Tips for Vanheim

[Trumanator]

The title says it all. I'm looking for any and all thoughts, hints, tips, strategies, etc. regarding playing Vanheim.

I realize that a double bless is the obvious thing at first, but I am mainly concerned with where to go from there. Vanheim has less than stellar research, without the ability to forge skull mentors ala Helheim. Also, what would be the best bless? F9W9 is obviously best for the troops, but its somewhat less than stellar for the commanders. Is an E9W9 bless feasible?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

[Jazzepi]

You can squeeze N4W9S9 out of a monolith with
O3
S3
C3
D1
Misfortune2
Magic1

I'm not sure how the twist fate interacts with the glamour. If it works properly then, I think, you should basically get "two" twist fates. One for the glamour hit, and one for the twist fate hit. The quickness + dual wielding means they'll hit their targets after closing the distance with glamor and twist fate to protect them from archers. 16 defense isn't a lot, though, and these units are probably going to fatigue pretty quickly.

I wish this nation had the fountain as a pretender choice. It makes astral blesses a lot cheaper.

Jazzepi

[chrispedersen]

CBM or non Cbm?

Also, vanheim gets ready access to dwarven hammers. Air quills are much sneered at. They shouldn't be.

[Trumanator]

Its CBM, and I was sneering at quills. How worth it are they? Also, I'm pretty leery of taking both death and misfortune, is d1 mis2 not that bad?

[P3D]

EA Vanheim?

Take EA Helheim, throw away the Helkarls/Valkyries and Death Magic access, replace the capital-only mages with one having one less magic path (A3B1? vs. A2D3?, E3? vs. E2D2?). What you get in exchange is extra Supplies in dominion (Fey Boar) and a dual-wielding berserking infantry that is also cap-only.
At least you have guaranteed E3/E4 access which is not bad for the buffs.
You could use most of the tactics described in the Helheim guide as you have the same access to air and Earth magic (and more to the latter). Your blood access is marginally better (B2 randoms) and you have guaranteed A3 with A4 (and lucky A5) randoms for Thunderstrike spam - the same air access as Caelum.

Mind you, the +5 berserking gets you to 18 attack skill and 24/25 damage but 7 or so defense without bless, you don't really need fire weapons unless facing ethereal troops, and they'd deal enough damage to pop Mistform. So they'd get hit and would be much less durable.

What about an imprisoned Dom6 Enchantress with say O2S3C3D2L1M0, A1E9S9N4. Your Vanhere's protection would be 16 (20 with legions of Steel) you automatically ignore two hits and you encumbrance is reduced to 3 (5 in Cold-3), and Twist Fate remains longer in melee. Get one scale for Dom-5.
Monolith would give you one better scale with above bless at Dom-6.

The E9 bless would also help your Vanadrotts and Vanjarls with fatigue.

All this CBM.
In CBM quills are lvl 0, you might need them.
You have Dwarven Elder multiheroes too, with some big research bonus and more magic, IIRC.

[Quitti]

I'm currently in a CBM mp-game (if you really want to know which, dig it out yourselves) with a master lich who is imprisoned w4e4d9n4 order3 sloth1 cold3 magic1 with dom7. Worked quite well so far - though in retrospect I'd like to swap out that order for growth or get more sloth for growth. One possibility would be dom5 order3 sloth3 cold3 growth3 magic1, though it'd leave you with some extra points for one point of a random path of your choice (blood? astral?)

That lich is good for forging boosters and that's your d9 access right out of the box after he wakes up. Tartarians are easy to get with him, and ench8 and you got your liches. Only problem will be astral access, which I solved by finding some random s1 mages and working up from there.

The lack of good magic paths (air is pretty one trick pony, thunderstrikes, and confusion is good if thunderstrikes won't work).

d9 gives a nice starting boost for your Vanheres who also get some def, reinvig and a small regen. d9 also works wonders with sacred shroud + seeking arrows, which you will have plenty of access to (I recall that affliction chance does work with them).

And you have blood. Blood is good and useful, except that you won't be getting much of anything from there until very late game (thanks to your abysmal research), at which point storm demons are not that much useful anymore

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Its CBM, and I was sneering at quills. How worth it are they?

I don't want to threadjack, but I suppose this is on topic. Owl quills are just plain bad in almost all situations. I'm speaking in general here, not just about Vanheim. Consider that the gap they're trying to fill is very early research which means also that you're very gem constrained. This means not only for the quills, but for dwarven hammers. If you've got a hammer, you're unlikely to have 2, and you're likely to have other things you'd like to use it on. This means, generally, the cost of the quill is often 5A (not 3) and you've not had time to build up a stockpile or income of them. For 5A you're probably getting a research boost less than one more cheap research mage (3RP +1 for a magic scale)....but you've used up a mage-turn forging (another if you insist you managed a hammer) and possibly many more if you're out manually site searching to try and get some early A gems for quills. All this to do the work of (generally) one extra castle spitting out research mages.

Compare this to my suggestion in my Helheim guide where 3 castles are doing the research output of 10 while picking up points being in a drain-2 environment - it's a completely different scale. Obviously it's an apples to oranges comparison, but my point is why it works for the strategy I suggest is because of the point of the game you're at (you've got gems to use) the fact you can have sufficient hammers (because you've got gems to use and need less hammers to process gems into research points) and because of the research concentration (you don't need many forgers or research mages for impressive results). Owl quills are too little bang for the buck, and too hard to output at the point of the game they fit because of your constraints.

[Jazzepi]

I'm putting quills to good use in one of my games. I have a good air gem income, and air gems, to be honest, aren't really useful for gearing up SCs. Generally you want earth, fire, water, and nature gems for that, with some astral thrown in for MR amulets, and starshin skullcaps.

With that in mind, what /do/ you use air gems for?

1. Battle magic (fog warriors, etc)
2. Summoning air queens
3. Forging items like staff of storms

Outside of the above three applications, I don't see a ton of use for air gems. That said, 3 can be extremely expensive. Air boosters are 25 a pop, and a staff of storms will run you the same amount. Though, generally you only need two air boosters, and maybe one or two staves.

With that in mind, I'm having great success using quills to push my research up and above by forging them with hammers. They're upkeep free, and you'll have them until the end of the game, which is really nice.

I really think air quills could use a research boost to 4 instead of 3. That would bring them closer to lightless lanterns, but TBH, air magic is already really good. I don't think it needs to be able to forge great researching items as well.

Jazzepi

[Baalz]

Not to be argumentative, but what do you use any gems for outside of combat, summoning, and forging? Assuming I've got national air mages to use them air gems are often one of my most strategic gems.

Cloud trapeze - this spell at A2 is generally much more accessable than an S3 for teleport, which means you can move a lot more of your mages provided you've got the gems. Coincidentally, a lot of the national A2+ mages make good solo thugs - Vanheim/Helhiem, Eriu, Lanka, Formoria, etc. If not thuggin', then dropping in to lay down wind guide/arrow fend or more optimistically mass flight/fog warriors/wrathful skies. Or:

Thunderstrike. A2 mages are drastically more common than A3 ones. One owl quill = 5 thunderstrikes = a tremendous amount of damage out of research mages. Or better yet, storm + storm power...

Seeking arrow = pure awesome if you've got mages to spam it and A gems to dump in large numbers.

I've got lots more "good" uses for air gems, but those three are my "great" ones that I tend to jealously hoard my air gems over.

[Trumanator]

I would love to use all those, but I really need a way to try and negate Van's research problem, which is similar to Helheim's, but without the Skull mentor option.