Seven does not sound like enough. With the relative weakness of the Counterstrike racial skill, it seem that Haven may now be at a disadvantage. I guess we'll have to wait and see. If it were my call, I think I'd have made the limit one week's growth, which would then scale with the creature level.

BTW, JJ: What else can you tell us about the contents of the patch?

No, I disagree here. The skill is training, not training Archers. As it is, Haven simply gives peasants a bow, boring and leading to a new Gremlin rush. However, with TRAINING GROUNDS (there is a Hall of Heroes to be build as well which increases the limit) allowing to train 7 units only you might see other training actions as well - Cleric to Cavalier, for example, expensive, but very powerful.

I've told already toomuch anyway about the patch.

It's too difficult for Sylvan to reduce casualties in the beginning,

They do have rough time creeping early, WITHOUT Deleb. That is not a sign of a strong faction, but of a strong Hero.

For the record.... I always require that both players play random heroes. And on top of that...will request that powerful heroes like Deleb - Ossir - Dougal be banned as main hero. Those heroes are more of a campaign type hero and not a serious multiplayer based hero. It amazes me when people grumble when I say we need to go Random heroes. They cridnge at the thought of having to play a normal hero that isnt suped up!

As for dominate races.... Ubisoft had a nice vision of making the towns sooo unique , each having there special advantage.... however the problem is the maps. As you pointed out, some maps this race and that race are dominate other maps other races are. Which means that Ubisoft did not succeed 100% in there multiplayer attempts. This game is great fun, and I do LOVE it. Has ALOT of great concepts and new features... but what it lacks is that ability of the towns to have there unique advantages and at the same time have that aura of balanced.

i totally disagree .... You almost never have the extra devil stack, because chances that you will find this one artifact is very low(you need ultimate gating). Unupgraded devil is mhmm ... to low on hp to be serious unit... it's in fact the worst from all 7 level in my opinion. Archedivls bonus ? they get a little hp and small statistic bonus... summon pitlord ? yeah it would be nice if it would not need the dead enemy stack .... before you can use it your devils will be dead. (I'm not sure if it needs a dead stack ? any patch changed that ? ).... anyway I'm sure that devils wins the contest for worst level 7 unit.

Perhaps I'm too multiplayer focused, but as much potential Sylvan has, they really have difficulty creeping in the beginning. Everyone has their way of creeping: Haven has marksman (for big creeps; no point wasting marksman on lots of assassins), inferno has gating, necros have raise skeleton, dungeon and academy has magic. It's too difficult for Sylvan to reduce casualties in the beginning, as they don't have a skill that they can immediately use. Once you get the resources to get hunters, you won't have many sprites and blade dancers left as meatshield, and they aren't even that good at being meatshields. I just don't see how they can avoid being bashed by ANY human army in the first month.

If you don't avoid ranged creatures that is. Sprites + Hero = death to anything not fast enough. Keep the BDancers out of the early fights to horde them.

Sometimes you can't avoid Ranged (or magical) creatures early.