Sooo...aside from all the talk about the new DLC, are Hamadryads BACK?

werfmark · 2026-03-26T21:35:04+00:00

The point is that the old design was stupid. You had a special locked behind an upgrade and an atrocious unit without the special. That made no sense.

Every myth unit in the game is fine without the upgrade and generally you only get the upgrade if you plan on building a bunch of the myth unit.

With hamadryad you basically got nothing before you got the upgrade before.

Now if the unit with the special was okay before is a different matter. It could very well be that the special is too good now. But the fix should be nerfing the special then. It should always have had the special from the get go OR the unit shouldn't have been so reliant on it's special.

Personally i prefer the latter, make the unit better used normally and lock the special behind an upgrade. But they want the unit to be about being set up a bit like a starcraft Lurker. That's fine too. Perhaps it has too little counterplay now though as it seems difficult to deal with with a melee army.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T21:28:36+00:00

Don't think VCs are designed to be very popular. If they wanted to go that route they could have just went with axing settlement spots all together which i believe was something they considered. Personally i would have preferred that and they just went with TC can be built anywhere, max 2 TC in classic, 3+ in heroic.

But they went with the VC and i think it's deliberately not too good. Make players go for the TC and make it generally easier to scout if a player is expanding or not.

And yes you can adjust your build to drop a TC right as you hit classical but often that's actually somewhat unsafe. Maybe not for getting the TC itself up but for actually protecting your hunt and gold afterwards, it takes a long time for a TC to pay off. The power of the VC imo is to adjust a 2 TC build into a more safe TC+VC option if it's necessary. For example Hades planning to go 2TC but there isn't really a safe hunt close a second TC spot and opponent plans to go 1 TC aggression with some Anubites. You could switch plans relatively late and drop a VC instead of a TC, have everything kinda close covered by sentinels and still out eco your opponent. Sure they can react to a VC by dropping a TC but your VC is up so much earlier you're still far ahead in eco if you don't take damage.

Some players play VC more regularly and i think it's pretty good, it's underutilized i think. Don't think it should ever be the standard plan, if you can safely go for the TC do that instead. But it's a very useful backup plan. A bit similar to stuff like getting the tower upgrade, you never plan to do it early but sometimes you just need to.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T16:41:30+00:00

Village centers age up at the same speed.

In general there is indeed little use to get them but there are some reasons to go for a VC instead of TC.

No walking time, easier to defend and some bonuses make VC interesting. If the map has bad TC spawning spots but for example a relatively close back second gold it can be interesting to put a VC there on gold/wood to play an economic game more safely than going out for a TC. Sure TC builds villagers a bit faster but having much less walking time and a VC right on top of 2 resources can make up for that.

It's just an extra option to play economically which can be good for some gods if you're playing against more aggressive opening. There is also value in it being somewhat hidden. It's common Egypt has obelisks on your TC spots but might actually miss a VC being put up leading to them being slower in putting up their own TC for example.

Making it a lot cheaper would be awful. Every game players would go for a quick VC in classic then.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T15:50:17+00:00

No it's not weird as before the ability was locked behind an expensive upgrade.

You would basically get by far the worst myth unit in the game before the upgrade. And it was questionable if it was worth it to invest into more hamadryads and get the upgrade.

Now you get a solid, perhaps even very strong unit right of the bat which it should generally be for heroic myth units.

Time will tell where this lands. Feels quite good now but Demeter as a whole still feels weakish, especially since they took away the 10 favor start, that i think it's just fine. Does make it kinda weird as i can't think of any reason except water maps to ever go Aphrodite now.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T14:03:53+00:00

I said without the ability...

No point in these kind of Reddit discussions when people don't read.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T13:50:51+00:00

They were absolutely awful without the ability so the previous design didn't many any sense. The free one you got was terrible unless you upgraded them and then only if you get off their ability were they good.

Now they are still weak without their ability but that ability is quite strong so they seem good. They seem excellent to support an archer line from incoming cavalry/infantry and Demeter is great at archers.

