[Edit: I wanted to make it clear that the specifics build I use here is with the CBM mod, though it shouldn't be too difficult to do something similar in vanilla]
Once upon a time, Helheim was one of the real EA powerhouses. Then the double nerfbat came across their shoulders and they were humbled. The Helhirdlings were drastically reduced in power with the nerfing of glamour, glamour no longer protects against ranged effects or spells. The once terrifying sacred cavalry now often struggles against mere javelin PD in sufficient numbers and archers – both of which are common in PD and indies. The more grievous of the nerfs though was the plague which wiped out most of Helheim’s dwarves. The Svartalf became capital only and Helheim lost its only cost effective non-capital researcher. Leaning on sacred units for early expansion means sending priest/mages out rather than researching, leaving a research gap that is impossible to close with their very expensive and ineffective Helkarl/Vanheres researchers who add insult to injury by requiring temples as well as labs to recruit. Finally, your opponent pretty much knows what to expect so they can start working on counters the second they realize they’re your neighbor.

Since the double nerf Helheim’s dominance has drastically waned, their usual pattern is an aggressive dual bless rush which quickly fades as their research struggles and their glamour fails to protect them from a variety of counters. I haven’t seen Helheim do impressively well into late game since this massive double nerf, so I figured they needed a guide.

To properly play Helheim, you need to get into the right mind set. Whereas Ulm is the model of German efficiency, Helheim is a V-12 American muscle car. You’re lacking the AC, and you’re not paying attention to your abysmal gas mileage because you’re all about raw, concentrated, glorious *power*. Some of the suggestions I put forth in this guide might make you wince a bit because they perhaps feel wasteful, perhaps they feel like a bit of a loose cannon, but you have to play a nation with the grain, and injecting nitro is not about efficiency. It’s about leaving the poor schmuck sucking your exhaust at the light.

So, I’m gonna go ahead and lead with your pretender, and you’ll have to bear with me a bit as to why I make some of these uncommon choices. As with all my guides, this build has some room to be tweaked once you understand the song we’re trying to sing and you want to try some harmonies of your own. Lets take an awake master druid 2F 4W 9E 2S 4N, with Order-3, sloth-3, cold-2, death -3, luck-3 and drain-2 with a dominion score of 3.

Eeeek! Not only high death with a blood hunting nation but drain! Didn’t you just get through lamenting their difficulty with research? The thing to keep in mind is you’ve got to embrace your strengths and play the way the nation naturally flows. Some people look at a weakness and try to directly compensate for it. They see a nation vulnerable to a rush and thus want a SC pretender. They see a nation with weak research and think that means you have to take a magic scale, maybe even look at the terribly expensive magic-3 scale. Me, I’d rather set the tempo so the dance never hurts my lame foot. If all I’ve got is terribly inefficient researchers, then I’m not going to use them.

Now, I’m betting some of you are confused at this point. The blessing I suggest is not something that lends itself to a standard bless rush, particularly with a dominion score of 3. But I’m not using my non-capital researchers. So, no rush and extremely weak research….what the hell do I have in mind? Raw, concentrated, power my friend, listen to the growl of that beautiful engine.

With this blessing you’re going to be able to expand against moderate to weak indies using just a single Helkarl with a single Helhirding and a half dozen huskarls. Set the Helhirding to guard commander and he’ll be permanently wedged into the same square as the commander, thus halving the number of attacks he’s fending off and the blessing is giving you extra defense, and a high enough armor that your one point of regeneration will cover the odd hit that does land while the reinvig makes sure you keep on kicking. The huskarls are there to take the attention of the indies, catching the arrows, javelins, etc on their shields and tying up the infantry with their high defense and glamour, while your two mounted guys attacks the rear. You’re gonna take a casualty here or there but your expansion will be reliable enough and a bargain for the price.

You’re fielding a cheap expansion party every round for the first couple. Avoiding the tougher indies shouldn’t too much of a problem because your primary goal is not the high income, well defended territories, it’s the much more modestly defended mountains and wastelands. That raw power at this point is concentrated in just a handful of guys in each squad, and with those nice order/luck scales you won’t have any problem with cashflow despite sticking to the lower income indies. Don’t hesitate to use your stealth to sneak on by anybody that looks like they’ll give you too much of a fight – you’ll be having a very brisk expansion even if you’re picky about where you attack.

