Helheim - lets burn some rubber

[Baalz]

[Edit: I wanted to make it clear that the specifics build I use here is with the CBM mod, though it shouldn't be too difficult to do something similar in vanilla]
Once upon a time, Helheim was one of the real EA powerhouses. Then the double nerfbat came across their shoulders and they were humbled. The Helhirdlings were drastically reduced in power with the nerfing of glamour, glamour no longer protects against ranged effects or spells. The once terrifying sacred cavalry now often struggles against mere javelin PD in sufficient numbers and archers – both of which are common in PD and indies. The more grievous of the nerfs though was the plague which wiped out most of Helheim’s dwarves. The Svartalf became capital only and Helheim lost its only cost effective non-capital researcher. Leaning on sacred units for early expansion means sending priest/mages out rather than researching, leaving a research gap that is impossible to close with their very expensive and ineffective Helkarl/Vanheres researchers who add insult to injury by requiring temples as well as labs to recruit. Finally, your opponent pretty much knows what to expect so they can start working on counters the second they realize they’re your neighbor.

Since the double nerf Helheim’s dominance has drastically waned, their usual pattern is an aggressive dual bless rush which quickly fades as their research struggles and their glamour fails to protect them from a variety of counters. I haven’t seen Helheim do impressively well into late game since this massive double nerf, so I figured they needed a guide.

To properly play Helheim, you need to get into the right mind set. Whereas Ulm is the model of German efficiency, Helheim is a V-12 American muscle car. You’re lacking the AC, and you’re not paying attention to your abysmal gas mileage because you’re all about raw, concentrated, glorious *power*. Some of the suggestions I put forth in this guide might make you wince a bit because they perhaps feel wasteful, perhaps they feel like a bit of a loose cannon, but you have to play a nation with the grain, and injecting nitro is not about efficiency. It’s about leaving the poor schmuck sucking your exhaust at the light.

So, I’m gonna go ahead and lead with your pretender, and you’ll have to bear with me a bit as to why I make some of these uncommon choices. As with all my guides, this build has some room to be tweaked once you understand the song we’re trying to sing and you want to try some harmonies of your own. Lets take an awake master druid 2F 4W 9E 2S 4N, with Order-3, sloth-3, cold-2, death -3, luck-3 and drain-2 with a dominion score of 3.

Eeeek! Not only high death with a blood hunting nation but drain! Didn’t you just get through lamenting their difficulty with research? The thing to keep in mind is you’ve got to embrace your strengths and play the way the nation naturally flows. Some people look at a weakness and try to directly compensate for it. They see a nation vulnerable to a rush and thus want a SC pretender. They see a nation with weak research and think that means you have to take a magic scale, maybe even look at the terribly expensive magic-3 scale. Me, I’d rather set the tempo so the dance never hurts my lame foot. If all I’ve got is terribly inefficient researchers, then I’m not going to use them.

Now, I’m betting some of you are confused at this point. The blessing I suggest is not something that lends itself to a standard bless rush, particularly with a dominion score of 3. But I’m not using my non-capital researchers. So, no rush and extremely weak research….what the hell do I have in mind? Raw, concentrated, power my friend, listen to the growl of that beautiful engine.

With this blessing you’re going to be able to expand against moderate to weak indies using just a single Helkarl with a single Helhirding and a half dozen huskarls. Set the Helhirding to guard commander and he’ll be permanently wedged into the same square as the commander, thus halving the number of attacks he’s fending off and the blessing is giving you extra defense, and a high enough armor that your one point of regeneration will cover the odd hit that does land while the reinvig makes sure you keep on kicking. The huskarls are there to take the attention of the indies, catching the arrows, javelins, etc on their shields and tying up the infantry with their high defense and glamour, while your two mounted guys attacks the rear. You’re gonna take a casualty here or there but your expansion will be reliable enough and a bargain for the price.

You’re fielding a cheap expansion party every round for the first couple. Avoiding the tougher indies shouldn’t too much of a problem because your primary goal is not the high income, well defended territories, it’s the much more modestly defended mountains and wastelands. That raw power at this point is concentrated in just a handful of guys in each squad, and with those nice order/luck scales you won’t have any problem with cashflow despite sticking to the lower income indies. Don’t hesitate to use your stealth to sneak on by anybody that looks like they’ll give you too much of a fight – you’ll be having a very brisk expansion even if you’re picky about where you attack.

This isn’t just to make your initial expansion run smoothly, it’s also exactly what you want the most. After the first two turns you’re going to switch to fielding an expansion party every other turn, alternating with recruiting a dwarf. The dwarves are going to go our site searching in those mountains and wastelands, forests and swamps. What you need the most is earth and death gems, and conveniently every dwarf will hit both of those with at least level 2. Meanwhile your very modest gold outlay and very nice income scales will let you pop up a second castle pretty quickly, along with a lab and temple. If you’re doing well you’ll likely get castle three up pretty quick as well, but really it’s only the second one which is urgent. Out of every non-capital castle you ever put up you will do exactly the same thing every turn, recruit a Vanjarl and nothing else (if you’re pinched you can recruit some troops, but that’s just an emergency measure). Unmodified, the Vanjarls have 4 research points in drain-2 at a staggering 280 gold. Ignore that, just assume they can’t research and mentally put them at 0 research points. These guys aren’t meant to research, at this point every one you recruit should be set to blood hunt. This is also immensely expensive for a blood hunter, but just ignore that little voice because we’re interested in power, not efficiency. You shouldn’t have any probably affording two Vanjarls and a dwarf every round which is really all you should care about. Meanwhile, your pretender solidly researches construction. Your pretender has 29 research points and doesn’t really care about the one point he loses from drain.

So, how does this all come together around the end of year one? You’ve done an above average expansion against the indies, respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you. Your income, likewise is modest with your good scales being more than compensated by your focus on lower population indies. Your research, carried almost completely by your pretender is solid, among the leaders but likely not first place. Your gem income is probably at an impressive lead, heavily weighted to earth and death gems. With your very nice capital income of 4 death gems and having spent none, you should be looking at 60-80 death gems unless you’ve just had abysmal luck searching, and you’ve turned your earth gems into a couple hammers - if luck is with you, you might have as many as four by now, don’t hesitate to alchemize anything other than death to get those initial hammers.

Right around the end of year one is when you’ll finish research on construction-4. Now it’s time to feel the rumble of that engine, let’s get to concentrating that power. You’re gonna start cranking out skull mentors like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll almost certainly have a death gem income in the double digits by now, with your capital income just two nice magic sites practically get you there. Given the death gems you’ve stockpiled at this point you should be able to easily crank out 3-4 skull mentors per turn for a good while. Make sure you’re only doing this with hammers, because of the way the rounding works out you’re getting three of them for 21 gems instead of 2 of them for 20, so it’s essentially a 50% increase in mentor production for a given amount of gems.

Burn that nitro baby. Plenty of people are reluctant to forge skull mentors, of the mindset that this uses very valuable death gems to do something you can get done other ways. Stop thinking like Ulm! Gun that engine and, well, lets do some math. With a skull mentor those dwarves are spitting out 15 research points and once you run out of dwarves to stick them on the Vanjarls are clearing 13 (hey, the skull mentor is doing the research, so I maintain I’m not using *Vanjarls* to research). Impressive! Another way to look at this is you’re forging 9X3 = 27 research generators plus the mages you’re recruiting (2 Vanjarls + a dwarf = 14 points), so 41 research points per turn out of three castles. That’s the research generation of *ten* castles for some nations in magic-1 scales. Simple arithmetic means that if you can keep that up you’re pulling in over 500 research points per turn *by the end of year two*! That’s more research than some people pull in by the end of the game! 40+60+100+160+260+420+680+1100+1780 = 4600, so to put this in perspective you can research all the way from 0 to level 9 of a school in 9 turns. Damn the efficiency, I’m winning the race.

Research alone isn’t gonna win for you, and that wicked hockey stick turn in your research graph will most definitely start giving you problems from your neighbors. That’s ok, because as of this second you are ready to go on the offensive just as your research is starting to gear up.

You’ve hit construction 4, and hopefully have managed to scrape together a couple of fire gems with your site searching from fire random dwarves. You’ll want to send your pretender out to site search now and let the skull mentors take over in the lab. This will give you a very nice spread of magic diversity for your income, which is the reason you’ve got F2 on him. A few fire gems are going to go a long way because with a golden shield and almost any weapon you want to stick on him every one of those Vanjarls you’ve been cranking out is a thug. Your rapidly exploding research will get you to alt-3 in no time, and blessing (reinvig + regen), air shield, plus mistform along with the awe from the golden shield will leave the Vanjarls essentially immune to anything short of anti-thug tactics. A short hop (for your rapidly increasing research) up to ench-4 means each and every one of them is able to cloud trapeze. Check out my guide to Eriu for some detailed suggestions (I use a very similar setup in it), but suffice it to say that this is a whole solid strategy by itself. This is why we took that expensive E9 blessing, that reinvig plus regen means you practically don’t need to put any items on them at all, and in fact they can be used “naked” in a pinch, just field more than one together. You should be fielding dozens of thugs in year two, each with the utmost mobility and stealth. You’ll also want to start recruiting Hangadrotts, they make even better thugs than Vanjarls – once soul vortex is researched you don’t even need to give them a magic weapon.

This is just the opening act though. You will find that you’ve got no problem setting up 3 provinces each with Vanjarls bloodhunting (all with sanguine rods now). This will pull you in around 50 or so blood slaves per turn, which means it won’t take long to empower up 3 dwarves to crank out bloodstones. Three bloodstones per turn is gonna start adding up really fast, you should be looking at most of your people with skull mentors and bloodstones before you know it. Once you’ve got those dwarves empowered you’ll probably find that you’re pulling in more blood slaves than you’re using, that’s good, just let your bloodslaves pile up for now – we’re gonna use them later. Any Vanjarls who don’t have a skull mentor or a golden shield should be blood hunting so depending on how stuff plays out you may find yourself with quite an impressive stockpile of blood slaves. One thing to remember, you can easily blood sacrifice out of each of your castles (who all have temples of course) so there’s no reason to fear a dominion push even with your dominion score of 3. There’s also no reason not to make sure that order-3/luck-3 combination is pushed to all your provinces.

