Help with Vanheim

[Endoperez]

It's EA Vanheim, isn't it? The high-blessing strategy still works. All Vanir have high defense, and their Glamour ability adds even more to it, and Water 9 with its defence makes it almost impossible for normal units to hit them. The quickness doesn't hurt either. Be careful about fighting bigger armies, though, because your Vanir will get fatiqued (bad!) and their defense goes down when they are targeted by many attacks (-1 def for every time they've been already attacked that turn).

Fire 9 makes their weapons Flaming, and increases their Attack. They will be able to handle almost any enemy then, and their natural defense is usually high enough to keep them alive.

Dwarves are good casters. Try researching Blade Wind and using more dwarves on the battlefield. Just be careful with your own troops; you don't want your own Blade Wind to accidentally hit them.

Beware bows. They hurt a lot. Storm helps, and Arrow Fend helps even more.

[Warhammer]

Yeah, its EA Vanheim, and your post illustrated a lot of what I have been thinking about. I've tried a rainbow bless, but that didn't really work well. I've thought about an A9 bless for the air shield. I've tried a F9/W9, but we didn't have enough troops. I wonder if a F9/E9 for the reinvigoration would be good.

The only problem with that is missing out on all the cool A3+ spells you get like storm and thunder strike, etc.

How much should I focus on the construction, should I just focus on the Evo school?

[Teraswaerto]

On a big map you can't rely on just your blessed troops, so taking good scales instead of blessings might be worth trying out. Take Oracle or some other low cost high dominion pretender, max out scales, build lots of castles and just get bigger armies than the AIs (or just big enough, since you can out-maneuver the AI).

Also, figure out what magics to research since that's what will win or lose the end game (less so in SP, but it's something to learn if you ever plan to play MP) .

[Daynarr]

Teraswaerto said:
On a big map you can't rely on just your blessed troops, so taking good scales instead of blessings might be worth trying out. Take Oracle or some other low cost high dominion pretender, max out scales, build lots of castles and just get bigger armies than the AIs (or just big enough, since you can out-maneuver the AI).

Actually, on large maps it has biggest impact. With small number of sacred troops you will be able to take out indies without any losses and get lots of provinces fast as a result. Also, imprisoned pretenders can take W9F9 without getting too large hit to scales. You can still have decent income.

[thejeff]

On big maps you can rely on sacred troops until you start building SCs and mage squads that can annihilate AI armies at will.

[Teraswaerto]

Sure, it can help speed up expansion a lot. But biggest impact on big maps? I don't see it.

On a small map the deciding wars will probably be fought while the blessed troops are still relevant. Not so on a big map (assuming, of course, you survive that far).

[Shovah32]

If your trying a f9/w9 bless go with an imprisoned *insert name of pretender who can easy get f9w9* with 1 or 2 sloth, or 2 misfortune and as much order and dominion as you can afford.

[Daynarr]

Btw, same applies to Helheim. W9F9 bless on sacred troops is just brutal.

[Truper]

One thing to notice is that your troops all have a fairly high gold to resource cost. This means that you can fairly comfortably use Sloth to get design points. If you want to go for a bless strategy, I would personally go for F9 and skip Water. Glamour already does a lot to keep your troops alive, and your sacred troops and leaders all have multiple attacks, so you might as well ensure they hit insanely hard. Sticking to a single bless is a *lot* cheaper than going for a dual bless, and the better scales that you can afford may solve your problem of not having enough troops.

I wouldn't worry about putting Air on your pretender to gain access to the better Air spells, that is after all what Vanadrotts are for

If you are having difficulty researching, you are probably not buying enough Dwarven Smiths. They are your best researchers. You can also research Construction 2 early on, and build some Owl Quills.

An outline for a design incorporating the points I've mentioned:

Take an Awake Red Dragon. Give him Fire 9. Take Order 1, Sloth 3, Cold 1, Luck 1, Magic 1, Dominion 6. These scale choices can be tweaked to taste, but are probably how I would do it.

On the 1st turn, buy a Vanjarl and a couple of Vanheres. Leave your Dragon in human form, and have him research Construction. On turn 2, make your Vanjarl your Prophet, buy a Dwarven Smith, and whatever other troops you can reasonably afford. Switch your Dragon to his Dragon form, script him to Fire Closest, place him about 1/4 of the way away from the front of the battle board, and send him out to take the most weakly-defended province next to your castle. You want to start conquering ASAP to minimize the affects of all that Sloth by using the admin value of your Fortified City to gather resources. On turn 3, your Prophet can lead your army out to begin conquering as well.

Once you hit Construction 2, you can make Bracers of Defence and an Amulet of Missle Protection for your Dragon, and start forging some Owl Quills to boost your research.

Your next research goal might be Evocation 2, so your Vanjarls can start tossing lightning bolts at the enemy with their superb precision.

Hope this helps.

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, how much the Owl Quils will speed up research? And were they 1 or 2 Air?