Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

In what way did you find it to be deficient? How did you get the crap beat out of you?

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

BTW I don't consider 15 provinces by the end of year 1 rocket fuel. 15 is exactly my target for a nation acceptable to play in mp with an expectation of a chance at winning.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The law of probabilities would dictate that a nation could lose even if it made stronger decisions every turn.

One data point is hardly enough to make a fair judgment...
Can I guess that Vanheim got some important research done before you?
That's usually a game winner.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

If you actually read what I posted, I very clearly indicate your initial expansion with this build is intended to be "respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you" (and 15 provinces, as mentioned is at the lower range of what I've managed in my tests). Clearly you're not going with the full court press for your initial expansion, you could fairly easily double that expansion if you didn't heavily invest in early site searching, castles, and an awake non-expansion pretender - but then you'd obviously be pursuing a different strategy. This is actually a pretty good illustration of why I think it's silly how much tunnel vision people get - investing in a blistering initial expansion is a poor use of your resources if you're trying to use the strategy I lay out here. Its perpetually surprising to me how badly even most vets seem to be at assessing the real power level of their opposition - the most powerful (defined as most likely to end up winning) nation is often not the one with the most provinces.

You can fairly easily assess the raw power of a nation by looking at its income levels, but the applied power is a function of raw power multiplied by leverage....and leverage is everything from research and castle count to their available troops, magic paths and upkeep. A frequent component of conversations is how some nations are more or less predisposed to be a late game power...yet more often than not its the guy who is leading in provinces who gets dogpiled on. Province count is almost totally worthless to consider in a vacuum, and if Abyssia, Pythium & Mictlan are all vying for second place as you pull into late game it's pretty silly to think that Eriu or Man is winning despite the fact that they're in a solid 1st place in provinces and income (silly in an abstract sense, obviously there's a lot more to consider than what the nation is).

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

In practice, you will almost never get the initial expansion during an actual MP game that you get in build testing. Other players also expand fast, and will attack an overexpanded player who pushes into what they consider their 'implicit territory' (the provinces surrounding their cap, and probably many of those within two steps of cap too). For these reasons (and the latter one especially) metrics like initial expansion are over-hyped.

Initial expansion capacity possesses some minimum requirement to be competitive, but with some threshold beyond which it is pointless. For most MP games (which have about 12 provinces per player) most nations will not get 15 initial provinces. Most will get whatever the mean number of provinces per player is, regardless of how well they do in testing (unless they do just really really bad).

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Baalz,

Perhaps you would be good enough to rank the nations you create guides for?

And whether you consider them top tier, second tier etc.

I think this would go a long way toward giving perspecitve.

For example, how would you rank niefle, sauromatia, Helheim, and pick some other races you've made guides for.

I've no problem with some hyperbole but I think it lacks a bit of perspective to put Niefle and yomi, sauro and man in the same boat, regardless of the strength of the guide.


You can't burn rubber with all of them. Some burn rubber. Others burn oil.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

In my recollection, the death scales beat me up. I did well in my initial expansion into the Van player, but he then came back with a vengeance (to be fair, Van was played by one of the best players of the game.) Money became hard to come by, when I still needed it. He used skellie amulets on all his commanders, which actually outclassed my skellie spamming, and lots of magic bows on his commanders as well. It was bit unorthadox, but it worked. My small numbers of troops could not win.

It was the RAND game currently still in action.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Hmmm, if you've got Order-3/Luck-3 then Death-3 isn't nearly enough to push you into "poor income" territory, particularly in the early game. No doubt you can always run out of money, but I don't think you can blame the scales for that one. Sounds like pretty early fighting if skellie amulets carried the day, but from a theoretical point of view I'm having a hard time picturing how skellie amulets are going to be much of a problem for lots of (net) 0-enc thugs wielding firebrands supported by 0-enc heavy cav and well blessed flying sacreds (who fly in and kill the back row before the skeletons get critical mass). If you're going for skellispam for yourself did you try leveraging sabbaths with reinvigoration? That's a powerful way to raise a whole lot of undead. Your pretender could forge master/slave matrixes as needed to get svartalfs in on the action throwing summon earthpower on top of an E9 blessing on top of reinvigoration. Those master matrixes can pull double duty if you're clever by letting you stack invulnerability and fire shield on your fire brand wielding 0-enc thugs (followed by reinvigoration of course)...which basically turns them into the ideal skellispam counter. If you're feeling particularly fancy you can add on summon earthpower to the mix which will let you quicken self (via your pretender if you've no better options) and breath of winter...which doesn't help against skeletons, but does work very nice against most other things when you've got several thugs working together for big fights. I don't doubt what you're saying, but I have a hard time picturing how in an early fight Vanheim has enough death income to be anywhere near competitive with Helheim in dropping skeletons if that's the route you wanted to take...considering you're leveraging all that on D3/D4 Hangadrotts each one should be an almost never ending vomit of shuffling dead if you really focus on skellispam. If you're that hard pressed and are pushing skellispam forge a couple skull staffs rather than skull mentors and you're looking at D4/D5 guys with 8 reinvigoration hitting turn 6 with no fatigue (due to the reinvigoration blood spell). As to magic bows it seems like your first target in this strategy is thugs who can drop air shield, which seems like an ideal counter.

It sounds like you just got out played. No shame in that if you're playing against a skilled opponent, but unless I'm missing something it doesn't sound like the build itself failed you.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The thing is though, if you're reverse sabbathing and put up a mass stormpower, your communion slaves (Vanjarls) have Air-3. Unless you use Hellpower (which is kinda risky if you're using a big sabbath, as you'll likely get swarmed by horrors), of course; it only however gives A5 (or 5 NoE). Air-3 gets you thunderstrikes, which massively outclass Orb Lightning, hands down.
Let's compare:
Fatigue: Thunderstrike (50-), Orb Lightning (10-)
Damage/NoE: Thunderstrike (26+, AN, 1 AoE, and larger AoE Damage+Stun), Orb Lightning (10, AN, 1+ NoE (at A3, 3))
Range: Thunderstrike (100), Orb Lightning (15 {very very low})
Precision: Thundertrike (+0), Orb Lightning (+2)

So in terms of usefulness, Thunderstrike beats out Orb Lightning, all the time. It has an AoE damage/stun effect outside of the actual spell center, and Range 100 is awesome, (certainly when compared with Range 15, which, really sucks). If you choose to Orb Lightning spam, you'll do far less damage then with Thunderstrikes, not including extra AoE damage/stun (far, it would take an A8 mage to outcap damage done by a Thunderstrike in an AoE, 78+ vs. 80 (10*8)). The precision bonus with Orb Lightning won't be too big of a deal, and when the fatigue issue comes up...well, that's why you're reverse sabbathing (i.e. having masters spam reinvigoration). When you include the extra damage done by the extra AoE and stun, thunderstrikes are infinitely more useful in terms of damage/turn and army decimation then Orb lightning, and provides alot more security for you (the massive range allows you to space out your slaves around the battlefield, so they can't all be killed at once), and it also takes full advantage of sabbaths (reinvigoration). The thing about Orb Lightning is, though, that (I think, I'm not quite sure)it may hit the same unit on the same square multiple times. However, to take advantage of that, you'd need to be really close to your target thug or SC (assuming they aren't lightning-resistant). Certainly it's useful if your opponent is sending horrors your way (on your PD), but most thugs you'll find will get a copper plate or something, so it isn't too useful in that regard.

Plus, Thunderstrikes are easier to reach. Evo-4 vs Evo-5.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The only good thing about Orb Lightning is that A1 mages can spam it. Other than that, there isn't really anything good.