Now that ever growing pile of earth gems is going to solve several problem for you. Crank out several gate cleavers and you’ll have no problem with people hiding in castles when you raid – just cloud trapeze in a half dozen gate cleavers who can sneak wherever you want them. Crumble is also easy to do once you’ve got it researched (your pretender casts it gloriously). It’s also going to fill in some mass for you when your thugs aren’t the right tool for the job. Your E9 pretender (plus boots, bloodstone of course) can very efficiently pop out a bunch of enliven’ed statues (who fit a lot better in this context than for Ulm because they fill a niche so far vacant) and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. Gargoyles of course as well round out some nice choices all in one path, so that’s where you’ll want to bend your research if that’s what you’re wanting. Earth gems, boots & stones also of course turn your dwarves into earth monsters with all the yummy straight earth stuff from earthquake to petrify. As MaxWilson points out in the Helheim Dirty Tactic thread rain of stones is in easy reach and can be devastating using a Hangadrott with an earth random and a blood stone, but in general your combat mages are going to be your dwarves and summons while the Vanir are your thugs. In a pinch all those Vanjarls you’ve been massing can spam thunderstrike if you can lay down a storm for them to power up, and don’t neglect fun blood combat options like leech and hellbind heart.

What I’d do if you can get away with it though is focus on that concentrated raw power rather than diluting it by spreading out. Lean on your thugs for a bit and drive straight up to const-8 where your pretender forges the chalice. You shouldn’t really have any problem snagging it with your blazing research and early focus on construction. Then straight into conjuration research while of course snagging any other artifacts that appeal to you (snag the unique death boosters). Your nitro powered research will let you blaze up the tree faster than you thought possible. As you gain momentum, stop forging more skull mentors and stockpile some death gems. You shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting conj-8 with the 80 gems necessary to cast the Well of Misery (Hangadrott with a death random, staff and skull cap can cast it).

That same Hangadrott with one of the death booster artifacts (or a ring of sorcery your pretender forged) can then start dropping tartarians. You’ve now nitro boosted your way up into a very early tartarian factory as your Hangadrott’s start cranking out a couple per turn, while you use the water income your pretender scraped up while site searching to summon a couple niads to cast haurespex with the gems your pretender lined up, then gift of reason. You’re gonna be constrained on the nature gems, but between casting gift of reason every few turns and the lucky natural tartarian commander you’re gonna build up a fleet of SCs before anybody can believe you’ve got them. You’ll also have an easy time summoning all the elemental royalty other than fire, as many as you can afford.

This also is a solid strategy in its own right, but why stop now? As soon as you start raining tartarians at an absurdly early time, anyone who’s so inclined will be mobilizing against you. You’ll want to strongly consider leveraging all those death gems into burden of time, all your guys are practically immortal but it’ll royally screw with plenty of your rivals. Burden of time is one of those very situational things, there are some nations it really hurts, some it doesn’t hurt at all, and some who it’s more an annoyance. It’s not hard to line up other people who would like to see it up, so don’t think you necessarily need to declare war on everybody to put it up. Plus, what’s more thematic than Helheim breaking down the gates of Tartarus and releasing death to stalk the land? Continuing in the same vein you could throw in foul air, you do have the chalice after all for your own owies.

Rounding out this brutal research blitz is all those blood slaves burning a hole in your pocket. You’ve slammed down on the gas pedal and never let up, so that death dominion probably hasn’t been hampering you much but when provinces do start burning out it’s time to conquer some new lands! If you’ve done everything right you’re probably sitting on several hundred blood slaves at this point, and with that nasty research engine blood-9 is not that far away. A couple boosters and cheap empowerings and you’re going to be adding infernal crusade and infernal tempest to your monthly ritual list. Skip the blood SC’s, you’ll be competing with the other blood nations for them and tartarians will cover that role.
A blazing blood economy, game leading research, obscene amounts of earth and death gems, the ability to simultaneously raid every single province in an enemy nation simultaneously, and a tartarian factory before anybody else can even think about it. Lets see you manage that efficiently.

So, I hope I’ve illustrated how driving Helheim like the muscle car it is can be immensely satisfying though you’re gonna be disappointed if you’re trying to drive her like a commuter car, watching her gas mileage. Don’t worry about using 280 gold bloodhunters, it’s far worse to ignore your blood roots. Don’t worry about taking drain and death scales, it’s far worse to try and nurse along what will never be good. Don’t worry about efficiency (well, at least all the time), worry about power and let that nitro burn!

[mighty_scoop]

Happy new year ... a new Baalz guide ... awesome :-)
Thx

[MaxWilson]

Good guide, Baalz. Most of Helheim's old tricks still work, I just avoid them now out of emotional pain from the Svartalf plague. :(

Don't forget that Helheim can forge Owl Quills and Lightless Lanterns too. I agree that Drain isn't really going to hurt you as long as you're willing to spend some gems, and E9 for Helheim is pretty neat.

-Max

[Baalz]

Good guide, Baalz. Most of Helheim's old tricks still work, I just avoid them now out of emotional pain from the Svartalf plague. :(

Don't forget that Helheim can forge Owl Quills and Lightless Lanterns too. I agree that Drain isn't really going to hurt you as long as you're willing to spend some gems, and E9 for Helheim is pretty neat.

-Max

Man, I just don't like owl quills myself. They're just so inefficient, and using the massive thug wave strategy I tend to burn through a lot of air gems for cloud trapeze. Plus, honestly you start running out slots to stick blood stones and skull mentors in when you're recruiting smaller numbers of expensive mages while sending some of them out to raid and fight. Lightless lanterns are efficient enough, but to be honest every fire gem I scrape up goes to golden shields, or if I'm really lucky I start whipping out fire brands to go with them. You don't really end up with that much to fire site search with and ideally you want to crank out dozens of golden shields.

[quantum_mechani]

and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. I'm pretty doubtful about this, 75 earth gems is a lot. I don't generally use a lot of earth gem summons myself, but I have trouble seeing hidden in sand beating out, say, 40 living statues. Or 50 mech men (which go well with wrathful skies).

[vfb]

Another cool guide, thanks Baalz!

My latest experiment with Helheim was pretty similar, a F1A2W9E4S4D4N4 Frost Father, with Order-3 Sloth-3 Cold-3 Death-3 Luck-3 Magic-1, Dom-5.

A2D4 HangaDrotts casting Blessing-Mistform-Holy Avenger-Soul Vortex-Life Drain, then attack, are pretty cool. I went with Vine Shields instead of the Gold shields, plus a Fire Brand and Rime Hauberk. The Fire Brand is nice for when they hit lifeless armies.

I also made a couple of Lightning Rods early and summoned a crapload of Corpse Contructs, which are pretty good in CBM with 24HP and 14MR.

[Baalz]

and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. I'm pretty doubtful about this, 75 earth gems is a lot. I don't generally use a lot of earth gem summons myself, but I have trouble seeing hidden in sand beating out, say, 40 living statues. Or 50 mech men (which go well with wrathful skies).

Well, it's definitely on the expensive side but don't forget it'll also nab you a fire/astral/earth/death mage which helps with your magic diversity and can often cast soul drain, vengeance of the dead, astral fires, and some other nice things Helheim can't otherwise easily field (and are thus unexpected). They also bring fire aura to the table which can be a nasty surprise people won't often expect from Helheim. 20-40 dust walkers aren't *that* expensive in that light, and they have the added advantage of costing much less mage time than the statues or mechanical men. Finally, they come with their own troop herder so that frees up a mage from that duty. That said, yes I agree that they wouldn't be my first choice for run of the mill fodder.

[quantum_mechani]

and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. I'm pretty doubtful about this, 75 earth gems is a lot. I don't generally use a lot of earth gem summons myself, but I have trouble seeing hidden in sand beating out, say, 40 living statues. Or 50 mech men (which go well with wrathful skies).

Well, it's definitely on the expensive side but don't forget it'll also nab you a fire/astral/earth/death mage which helps with your magic diversity and can often cast soul drain, vengeance of the dead, astral fires, and some other nice things Helheim can't otherwise easily field (and are thus unexpected). They also bring fire aura to the table which can be a nasty surprise people won't often expect from Helheim. 20-40 dust walkers aren't *that* expensive in that light, and they have the added advantage of costing much less mage time than the statues or mechanical men. Finally, they come with their own troop herder so that frees up a mage from that duty. That said, yes I agree that they wouldn't be my first choice for run of the mill fodder.Well, you are already talking about pumping tartarians, at that point mage diversity doesn't seen so much an issue. 3-4 more mages turns isn't that much an investment either, adds up to probably less than 40 rp generally. I'll grant you hidden in sand is more fun though. ;)

[MaxWilson]

Man, I just don't like owl quills myself. They're just so inefficient, and using the massive thug wave strategy I tend to burn through a lot of air gems for cloud trapeze. Plus, honestly you start running out slots to stick blood stones and skull mentors in when you're recruiting smaller numbers of expensive mages while sending some of them out to raid and fight. Lightless lanterns are efficient enough, but to be honest every fire gem I scrape up goes to golden shields, or if I'm really lucky I start whipping out fire brands to go with them. You don't really end up with that much to fire site search with and ideally you want to crank out dozens of golden shields.

Owl Quills might be more important in a strategic variant that doesn't want to take an awake pretender (to get from Const-2 up to Const-4) or that wants to save death games for shadow brands. I'm just saying, know your options, because in some games you discover lots of fire sites and few death sites. Of course *you* already know about lightless lanterns and owl quills but some people don't.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

As MaxWilson points out in the Helheim Dirty Tactic thread rain of stones is in easy reach and can be devastating using a Hangadrott with an earth random and a blood stone,

I don't know if I mentioned this in the other thread, but you can do it without a blood stone. Have 3 earth gems, and do Summon Earthpower (with 1 gem) and Rain of Stones (with 2 gems). Do Mistform first if you want to increase your chances of surviving.

-Max

P.S. Consider combining with Leprosy.

[Rick L]

I am in awe of this post.

[lch]

*chalks one off the list*

Thanks Baalz, Helheim didn't have a guide yet, while other nations have like five to them.

Oceania, any age, or Niefelheim next?

[Sombre]

lch: Everyone hates Oceania.

Niefelheim is one of those that's always been considered a bit obvious. I think Honeybadger wrote some sort of guide to them also.

[Sombre]

Actually, let me do a quick guide to MA Oceania:

1. Don't play MA Oceania.
2. If you're the only water nation, clam and win the most boring game ever.
3. What the hell were you thinking taking MA Oceania?

[lch]

People say that Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath is even more overpowered than Niefelheim, and still Baalz wrote a guide for them. Helheim received the same treatment.

