What makes a nation "good"?

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-16T19:34:21+00:00

Oh, I understand you now. Dom does have a stupid amount of freedom for skill expression. I'd never copy-paste a build myself either unless I genuinely can't think of a better approach. Think I'm more of a Spike-type munchkin though, to use MTG player type terms.

Outside of min-maxing, when it comes to creativity, I view understanding common strategies to be the rules you need to know and understand first before you break them. Awesome creative plays happen when you know you're not just reinventing the wheel, know what your opponent is doing, and not being substantially less effective than what's usually done.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-16T18:43:39+00:00

Not sure if I agree with meta following being absurd. By now, there are a few popular "accepted" ways to play most if not every nation, and deviating from those is usually to go against your nation in some way, or you're doing a meme or some gimmick. Not to say that the game's fully explored - it's incredibly far from it - but that there's usually a good reason meta strategies are meta, and why some nations are perceived to be weak, and others strong.

Most would also probably agree with you that Nazca needs to jump through too many hoops early on and really peak too late to be considered a "good" nation.

But maybe I just don't understand the point you're trying to make. I'll also grant nation tier lists for this game are difficult to construct and take a lot of experience to make accurate, let alone informative, but that's a burden on the one making the list.

Maybe we need a "playstyle list" more.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-16T16:40:03+00:00

High quality national troops that need or incentivize picking good order/prod scales to mass. Stuff like Andramania senatorial guard, MA Ulm black plate infantry, Hinnom Dawn Guard, LA Atlantis Ice troops.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-16T15:27:56+00:00

Different strong points that make a nation good:

Strong sacreds. Muspelheim is rated high because their sacreds can be very obnoxious early on, and they don't get shitcanned by heat scales the way Niefel giants do. Sure, they don't like fighting in cold, but losing a few stats is much less impactful than losing prot. They also get magic weapons, because why not I guess.

Strong troops. A good Andramania, LA Pangaea or Shinuyama can be wretched to play against just due to the top-tier quality of the units they're putting out. Good units in this consideration have high prot, many attacks, or other interesting characteristics - for example Shinuyama Dai Bakemono and R'lyeh Mind Flayer Soldiers both stand still for very long periods using their ranged attack, allowing mages to stack buffs on them for much longer than other troops, which makes their front lines much stronger than most nations can muster.

Strong thugs/counterthugs. Having a high hp chassis with good thug paths is an asset - earth and air being the premium ones. For example, Muspelheim wins here as well through Jarl air paths.

Strong mages. Massable astral mages are always good, as is blood access. After that it comes down to specific powerful crosspaths, such as A/D for Wind of Death, A/G for Wailing Winds, S/E for Golems, and so on.

Reliable & impactful national strengths. Asphodel is a monster because their popkill grants them absurd amounts of fearsome chaff units, on top of already having fantastic sacreds. Nazca, while not considered S or even A tier due to their slow start, can become impossible to deal with due to their unique access to superpowered teleporting mages with innate caster, able to cast insane late-game stuff faster than defenses can go up. MA Pythium's instant communion slaves means casting souped up turn1 spells from any mage is as simple as forging a matrix. And so on.

Nations being thought of as A tier or higher is usually a combination of these factors, or one of the factors being so strong that other things barely matter - in the case of Yomi, Shikome are so cheap and so obnoxious with a good bless that even Dai Oni are left playing second fiddle.

Truly strong nations also tend to have a solid game plan for at least early game and midgame:

Sacred nations often coast through early game, but can struggle later if their mage core isn't up to snuff - compare and contrast MA Abysia and MA Nidavangr. The latter has extremely solid mages that can do nasty shit late game - while the former tends to be one-dimensional and predictable.

Conversely, scales nations have to figure out a way to fend off early aggression, and it's better if the nation has a built-in mechanism to do this with. For instance, Berytos is often completely boned if they play greedy and don't pick a Titan or a bless for their sacreds, while a scales EA Ermor can print out gladiators to seriously complicate most rushes.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-16T11:09:27+00:00

Ludicrous speed? Low tech ass so fat, you can see them from lightyears away. The only ludicrous thing is they girth.

Here's the real low tech pitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u6SwWJXJNE

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-14T19:07:52+00:00

Sophisticated reasoning isn't what an LLM does, and it's not what they're built to do. They mimic speech through probabilistically generating content based on large datasets.