This isn’t just to make your initial expansion run smoothly, it’s also exactly what you want the most. After the first two turns you’re going to switch to fielding an expansion party every other turn, alternating with recruiting a dwarf. The dwarves are going to go our site searching in those mountains and wastelands, forests and swamps. What you need the most is earth and death gems, and conveniently every dwarf will hit both of those with at least level 2. Meanwhile your very modest gold outlay and very nice income scales will let you pop up a second castle pretty quickly, along with a lab and temple. If you’re doing well you’ll likely get castle three up pretty quick as well, but really it’s only the second one which is urgent. Out of every non-capital castle you ever put up you will do exactly the same thing every turn, recruit a Vanjarl and nothing else (if you’re pinched you can recruit some troops, but that’s just an emergency measure). Unmodified, the Vanjarls have 4 research points in drain-2 at a staggering 280 gold. Ignore that, just assume they can’t research and mentally put them at 0 research points. These guys aren’t meant to research, at this point every one you recruit should be set to blood hunt. This is also immensely expensive for a blood hunter, but just ignore that little voice because we’re interested in power, not efficiency. You shouldn’t have any probably affording two Vanjarls and a dwarf every round which is really all you should care about. Meanwhile, your pretender solidly researches construction. Your pretender has 29 research points and doesn’t really care about the one point he loses from drain.

So, how does this all come together around the end of year one? You’ve done an above average expansion against the indies, respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you. Your income, likewise is modest with your good scales being more than compensated by your focus on lower population indies. Your research, carried almost completely by your pretender is solid, among the leaders but likely not first place. Your gem income is probably at an impressive lead, heavily weighted to earth and death gems. With your very nice capital income of 4 death gems and having spent none, you should be looking at 60-80 death gems unless you’ve just had abysmal luck searching, and you’ve turned your earth gems into a couple hammers - if luck is with you, you might have as many as four by now, don’t hesitate to alchemize anything other than death to get those initial hammers.

Right around the end of year one is when you’ll finish research on construction-4. Now it’s time to feel the rumble of that engine, let’s get to concentrating that power. You’re gonna start cranking out skull mentors like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll almost certainly have a death gem income in the double digits by now, with your capital income just two nice magic sites practically get you there. Given the death gems you’ve stockpiled at this point you should be able to easily crank out 3-4 skull mentors per turn for a good while. Make sure you’re only doing this with hammers, because of the way the rounding works out you’re getting three of them for 21 gems instead of 2 of them for 20, so it’s essentially a 50% increase in mentor production for a given amount of gems.

Burn that nitro baby. Plenty of people are reluctant to forge skull mentors, of the mindset that this uses very valuable death gems to do something you can get done other ways. Stop thinking like Ulm! Gun that engine and, well, lets do some math. With a skull mentor those dwarves are spitting out 15 research points and once you run out of dwarves to stick them on the Vanjarls are clearing 13 (hey, the skull mentor is doing the research, so I maintain I’m not using *Vanjarls* to research). Impressive! Another way to look at this is you’re forging 9X3 = 27 research generators plus the mages you’re recruiting (2 Vanjarls + a dwarf = 14 points), so 41 research points per turn out of three castles. That’s the research generation of *ten* castles for some nations in magic-1 scales. Simple arithmetic means that if you can keep that up you’re pulling in over 500 research points per turn *by the end of year two*! That’s more research than some people pull in by the end of the game! 40+60+100+160+260+420+680+1100+1780 = 4600, so to put this in perspective you can research all the way from 0 to level 9 of a school in 9 turns. Damn the efficiency, I’m winning the race.

Research alone isn’t gonna win for you, and that wicked hockey stick turn in your research graph will most definitely start giving you problems from your neighbors. That’s ok, because as of this second you are ready to go on the offensive just as your research is starting to gear up.