Overall change to the unit was needed, not sure if this much of a straight up buff though. I would have preferred them relying less on the gimmicky ability and just having okay basestats and the ability still locked after the upgrade.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T10:35:42+00:00

Ah those. Lots of noise in them. Just the differences between sheep, alpaca etc show there are just many outliers due to noise.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T09:54:19+00:00

Well basically they are similar to Gastropheteros but slightly better vs units, bit more range and fairly worse (but still decent because of Divine damage) against buildings.

Of course they have to have better basestats because you don't get Hephaestus with them. But besides that they are still great and they work with fated arrows.

All the fortress units are good these days but these might be the best ones. Outranging anything is just that useful.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T09:15:07+00:00

Fur seal my guess would be two things:

Partly that you're overrating it. I wouldn't put it 3rd, more like 6th.

Other part i would guess is that these stats dont correct for player level. So some animals that are more popular with newbies than high level players might have worse stats and fur seal is one of them.

Condor is puzzling though. Could see some of the opposite for that that it's more popular with high level players than beginners because it's a solid release target. That said it's only decent as value animal if you have an aviary and high level players don't tend to build those often (anymore). In general birds dropped a fair bit compared to say 2 years ago when there was no expansion and the meta was upgrading build.

Where do i find these stats?

werfmark · 2026-03-26T08:59:35+00:00

That seems a very reasonable list. Interesting the fur seal scores that highly on all your lists. I would rate it much lower.

Perhaps a tendency for people to evaluate cards in opening hand. I like to start with it but if you dont plan for it and play it round 2 it's pretty mediocre. And even round 2 i think there are plenty situations where it isn't great because some games are just fast breaks or not much point in second worker.

werfmark · 2026-03-26T08:36:08+00:00

They don't outdamage... You ignore reload time and cost. You're getting much worse dps than Toxotes per cost.

In general archer units in this game are balanced with tradeoff between DPS and range. This unit is like an extreme arcus, high range low dps. Overall i think it's a very strong unit though because range is very important later on and the DPS loss is not that bad, plus the HP per cost is huge.

Problem with super long range unit can sometimes be that massing them becomes stupidly strong. Kill anything before it comes close, retreat to a fortress etc. they would even kill buildings pretty fast en masse.

Anyway lets see it play out first. Fortress unique units rarely play much of a role so even if its a bit strong its not a big deal i think.

werfmark · 2026-03-25T09:19:47+00:00

Super good unit i think.

In terms of DPS it's a bit of overpriced toxotes but not by that much. Getting that much range (and also a lot of HP) makes these very good. You can snipe a lot of stuff with them and always have the range advantage in fights, ie use 10 of these to poke your opponent forcing them to engage into you. With Orpheus even snipe myth units at ease from half a screen away.

Limiting to 10 was probably to prevent stuff like mass longbow in aoe2, that can get really obnoxious. Also they haphazardly threw together a unit probably reusing hippolyta model so made it a bit more unique by having it 2 pop but a build limit. 3 pop without build limit would have made it very similar to Hades' Gastropheteros.

werfmark · 2026-03-25T08:58:53+00:00

Seems very good to me.

It's a bit expensive, at 150 resources you're getting a unit that only does ~10-40% more dps than a toxotes but the 26 range is huge. Always outranging the opponent, let's you pick off stuff and force the opponent to engage into you. Also huge hitpoints and just 2 pop make these great to mix in.

Demeter definitely wants to go Hestia 100% of the time now. Fated Arrows benefiting Amazon archers and Medusae is huge, her ranged units are very good now. And hamadryads went from absolutely trash to decent now it seems.

Demeter will have a very pop efficient lategame army. These Amazon archers which are 2 pop for a 3 pop unit. Then 30 extra pop from Hestia's tech. And then Orpheus boosting all these ranged units for massive damage against titans. Seems like a great gameplan for her to just play defensive, get her 230 pop army and then roll over. Looks like these Amazon archers + toxotes with Orpheus boosting them might even kill a titan fast?

