Vanheim - help wanted.

[magnate]

As others have said, the biggest problem with your design is that Bless effects cannot be obtained by empowerment or items, so you have to have level 4 paths on your pretender from the start. You definitely want F4W4B4 - I would choose S4 over A4, because you can recruit powerful air and earth mages (vanadrotts and smiths), although the D4 blessing is ok too and D4B4 does open up some nice spells.

I would pay for these extra paths by getting rid of your growth scale. With Order 3 you will have no money problems so a death scale would be fine.

I'm playing Vanheim in my current game, with a setup a little like yours:

Great Sage pretender
F4W4E1A1S4N4D4B4 - for summoning, forging, site searching
Watch tower (I never build castles)
Order3Prod0Cold2Death3Misf2Magic1

- it's been great so far, though I have lost three provinces to barbarian/knight attacks, and neither hero has arrived.

If you want your vans and valkyries to really kick ***, you need F9W9 blessing instead of any of the above. I don't know how you pay for this though - I suspect you have to sacrifice order3.

I research construction to get winged shoes for my scouts and SDRs for my blood hunters, and then straight to Blood5 for Ice Devils. I was very lucky to find garnet sorceresses in an indy province - they are B2 so much better blood hunters than vanjarls.

Good luck,

CC

[Borg]

magnate said:
I would pay for these extra paths by getting rid of your growth scale. With Order 3 you will have no money problems so a death scale would be fine.

If you want to bloodhunt isn't it advisable to take a slight growth scale ?
To compensate for the losses and/or to let your provinces grow above 8000 pop where your Blood Hunts apparently stop reducing pop ?

[archaeolept]

it may be advisable but i sure never do ;p

[Truper]

Arch is a veritable Prince of Death (scales), and his Vanheim is the leading power in Truper's Revenge, so his advice shouldn't be taken lightly. On the other hand, I've yet to see any evidence that he's doing any serious Blood hunting.

[quantum_mechani]

archaeolept said:
it may be advisable but i sure never do ;p

Same here.

[Endoperez]

Blood Hunting always reduces population, but with 8000+ pop it will take too long for it to be noticed in the game. Of course, patrolling will bring it down much too quickly, so you'll have to reduce taxes. It seems most people prefer three hunters and zero taxes. The really big difference comes around 5000 people. Below that, it is really hard to find slaves.

Of course, in long games Growth is invaluable, and Death+Misfortune can result in grim events. I usually don't sacrifice that much for a multitude of low blessings. I counted 6 level 4s. I would only have taken Water and Blood, and possibly Earth for mages, leaving the other paths to minimum levels required for boosters. As an example, a Nature 2 pretender can achieve Nature 5 through boosters: N2 -> Thistle Mace, N3S1 -> Moonvine Bracelet, N4 -> Treelord's Staff (+2 levels, but replaces Thistle Mace). And I would leave out Air and Earth if I weren't going for bless, as the national mages cover those two well.

Vanir and Valkyries have awesome defence, but aren't as good on the damage dealing end, so each of Water, Blood and Fire are good blessings. Fire doesn't actually deal more damage until Fire 9, but the flaming weapons make a huge difference. On the other hand, Blood 9 is nigh useless (a chance of cursing the one who killed the unit), but it helps a lot on lower levels. And Water 9 makes your blessed units untouchable by almost all enemy warriors, and gives both them and your mages quickness. As it stacks with the one available from e.g. Boots of Quickness, it is also very powerful.


Also, don't forget to script your Huskarl forces to Fire instead of Attack closest. Those Javelins do make a difference. Unfortunately the better Hirdmen don't carry Javelins. I'd love to be able to use Javelin forces boosted with Strength of Giants and, much later, Rush of Strength.

[shovah]

just a question, would bless quickness+ the spell+ jade armour+ boots of quickness let me cast 5 spells a turn? (4 quickness+1 normal)

[quantum_mechani]

shovah said:
just a question, would bless quickness+ the spell+ jade armour+ boots of quickness let me cast 5 spells a turn? (4 quickness+1 normal)

The spell would not stack with any items, but would stack with the 50% quickness bless. Heroic quickness would also stack.

[shovah]

so how many spells per turn would all the items+bless give?

[quantum_mechani]

shovah said:
so how many spells per turn would all the items+bless give?

Jade armour, boots of quickness and the spell all do the same thing and only one will have an effect. So, the spell plus bless would give you 2 spells per turn, and 3 every other turn.