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[Cthulhu]

Meanwhile I've been doing my singleplayer with MA phlegra for the freespawn troops, recruitable SC, and auto-communions.  This nation kind of feels like a crutch.

[oldark]

 I just finished my second game of this and have been having a blast. My first game was as LA R'lyeh, I tied in last place. My greatest achievement was figuring out how communions work.   Second game just ended today with my playing EA Abysia.  Did great early game with my sacreds and fire magic then got my rear kicked by Vanheim.  Tried to swap to blood (they had heavy fire resist) but wasn't able to do it fast enough to be useful. Finished in second place (out of 4).   Will be starting my third game tonight or tomorrow most likely as MA Abysia and I'm super looking forward to it!

[E. Albright]

Can I get an opinion from the crusty oldsters here? Slowly inching towards another NationGen release, and the most recent proof of my barely-there attention span has been working on Asmegir and their associated Big Guys/Gals, Aesir. The question is, does this look balanced for a set of base stats on the troop-type versions if they're elite/sacred only (and will thus be getting either better stats, other abilities, and/or sacred status, albeit with a higher cost - and of course, their commanders/casters would be out-of-the-box thugs)?

Spoiler: Proposed Aes stats (click to show/hide)

#gcost 120
#rpcost 80000
#size 5
#hp 58
#prot 3
#mr 15
#mor 14
#str 19
#att 11
#def 11
#prec 11
#ap 16
#mapmove 22
#enc 2
#maxage 1000
#stealthy +25
#illusion
#twiceborn 3445
#reclimit 2

[Karlito]

Beefier glamour Anakites, eh? My sense it that cost-effectiveness is going to depend a lot on things like number of attacks and paths on commanders. It doesn't look totally out of whack, but if we're just thinking about whether the gold cost should be adjusted by 10-20, well, I can't provide that kind of precision.

[E. Albright]

Probably the only path they'll tend towards is Air. Based on some discussion on Discord, I'm dropping the stealthy to +0 (which will equal 65 after base stealth and glamour) and will probably get rid of the reclimit. They're not likely to be multi-attack, though - sword/spear/axe and board plus reasonably heavy armor elites/sacreds.

And yeah, I'm basically looking for "does this seem unreasonable" levels of precision for feedback. I have a pretty awful time sussing what reasonable looks like for this sort of thing.

[EuchreJack]

Well, if its sacred trooper that is probably ok, otherwise the gold cost seems low.  In fact, I would probably suggest sacred-only.  For an elite non-sacred, I'd suggest some sort of half-breed.

Protection 3, size 5 means that those hitpoints won't last long without bless or spells, as every little guy is going to be swiping away at it.  Trying to give your hobbits something to crush, eh?

MR 15 might be a bit high, maybe 14 would be better.  Then again, I haven't played Dominions 5, so maybe they nerfed MR or made more boosters/units available that could penetrate MR.

[USEC_OFFICER]

MR 15 on a sacred or commander isn't unprecedented but for regular units it is. R'lyeh is the only nation that gets regular units with MR that high (and Ur's Mushussus but who uses those?). As such I would support dropping them down to MR 14. There's enough units with that much MR that they wouldn't be exceptional, at least before Nationgen's usual shenanigans are slapped on top of them.

[Il Palazzo]

MR 15 on a sacred or commander isn't unprecedented but for regular units it is. R'lyeh is the only nation that gets regular units with MR that high (and Ur's Mushussus but who uses those?).

Your dominions-fu is weak
Fomorian Giants, Rephaite Warriors, Shadow Vestals, and most pertinently - Niefel Giants, all have 15 mr. Niefel Giants (together with R'lyeh units) are the only ones that can be recruited outside capital, though. 15 mr seems more fitting lore-wise, since the Aesir would then match the other giants drawn from the mythology, 14 mr being reserved for the more human-like Vanir.
But then again, 14 might be better from the balance standpoint. Kinda depends on how many a player can be expected to field in their army mix.