Another nation without a guide that might be more interesting, then, is EA Ulm or not-EA Caelum.

[JimMorrison]

I love you Baalz.

I don't know how you keep doing this, and one right after another..... but keep it up. Maybe Illwinter will hire you to write the manual for Dom4. ;)

[Mithras]

With referance to the EA chronicles thread... eep!

Seriosly though love the guides... quality and volume. I look forward to being crushed by Baalz in the near future.

P.s. Baalz sayed he couldn't do anything with MA ocenia... theres a post around here somewhere...

[Kadelake]

This guide is for CBM, right? The awe-shield is construction 6 in vanilla.

[MaxWilson]

I'd like to see a guide for Niefelheim. The point of a guide is not necessarily to teach you how to survive, it's to bring out the NON-obvious points of a nation. Niefelheim's mages have always kind of perturbed me because their low and scattered randoms mean they have trouble casting combat-magic, although obviously Skratti are surprisingly good at arty spells once you forge a Water Bracelet and/or Robe of the Sea. I wonder what else I'm overlooking in Niefelheim.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

One other comment about Helheim: if you don't want to burn death gems on skull mentors, there's really nothing stopping you from taking Magic and researching with indy mages. Generally indy mage research is pretty contemptible, but you can produce 4 or 5 sacred indy shamans per turn without much trouble, which IIRC is +240 RP per year in Magic-3 for very little cost (22 gold per RP initially, 0.733333333 gold per RP ongoing).

Vanir infantry are also a lot more fun once they've been buffed with Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel/Weapons of Sharpness. It's more of a pain now to get Svartalfs in the right places to cast these, but you can still do it.

Don't forget that Hangadrottir thugs benefit disproportionately from Bracers of Defense (w/ E9 blessing they thicken to Prot 6, w/ Legions of Steel they thicken to Prot 9, cumulative with other sources of Prot), although some people view that as a bug.

-Max

-Max

[Baalz]

Thanks for the encouraging words guys. I generally write a guide for a nation I feel is under appreciated, when I can find a competitive angle that seems to be mostly overlooked. When I wrote the Hinnom guide they were brand new, and I don't think anybody (including me when I started) appreciated how strong they were.

MA Oceana is the only nation I've picked up and tried hard to polish, only to fail. In my opinion they are not only the weakest nation I've played, but horribly crippled. We had a fun thread awhile ago with some thematic suggestions to add to them, but as they are now I can't come up with anything remotely competitive to do with them after your initial expansion. Perhaps somebody more clever than me could, but I failed.

I heard a request for Niefelheim and Yomi, I'll see if I can find some inspiring stuff to write for these.

[Sombre]

I'd like a Niefel guide that doesn't use a heavy bless, since the heavy bless method is very well known. Something that makes good use of the Skratti too.

[Baalz]

One other comment about Helheim: if you don't want to burn death gems on skull mentors, there's really nothing stopping you from taking Magic and researching with indy mages. Generally indy mage research is pretty contemptible, but you can produce 4 or 5 sacred indy shamans per turn without much trouble, which IIRC is +240 RP per year in Magic-3 for very little cost (22 gold per RP initially, 0.733333333 gold per RP ongoing).

Vanir infantry are also a lot more fun once they've been buffed with Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel/Weapons of Sharpness. It's more of a pain now to get Svartalfs in the right places to cast these, but you can still do it.

Don't forget that Hangadrottir thugs benefit disproportionately from Bracers of Defense (w/ E9 blessing they thicken to Prot 6, w/ Legions of Steel they thicken to Prot 9, cumulative with other sources of Prot), although some people view that as a bug.

-Max

-Max

Ah yes, I really meant to mention the bracers of defense and forgot to. With the abundance of earth gems they make very cost effective additions to your ubiquitous thugs.

I have to disagree with you on the indie research angle though. You have to consider the opportunity cost. You're switching from drain-2 to magic-3, which costs 200 design points and makes your thugs more vulnerable to counters in your own dominion. Not sure where you intend to get those design points from, but that's a huge opportunity cost right off the bat. You suggest sacred shamans, so you're putting up 5 labs plus temples - were you putting up castles to, or hoping nobody raids you, pops your temples and kills all your researchers? So 4500-9000 gold before you start paying for the mages themselves depending on your tolerance for risk. So, on top of the straight gold opportunity cost there's the time opportunity cost of gathering that gold, building the infrastructure, and recruiting the mages.

This actually is a very good illustration of the very heart of my thesis for this guide. Assuming you're not suggesting you can line all this up in the first year you've got a whole hell of a lot of catchup to do to my suggested strategy which, if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one. It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best. It's the difference between virtually being assured to snag the chalice and then pump out Tartarians while everyone else has their thumbs up their butts, or playing catchup as people research solid counters to your sacred troops and thugs.

This is what I was trying to convey with my metaphor about not dancing on your lame foot. Its a bad idea to focus on your weaknesses, you're never going to be competitive like that. Focus on your strengths and *circumvent* your weaknesses. Dumping that huge opportunity costs into getting still rather bleh research is...bad.

[Slobby]

lch: Everyone hates Oceania.


I like ea oceania...:)

[Radioheart]

Whereas Ulm is the model of German efficiency, Helheim is a V-12 American muscle car.

There essentially hasn't been an American V12 since World War II.

Lets take an awake master druid 2F 4W 9E 2S 4N, with Order-3, sloth-3, cold-1, death -3, luck-3 and drain-2 with a dominion score of 3.

I can't find the points for this build in CBM and cannot get close in vanilla.

[KissBlade]

I'm planning a Yomi guide when I get back to playing some heavy MP's but it'll be nice to see some alter views on it.

[Baalz]

Whereas Ulm is the model of German efficiency, Helheim is a V-12 American muscle car.

There essentially hasn't been an American V12 since World War II.

Lets take an awake master druid 2F 4W 9E 2S 4N, with Order-3, sloth-3, cold-1, death -3, luck-3 and drain-2 with a dominion score of 3.

I can't find the points for this build in CBM and cannot get close in vanilla.

I did this in CBM, though you can certainly do something similar in vanilla as CBM doesn't make any critical differences to this strategy.

Sorry, I actually took cold-2 to squeeze in the points, though you can tweak this as you like.

[MaxWilson]

I have to disagree with you on the indie research angle though. You have to consider the opportunity cost. You're switching from drain-2 to magic-3, which costs 200 design points and makes your thugs more vulnerable to counters in your own dominion. Not sure where you intend to get those design points from, but that's a huge opportunity cost right off the bat. You suggest sacred shamans, so you're putting up 5 labs plus temples - were you putting up castles to, or hoping nobody raids you, pops your temples and kills all your researchers? So 4500-9000 gold before you start paying for the mages themselves depending on your tolerance for risk. So, on top of the straight gold opportunity cost there's the time opportunity cost of gathering that gold, building the infrastructure, and recruiting the mages.


The design points could come from taking an imprisoned pretender instead of an awake one (and you have 50 points left over for higher Dominion or whatnot). I agree that this is the exact opposite of the approach you suggest in your guide. On a crowded map going for long-term gain (Magic-3 instead of awake pretender) is likely to be painful for exactly the reasons you suggest. On a larger map with less early conflict, +3 RP per researcher is a better deal than an extra 29 RP per turn. It's not like Magic and skull mentors are mutually exclusive, after all, and Magic also helps your thugs by reducing their early fatigue from Soul Vortex. (It also makes Soul Vortex kill more chaff and suck in more healing/reinvig.)

You don't have to build forts to protect your temples, just set the researchers to retreat, unless there's enough of them that you *want* them supporting the PD (which they can't do from inside a fort). So yeah, 4500 setup cost (5 labs, 5 temples for indies) vs. 5100 (3 labs, 3 temples, 3 forts for Vanjarls) although the indies have obvious disadvantages too. Note that I'm not even necessarily suggesting that you have to build the indies, just that it becomes an attractive option which you rule out by taking Drain in favor of an awake pretender.

a lot of catchup to do to my suggested strategy which, if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one.

Not as much catchup as you'd think, since you can still have just as many death gems stockpiled. You'll take longer to hit Const-4, but once you do you're in an even better position. (You're generating 62 RP from those same 4 skull mentors and 3 mages.)

It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best.

This I just don't buy--it's not that hard to catch up on research if you have gems stockpiled and a good economy, and aren't busy fighting a war, and Helheim isn't a likely rush target. I used to play heavily in favor of skull mentors, making Const-4 a top priority for every nation, but sometimes it really hurts to blow 140 death gems for a mere 180 RP per turn, and once your economy is cranking 180 RP is a drop in the bucket. It comes down to this: I may be wrong, I frequently am, but to me it looks like taking Drain-2 in order to have an awake pretender is a poor tradeoff for Helheim.

-Max

Edit: just to re-emphasize, Baalz is more likely to be right than I am about anything involving MP, because I only play SP. Maybe Helheim really does need the early research to stave off attackers.

[DonCorazon]

Well written guide Baalz - thanks for the insights. I agree that the conventional dual bless for the Heims is fun in the short-run, but not really viable in the long-run, at least that was my experience with Van - have never tried Helheim in MP.

Interestingly, elements of this strategy actually parallel a strategy for LA TC. They have ready access to E2 and D2 mages (all their "Ancestor" mages have some D so D gem income is easy to get up and running) and putting hammer-forged Skull mentors on 100GP sacred Masters of the Way is, as you say, like nitrous on your research, and you can use an Earth blessing on small bands of sacred Ancestor Vessels to easily expand.

[chrispedersen]

[QUOTE=Baalz;663456][QUOTE=MaxWilson;663442]if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one. It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best. QUOTE]

Hey Baalz

I agree with most of your analysis most of the time. However assuming a first place research on the strength of skull mentors is overstating the case.

Competitive research - sure. But you will still fall behind any nation utilizing skull mentors without a magic drain, yet with a competent research mage.

[Aezeal]

Sombre, Niefel w/o a heavy bless isn't that just not making optimal usage of the nation.. sure advice for use of skratti's will never hurt, but Niefel w/o a bless is well.. sub optimal and I don't think a guide should be about a sub optimal strat really.

[MaxWilson]

Skrattis can have a bless. IIRC they have pretty good natural Prot and a torso slot in their werewolf form, which makes a Shroud (forged by Gygjas) a workable option.