You’ve hit construction 4, and hopefully have managed to scrape together a couple of fire gems with your site searching from fire random dwarves. You’ll want to send your pretender out to site search now and let the skull mentors take over in the lab. This will give you a very nice spread of magic diversity for your income, which is the reason you’ve got F2 on him. A few fire gems are going to go a long way because with a golden shield and almost any weapon you want to stick on him every one of those Vanjarls you’ve been cranking out is a thug. Your rapidly exploding research will get you to alt-3 in no time, and blessing (reinvig + regen), air shield, plus mistform along with the awe from the golden shield will leave the Vanjarls essentially immune to anything short of anti-thug tactics. A short hop (for your rapidly increasing research) up to ench-4 means each and every one of them is able to cloud trapeze. Check out my guide to Eriu for some detailed suggestions (I use a very similar setup in it), but suffice it to say that this is a whole solid strategy by itself. This is why we took that expensive E9 blessing, that reinvig plus regen means you practically don’t need to put any items on them at all, and in fact they can be used “naked” in a pinch, just field more than one together. You should be fielding dozens of thugs in year two, each with the utmost mobility and stealth. You’ll also want to start recruiting Hangadrotts, they make even better thugs than Vanjarls – once soul vortex is researched you don’t even need to give them a magic weapon.

This is just the opening act though. You will find that you’ve got no problem setting up 3 provinces each with Vanjarls bloodhunting (all with sanguine rods now). This will pull you in around 50 or so blood slaves per turn, which means it won’t take long to empower up 3 dwarves to crank out bloodstones. Three bloodstones per turn is gonna start adding up really fast, you should be looking at most of your people with skull mentors and bloodstones before you know it. Once you’ve got those dwarves empowered you’ll probably find that you’re pulling in more blood slaves than you’re using, that’s good, just let your bloodslaves pile up for now – we’re gonna use them later. Any Vanjarls who don’t have a skull mentor or a golden shield should be blood hunting so depending on how stuff plays out you may find yourself with quite an impressive stockpile of blood slaves. One thing to remember, you can easily blood sacrifice out of each of your castles (who all have temples of course) so there’s no reason to fear a dominion push even with your dominion score of 3. There’s also no reason not to make sure that order-3/luck-3 combination is pushed to all your provinces.

Now that ever growing pile of earth gems is going to solve several problem for you. Crank out several gate cleavers and you’ll have no problem with people hiding in castles when you raid – just cloud trapeze in a half dozen gate cleavers who can sneak wherever you want them. Crumble is also easy to do once you’ve got it researched (your pretender casts it gloriously). It’s also going to fill in some mass for you when your thugs aren’t the right tool for the job. Your E9 pretender (plus boots, bloodstone of course) can very efficiently pop out a bunch of enliven’ed statues (who fit a lot better in this context than for Ulm because they fill a niche so far vacant) and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. Gargoyles of course as well round out some nice choices all in one path, so that’s where you’ll want to bend your research if that’s what you’re wanting. Earth gems, boots & stones also of course turn your dwarves into earth monsters with all the yummy straight earth stuff from earthquake to petrify. As MaxWilson points out in the Helheim Dirty Tactic thread rain of stones is in easy reach and can be devastating using a Hangadrott with an earth random and a blood stone, but in general your combat mages are going to be your dwarves and summons while the Vanir are your thugs. In a pinch all those Vanjarls you’ve been massing can spam thunderstrike if you can lay down a storm for them to power up, and don’t neglect fun blood combat options like leech and hellbind heart.

What I’d do if you can get away with it though is focus on that concentrated raw power rather than diluting it by spreading out. Lean on your thugs for a bit and drive straight up to const-8 where your pretender forges the chalice. You shouldn’t really have any problem snagging it with your blazing research and early focus on construction. Then straight into conjuration research while of course snagging any other artifacts that appeal to you (snag the unique death boosters). Your nitro powered research will let you blaze up the tree faster than you thought possible. As you gain momentum, stop forging more skull mentors and stockpile some death gems. You shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting conj-8 with the 80 gems necessary to cast the Well of Misery (Hangadrott with a death random, staff and skull cap can cast it).

That same Hangadrott with one of the death booster artifacts (or a ring of sorcery your pretender forged) can then start dropping tartarians. You’ve now nitro boosted your way up into a very early tartarian factory as your Hangadrott’s start cranking out a couple per turn, while you use the water income your pretender scraped up while site searching to summon a couple niads to cast haurespex with the gems your pretender lined up, then gift of reason. You’re gonna be constrained on the nature gems, but between casting gift of reason every few turns and the lucky natural tartarian commander you’re gonna build up a fleet of SCs before anybody can believe you’ve got them. You’ll also have an easy time summoning all the elemental royalty other than fire, as many as you can afford.