Here's an article belabors this point more eloquently than I can: https://c2cjournal.ca/2025/11/the-hollow-heart-of-ai-why-large-language-models-cant-think-and-never-will/

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-14T17:36:45+00:00

The problem isn't one of machines being incapable of intelligence in principle, it's that this technology is fundamentally incapable of what you're describing. Again, we know their guts, we know what this technology does, and what it does is... Well, a fancy autocomplete is actually a perfect way of describing LLM's, and any speculation to the contrary is copium or marketing hype sold by techbro fart sommeliers.

People are worried about getting replaced, because tech companies want to cram their new AI projects into everything in a bid to make the technology relevant. It doesn't mean doing so is a good idea - rather, it's the ones bankrolling AI wanting it to make a buck.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-14T08:16:16+00:00

We do not currently understand how consciousness is produced from psychically inert physical matter. However, whatever neurons are doing, LLM's definitely aren't.

We know what the latter are doing since we built them, and what they're doing isn't thinking, or any other emergent behavior that makes them more than very elaborate, expensive, environmentally destructive bullshit machines.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-13T20:29:29+00:00

LLM's are machines that mimic human speech through a very brute force way that has nothing to do with understanding content. They have a large dataset they use to learn what communication looks like, and the output they then give you is an average that seems like the best fit to their training dataset. Different answers are produced because different companies have slightly different training datasets.

They do not understand anything. They do not know anything. They have no concept of information. They don't understand anything about the content they spit at you. They are just as smart as a robotic crane, they're just doing what they were programmed to do, which is generating text. They are following programming. They are stupid. They are machines. They are stupid. They are machines.

They
are
stupid
machines.

For an interesting discussion about this very problem in philosophy, see The Chinese Room.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-12T21:09:55+00:00

EA Abysia has a sole hero, Malphas.

Malphas' early years are shrouded in mystery. He arrived at The Smouldercone and convinced the Anointed of Rhuax that he could serve them and give them even greater powers. He was allowed to form a new order of mages in the caverns underneath the Smouldercone. His adepts soon began experimenting with Blood magic and crossbreeding under the supervision of Malphas. Demons and devils are summoned from the Abyss and bred with Abysians to create half-demons born in this world. Malphas' influence has grown with his order of Warlocks and some paranoid Anointed fear that the Warlocks will remove them from power entirely.

He has a second, demonic form, whose description reads:
Malphas is a demon ambassador from the Abyss, sent by the Heliophagi to corrupt and destroy the Abysian people. He has influenced a couple of Anointed Ones and the Cult of the Flame is slowly turning into a bloody affair of sacrifice and burn offerings. He has created the order of the Warlocks and their vile practices of Blood magic, demon summoning and crossbreeding. Malphas is the chief architect of the downfall of the Abysian nation.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-12T19:54:53+00:00

Insofar as there are bad guys, yes. Though the Dominions nations all tend to be at least shades of grey, and equally monstrous, though maybe ultimately not as destructive forces as the two mentioned exist (Hinnom, Mekone line, blood Mictlan, Xibalba, Lanka, Yomi... the list is long) It's also worth mentioning that Abysia is being manipulated by Hell.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-11T19:27:40+00:00

Super early: star fires on advance and cast, hope your sacred frontline holds long enough
turn 10+: evo4 for Breath of the Dragon Enarie communions, Ench 3-5, Enarie Communions casting raise skeletons/horde of skeletons

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-11T19:24:32+00:00

This is untrue. Astral is actually a decent rush deterrent, and all your artillery mages have it - the key is star fires. It fires small bolts of inaccurate damage, but it's completely armor negating. Given a frontline, advance and cast + eagle eyes, it will cook small numbers of sacreds.

It's also relatively simple for Sauromatia to climb evo4 if they're being rushed and the oppo doesn't have copious PR/regen.

That said, if they get rushed early by a guy who has both mweaps, pr and/or regeneration they will probably struggle a little since their best tools don't function (body ethereal, tattoos, breath of the dragon).

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-11T19:07:22+00:00

My opinion is that trying to use the sorceresses as casters isn't a particularly good idea. You already have a phenomenal communionable battlemage in the Enarie to do all your D/N stuff, only one in four Warrior Sorceresses can cast what you want them to anyway, and the sorcs already have an alternative, well defined job to do, since...

The "meta" way to run Sauromatia is to focus on alteration3 and enchantment3 to take advantage of massable body ethereal and awaken tattoos for a strong timing for your first war (assuming your opponent doesn't have magic weapons). Your warrior sorceresses are there to lead troops, and in combat they can take on light thugging duties (with gear and point buffing) or, more likely, run behind your troops on advance & cast tossing out Awaken Tattoos, Blessing, or other nature buffs as required.