Edit: Oops, sorry, Aezeal, I think I misunderstood your point because I had missed seeing Sombre's original post that you were replying to.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

...and once your economy is cranking 180 RP is a drop in the bucket....

A lot of your argument is somewhat persuasive, but unless you are talking about very large maps, with Hard/VH research, 180 points is a lot. Typically I find that many nations peak out at around 800 or so by the time they are completing their research. 180 is ~25% of that total, and talking about a jump from 600 to 800 is a big deal. But Baalz was talking about more than 20 Mentors.

However, that leads me to my problem with this scenario. To push 3 Mentors per month, you are looking at 21 Death gems needed every month, after your hammers. I have done a LOT of starts, and given the typical MP paradigm of 15 provinces/player, even on a good start where you end up with 20 provinces, and using remote (level 9) searches rather than manual searches, ~20 is typically the absolutely high end of Death gem income. I think it's entirely possible that manually searching all of your starting provinces may only net you ~10 or so income. Granted, you do get 4 in the cap, so baseline income will be higher, but it highlights my problem with strategies that are too highly defined, and too highly optimized. You are wholly reliant on getting a robust gem income to succeed - your build absolutely requires it, and if you don't get it, you are pretty invested into the game as far as your time goes, and left holding an empty bag.

[MaxWilson]

A lot of your argument is somewhat persuasive, but unless you are talking about very large maps, with Hard/VH research, 180 points is a lot. Typically I find that many nations peak out at around 800 or so by the time they are completing their research. 180 is ~25% of that total, and talking about a jump from 600 to 800 is a big deal. But Baalz was talking about more than 20 Mentors.

Yeah, I probably overstated the case against skull mentors here. 180 RP is never really "a drop in the bucket."

-Max

P.S. I agree with you, Jim, in that I'd rather have a flexible build (or nation) which can respond as luck and circumstances dictate, rather than having a set strategy before the game even starts. That said, Helheim is actually pretty good for just that kind of flexible play, especially with the E9N4W4 bless Baalz suggests. You can do everything from blood stones to Cloud-Trapezing thugs to Magma Eruption to Thunderstrike to Rigor Mortis to Stygian Paths. The only major hole that I miss in Helheim is Astral, but they have a lot of flexibility and mobility.

[KissBlade]

I'm not certain if I see helheim being a weak late game nation. Access to death and earth is pretty strong and death opens astral for you anyway. With an imprisoned master druid under cbm, you get something like e9w9n4s1 with order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 1, misf 1, magic 1 dom 4(or splash to some other chassis for b4 instead of n4 ) and your valkyries will absolutely dominate any standard troops you face. Archers get screened by serfs easily if you really worry (you start with like 20 screens anyway). mid game you still have access to the same skull mentors and your valkyries will still kick the crap out of any pd's with thug Han's if they really crank it up. Late game you still get blood/death magic which is better than a lot of other nations can garner. The only real advantage to an awake pretender IMO is that you're gambling on enough death sites to make conjuration 4 pay off big time and that's a bit too idealistic isn't it? Not to mention, the BIG graphs that good players look at are your research and gem income so with a subpar bless and an assumable lead in those two researching construction 8 as your priority, you're not making many friends any time soon.

[Baalz]

The thing is you have a very large cascade factor. You take an imprisoned pretender to get the design points for magic scales because 29 research points doesn’t seem like that much. Now you can take one of two choices, either essentially do no research in year one, or forego site searching and try to line up indie priests to lead and bless your troops (or not use your blessing at all). The difference between having constr-4 researched in time for your first engagement is *huge* considering the strategy I suggest of Vanjarl thugs. This is an extremely strong strategy at first which relatively rapidly loses steam as people tool up anti-thug tactics. These guys are pretty much unstoppable using normal troops, but not so much once enemy mages are a significant factor.

The thing is, almost everything in dominions has a very large inflation factor which drops its value as the game progresses. Getting an extra 3000 gold on turn one is game changing, towards the end of year one it’s very nice, in the end game it’s merely good. Extra gems at the point you’re trying to scrape up enough to site search is huge, in the middle of the game it’s very nice while one extra summon can make a significant impact, by the end of the game it’s barely noticeable. Likewise, you can’t compare the 350 research an awake pretender can contribute in the first year to what you can make up in the 3rd year – their values aren’t even close to the same. The difference between trying to fight a war with no research and modest research is huge, it’s the difference between having a swarm of thugs hitting everywhere at once and having just your recruitable troops which your opponent has been preparing counters for the second his scouts showed you as a neighbor.

I’d also like to expound upon my assertion that there is no way you can catch up to the skull mentor strategy using magic scales instead. Of course you can’t assume you’ll be the leader in research, and you can’t guarantee you’ll find death sites but for the sake of argument lets make a couple of fairly reasonable assumptions. Following my suggested strategy you’re explicitly targeting provinces with higher magic site levels, and this is EA which has a higher magic site rate. You’ve had several mages out site searching, you can expect to generally have found 3 or more sites by the end of year one. With just the income from your capital (4d) you’ve got 48 death gems at this point, so you can reasonably plan on having 60-80 D counting the income from sites you’ve found with an income of 10+. Of course it’s not guaranteed, but likely enough you can make plans around it. Likewise, you’ve got 1E income from your cap so we’ll assume you’ve either got or are close to having your 3rd dwarven hammer.

Cranking out 3 skull mentors per turn takes 21D, but remember you’re pulling in 10+ per turn, so net you’re only going down less than 11D per turn from your pool of 60-80. You’re still site searching remember, and just one or two more sites at this point can easily put you to the point you’re only dropping 7 or less D per turn, putting you roughly in the ball park of cranking out 3 skull mentors per turn for one full year, year two. You might be a little under that if my assumptions about finding sites is optimistic, but you should be in that ballpark and it’s not hard to imagine if you get lucky you’re doing more like 4 skull mentors per turn. It’s not *that* uncommon to hit two death sites when searching mountains/swamps/waste, and that’ll bump you up 3-5D per turn right there. At this point you’re probably not gonna keep cranking out the mentors anyway, it’s time to start saving for the well of misery.

So, 3 skull mentors + 3 mages puts you at the 41 research points per turn I suggested, and to the roughly 500 research points per turn by the end of year two I suggested. Yes, you can’t guarantee that you’re leading in research, but you certainly have a good shot at it and the strategy doesn’t exactly fall apart if you’re not the only guy hitting the research hard. To put it in perspective, that’s 100, 5rp mages hitting the books - it’ll be a very rare game that somebody is pulling in more than 500 research points per turn in two years.

Magic scales and skull mentors are not mutually exclusive…yet you suggest taking an imprisoned pretender and thus having no possible way to get to construction-4 in the same time frame I suggest – certainly not with the gem income necessary. Here’s the nature of the catchup, lets say you somehow manage to get in a position to crank out 3 skull mentors with a magic-3 scale a mere 6 turns later than you would with drain and an awake pretender (though I can’t imagine how you’d manage that). Just examine the impact that skull mentors make in those 6 turns I’ve generated 27 + 54 + 81 + 108 + 135 + 162 = 567 research points plus the 522 research my pretender outputs in those first 18 turns. That’s a hell of a hurdle to make up, even assuming you were able to close the gap in output immediately (which you won’t because I’m still cranking out more skull mentors myself)…particularly given the inflation time value of research I point out above. And for what exactly? You originally suggested that this would make sense if you didn’t want to burn your death gems, which would mean you’d most definitely remain far behind the skull mentor research. If you’re planning on skull mentors anyway why try so hard to play catchup? Number crunching aside let me just tell you anecdotally that the research output of this strategy is stunningly better than “standard” strong research, you’ve got to see it in the score graph to really appreciate it.

The real beauty of this to is that you’re not sacrificing your short term strength for the sake of a long term payoff – you’re pumping the other gems you managed to gather into swarms of thugs who are very competitive year two (and don’t really want your D gems anyway). This is important because as I mention (and KissBlade reiterates) you’re not gonna make many friends with this very aggressive muscle car approach, and you need to immediately have the teeth to back up the roar.

Now of course I’m not saying this is the only way you can play Helheim competitively, but it still works just fine even if you get a bit of bad luck or a slow start – 400 research per turn by year 3 is not gonna invalidate this strategy and you’ve always got to roll with the punches and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not certain if I see helheim being a weak late game nation. Access to death and earth is pretty strong and death opens astral for you anyway.

Via Tartarians, or is there some other path I'm missing? (Maybe spectral mages? I haven't used them much.) Tartarians require bootstrapping into Nature first for some builds without a N pretender. Obviously that's not a problem with the build Baalz has recommended but I want to understand KissBlade's comment.

-Max

[KissBlade]

Specters are 1d2random ,both of which has a 25% shot of being astrals.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. S1 will get you site-searching, but it's really no better than you get from a lizard shaman. IMO you need S3 at minimum in order to really consider yourself to have opened up Astral, which means either hoping for an S2 spectre and forging him a skullcap, or empowering, or just waiting for Tartarians. Helheim for sure isn't going to be doing communions or Master Enslave.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Well, dipping into your pre-forging income, to keep the Mentors rolling, makes a lot of sense, I wasn't really thinking about the amount of momentum those initial gems would add.

Mentors are really quite powerful, if you can spare the gems. The difference from Drain2 to Magic1 is 2RP, making each Mentor make up the difference of 4.5 mages. Or looked at another way, even only forging 2 Mentors a turn, is 18RP, so if you and an opponent train 2 identical mages that turn, he still has 14RP to make up somewhere. At a certain point when you stop forging Mentors, that opponent can then more realistically begin to "catch up", but the disparity will be huge if you really focus on the strategy. Of course, if that opponent went Magic3 it changes the math a bit, but that's a lot of design points. There's only a couple of nations that I have built strats for involving Magic3, but it's not for "OMG these mages are such horrible researchers, I need to improve them", it's always "wow these researchers are SO cheap, I want to superpower them".

It just makes me wonder what Vanheim can do to bolster their similarly sad research prospects (other than train expensive indies). IMO forging Quills is like wearing a skirt in a prison.....

[chrispedersen]

Quills are much maligned - but they serve one useful purpose.
to cut the time down till con4 is available. if you have a low cost 1 air mage, it is well worth the time and gems to pump out 5-6 of these. Payback is on the order of 1-2 turns.

[JimMorrison]

Payback in terms of investment of mage time vs RP gained from the Quill, sure. But I can't think of a single situation that I won't find myself in 20 turns with a dozen good uses for 25 Air gems that I don't have.