This also is a solid strategy in its own right, but why stop now? As soon as you start raining tartarians at an absurdly early time, anyone who’s so inclined will be mobilizing against you. You’ll want to strongly consider leveraging all those death gems into burden of time, all your guys are practically immortal but it’ll royally screw with plenty of your rivals. Burden of time is one of those very situational things, there are some nations it really hurts, some it doesn’t hurt at all, and some who it’s more an annoyance. It’s not hard to line up other people who would like to see it up, so don’t think you necessarily need to declare war on everybody to put it up. Plus, what’s more thematic than Helheim breaking down the gates of Tartarus and releasing death to stalk the land? Continuing in the same vein you could throw in foul air, you do have the chalice after all for your own owies.

Rounding out this brutal research blitz is all those blood slaves burning a hole in your pocket. You’ve slammed down on the gas pedal and never let up, so that death dominion probably hasn’t been hampering you much but when provinces do start burning out it’s time to conquer some new lands! If you’ve done everything right you’re probably sitting on several hundred blood slaves at this point, and with that nasty research engine blood-9 is not that far away. A couple boosters and cheap empowerings and you’re going to be adding infernal crusade and infernal tempest to your monthly ritual list. Skip the blood SC’s, you’ll be competing with the other blood nations for them and tartarians will cover that role.
A blazing blood economy, game leading research, obscene amounts of earth and death gems, the ability to simultaneously raid every single province in an enemy nation simultaneously, and a tartarian factory before anybody else can even think about it. Lets see you manage that efficiently.

So, I hope I’ve illustrated how driving Helheim like the muscle car it is can be immensely satisfying though you’re gonna be disappointed if you’re trying to drive her like a commuter car, watching her gas mileage. Don’t worry about using 280 gold bloodhunters, it’s far worse to ignore your blood roots. Don’t worry about taking drain and death scales, it’s far worse to try and nurse along what will never be good. Don’t worry about efficiency (well, at least all the time), worry about power and let that nitro burn!

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Happy new year ... a new Baalz guide ... awesome :-)
Thx

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Good guide, Baalz. Most of Helheim's old tricks still work, I just avoid them now out of emotional pain from the Svartalf plague. :(

Don't forget that Helheim can forge Owl Quills and Lightless Lanterns too. I agree that Drain isn't really going to hurt you as long as you're willing to spend some gems, and E9 for Helheim is pretty neat.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Man, I just don't like owl quills myself. They're just so inefficient, and using the massive thug wave strategy I tend to burn through a lot of air gems for cloud trapeze. Plus, honestly you start running out slots to stick blood stones and skull mentors in when you're recruiting smaller numbers of expensive mages while sending some of them out to raid and fight. Lightless lanterns are efficient enough, but to be honest every fire gem I scrape up goes to golden shields, or if I'm really lucky I start whipping out fire brands to go with them. You don't really end up with that much to fire site search with and ideally you want to crank out dozens of golden shields.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I'm pretty doubtful about this, 75 earth gems is a lot. I don't generally use a lot of earth gem summons myself, but I have trouble seeing hidden in sand beating out, say, 40 living statues. Or 50 mech men (which go well with wrathful skies).

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Another cool guide, thanks Baalz!

My latest experiment with Helheim was pretty similar, a F1A2W9E4S4D4N4 Frost Father, with Order-3 Sloth-3 Cold-3 Death-3 Luck-3 Magic-1, Dom-5.

A2D4 HangaDrotts casting Blessing-Mistform-Holy Avenger-Soul Vortex-Life Drain, then attack, are pretty cool. I went with Vine Shields instead of the Gold shields, plus a Fire Brand and Rime Hauberk. The Fire Brand is nice for when they hit lifeless armies.

