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[USEC_OFFICER]

No Nefton for you.

No... My Nefton. ;~;

[Il Palazzo]

Eh, I really wanted to take Akuaku to ensure mechanized hoburgs no matter what, but they're just so horribad.
So I'm taking Shela (321942488), because van cavalry and 2 forge bonus are nice, but it's the fact that they have units called 'Rhubarb Avenger' and 'Rhubarb Master' that makes the nation for me.

[Darkwind3]

I'll round it all off with Obliheim (-2033449213), because a nation with recruitable Rain of Stones casters that can Cloud Trapeze sounds enjoyable. And blood magic lategame!

This means I got my #1 pick and one of the nations that were roughly tied for #2. Most of the nations you picked I didn't even look at. Were the things I was looking for just crazy? I guess after the elimination is done I'll see if I can't write up a bit about my top picks and what I was looking for.

(For the record, the nations picked that were on my list were Lissikos, Nefton, Sinam and Shela.)

e: I'm going to take a little while to determine which nation to nix. Expect your deliverance and/or crushing, abject despondence tonight, Il Palazzo!

[Il Palazzo]

e: I'm going to take a little while to determine which nation to nix. Expect your deliverance and/or crushing, abject despondence tonight, Il Palazzo!

Take into your consideration that I just love the flavour of Qurghannia, so should you end up having to decide on a toss of a coin, maybe you'll do the nice thing and let me play with Hoburg mechanized infantry.


As for me, I'm against boring nations, so you get to keep your first choice, Karlito! (Apollopos disappears into oblivion).

[AlStar]

In case anyone's curious, here was the rest of my list (with my notes):

Spoiler: Top Tier (click to show/hide)

Abaluouti - heat1. MM2 Spider Cav in full plate (50g33r), alicorn mounted sacred w 3 attacks, pretty much everyone else is MM1 - high resource cost. MM3 Assassin with a Machaka Spear. 1F3A3N3B Hero. Cheap mages good for recruiting Corpse Men.
Konluundi - heat2. MM1 14g30r sacred. Lots of javalins. unarmored 40g4r Spider Cav. Cheap mages. Mounted giant lancers w javalins. 1MM full plate machaka spear assassin.

Spoiler: 2nd Tier (click to show/hide)

Ungburg - starts at cold3. Mages summon s3 fire elementals at battle start. Hobbits, so slow and weak. Crossbows. Hog Warriors seem pretty good - 25g10r.
Urumsoi - ignores drain. Demonbred/Pale One. Demons in plate 30g28r. 2 sacred troops - 2 attacks/no armor (28hp), 1 battleaxe and bronze (37hp).
Nefton - heat2. Many troops have 3 attacks. Croc Cav (1MM, 30g10r). Giant Bear Cav (2MM, 65g32r). MM2 Giant Assassins with throwing axes. No shields.

Spoiler: 3rd Tier (click to show/hide)

Phealinn - cold resist, death recruit?, mostly glass cannon troops - expensive, resource heavy troops. Cheap mages good for recruiting Corpse Men. Sacred troops don't seem too good.
Luha - 80! gold, !73! resources for sacred (sailing, water breathing, amphibious). Kite shields on a lot of the troops.
Lothgamer - arblast sacreds. Hobbits. !Slow. Cheap troops, except for the flying cav. Blood Nation.
Saxmar - Sac Fellow is a good sitesearcher, but only MM1. Troops fairly expenisve, fairly good.
Per-baedj - heat3. MM1 Sacred. Fossil Giant riders, with giants that stick around (bring undead leadership). MM2 Naked Abysians with hats and shields, MM1 with armor.
Vanbach - expensive mages. Spider riders with chain. MM2 Sacred troops w 2 axes who turn into boars - not as strong as you'd expect.
Lumbuique - heat1. very expensive mages StR + 1 very cheap (40g). 2 sacreds - both cap only. flying/machaka spear 40g6r, 1MM 105g28r plate/lifestealing + throwing axe. Unarmored spider riders. Old Hero (3 HP!)

Spoiler: Nope. (click to show/hide)

Ashavsvaz - flyers. sacred archers (cap only). Most troops in plate (cheap gold, expensive! resources). death recruit? Not very impressed by their troops.
Indbal - MM1 sacred troops. Most troops resource heavy. Decent survivability, not very good killing power. Chakrams are surprisingly crap ranged weapons.