[vfb]

Yep, but you can get a lot out of 2 quills you make on turn 2 and 4 with some nations (CB), especially if you're on hard research or have drain scales, or you've got limited research mages you can hire because you need priests from your cap leading your armies.

[Sombre]

I am loathe to spend air gems that could be used on cloud trapezes.

[Wrana]

I had an idea about good scales strategy with Helheim - mostly based on their standart troops for early expansion. But probably this idea would be better for EA Vanaheim... I agree that Vans are good thugs and I used them as such in one game I was actually competing for victory in. :) Actually, I don't think that Helheim's research is THAT terrible - I had stable second place throughout all game and probably could get better.
Considering communions - Vanjarls can do them just fine by themselves, though this will burn slaves, of course. And Spectre or Unburied mage can capitalize on it with just the Mass Enslave somebody said was impossible for Helheim (by the way, Specter is almost as stealthy as Vans themselves!).
Quills I think aren't that bad, especially as you can have them cheaply with hammers. Probably an awakened researcher negates necessity for them, but still they are good enough - expecially if you don't have enough Death/Fire gems (or no research).

[Kadelake]

Actually, I don't think that Helheim's research is THAT terrible - I had stable second place throughout all game and probably could get better.
I've been wondering how you managed to have so high research :)
Did you use any special method?

[WraithLord]

The guide is good and I think following it will lead to a significant advantage but only so long as the nation expands. Some builds can benefit from sitting tight, but certainly not this one. The must expand builds suffer a diplomatic penalty b/c many times they'll face allied opposition. Of course it all depends on game settings: score graphs on/off, diplo on/off, map size etc.

I read you're considering doing a Yomi guide. Yommi :D
I was breaking my head how to play this nation right (as in efficiently) and the best I came up with is going with the nation power, the Dai Onis. I can wait to read your angle on this.

[Wrana]

As far as I remember, I just didn't scorn Quills. :) Plus Magic +1 (which seemed to be the case with you, too) and Vans as researchers weren't too hard on upkeep, considering they are sacred. Of course, Svartalfar are better per turn - but they were also more busy, hammers and all. By the way, I also empowered Svartalf in Blood, as Baalz recommends. Anyway, I will write in more details if I actually manage to win with this setup... ;)

[MaxWilson]

Another thing worth mentioning: Helheim mages have naturally high precision, access to Air magic for Aim, dwarven hammers, and plenty of D1 Helkarls. If you're facing thugs or mages, to me this says "Black Bow of Botulf for 3 death gems, please, with 26 Precision."

This is one of the few legitimate uses IMHO for fire/fire/fire/fire/fire and flee, since the next time you come back the thug won't have any buffs (or MR). Later on, of course, this is a prelude to just Disintegrating everyone.

-Max

[Baalz]

Yeah, when I started putting together this guide one of the first things I tried to put together was a death bless with bows of war and super precision. Wasn't nearly cost effective though as anything you really want to afflict is well armored with a shield. Black bow is a good idea, particularly in concert with a black heart. I've also had a lot of luck with piercers, once you get up to like 10 of them they are exceptionally good human hitpoint stuff with good armor. I once played a game as Machaka vs dual blessed Knights of the Chalice and when I first deployed the piercers against a large group of knights who had until that point be dominating me it was immensely amusing - it looked just like the PD Machaka shortbows were suddenly mowing down the knights with a vengeance. I think a shield still blocks the AN damage due to the way the mechanics work, but it's still plenty effective against units without a tower shield and a bargain for 3E.

[MaxWilson]

Oooh, black heart + black bow, now *that* is wicked. Works even against units with bodyguards, and the Chest Wound doesn't hurt as much if you're just firing a bow. One reason I was skeptical earlier of someone raiding you and popping your temples is that Helheim is already *scary* to raid since you never know what's there; now even if you take the province there *still* might be assassins hiding to kill all your mages.

BTW, Piercer costs 3A as well as 3E. That's a hard path combo; did your pretender forge it or did you find some metal adepts or something?

-Max

[Baalz]

The piercer is only 3E in CBM, making it viable. Its on the long list of things that you'll have a very hard time putting to cost effective use in vanilla.

[WraithLord]

But how well would that work against an SC with a shield or the missile prot. amulet or spell?

[Endoperez]

But how well would that work against an SC with a shield or the missile prot. amulet or spell?

Only rarely, but you might get lucky. If you're using Bow of Botulf, it's worth trying.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think Feeblemind on the Black Bow of Botulf is a secondary effect like poison. In that case, a shield won't stop it although a missile amulet might.

-Max

[Sombre]

Botulf is shieldproof, yes.

Missile protection still stops it though iirc.

[vfb]

Botulf is Magic so you get +2 on the hit roll, but I don't think it's shieldproof. I thought since the Feeblemind is an effect, not effectauto, that you need to do 1HP damage for it to affect the target. (This is according to Edi's DB.) But see the next post, I don't think the 14-dam hit needs to do damage to trigger feeblemind.

Anyway, I tested with Lugh shooting a Titan (parry 9).

In one case the arrow landed in the Titan's square but did no damage or feeblemind:

auto placement player 3
deploycom Noth at 23 11
deploy_side 185 at 23 11 (w60 h30)
deployunits
...
gettarget player 16 targtype 5 unr 340 eu 185 mode 2
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg14 eff2 spc1073741826 as-1 al0
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg33554432 eff11 spc1073872896 as-1 al0
battle_incheck
leftplayer teamhp 108 max 108

The titan was set to Hold x 5, Retreat. Visual check shows he's still in 23,11 when the arrow hits the square. Lugh managed to hit the 23,11 square twice, and both times the Titan did not take damage or get feebleminded.

[vfb]

Update, the Titan finally got feebleminded. There was no damage from the dam-14 on the bow. But the feeblemind is aoe-0, so I think that's triggering a shield check, I can't think of any other explanation for why the arrow hits the square at least 10 times without feebleminding the Titan.

----- turn 3 (rand 384)(check 26336429)
Battle running along just as I have forseen
battle_incheck
rightplayer teamhp 29 max 29
Mrlreport (right): good2 broken0 autobreak0 turn3
Closest enemy (for unr 340)
gettarget player 16 targtype 5 unr 340 eu 185 mode 2
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg14 eff2 spc1073741826 as-1 al0
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg33554432 eff11 spc1073872896 as-1 al0
battle_incheck
leftplayer teamhp 90 max 90
Mrlreport (left): good0 broken0 autobreak0 turn3
battle_incheck
----- turn 4 (rand 233)(check 26313981)
Battle running along just as I have forseen
battle_incheck
rightplayer teamhp 29 max 29
Mrlreport (right): good2 broken0 autobreak0 turn4
Closest enemy (for unr 340)
gettarget player 16 targtype 5 unr 340 eu 185 mode 2
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg14 eff2 spc1073741826 as-1 al0
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg33554432 eff11 spc1073872896 as-1 al0
affectvic vic185 hv0
hitunit 340 185 dmg33554432 spec1073872896 ba1
battle_incheck
leftplayer teamhp 90 max 90
Mrlreport (left): good0 broken0 autobreak0 turn4
battle_incheck

[Loren]

I've been trying to play with this and the strategy makes no sense. I have yet to get a start where I have the resources needed to produce the indicated troops early on. The specified army can only conquer weak provinces and if you don't get enough of them around your capital you won't have the resources.

It also left me unable to cope with invasions from two sides the one time I didn't get stuck at the start.


Finally, what's the point of the N4? 5% regen just isn't that much on the sort of units you are using.

[Sombre]

Botulf is Magic so you get +2 on the hit roll, but I don't think it's shieldproof. I thought since the Feeblemind is an effect, not effectauto, that you need to do 1HP damage for it to affect the target. (This is according to Edi's DB.) But see the next post, I don't think the 14-dam hit needs to do damage to trigger feeblemind.

Anyway, I tested with Lugh shooting a Titan (parry 9).

In one case the arrow landed in the Titan's square but did no damage or feeblemind:

auto placement player 3
deploycom Noth at 23 11
deploy_side 185 at 23 11 (w60 h30)
deployunits
...
gettarget player 16 targtype 5 unr 340 eu 185 mode 2
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg14 eff2 spc1073741826 as-1 al0
blastsqr: unr340 x23 y11 aoe0 dmg33554432 eff11 spc1073872896 as-1 al0
battle_incheck
leftplayer teamhp 108 max 108

The titan was set to Hold x 5, Retreat. Visual check shows he's still in 23,11 when the arrow hits the square. Lugh managed to hit the 23,11 square twice, and both times the Titan did not take damage or get feebleminded.

I don't know about 'effectauto' but poison assigned to secondaryeffect will work even when parried and the same is true of various other effects. I haven't tested botulf though, while you have. That would suggest there's something about an effect that decides whether it requires damage to be dealt or not, which is good news for the potential fixing of poison missile weapons.

[vfb]

N4 gives you 1HP per turn, and when you've cast mistform that's often enough. It also gives less chance of afflictions.

I like W9 a bit better than E9 because it's nice with the lances, it improves your already good defense, and it multiplies your attacks. And Helheim's probably not going to be casting Quickness, so there's no waste there.

[thejeff]

Agreed, the 1hp regen a turn comes in nice when you start using the VanJarls and get mistform. (Which if you follow it strictly is after you start summoning Tartarians?)

It doesn't help much with initial expansion, though. Maybe reduces afflictions on the Helkarlar.

I agree the suggested force is both weak and hard to recruit at first. If you split the starting troops up, you can field a couple Helkarls, then alternate with dwarfs. If you've got the money, that should give you enough resources to field the Helhirding and Huskarls every other turn.
Still I had a lot of attrition with the Huskarls and the occasional total loss. Maybe I wasn't picky enough with my attacks. Still, if the intent is to get site rich provinces for the dwarfs to search, you've got to have a path to reach them, so sneaking around too much doesn't help. Also, couldn't begin to afford a second castle until I'd taken at least one high-income province.
I tend to play on fairly crowded maps in SP, so that may also be a factor. I didn't have a lot of provinces to choose from.

[MaxWilson]

I don't know about 'effectauto' but poison assigned to secondaryeffect will work even when parried and the same is true of various other effects. I haven't tested botulf though, while you have. That would suggest there's something about an effect that decides whether it requires damage to be dealt or not, which is good news for the potential fixing of poison missile weapons.

If it depends on the effect, this might also explain why Lightning Bolt ignores shield parry even though it's not Prec 100.