I also made a couple of Lightning Rods early and summoned a crapload of Corpse Contructs, which are pretty good in CBM with 24HP and 14MR.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Well, it's definitely on the expensive side but don't forget it'll also nab you a fire/astral/earth/death mage which helps with your magic diversity and can often cast soul drain, vengeance of the dead, astral fires, and some other nice things Helheim can't otherwise easily field (and are thus unexpected). They also bring fire aura to the table which can be a nasty surprise people won't often expect from Helheim. 20-40 dust walkers aren't *that* expensive in that light, and they have the added advantage of costing much less mage time than the statues or mechanical men. Finally, they come with their own troop herder so that frees up a mage from that duty. That said, yes I agree that they wouldn't be my first choice for run of the mill fodder.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Well, you are already talking about pumping tartarians, at that point mage diversity doesn't seen so much an issue. 3-4 more mages turns isn't that much an investment either, adds up to probably less than 40 rp generally. I'll grant you hidden in sand is more fun though. ;)

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Owl Quills might be more important in a strategic variant that doesn't want to take an awake pretender (to get from Const-2 up to Const-4) or that wants to save death games for shadow brands. I'm just saying, know your options, because in some games you discover lots of fire sites and few death sites. Of course *you* already know about lightless lanterns and owl quills but some people don't.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I don't know if I mentioned this in the other thread, but you can do it without a blood stone. Have 3 earth gems, and do Summon Earthpower (with 1 gem) and Rain of Stones (with 2 gems). Do Mistform first if you want to increase your chances of surviving.

-Max

P.S. Consider combining with Leprosy.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I am in awe of this post.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

*chalks one off the list*

Thanks Baalz, Helheim didn't have a guide yet, while other nations have like five to them.

Oceania, any age, or Niefelheim next?

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

lch: Everyone hates Oceania.

Niefelheim is one of those that's always been considered a bit obvious. I think Honeybadger wrote some sort of guide to them also.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Actually, let me do a quick guide to MA Oceania:

1. Don't play MA Oceania.
2. If you're the only water nation, clam and win the most boring game ever.
3. What the hell were you thinking taking MA Oceania?

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

People say that Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath is even more overpowered than Niefelheim, and still Baalz wrote a guide for them. Helheim received the same treatment.

Another nation without a guide that might be more interesting, then, is EA Ulm or not-EA Caelum.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I love you Baalz.

I don't know how you keep doing this, and one right after another..... but keep it up. Maybe Illwinter will hire you to write the manual for Dom4. ;)

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

With referance to the EA chronicles thread... eep!

Seriosly though love the guides... quality and volume. I look forward to being crushed by Baalz in the near future.

P.s. Baalz sayed he couldn't do anything with MA ocenia... theres a post around here somewhere...

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

This guide is for CBM, right? The awe-shield is construction 6 in vanilla.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I'd like to see a guide for Niefelheim. The point of a guide is not necessarily to teach you how to survive, it's to bring out the NON-obvious points of a nation. Niefelheim's mages have always kind of perturbed me because their low and scattered randoms mean they have trouble casting combat-magic, although obviously Skratti are surprisingly good at arty spells once you forge a Water Bracelet and/or Robe of the Sea. I wonder what else I'm overlooking in Niefelheim.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

One other comment about Helheim: if you don't want to burn death gems on skull mentors, there's really nothing stopping you from taking Magic and researching with indy mages. Generally indy mage research is pretty contemptible, but you can produce 4 or 5 sacred indy shamans per turn without much trouble, which IIRC is +240 RP per year in Magic-3 for very little cost (22 gold per RP initially, 0.733333333 gold per RP ongoing).

Vanir infantry are also a lot more fun once they've been buffed with Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel/Weapons of Sharpness. It's more of a pain now to get Svartalfs in the right places to cast these, but you can still do it.

Don't forget that Hangadrottir thugs benefit disproportionately from Bracers of Defense (w/ E9 blessing they thicken to Prot 6, w/ Legions of Steel they thicken to Prot 9, cumulative with other sources of Prot), although some people view that as a bug.

-Max

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Thanks for the encouraging words guys. I generally write a guide for a nation I feel is under appreciated, when I can find a competitive angle that seems to be mostly overlooked. When I wrote the Hinnom guide they were brand new, and I don't think anybody (including me when I started) appreciated how strong they were.

MA Oceana is the only nation I've picked up and tried hard to polish, only to fail. In my opinion they are not only the weakest nation I've played, but horribly crippled. We had a fun thread awhile ago with some thematic suggestions to add to them, but as they are now I can't come up with anything remotely competitive to do with them after your initial expansion. Perhaps somebody more clever than me could, but I failed.