And as a bonus, I took note that Palalm had 1S1D MV3 Assassins, but never got around to checking out what the rest of the roster looked like.

[E. Albright]

Spoiler: My "short list" (click to show/hide)

Luha - Slow start, but recruit-anywhere most everything, esp. giants *
Nefton - Has potential, has problems - cumbersome and cappy **
Mextlan - Has potential, has problems - seems like it'd sputter against humans**
Unburg - Has potential, has problems - feels eratic **
Akaku - Decentralized but mediocre ***
Urumsasaha - Drain, moderate variety, weak roster ***
Konluundi - Not tied to cap, reasonable roster/variety **
Sinam - As vile as expected - RA ape pony-tigers, mystics, 25% A4s *
Macgard - Strong mages, weak roster, centralized **
Elmtium - nasty RA sacred, air elementals *1/2
Sag an Iar - Strong D, mostly decentralized **
Bolengar - RA sacreds, shallow diversity/roster **
Hut-herytep - Decentralized, flying assassins, broad but erratic diversity **
Celmomia - Solid ogre nation, good diversity, RA sacreds *1/2
Oliebheim - Solid roster, all Van, centralized **
Hut-heryedj - Solid ldr, mages; RA sacred; meh roster **
Ichvia - Good roster, mages, ldr, RA sacred, low diversity *1/2
Garyadu - narrow roster; drain, totally decentralized, good but narrow mages *1/2
Jagkar Log - centralized, middling roster, low diversity, obscene N mages *1/2
Ceria - Strong O troops, strong mages, bit centralized **
Mylth - Strong mages, very diverse, centralized *1/2
Vanbach - Cappy mages, decent diversity, nasty RA sacred *1/2
Hierkasion - Strong cap mages, low div, decent RA sacred, no cheap labrat **
Djedhur - Disgusting cap-only zerkers and high F/B *
Veroor - Very strong cappy mages, air elementals *1/2

The differences between *, *1/2, and ** are kinda blurry, not least because I only added  *1/2 partway through. All these are fairly impressionistic, and bad luck while playing 1-10 turns with those that I actually tried briefly might have soured me on good nations (or the inverse may have charmed me with bad ones).

[E. Albright]

Take into your consideration that I just love the flavour of Qurghannia, so should you end up having to decide on a toss of a coin, maybe you'll do the nice thing and let me play with Hoburg mechanized infantry.

FWIW, I never did add as many "special" options to the oversized exoskeletons as I'd meant to, and have always vaguely intended to go back and add more. The top of the list would be two-shot, short-range offhand flame or poison gas throwers...

[Karlito]

As for me, I'm against boring nations, so you get to keep your first choice, Karlito! (Apollopos disappears into oblivion).

This game will either be amazing or disastrous for me.

[Jilladilla]

You sure aren't making this easy on me Darkwind... Vanir capable of spamming turn 1 Rain of Stones or Fomorians who have some ludicrously powerful cap-only mages? This will take time I feel...

[Darkwind3]

It seems as if nobody else noticed Dobgan (or posted about noticing it, anyways; I certainly wanted to keep all my tier 1 choices secret). I'm astonished, honestly.

Before I write a bit about my top choices, I'd like to note that nobody picked any of my Tier 1 choices. This leads me to believe I was looking for very different things than everyone else. I might have simply been searching differently, though.

Spoiler: Tier 1 (click to show/hide)

Dobgan: [redacted until Jilladilla makes a choice]
Obliheim: [redacted until Jilladilla makes a choice]
Mextlan: Solid troops (?), RA E2A2 for shenanigans, amphibious mages (albeit not amazing paths at W2F1); also, muuch are cool
Hierkasion: attack 13 defence 18 RA sacred, very good mages, blood access, sailing (but not on any good leaders)

Spoiler: Tier 2 (click to show/hide)

Sgar an Iar: solid troops, RA D2s, a little bit of blood too
Ichvia: phenomenal RA mages (60g S1W1 + W3 w/ Deep One shape), RA sacred
Ceria: predators with flails + Strength of Giants, RA D3 mages (!), blood magic
Celmomia: solid troops, RA S1D (!!), good crosspaths in capital
Ungburg: good mages, but hoburgs; didn't have a chance to test hoburg expansion
Nefton: RA A3, everything else is gravy
Ashavsvaz: skellingtons, flying, classic caelian thunderspam