-Max

[Baalz]

I've been trying to play with this and the strategy makes no sense. I have yet to get a start where I have the resources needed to produce the indicated troops early on.


With this blessing you’re going to be able to expand against moderate to weak indies using just a single Helkarl with a single Helhirding and a half dozen huskarls.....After the first two turns you’re going to switch to fielding an expansion party every other turn, alternating with recruiting a dwarf.

Hmmm, the troops I list here cost a total of 84 resources if you recruit everything from scratch, so you should be able to field one every other turn with your capital only resources...but you start out with enough infantry for two of these squads so you shouldn't really have trouble fielding exactly what I suggest. Also, everything I suggest is of necessity a rough suggestion that you'll have to modify in light of how a particular game is going - it's not the end of the world if you have to skip a turn sending out an expansion party. You are going to have to skip the tougher ones, combine expansion parties to attack the slightly tougher oens and you're going to take some total losses. That's Ok, this isn't a recipe for an uber fast expansion, just a decent one. In a theoretic best case scenario with each of those expansion parties conquering one province per turn you're looking at over 50 provinces by the end of year one. Don't aim that high, you'll never make it! Be more modest in your targets, skipping some, pulling some of your armies together, don't worry if you lose a couple, etc. and you should be able to maintain a respectable if not blistering initial expansion until you're ready to start burning rubber.

Also, perhaps I didn't make it clear, but literally going straight for constr-8 then conj-9 is kind of a perfect ideal that you aim for and can hope for if all the stars line up, but realistically it's seldom going to play out perfectly. After constr-4 when your research starts really ramping up it's a pretty quick sidetrack to pick up alt-3, which in combination with constr-4 and the suggested bless (of which 1 point of regen is a critical feature) gives you thugs easily able to handle the harder indies you skipped over initially. If you're then pressed into an early war (or decide to pursue one yourself) I'd also recommend swinging over and picking up cloud trapeze before the full court press to Tartarians. Constr-4 + alt-3 + ench-4 should give you the muscle to fight it out through mid game, those blessed, buffed & equipped vanjarls are pretty tough. If you're really getting pressed by somebody who is laying down solid thug counters you'll obviously have to reroute your research to more urgent goals, but just a touch more alt research and you're throwing down destruction, you've got strength of giants, legions of steel then weapons of sharpness in your planned research path so your glamoured infantry starts being a pretty darned tough more standard army, and your Helhirdlings start looking like some *serious* 0 enc heavy cavalry.

[cleveland]

I've been trying to play with this and the strategy makes no sense...

I had similar trouble getting this strat off the ground, but found a nice way to make it work.

I was going to post it here, but it became so long that I'm going to give it it's own thread in the main forum.

Your strategy is really awesome, Baalz. :up:

[Baalz]

Hmmm, a couple people seem to be having trouble getting this opening to work while I'm very consistently able to do it every time I test it. I must be failing to communicate some aspect so let me see if I can clearly show how I do this start. I've attached a zip with the turns starting with the first fight (turn 3). I'll also assert that this was not a particularly lucky start, in fact this was slower than what I usually do with more backtracking due to my capital being placed right against some impassable mountains limiting my options for expansion.

Turn 1: Scout -> prophet, recruit Helkarl & 2 Helhirdings.

Turn 2: Scouting reveals my neighbors are:
30 militia/heavy cavalry
20 militia/archers
40 wolf tribe
50 militia/archers

Seeing only one province I’m confident I can take with the smaller expansion squad I decide to combine them for this turn. From the flanks the Helkarls are scripted to bless and attack rearmost, Hulkarls are holding and attacking and the serf warriors doing the same from behind them. I choose to attack the wolf tribe primarily because it has the most neighbors and thus best prospects for good expansion next turn.

I recruit a dwarf and 4 Huskarls.

Turn 3: Oops. What I outlined in turn 2 was what I meant to do, but apparently I accidentally sent half my army to attack the 20 militia as I had originally considered, and also forgot to send my prophet along for smiting. Oh well, I carry the day anyway as my Helkarl runs back and kills the wolf tribe leaders. Total losses: 1 Huskarl and most of my serf warriors (who I was mostly just trying to kill off anyway).

Attack 20 Militia/archers
Attack 10 militia/heavy cavalry (include my prophet this time!)
Recruit Helkarl, Helherding and 6 more Huskarls

Turn 4: Unlucky roll makes my Huskarls route from militia of all things, but my Helkarl and Helherding escape unscratched. Heavy cavalry dispatched with no casualties.

The Helkarl who ran away collects the Helherding and joins in an attack with the fresh recruits on 30 militias and archers. Other army lacks confidence in all it’s potential targets and falls back to collect reinforcements. Recruit my second dwarf and 10 Huskarls. Prophet moves to where he can support my army next turn.

Turn 5: Battle successful, lost one Huskarl. Split that army up, half attacking 30 militia, half moving into position to attack next turn. 3rd army, having collected reinforcements moves into position for next turn. 2 dwarves head out to site search. Recruit a Helkarl, Helherding and a dozen Huskarls.

Turn 6: Battle successful, no casualties. Scouting reports look grim so I reconsolidate my western squads. Attack 40 militias/heavy cav to the easy and move third army into position. Recruit a dwarf.

Turn 7: Battle successful, no casualties. Time to start saving for a castle, recruit another dwarf. Attack 50 militia/heavy cav with my double Helkarl squad + prophet. Also attack 40 barbarians and 40 lion tribe with armies 2 and 3. 3 dwarves out site searching now.

Turn 8: All attacks successful, total casualties 6 Huskarls (there were a lot of heavy cavalry). Yeah! Found steel ovens which would obviously be great given this strategy if this was a real game. Attack 30 militia/HI, 20 ghouls/longdead, and 30 militia/HI. Recruit another dwarf and some indie commanders to put up extra forts.

Turn 9: All attacks successful, total casualties 3 huskarls. Simultaneously start construction on forts 2&3. Recruit a dwarf, & pull my prophet back to start putting temples in these extra forts. Attack 40 hoburg militia, 70 jaguar tribe (using two Helkarls), and 10 LI/archers.

Turn 10: Ayeee! The 10 light infantry had an air mage. Luckily my rear attacking Helkarl killed him first. Size 1 Hoburgs proved to be pretty good against glamoured troops, they ran me off but the Helkarl & Helhirding survived. Other two attacks successful, total casualties 10 Heurlkarl.


So, I think this is far enough to demonstrate the technique. Turn 10 I've got 15 provinces, 2 castles going up and have several dwarves out site searching, would be cranking out a dwarven hammer and about to start the skull mentor factory if this were a real game. Again, this is pretty consistent with the other tests I've done, I'm not sure what you guys are doing differently. I had some good luck, some bad, but as I mentioned I generally can do a little better with the ability to spread evenly in most directions.

[Immaculate]

Its worth mentioning that orb lightning scales up very well with air power. Having said that, Vanjarls are air 2 and blood 1. Blood 1 brings sabbaths. Perhaps the reader can see the potential for reverse communion sabbaths with storm, storm-power, aim, reverse communion Orb Lightning smack-downs?

Caelum only wishes...

[Tolkien]

If you're reverse communing (always a good idea) and put up stormpower, then why stay with orb lightning when you can spam thunderstrike (and reinvig)?

[Immaculate]

because orb lightning scales with air magic skill?

[Lingchih]

This build did not work for me. I was annihilated by Vanheim. Perhaps I did not use it well. Expansion was great, but when it came time for war, Van beat the crap out of me.

[Baalz]

In what way did you find it to be deficient? How did you get the crap beat out of you?

[chrispedersen]

BTW I don't consider 15 provinces by the end of year 1 rocket fuel. 15 is exactly my target for a nation acceptable to play in mp with an expectation of a chance at winning.

[Redeyes]

The law of probabilities would dictate that a nation could lose even if it made stronger decisions every turn.

One data point is hardly enough to make a fair judgment...
Can I guess that Vanheim got some important research done before you?
That's usually a game winner.

[Baalz]

BTW I don't consider 15 provinces by the end of year 1 rocket fuel. 15 is exactly my target for a nation acceptable to play in mp with an expectation of a chance at winning.

If you actually read what I posted, I very clearly indicate your initial expansion with this build is intended to be "respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you" (and 15 provinces, as mentioned is at the lower range of what I've managed in my tests). Clearly you're not going with the full court press for your initial expansion, you could fairly easily double that expansion if you didn't heavily invest in early site searching, castles, and an awake non-expansion pretender - but then you'd obviously be pursuing a different strategy. This is actually a pretty good illustration of why I think it's silly how much tunnel vision people get - investing in a blistering initial expansion is a poor use of your resources if you're trying to use the strategy I lay out here. Its perpetually surprising to me how badly even most vets seem to be at assessing the real power level of their opposition - the most powerful (defined as most likely to end up winning) nation is often not the one with the most provinces.

You can fairly easily assess the raw power of a nation by looking at its income levels, but the applied power is a function of raw power multiplied by leverage....and leverage is everything from research and castle count to their available troops, magic paths and upkeep. A frequent component of conversations is how some nations are more or less predisposed to be a late game power...yet more often than not its the guy who is leading in provinces who gets dogpiled on. Province count is almost totally worthless to consider in a vacuum, and if Abyssia, Pythium & Mictlan are all vying for second place as you pull into late game it's pretty silly to think that Eriu or Man is winning despite the fact that they're in a solid 1st place in provinces and income (silly in an abstract sense, obviously there's a lot more to consider than what the nation is).

[Omnirizon]

In practice, you will almost never get the initial expansion during an actual MP game that you get in build testing. Other players also expand fast, and will attack an overexpanded player who pushes into what they consider their 'implicit territory' (the provinces surrounding their cap, and probably many of those within two steps of cap too). For these reasons (and the latter one especially) metrics like initial expansion are over-hyped.

Initial expansion capacity possesses some minimum requirement to be competitive, but with some threshold beyond which it is pointless. For most MP games (which have about 12 provinces per player) most nations will not get 15 initial provinces. Most will get whatever the mean number of provinces per player is, regardless of how well they do in testing (unless they do just really really bad).

[chrispedersen]

Baalz,

Perhaps you would be good enough to rank the nations you create guides for?

And whether you consider them top tier, second tier etc.

I think this would go a long way toward giving perspecitve.

For example, how would you rank niefle, sauromatia, Helheim, and pick some other races you've made guides for.