I heard a request for Niefelheim and Yomi, I'll see if I can find some inspiring stuff to write for these.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I'd like a Niefel guide that doesn't use a heavy bless, since the heavy bless method is very well known. Something that makes good use of the Skratti too.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Ah yes, I really meant to mention the bracers of defense and forgot to. With the abundance of earth gems they make very cost effective additions to your ubiquitous thugs.

I have to disagree with you on the indie research angle though. You have to consider the opportunity cost. You're switching from drain-2 to magic-3, which costs 200 design points and makes your thugs more vulnerable to counters in your own dominion. Not sure where you intend to get those design points from, but that's a huge opportunity cost right off the bat. You suggest sacred shamans, so you're putting up 5 labs plus temples - were you putting up castles to, or hoping nobody raids you, pops your temples and kills all your researchers? So 4500-9000 gold before you start paying for the mages themselves depending on your tolerance for risk. So, on top of the straight gold opportunity cost there's the time opportunity cost of gathering that gold, building the infrastructure, and recruiting the mages.

This actually is a very good illustration of the very heart of my thesis for this guide. Assuming you're not suggesting you can line all this up in the first year you've got a whole hell of a lot of catchup to do to my suggested strategy which, if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one. It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best. It's the difference between virtually being assured to snag the chalice and then pump out Tartarians while everyone else has their thumbs up their butts, or playing catchup as people research solid counters to your sacred troops and thugs.

This is what I was trying to convey with my metaphor about not dancing on your lame foot. Its a bad idea to focus on your weaknesses, you're never going to be competitive like that. Focus on your strengths and *circumvent* your weaknesses. Dumping that huge opportunity costs into getting still rather bleh research is...bad.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I like ea oceania...:)

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

There essentially hasn't been an American V12 since World War II.

I can't find the points for this build in CBM and cannot get close in vanilla.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I'm planning a Yomi guide when I get back to playing some heavy MP's but it'll be nice to see some alter views on it.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I did this in CBM, though you can certainly do something similar in vanilla as CBM doesn't make any critical differences to this strategy.

Sorry, I actually took cold-2 to squeeze in the points, though you can tweak this as you like.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The design points could come from taking an imprisoned pretender instead of an awake one (and you have 50 points left over for higher Dominion or whatnot). I agree that this is the exact opposite of the approach you suggest in your guide. On a crowded map going for long-term gain (Magic-3 instead of awake pretender) is likely to be painful for exactly the reasons you suggest. On a larger map with less early conflict, +3 RP per researcher is a better deal than an extra 29 RP per turn. It's not like Magic and skull mentors are mutually exclusive, after all, and Magic also helps your thugs by reducing their early fatigue from Soul Vortex. (It also makes Soul Vortex kill more chaff and suck in more healing/reinvig.)

You don't have to build forts to protect your temples, just set the researchers to retreat, unless there's enough of them that you *want* them supporting the PD (which they can't do from inside a fort). So yeah, 4500 setup cost (5 labs, 5 temples for indies) vs. 5100 (3 labs, 3 temples, 3 forts for Vanjarls) although the indies have obvious disadvantages too. Note that I'm not even necessarily suggesting that you have to build the indies, just that it becomes an attractive option which you rule out by taking Drain in favor of an awake pretender.

Not as much catchup as you'd think, since you can still have just as many death gems stockpiled. You'll take longer to hit Const-4, but once you do you're in an even better position. (You're generating 62 RP from those same 4 skull mentors and 3 mages.)

This I just don't buy--it's not that hard to catch up on research if you have gems stockpiled and a good economy, and aren't busy fighting a war, and Helheim isn't a likely rush target. I used to play heavily in favor of skull mentors, making Const-4 a top priority for every nation, but sometimes it really hurts to blow 140 death gems for a mere 180 RP per turn, and once your economy is cranking 180 RP is a drop in the bucket. It comes down to this: I may be wrong, I frequently am, but to me it looks like taking Drain-2 in order to have an awake pretender is a poor tradeoff for Helheim.

-Max

Edit: just to re-emphasize, Baalz is more likely to be right than I am about anything involving MP, because I only play SP. Maybe Helheim really does need the early research to stave off attackers.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Well written guide Baalz - thanks for the insights. I agree that the conventional dual bless for the Heims is fun in the short-run, but not really viable in the long-run, at least that was my experience with Van - have never tried Helheim in MP.

