug chassis are not only cap-only, but STR, in addition to punitively expensive. And there are 3 that compete for recruitment. The two Adons in the battle are 360g (?) and STR (also 90+r).

If he can devote two cap-only, STR, highly expensive mage/thugs to that battle, why can't you devote some mages of your own?

With MA Ulm, putting up new early forts is essential. The more forts=more spam of your very cheap yet excellent heavy infantry, and massing mages.

Is Ashdod strong as a nation? Yes, but I'm not yet convinced that they're irredeemably broken.

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

You never have to capture a fort to win. Even Disciples 2 recognized that a unit with 150% hp and 200% damage is worth two units each with 100% hp and 100% damage. That is the crux of the issue. Asdod's sacreds are actually way too good a deal for what you get.

Oh, to add salt to the wound, Asdod is perfect for casting flaming arrows.

Edited by: Gaslov

You're MA Ulm. You have Guardians. Makes you about the last nation that should be complaining about Anakites.