I've no problem with some hyperbole but I think it lacks a bit of perspective to put Niefle and yomi, sauro and man in the same boat, regardless of the strength of the guide.


You can't burn rubber with all of them. Some burn rubber. Others burn oil.

[Lingchih]

In what way did you find it to be deficient? How did you get the crap beat out of you?

In my recollection, the death scales beat me up. I did well in my initial expansion into the Van player, but he then came back with a vengeance (to be fair, Van was played by one of the best players of the game.) Money became hard to come by, when I still needed it. He used skellie amulets on all his commanders, which actually outclassed my skellie spamming, and lots of magic bows on his commanders as well. It was bit unorthadox, but it worked. My small numbers of troops could not win.

It was the RAND game currently still in action.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, if you've got Order-3/Luck-3 then Death-3 isn't nearly enough to push you into "poor income" territory, particularly in the early game. No doubt you can always run out of money, but I don't think you can blame the scales for that one. Sounds like pretty early fighting if skellie amulets carried the day, but from a theoretical point of view I'm having a hard time picturing how skellie amulets are going to be much of a problem for lots of (net) 0-enc thugs wielding firebrands supported by 0-enc heavy cav and well blessed flying sacreds (who fly in and kill the back row before the skeletons get critical mass). If you're going for skellispam for yourself did you try leveraging sabbaths with reinvigoration? That's a powerful way to raise a whole lot of undead. Your pretender could forge master/slave matrixes as needed to get svartalfs in on the action throwing summon earthpower on top of an E9 blessing on top of reinvigoration. Those master matrixes can pull double duty if you're clever by letting you stack invulnerability and fire shield on your fire brand wielding 0-enc thugs (followed by reinvigoration of course)...which basically turns them into the ideal skellispam counter. If you're feeling particularly fancy you can add on summon earthpower to the mix which will let you quicken self (via your pretender if you've no better options) and breath of winter...which doesn't help against skeletons, but does work very nice against most other things when you've got several thugs working together for big fights. I don't doubt what you're saying, but I have a hard time picturing how in an early fight Vanheim has enough death income to be anywhere near competitive with Helheim in dropping skeletons if that's the route you wanted to take...considering you're leveraging all that on D3/D4 Hangadrotts each one should be an almost never ending vomit of shuffling dead if you really focus on skellispam. If you're that hard pressed and are pushing skellispam forge a couple skull staffs rather than skull mentors and you're looking at D4/D5 guys with 8 reinvigoration hitting turn 6 with no fatigue (due to the reinvigoration blood spell). As to magic bows it seems like your first target in this strategy is thugs who can drop air shield, which seems like an ideal counter.

It sounds like you just got out played. No shame in that if you're playing against a skilled opponent, but unless I'm missing something it doesn't sound like the build itself failed you.

[Tolkien]

because orb lightning scales with air magic skill?

The thing is though, if you're reverse sabbathing and put up a mass stormpower, your communion slaves (Vanjarls) have Air-3. Unless you use Hellpower (which is kinda risky if you're using a big sabbath, as you'll likely get swarmed by horrors), of course; it only however gives A5 (or 5 NoE). Air-3 gets you thunderstrikes, which massively outclass Orb Lightning, hands down.
Let's compare:
Fatigue: Thunderstrike (50-), Orb Lightning (10-)
Damage/NoE: Thunderstrike (26+, AN, 1 AoE, and larger AoE Damage+Stun), Orb Lightning (10, AN, 1+ NoE (at A3, 3))
Range: Thunderstrike (100), Orb Lightning (15 {very very low})
Precision: Thundertrike (+0), Orb Lightning (+2)

So in terms of usefulness, Thunderstrike beats out Orb Lightning, all the time. It has an AoE damage/stun effect outside of the actual spell center, and Range 100 is awesome, (certainly when compared with Range 15, which, really sucks). If you choose to Orb Lightning spam, you'll do far less damage then with Thunderstrikes, not including extra AoE damage/stun (far, it would take an A8 mage to outcap damage done by a Thunderstrike in an AoE, 78+ vs. 80 (10*8)). The precision bonus with Orb Lightning won't be too big of a deal, and when the fatigue issue comes up...well, that's why you're reverse sabbathing (i.e. having masters spam reinvigoration). When you include the extra damage done by the extra AoE and stun, thunderstrikes are infinitely more useful in terms of damage/turn and army decimation then Orb lightning, and provides alot more security for you (the massive range allows you to space out your slaves around the battlefield, so they can't all be killed at once), and it also takes full advantage of sabbaths (reinvigoration). The thing about Orb Lightning is, though, that (I think, I'm not quite sure)it may hit the same unit on the same square multiple times. However, to take advantage of that, you'd need to be really close to your target thug or SC (assuming they aren't lightning-resistant). Certainly it's useful if your opponent is sending horrors your way (on your PD), but most thugs you'll find will get a copper plate or something, so it isn't too useful in that regard.

Plus, Thunderstrikes are easier to reach. Evo-4 vs Evo-5.

[Trumanator]

The only good thing about Orb Lightning is that A1 mages can spam it. Other than that, there isn't really anything good.

[Tolkien]

Honestly, I really don't see why it's Evo-5. I don't see why it has to be higher then Thunderstrike. Anyone care to enlighten me to the reasoning?

(makes a mental note to suggest a lowering in CBM)

[Immaculate]

You've totally sold me on this tolkien- i can't wait to try this.

[Baalz]

So in terms of usefulness, Thunderstrike beats out Orb Lightning, all the time.

I don't agree with this. To be sure, thunderstike is a great spell, but orb lightning *definately* has its niche. The most obvious being A2 mages can cast it to very good effect if you deploy it properly. Other times orb lightning shines:

If you're fighting guys who are size 5/6 and only one per square, thunderstrike will do 26+ AN damage, while orb lightning for an A4 mage will do 40 AN. Even if you're fighting size 3 cavalry you're still often looking at a very compatible kill count per casting...which is not bad when you consider that you're also not passing out after a few castings.

Orb lightning's short range can actually be very useful for making your mages target who you want them to. Triple blessed sacred cavalry charging straight ahead into your troops? Orb lightning can clear the way so *your* cavalry can waltz up to the enemy archers which is hell of a lot better than blasting the archers with thunderstrikes because they're packed denser so the AI thinks they're better targets.

Orb lightning's fatigue cost for a mage powerful enough to be considering thunderstrike is negligible. You can lay out a lot more damage over a long battle than you could blowing your load on thunderstrikes.

Again, there's no doubt thunderstrike is a great spell, I just object to the assertion that there is no niche for orb lightning. Orb lighting is also a good spell.

[Micah]

Right, and don't forget that the real fatigue cost for orb lightning with an A3 mage is even lower than stated, at around 3, not 10.

[Psycho]

And don't forget that orb lightning does stun damage as well (per lightning, which amounts to far more than that of thunder strike for higher path mages, but it's not AoE).

[Tolkien]

Well, thanks for the correction: I was basing this on a human-sized units. I forgot about giants (in which case, Orb Lightning is going to be more useful).

My main problem with Orb Lightning is the range (15 is rather small), and that the fatigue for Thunderstrike, if you're reverse sabbathing with reinvigoration (which was the discussion that sparked the whole Orb Lightning vs. Thunderstrike debate), is more or less irrelevant, as fatigue won't be much of an issue in that case.

[Immaculate]

I tried to run a reverse communion with the thunderstrikes and blood sabbaths and it didn't work. If you'll bear with me, maybe you can explain what i did wrong.

i was breaking a seige from formoria (i hate formoria) and they had lots of troops of various sorts and i had about 12 helherdlings and some infantry and 8 vanjarls.

the first four vanjarls were scripted with:
sabbath slave, blessing, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike
the next 3 were scripted with:
sabbath salve, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike, thunderstrike
and the last was scripted with:
sabbath master, mistform, reinvigoration, air shield, reinvigoration


Instead they sat around casting holy avenger and sermon of courage and the sabbath master casted fanatacism.

Why didn't they cast as i was hoping they would? thanks for any help- i am still having lots of trouble with my sabbaths/communions.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Trumanator]

did they have slaves?

[vfb]

Sabbath/Communion slaves don't get a boost in their casting level, unless a master casts something like Power of the Spheres/Hell Power/Summon Storm Power. So they were unable to cast thuderstrike because they weren't A3s.

Only the masters get a casting level boost from just having communion slaves.

[TwoBits]

Sabbath/Communion slaves don't get a boost in their casting level, unless a master casts something like Power of the Spheres/Hell Power/Summon Storm Power. So they were unable to cast thuderstrike because they weren't A3s.

Only the masters get a casting level boost from just having communion slaves.

Dang, thanks for that clarification, VFB. I for one (and there are likely others) was under the mistaken notion that slaves had their effective caster levels raised, just like masters.

After reading your post, I went and re-read Baalz' communion guide (carefully, this time ;) ), and sure enough, in the bit about reverse communions, it spells out the need to cast booster spells to raise slave levels. A very important fact to get straight.

[Redeyes]

Dang, thanks for that clarification, VFB. I for one (and there are likely others) was under the mistaken notion that slaves had their effective caster levels raised, just like masters.Ttheir caster level but only when calculating the fatigue cost the slaves takes from the master's spell.

It's the reason why a 4-slave communion can cast more than twice as many spells as a 2-slave communion.

[Baalz]

Reverse communion works best with fire or earth spells because it's a lot easier to cast the appropriate buffing spell. If a master casts Earthpower/Phoenix power then power of the spheres it raises lowly F1/E1 guys up to level 3, which lets you cast the fun stuff like falling fires/blade wind. Air and water are a bit harder as you'll often be looking at just the 1 level bump from power of the spheres...and not even that if you're doing a sabbath with no available astral.

[Redeyes]

Dang, thanks for that clarification, VFB. I for one (and there are likely others) was under the mistaken notion that slaves had their effective caster levels raised, just like masters.Ttheir caster level but only when calculating the fatigue cost the slaves takes from the master's spell.

It's the reason why a 4-slave communion can cast more than twice as many spells as a 2-slave communion.

I meant to say "It actually affects their caster level"...
Somehow my post didn't turn out that way.

[Agusti]

This build did not work for me. I was annihilated by Vanheim. Perhaps I did not use it well. Expansion was great, but when it came time for war, Van beat the crap out of me.