[USEC_OFFICER]

MR 15 on a sacred or commander isn't unprecedented but for regular units it is.

Fomorian Giants, Rephaite Warriors, Shadow Vestals and Niefel Giants are all sacreds. I explicitly mentioned that MR 15 is fine on a sacred unit because I saw how all of those units were sacred. But you mentioned that the Aesir could be non-sacred troops as well which is why I brought it up. Only R'lyeh goes above MR 14 on regular, non-sacred, non-commander units. Of course nothing stops you from setting things however you want. I'm just seconding EuchreJack here. MR 15 seems a little too high as a base unless the unit is limited somehow, either by being cap-only, sacred or a per turn recruitment limit.

[E. Albright]

Fomorian giants in NG get 15mr base, so it would be in line with what's already there. They'll have the same chances to be cap-only as them as well - 75% for elites and 95% for sacreds (and likewise no normal troops even possible), and they'll be strictly sword/axe/spear and board, so at 1 attack per square I'm not overly concerned about them being stronger than occassional-DWing Fomorians (or the size-5 mr-14 elephant men, who always get at least mainhand plus tusks...).

That's the bigger issue - they'd going to be comparatively slow to kill their opponents and be very vulnerable to swarming. Walls, not tanks. These will play more like harder-to-hit Reaphim, not plus-size vanir. Of course, their commanders will be ideal for thugging and might even pass for pocket SCs, but that's something that happens with all giant commanders once you can start fiddling with what their gear is.

[Also, if we're nitpicking, Laestrogonian troops are non-sacred recruitables that get mr 18, but those nightmares really shouldn't be compared to ANYTHING...]

[USEC_OFFICER]

That all works for me.

[EuchreJack]

I'll just also throw in that Fomorian giants also get random afflictions, which is another significant balancing factor.

Also, the commanders will definitely pass for pocket SCs, the only reason I didn't mention it prior is because I didn't know that phrase.  Unlike Dominions 3, there are now item(s) to boost the hitpoints, which puts these guys into the pocket SCs territory.  I'd probably even consider a Gift of Reason* on these guys if I only had them as troops and not commanders.

And I agree with Il Palazzo that the question of MR 14 vs. 15 is a question of balance vs. lore.  Lorewise, MR 15 probably makes sense, but balance wise MR 14 makes more sense.  I will also add that, while they are vulnerable to swarming, that is just part of being a giant.

I will reiterate that the elites are way too cheap goldwise.  I would say the right number would be between 150 and 180.  But recruitment points might be a fairly decent limiter, I really can't say since I'm not familiar with that mechanic. Nevermind, just researched that "#reclimit 2" means that you only get 2 per province per turn, so the numbers are going to be limited sacred or not.  For that lucky 25% that gets them as elite not cap-only, they also get the micromanagement fun of actually getting them all in the same place.

*Not that anyone else should.  I just like Gift of Reason.

[E. Albright]

The size 6 Fomorian giants don't get afflictions. That's just the size 4 ones.

The reclimit is going to be removed, actually. The recpoints will have a pretty similar effect, though. For recpoint calculation, they'll start as though they cost 133% more than their "racial baseline" even before any further abilities increase their gcost - and their maxage of 1000 increases that more. 120+80000+1000 by itself leads to 47 recpoints. That's a lot, and most would have 40-80 res cost as well. Still... I might want to slap an extra flat 20 recpoints on top of that. Test generation will decide, I suppose.

[EuchreJack]

Well, that proposal does seem nicer than the strict 2 per province, as player choice on scales could lead to more or less.

[E. Albright]

If anyone is interested, there's a new NationGen version out: https://github.com/elmokki/nationgen/releases

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Lots of new content, as befits a release 16 months or so after the last one. *hangs head in shame* In principle, it should run w/o a JDK or JRE. In practice, this has only been tested on Windows, as no devs have access to linux/OSX boxes.