Spoiler: Tier 3 (click to show/hide)

Tjaet: predators with flails, blood magic, Abysians
Shela: cap-only thugs, van cavalry, amusingly-duplicated mages (?)
Sinam: thunderspam, RA mystic-style mages
Sir'tis: RA skelespam, cheap sacreds
Nayudjsu: solid troops, blood magic
Cissis: RA D2s and horrors

There were nine other nations I examined (including Lissikos) and am not going to bother to write up. They would be Tier 4, and I'm sure you can see my enthusiasm for this list waning as I went down from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

Looking back on it, maybe my #2 choice should have been Ashavsvaz? Nearly the same sort of dilemma there as here (both nations to choose between sharing one ludicrously annoying feature, albeit the feature(s) differs between Ashavsvaz and Obliheim).

Spoiler: my thoughts on sifting through nations (click to show/hide)

First, I examined specifically the nations with reanimation and ponymans. Then, I just opened up the mod inspector and started looking for exceptional troops or path combinations. Some of the specific things I looked for were:

• Rain of Stones casters with A2 (for Cloud Trapeze)
• Mystic-style mages, because they tend to be both cheap and effective
• nations with interesting communion potential, e.g. Ichvia, Celmomia
• giant nations with communions, for shenanigans
• forgebonus (although I didn't much like most of the nations that had one)
• High-attack/defense troops and RA sacreds
• RA sacreds in general
• Predator lizards with flails

I am irrationally enamored of predator lizards with flails. 9 attacks per square! Strength of Giants! You can't tell me that's not cool! I think it might not work out so well in practice though.

I'll note that my impressions of troop strength aren't based on anything more than gut feelings; I didn't get a chance to test more than a few nations, and none extensively. I tested Mextlan's troops, for example, just enough to determine that recruiting 40 of the 12g6r muuch and throwing them at heavy cavalry without orders does nothing.

You sure aren't making this easy on me Darkwind... Vanir capable of spamming turn 1 Rain of Stones or Fomorians who have some ludicrously powerful cap-only mages? This will take time I feel...

I have a hard time picking my favorite between the two myself!

I do want to note, Jilladilla, you might want to check Dobgan's national traits and priests. If you haven't and you're having trouble making a choice right now, I suspect that will make it easier. Just in the interests of fairness; I don't want to skate by with a nation because the person eliminating the other one didn't have all the information.

Finally, Il Palazzo, I think I will nix Shela. I am a generous man, and Master Smith Sidhe Lords with Astral sound fun in the worst sort of way. Enjoy your clockwork infantry! I don't understand the appeal.

[Jilladilla]

*In the distance you hear a skull repeatedly bash itself against a wall in frustration*

[E. Albright]

Honestly, yeah, that wouldn't help me decide either. Of all the things there are to dislike about Dobgan, that's pretty far down the list.

Enjoy your clockwork infantry! I don't understand the appeal.

What's to not understand??? They're hoburgs - with the strength of men.

[Darkwind3]

Wait, reanimation is far down the list of things to dislike about Dobgan? Sure they've got 600g temples, but skeletons! Admittedly, I didn't even know about it when I initially looked at the nation, it's really just mixed-blessing gravy.

As for clockwork infantry, it seems like an awful lot of work to put nearly 140g worth of 5 hp troops in a single square, neatly, for any evocations your opponent might want to cast. Maybe I'm just not looking at them the right way though.

[Il Palazzo]

BUT POWER ARMOUR!!!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to rely on the regular, cheap troops in the actual game, but I'm all for fluff. Maybe if they had two weapons like Akaku's or Cissium's clockworks, they'd be more viable for the price. Still. I'll enjoy every victory they'll manage to wrestle through sheer mechanical ingenuity from all those oversized bullies the world is littered with.

[E. Albright]

I'm seriously considering upping the "special ability" chance on the size-2 clockworks, given how uncommon they are to begin with. Only 1 in 5 gets a modification right now, and 4/5 modifications are pretty low key (reivig 0, standard 1, and pooramphib/15poisonres). I could probably even go all the way up to one modification per (especially if I threw in some padding like "strong mechanisms +1 Str", "well-lubricated joints +2 ap", etc.) and it wouldn't be significantly overbalanced. I mean, at the end of the day they're still hoburgs...


Oh, the other question - do we want to write up fluff for our nations? Most all of us did for 4.10 and it was jolly good fun, but it's up to y'all.