Hi. Me too but I was eliminated by Lanka in a MP game. In turn 15 Lanka attacked me with a lot of sacred Demon troops (Palankasha, blood magic level 1). I wasn't able to recruit more than three Helhirdings (Dom. 3) and my economy was weak. Lanka defeated my armies easily an only one time I was able to defeat their Demons (when I put a lot of Helhirdings together my troops had a very good behaviour in combat against Lanka so maybe in other circumstances my nation could have defended well against Lanka). But it was a war of attrition and Helheim, with the scales proposed in this guide, cannot afford a long term war against Lanka in the first stage of the war (at last with the scales this guide proposes), so I had to put my nation under the IA.

Lanka was able to summon more Palankasha than me recruting Helhirdings and Huskarls. Its troops were very well blessed (Twist Fate, defense + , protection +, etc) so they were a hard opponent for my Helhirdings (my best troops).

I think it's necessary better scales in productivity to get more resources for the sacred troops and more Dominion scale in order to recruit more Helhirdings or Valkyrias. Only with a powerful recruitment of sacred troops Helheim would be able to defend against rush nations, as Lanka for example.

Nevertheless, if it hadn't been by the attack of Lanka my nation was doing things very well and I was leading research and gem income so maybe I could have done very well in the mid-late game :)

[cleveland]

A Lanka bless-rush is tough to counter for anybody. Those Palankasha's (sp?) are actually cap-only recruits, so your opponent wasn't even expending mage-time summoning them.

You'll want to lean hard on Helheim's air magic next time. By turn 15, you should have ~20 Vanjarls/Hangadrotts (min A2 each), and he's not going to be able to impart any shock resistance to his demons yet.

Send these guys out in small teams scripted for (Blessing)(Mistform)(Resist Lightning)(attack)(Shock Wave)Cast Spells. The AI will autocast Shock Wave, which will be pretty effective vs. those demons with that bless.

[Torin]

I would say that its better to do your own setup taking ideas from Baalz's guide.
Perhaps tweaking the magic on your pretender to gather the points to bigger dominion score. Lesser earth? more sacred units.
Perhaps going to somewhere else instead of construction to have some battlemagic earlier.

On the other hand I see this as a strategy as a gamble that you will not
be rushed so early to see the benefits of quicker research.

Other choice is to do the usual sacred units rush instead while doing a slower chase of constructing skulls.

[Agusti]

A Lanka bless-rush is tough to counter for anybody. Those Palankasha's (sp?) are actually cap-only recruits, so your opponent wasn't even expending mage-time summoning them.

You'll want to lean hard on Helheim's air magic next time. By turn 15, you should have ~20 Vanjarls/Hangadrotts (min A2 each), and he's not going to be able to impart any shock resistance to his demons yet.

Send these guys out in small teams scripted for (Blessing)(Mistform)(Resist Lightning)(attack)(Shock Wave)Cast Spells. The AI will autocast Shock Wave, which will be pretty effective vs. those demons with that bless.

In other circumstances and with other scales my nation could have done better defending against Lanka (with more money and more resources to recruit more Helhirdings...and more Dominion, of course). And quick access to air magic spells, I agree with you, but I spent the first turns researching construction as this guide proposes ;)

I only had 4 o 5 Vanjarls in turn 15 and only one castle (a second one was about to be constructed) in another province and they were scattered everywhere conquering indie provinces. I would have needed a lot of money and castles to recruit 15-20 Vanjarls in 15 turns and I wasn't able to do that in my game with the scales Baalz proposes here (shortage in money and resources). Or maybe I could have recruited them instead of Helhirdings and infantry, but I don't like the idea.

"The strategy does not stand/hold the first contact with the enemy".The problem was that my strategy was not good to face Lanka and I made a mistake to not changing my strategy and my research priorities when I spotted Lanka so near to my provinces.

It's a hard lesson but a good one :)

[Baalz]

Yes, as Cleavland says Lanka is one of the classic bless rush nations and configured for such they're going to have a strong advantage against most nations in this situation. That doesn't mean you can't win, but it does mean you're going to have to outplay your opponent to win because in straight fights few troops can wade in and defeat well blessed palankashas. In this type of situation you'll need to (temporarily) abandon your long term planning and go into full emergency mode, divert your mages and research from what you had in mind to short term useful stuff. Evocation and lightning are a good suggestion, here are a couple others assuming you're following the template in this guide.

Turn 15 you should have construction-4 done and a pretty decent gem income with your research surging. Palankashas have a small buckler and are vulnerable to sufficient archery, so one option would be to delay them a few turns and push up to construction-6 (you should be able to achieve this pretty quickly if you pull your pretender back for research duty and leverage those skull mentors you're cranking out), then leverage those dwarven hammers you've been building to crank out bows of war. Your Vanjarls have a base precision of 16 and can self buff aim, half a dozen of them firing from behind your PD (which being high defense glamoured will last longer than average) will be very punishing. Any one of these should also be able to destroy Lanka's monkey PD (which is very vulnerable to archery) and is stealthy and very maneuverable, so you should be able to take 3-4 of their provinces for each of yours you lose. Combine this with lantern shields, which will auto summon corpse candles to the flanks of your enemy, making them run around to deal with them while you punish them brutally. Mix in a couple of black bows, visions foes, piercers, just man's crosses for Lankas thugs and just generally to put more of your gems to use. Don't hesitate to recruit a bunch of indie commanders if you've got more bows than Vanjarls - though once you see how that 20+ precision works you'll be in love with using them.

Meanwhile you've pushed up to evocation-4, a quick run with your strong research engine. At this point you're dropping blade wind and thunderstrike, and you're officially past the part where you're under the gun of a "bless rush". Palankashas go down very quickly when you can bring this kind of artillery to bear.

Another option would be hitting the alteration research. Palankashas are going to be coming in relatively small numbers, dropping destruction on them is probably all it would take to make your huskarls very competitive - but as long as you're there use false fetters to serve them up on a platter.

So, again, no doubt you're gonna have a hard time dealing with a good Lanka bless rush, but by turn 15 your options should really start opening up. Trying to fight them with helherdlings is a sucker's game, you're playing where they have a strong advantage. Particularly if you're using a build like the one I suggest here - forget about your sacreds as you're not built to optimize them. Rather than do that, try to shift the fighting to where you can leverage the strengths that you've cultivated (strong early research, lots of early vanjarls, good early gem income).

[Agusti]

Baalz, thank you. But one thing is what I would like to expect from the strategic point of view of your guide and the other the reality. And the reality was that my Svartalfs dind't find any earth gem site (very bad luck, I know) so in turn 15 I hadn't forge any Dwarden Hammer because I only collected 1 earth gem/turn. So my research was going very well but my gem production was not so good so I couldn't have forged magical items as easily as I/you would like.

I like the idea of recruiting Vanjarls as there's no tomorrow and use them to cast air spells, it would have been a better option than recruting Helhirdings as a priority. But I maintain that you can not easily defend Helheim only with Vanjarls and a bunch of sacred troops unless Helheim prioritizes his research in evocation and alteration spells very quickly instead of construction 4 or 6, specially if the gem production is bad.

Your guide is very interesting but need tweaks and adjustments specially when Helheim has to face a serious menace from a rush nation or when things are not going as was expected :)

[Squirrelloid]

Considering how common E sites are, finding no E income is incredibly unlucky. At that point its time to accept the inevitable and die with dignity, because nothing you can do is going to matter.

Definitely agree with baalz that your sacreds are not going to stand up to Lanka's sacreds. Lanka is the only nation in the game who can X9Y9Z9 (say FWS) bless and never look back. Even Mictlan stops and thinks for a moment before sucking down Drain 2 scales. Your sacreds are only going to melt against F9W9S9 palankashas. So once your gem-research engine fails, you really are done for.

[chrispedersen]

I would be interested in seeing a Baalz/Squirrel matchup, with baalz following his guide till turn 12, and no lanka attack till 12.

[Tolkien]

^^

As would I.

[Agusti]

Well, to be fair with you I found some earth gem sites just in the same turn Lanka was ordering its troops to attack me, in turn 14 :D

I had bad luck because Lanka was ruled by a veteran player and I think he knew I had a low Dominion. And he had Dominion 6 and a very well blessed troops, with Twist Fate, morale + 2, protection + 2, etc.

I had the possibility to forge the crossbow Just Man's Cross, that fits well to kill demons, but it cost 5 fire gems and without fire gems and without a Dwarden Hammer...

If I had had more time maybe I could have defend better but not in turn 15, it was too soon, wasn't it?

[Tollund]

I had bad luck because Lanka was ruled by a veteran player and I think he knew I had a low Dominion. And he had Dominion 6 and a very well blessed troops, with Twist Fate, morale + 2, protection + 2, etc.

All sacred troops get a morale boost when blessed regardless of magic on the pretender. The other blessings are from astral 9 (+4 MR and twist fate) and earth 9 (+4 protection and reinvigoration 4)

[Sombre]

I've always thought N9 was more fun for Lankan sacreds - the banishment and missile weapons just berserk you then.

[Tolkien]

Yeah. N9E9 would seem optimal to me, but then again, I haven't played Lanka all that much.

[Squirrelloid]

I can see N9 (and i've tried it - but when you run into F9W9B6 mictlan the N9 is a mistake), but i really can't see E9. Combats shouldn't last long enough for the fatigue to matter, and only half your sacreds have enough armor to care. And defense is more important than protection for regular troops you plan on fielding in reasonable numbers. (Thugs are different, and size 4+ troops are too, because its too easy to get swarmed).

[Trumanator]

well, your kala muhkas will like it,and there's nothing wrong with taking a bless that will benefit your thugs too.

[vfb]

I really think N9 is a mistake on any nation with sacred mages. You don't want your Mandeha to all the sudden fly into the melee, because it ate a piece of fireball pie. Well, you might sometimes, if you thugged it out. But probably not.

[chrispedersen]

I've played a lot of lanka. I never use an n9 blessing.

[Baalz]

N9 is a bit of a double edged sword. Yeah, it can bone your mages, but it also increases your attack & damage (which increases your kill rate), makes you functionally immune to fear & awe (including panic/terror spam), and will carry the day in a surprising amount of cases where you'd otherwise have a complete lost. If your opponent (for example) blows his load dropping a bunch of thunder strikes which kill a large amount of your troops the handful of nearly unstoppable scattered remaining Palankashas will run forward and polish off the passed out guys. This sort of thing happens more than you'd realize, the dregs of the well blessed Lankan army are still quite formidable.

[Sombre]

It also gives an extra prot iirc even at berserk 0.