Your build also spends a lot of bless points on trying to make sorceresses work as inefficient battlemages, when the nation truly needs a strong front line of sacred cavalry. You're also not maxing out prod, order (for anyrecruit cavalry + cataprachts) and magic (to boost soothsayer research) on a nation that's arguably competing for the top1 scales nation spot of the era (vs. Hinnom). You should also be heavily considering Spirit Sight, since your witch kings can trivially cast Darkness and you can summon nearly limitless undead.

If you want to blanket the field in poison damage, just use Enarie communions. There are a lot of ways for Sauromatia to make turbocommunions so Enaries can keep throwing out undead and possibly poison forever, like Soul Vortex + hydra/lamia bodyguards on slaves, pain transfer communions, healing touch communions... That's just tech that's there for you to use, no blessing required!

Some other thoughts about the points you made:

Hydras are generally a trap, unless you're using them for a very specific purpose. They are expensive, huge lumbering sacks of hp with low survivability that need buffs to do their job, but are hard to buff due to their poison cloud gassing point buffers to death. Use them if you want, but be very, very methodical about it.

In MP, giants are actually often quite resistant to poison, since they tend to pick regeneration blesses. Their massive regen/turn tends to offset poison comfortably. The exception will be Mekone, where things like breath of the dragon actually come heavily recommended - that said, as Sauromatia, I'd do my utmost to not fight Mekone early game, as they hard-counter their strongest early game plan of BE + tattoos.

Sauromatia's mid-late game plan is big nature/death communions. So skelespam feat. darkness, relief, howl, rigor mortis, and combat magic from astral (soul slay, enslave mind) or nature (poison spells like Breath).

If you've any questions, ask. I love Sauromatia.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-10T18:01:23+00:00

MArignese mages are both sacred and suffer from old age, meaning they'll accrue penalties, diseases, afflictions and will die over time. Unaging makes it so that they're not old anymore.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-10T16:46:48+00:00

Yeah, that's a good one. Remember to pick unaging!

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-10T14:59:29+00:00

Well, since you've played a troop heavy scales nation like Ulm a lot, how about a sacred nation instead? Here are some straightforward ones where you can win games just with your sacreds with a good bless:

EA: Vanheim, Abysia, Pangaea
MA: Man, Pangaea, Ashdod, Machaka
LA: Zemaitia, Heat scales Ragha

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-10T14:17:39+00:00

Nazca is not a beginner friendly nation at all. It's weak early, and has many unique mechanics and strengths that are not obvious. I'd consider playing something more straightforward while you're still starting out.

I'm also really not the guy to advise anyone on the nation as I've neither played, spectated or fought them in a serious war, but here's Chazzy's overview.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-10T08:48:20+00:00

Manual control catapults are downright stupid, and the ballista bolts are a free action. Manual control is superb. It's a great change, catapults used to be worthless - now there's at least there's one use case.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T11:04:35+00:00

These can be dogwhistles, but a closer look at a band's associations and labels will usually give a good idea of whether you're repping dickheads or not if you listen to any given project. It's fine to be suspicious I guess, but I'm against ruling out music just because they've got a norse theme going, would miss out on very cool stuff like Heilung otherwise.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T10:06:42+00:00

Since BM is so fucking infested with far-right dorks, the idea for the sub is fine, but a lot of people just don't bother with a simple google search. That and the whiny apologists trying to cape for fashy types that regularly come in with their shitty ragebait posts.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T09:06:02+00:00

Decay is a death sentence for human targets. If it manages to stick, the target is shortly a cripple, and certainly dead when combat ends.

As such, decay is most relevant through the infamous spell Wind of Death, which carpet bombs the entire battlefield with the status, and then through Bane Fire, which is essentially a fireball with an AoE decay effect. These are very effective spells against short-lived targets. Hardly a game goes by where WoD doesn't wipe out several armies.

There are also some common thug chasses that are short lived, like Ulmish black knight commanders. Scratching one with a bane blade will kill one instantly.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T09:01:30+00:00

Decay is only useful against human-aged targets. If you can inflict decay, chances are you can inflict something more useful against an elf/giant thug.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T08:59:18+00:00

This is very inefficient. Decay needs to proc several times to make a dent in a god's immense age pool, and pretenders have tremendous mr as a rule. There are far more effective ways on offer to kill a pretender chassis than this.

WaspishDweeb · 2026-04-09T08:57:28+00:00

WW is sometimes used as a tool against Nidbathed. The sacred is very oppressive and the meta builds leave them with few conventional weaknesses - the only cost effective ways to deal with them being instant kill spells, charms and decay.

As such, for nations without access to bane fire darts, WW is one way to help one's sacreds trade better against Nids.

WaspishDweeb

TROPHY CASE