I can't seem get Vanheim to work. Need some help.

[Chazar]

Can't help much with pretender design, as my only time as Vanheim is an on going Shepherds Game, but Good Scales and low Dominion Strength seems counterproductive to me...

As for early expansion: Air Magic is truly powerful, but only after a lot of research. So I used dwarves exclusively in the beginning. Go for Con3 and Evo4 (you need both anyway) so that your dwarves may cast LegionsOfSteel and BladeWind. 2-3 swarves backing up a couple of SkinShifters set on the flanks to attack rear and some hirdmen/huskarls/einheres in the middle on hold easily conquer independents without much losses. I quite like the regenerating skinshifters with LegionsOfSteel cast on them to minimize my losses - and the skin shifters go well in the case of taking sloth as you mentioned it (I am unsure whether sloth is acceptable for Vanheim). Sort out Dwarves with unusal paths for forging and use them for research meanwhile. I only recruited two air casters: a vanadrott for site searching and a vanjarl as my prophet to cast fanaticism in the beginning and divine blessing for the vans in the end. By they are expensive so it might be sensible to wait until expansion is rearly going...

This worked for me for the beginning. Later on I would switch to Air as soon as research allows and Vans almost exclusively. I guess Vans should come in numbers to avoid expensive losses. Maybe at least 16-20, depending what you are facing. I would recommend to spend the vans a blessing during pretender design. A water blessing probably cannot hurt, as extreme stats (in this case: defense) are usually not a bad choice. However, water magic is not that useful...

[Endoperez]

Vans are one of the best sacred units in the game. They cost 70 gold, but their sacredness halves that to 35, they are very stealthy and have built-in mirror image for combat. If you take any Water for your pretender, their defence becomes ridicculous, with Fire 9 they have awesome attack, defence and damage capability...

Also, if you take an expensive blessing (like Fire 9 Water 4 Earth 4), not only your Vanir and Valkyries but also your Vanherses, Vanjarls and Vanadrotts. Give them few magical items and researh Mirror Image and Mistform, and they can cause some serious damage. You could also try going the Resist Lightning & Shock Wave route if you are desperate, but be warned - combat AI will either fight or cast spells. When your Shock Wave-scripted Vanjarl has no enemies near him, he will probably cast something stupid and go unconscious too early.

[Kuritza_Dru]

About making Thugs (I believe that's what they become, right?) out of the Vanherses. Aren't you affraid that you'll lose them to some stupid random criticals? They weren't able to fight several enemies at once when I've tried it.

[Sandman]

Hmm. I think Hirdmen rock, personally. Sure, you can recruit more Huskarls - but only in the short term. In the long term, upkeep issues and secondary forts mean that you can recruit almost as many. And Hirdmen are much better fighters. Their slow map speed is less of an issue when you've got leaders with the sailing ability, too.

Generally, I'd stick with mostly broadsword ones, with a few spear wielders just to mix things up.

I never build Huskarls. Anything that can get killed by a javelin will get wiped out by heavy infantry, so what's the point? In the early game, I do occasionally set my Vanherses to cast a few buffs on themselves (including aim), and tell them to fire nearest. They'll hit with every shot. It's probably a waste of time, but it does look cool.

[The Panther]

Ah, Vanheim is one of the best nations in the game. I have it in my personal top 4 along with Pythium, Caelum, and C'tis. The reason Vanheim is so good?

Vans, vans, and more vans. Don't bother to build anything but vans. Those guys are the single best troop in the game for the cost. There has been a bunch of analysis and some combat simulators which show this in spades.

The main thing you need to make Vanheim work ridicuously well is to get a Fire 9 Bless on your pretender. The best way to do this is with the Phoenix. In addition to the Fire 9, your Phoenix can also get Air 4-6 to give your vans a (mostly) free air shield when blessed.

To start, get a level 4 prophet so he can do Divine Bless on your vans. Then build vans. You really need Order 3 to have the gold to make lots of vans. Sloth 1 works fine because the vans are a lower resource troop. Dominion 5-6 is sufficient to have the capitol holy level to pump out the vans.

Put your starting Huskarls around as targets and use your vans to swoop in from the side and kill enemies. It is quite easy to begin taking Level 9 indies (except cavs or knights) on Turn 4 with this method. Once you use up all your starting huskarls, you have enough vans to kill pretty much any indie on the map.

Meanwhile, your phoenix can stay at home and research Alteration 3 plus Evocation 1, at which point he can take most Level 9 independants all by himself.

Fire 9 vans have the additional advantage that they can destroy enemy SCs with ease because of the 8 AP damage from the Fire 9 bless.

Try it and see!

[Boron]

Panther's bless suggestion is good but a few considerations:
For a mere F9 bless a moloch is the best pretender, no other pretender gets F9 bless cheaper. A F9 Moloch with fire darts+ your starting troops are enough to take weaker indies.
Meanwhile make a lvl 3 van mage your priest and start building vans and alchemize your earthgems for gold.
Soon you have a van army also going.

Problems with Vanheim though:
-No natural lvl4 Priests, so only your prophet can do the battlefield wide bless.
The normal blessing has a rather small area of effect so you need 2-3 to bless about 20 vans.
-Vans are quite expensive, so a dualbless is prohibiting expensive. So Vans are only the 2nd-best blessable troop.
Place 1 goes to the jaguar warrior.

[WraithLord]

Boron said:
Problems with Vanheim though:
...
-Vans are quite expensive, so a dualbless is prohibiting expensive. So Vans are only the 2nd-best blessable troop.
Place 1 goes to the jaguar warrior.

I didn't get your meaning on that one.
Why do you think Jag war. the best blessable?