ME Ulm Vs Jotunheim advice wanted.

[Micah]

It's turn 16 in a fairly large MP game. I'm on a peninsula and have a 5 province border with Jotunheim, plus 2 provinces that border him but don't breach a front of mine. I border no one else on land, just a few water provinces and the edge of the map.

I'm kind of expecting him to come after me in a couple of turns after he's done sieging another player's capital. I have 3 well-placed forts churning out guys, but nothing seems effective against the giants...the cap-only guardians manage to take a sizable chunk out of the giants, but the normal troops tend to explode in blood, and like to rout to boot. Pikes seem to work the best, but that's not saying much.

I do have a decent amount of smiths, and I'm recruiting more every turn.

The one ray of sunshine that I have is that he's probably hitting his resource cap pretty hard, but that's about it.

Is there anything I can do here, or do I just sort of roll over and die to the horrible nation mismatch? I know the normal anti-giant strategies involve raiding and avoiding pitched battles, but seeing that my guys all have a 1 map movement that seems fairly hard to pull off.

Diplomatically he only has one neighbor aside from the soon-to-be-dead one, and I think the most help I can count on is opportunistic province-grabbing if I manage to distract Jotunheim enough, or maybe a full out assault once Jotunheim is engaged...regardless, it won't do much to take the heat off of me, since I'm sure Jotunheim will be loathe to leave the front with me to go deal with the other threat. It may stop reinforcements from coming in, but I still have the initial problem of 50+ giants on my hands.

Any advice is welcome, although any magic above level 4 is probably not feasible, at least to deal with his first attack, so don't bother telling me to spam magma eruption (I'd love to, believe me)

[Sandman]

A team of spies instilling unrest in the Jotun capital might work.

[Micah]

Spies are a certainty, but I'm still stuck dealing with the army he's already got.

[Kassander]

Give your army better protection: Legions of Steel (constr3, earth 3)
destroy enemy armour : Destruction (alt4, earth 3).

These spells don't require gems and won't hurt your own army (like Rust of Mist would). Start with 2-3 Legions of Steel, followed by as many Destruction as needed and finish with ranged spells/weapons like Blade Wind (evo4, earth3) or archers which shouldn't hurt your own troops too much.

Fight in your dominion to get +1 to moral to avoid breaking.

No, I don't know whether this will work because I have the demo only

[thejeff]

You have heavy protection troops, but even their protection isn't enough to protect them from the giants strength, and their high resource cost prevents you from massing them.

Try mixing in lots of low resource independent troops to swarm the giants. Preferably low protection high damage troops, barbarians maybe? Anything but your heaviest will die in one hit anyway, so protection doesn't really help. Go for numbers and damage. Swarming will drop their defense so you can hit them more.

Your heavy crossbows on "fire large monsters" will help a lot.

I wouldn't bother with Legions of Steel, unless you can target your guardians. Strength of Giants might help though. Not sure what research level that is. Destruction is good. Maybe Blade Wind, though it'll slaughter the crap troops I'm suggesting.

Longer term, any smiths that got the fire random can do Flaming Arrows.

[mivayan]

Magma bolts *looks* like it would be usefull against relatively few numbers of strong guys... but I haven't tried it.

Have you got a province with independent markattas? (5 gold, 14 def, otherwise useless).

[Askovdk]

I'm still somewhat new to this game and this was against the AI; - but anyway.

In my current game I held back a force of 150 giants. What seemed to work was a high provencial defence (~60) and around 50 archers. My infantry was taking a bad beating, and then the whole giant force suddenly fled! It must be the '1 wound for every 2' morale effect that was brought into effect due to the weak but constant dammage from the archers. The giants lost 1/3 of their force with many suvivors afflicted; - I only 'lost' provincial defence. :-)

My first 2c about what seems to be a really great game.

[Kalin]

I'm not sure a PD bunkering strategy is possible at this stage of the game, he would cripple himself pretty badly economically if he tries that... and all the giants have to do is go around it. He does have a 5 province border with them afterall.

The best chance Ulm has at this stage against Jotun is to use pikeneers as cannon foddler. The pikeneers have a 6 range pike, which will give them the chance to repel the giant's assault. (Which is also why your guardian is doing okay against the giants, they have 4 range halberds. FYI: The giants uses 3 range jotun swords.)


If you can stall a bit for researching, try:

Destruction (Alt 4), is probably the most useful spell to help your guys hurt the giants.

Strength of giants (Enc 3) could also come in handy for the same reason. Although destruction is more effective for your situation (due to survivability of your troops vs his), it also takes longer to research. Not to mention, of course, they are best used together if you can pull it off.

Fire Arrows (Enc 4) is nice if you can get your smiths to use them (give them some extra fire gems to boost the levels), but keep in mind that you should hire normal archers or longbowmans (if you can) for this tactic. The crossbows and arbalests shoots too slowly to take full advantage of this spell.

If you're willing to sacrifice some earth gems you can also try Curse of Stones (alt 4, same as destruction), making his giants tired faster (although not as effective as it could be given their MR).

By itself, Magma bolt (evo 3) isn't too great... but if you combine it with destruction, it could do some damage to the giants...

Lastly, Legion of Steel (Con 3) isn't worth the trouble, if your troops gets hit, they will probably die due to the giant's strength.


Ideally, a battle should have the giants wielding length 3 jotun swords going against length 6 pikes. Since you can pack many of your guys into one square, and there's a pretty good chance the giants will tire themselves out attacking and being repelled, you will get in some serious hits after a few rounds. Even if he does beat you, he'll take some hard losses, which is much harder for him to replace than for you.




Note, edited to remove misinfo, I was a little confused there... no sense confusing everyone else with it. Thanks for pointing that out thejeff.

[thejeff]

Note that this isn't Niflehiem, so the Jarls aren't there and abusive blesses aren't as much of problem.

ME Jotunheim is still tough to fight with Ulm, but at least the early SC Jarls aren't a threat.

[Kalin]

Doh... what the heck was I thinking (prolly too many complaints on nif), my sincere apologies. The above strategy (using pikeneers) works just fine on the giants of Jotunheim, perhaps even more so. To be honests, I've never had that much trouble with Jotunheim's giants (which is probably why I was thinking Nif all the way when you mentioned a giant army).

The only thing you have to be careful about Jotunheim is the Vaetti and Moose Riders, they are stealthy, so you might not see them before it's too late. The Vaetti are size 1, and can fill in between the giants, which might be a problem, for most troops because they use spears (range 4, most get repelled). However, your pikeneers still out range them, and chances are, they will also one-shot them in the repulsion process. The Moose riders are only trouble for low protection troops, and yours is well covered, so they will probably end up hurting their own troops more than yours from afar, and as calvary they are bleh.