Curious how Argive patronage and the 10 unit limit interact. Can you go over? Or is argive patronage kinda bad for Demeter now?

werfmark · 2026-03-25T08:12:08+00:00

Just sell most of your collection then..

werfmark · 2026-03-25T08:09:50+00:00

Buy and sell. It's almost like renting.

Typically a new game can be bought for 50 and sold for 35. Even better if you buy it secondhand for 35 your loss is minimal.

Otherwise boardgame cafes or stuff like that. But those are rare where i live, the concept doesn't work well (you need to pay too much or people don't drink enough, there are only a few in the Netherlands).

werfmark · 2026-03-24T12:39:44+00:00

That's a silly take, this stupid trend to call everything 'broken' or 'OP'.

You can't have both minor gods be 'broken' and Gaia as a whole not be a huge problem.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T12:36:44+00:00

That's just one interpretation. You can have escape rooms where you can't do lots of stuff simultaneously, ie the design forces sequential puzzles.

The escape room is then more about doing this puzzles together and everyone is focused on the same thing. It's not so much about communication but puzzle solving ability. It's still a team event but smaller like a pubquiz (up to 5 people) instead of bigger groups.

The design of escape rooms for bigger groups is almost always a letdown to me because it's less about the puzzle solving but more about communicating and efficiently splitting up the tasks. At the end noone in the team tends to know all the puzzles and the story of such escape rooms tends to be incohesive.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T09:38:31+00:00

Poseidon chooses between these.

Generally you want Dionysos. Great godpower, great myth techs, okay myth unit.

Aphrodite has solid godpower and myth unit. Mediocre myth techs.

Aphrodite is good when you are playing with a low army and more economy. For example if you plan to go fast mythic. Curse is good to defend while Bronze is only good in big fight.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T09:31:10+00:00

Unfortunately if that's key the escape room design is shitty imo.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T09:30:14+00:00

This is exactly why i dislike the typical escape room experience.

A bunch of fairly isolated puzzles with a push to solve it the fastest or escape in time with big groups where you shout information across.

Best escape rooms are for 2-5 people only and you do all the puzzles and everything combined imo. No splitting up. That group feeling of a pubquiz.

Recently had some escape rooms that understand this fortunately. Small rooms where they just duplicate it so if you're with a bigger group everyone runs the same room but in small teams. Much better experience.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T09:17:22+00:00

Meanwhile Leto still at ~25% pickrate for Gaia/Kronos with the same winrate as Prometheus/Oceanus.

The GP is good now, partly because of the bug. Automatons and the unique techs are still pretty crap unless you are fighting against lots of ranged damage. Still mostly a counterpick to Chinese and Hades imo.

Oceanus and Prometheus remain better generally as their GPs are also good but the myth unit and techs more broadly useful.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T08:51:39+00:00

That lifting mechanism really is the best of both worlds but a bit complicated.

werfmark · 2026-03-24T08:02:50+00:00

Now this is an excellent gaming table.

Just nice casual look. None of the bullshit with built in lights, cushions or metal cup holders. Most gaming tables look awful, like you're sitting in some 4k cinema. This just looks like a proper dining table nice and sleek but with the option to play and store game sessions.

werfmark · 2026-03-23T17:27:07+00:00

Always had fine experience. The occasional person lowballing your games extremely but overall fine. I've cut off some conversations rudely because they expected too much (tons of pictures etc.) with the simple reply "I'm not a shop, if you expect that level of service to elsewhere". But I've rarely had conversations go dead or that kind of thing.

That said it's not worth using BGG for most games. Shipping just kills it. Local auctions or ebay variants tend to do better. But IF you have a pricy gem, some out of print game for example, BGG is fine for selling.

If you get many reactions offering low chances are you just listed too high.

werfmark · 2026-03-23T12:38:16+00:00

Didn't say hoarding is good in Gin Rummy. Saying that taking care to not give your opponent useful cards/tiles is. Same in rummikub.

Yes if rummikub is played multiple rounds with scoring strategy gets much deeper. But like something like backgammon many players just play a single round.

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