Interestingly, elements of this strategy actually parallel a strategy for LA TC. They have ready access to E2 and D2 mages (all their "Ancestor" mages have some D so D gem income is easy to get up and running) and putting hammer-forged Skull mentors on 100GP sacred Masters of the Way is, as you say, like nitrous on your research, and you can use an Earth blessing on small bands of sacred Ancestor Vessels to easily expand.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

[quote=Baalz;663456][quote=MaxWilson;663442]if luck is with you is cranking out 50 research point generators (4 skull mentors + 3 mages) per turn by the end of year one. It's just not remotely in the same ballpark, I don't think it's even possible to catch up in a best case scenario. It's the difference between being an extremely solid first place in research and being mediocre at best. QUOTE]

Hey Baalz

I agree with most of your analysis most of the time. However assuming a first place research on the strength of skull mentors is overstating the case.

Competitive research - sure. But you will still fall behind any nation utilizing skull mentors without a magic drain, yet with a competent research mage.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Sombre, Niefel w/o a heavy bless isn't that just not making optimal usage of the nation.. sure advice for use of skratti's will never hurt, but Niefel w/o a bless is well.. sub optimal and I don't think a guide should be about a sub optimal strat really.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Skrattis can have a bless. IIRC they have pretty good natural Prot and a torso slot in their werewolf form, which makes a Shroud (forged by Gygjas) a workable option.

Edit: Oops, sorry, Aezeal, I think I misunderstood your point because I had missed seeing Sombre's original post that you were replying to.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

A lot of your argument is somewhat persuasive, but unless you are talking about very large maps, with Hard/VH research, 180 points is a lot. Typically I find that many nations peak out at around 800 or so by the time they are completing their research. 180 is ~25% of that total, and talking about a jump from 600 to 800 is a big deal. But Baalz was talking about more than 20 Mentors.

However, that leads me to my problem with this scenario. To push 3 Mentors per month, you are looking at 21 Death gems needed every month, after your hammers. I have done a LOT of starts, and given the typical MP paradigm of 15 provinces/player, even on a good start where you end up with 20 provinces, and using remote (level 9) searches rather than manual searches, ~20 is typically the absolutely high end of Death gem income. I think it's entirely possible that manually searching all of your starting provinces may only net you ~10 or so income. Granted, you do get 4 in the cap, so baseline income will be higher, but it highlights my problem with strategies that are too highly defined, and too highly optimized. You are wholly reliant on getting a robust gem income to succeed - your build absolutely requires it, and if you don't get it, you are pretty invested into the game as far as your time goes, and left holding an empty bag.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Yeah, I probably overstated the case against skull mentors here. 180 RP is never really "a drop in the bucket."

-Max

P.S. I agree with you, Jim, in that I'd rather have a flexible build (or nation) which can respond as luck and circumstances dictate, rather than having a set strategy before the game even starts. That said, Helheim is actually pretty good for just that kind of flexible play, especially with the E9N4W4 bless Baalz suggests. You can do everything from blood stones to Cloud-Trapezing thugs to Magma Eruption to Thunderstrike to Rigor Mortis to Stygian Paths. The only major hole that I miss in Helheim is Astral, but they have a lot of flexibility and mobility.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I'm not certain if I see helheim being a weak late game nation. Access to death and earth is pretty strong and death opens astral for you anyway. With an imprisoned master druid under cbm, you get something like e9w9n4s1 with order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 1, misf 1, magic 1 dom 4(or splash to some other chassis for b4 instead of n4 ) and your valkyries will absolutely dominate any standard troops you face. Archers get screened by serfs easily if you really worry (you start with like 20 screens anyway). mid game you still have access to the same skull mentors and your valkyries will still kick the crap out of any pd's with thug Han's if they really crank it up. Late game you still get blood/death magic which is better than a lot of other nations can garner. The only real advantage to an awake pretender IMO is that you're gambling on enough death sites to make conjuration 4 pay off big time and that's a bit too idealistic isn't it? Not to mention, the BIG graphs that good players look at are your research and gem income so with a subpar bless and an assumable lead in those two researching construction 8 as your priority, you're not making many friends any time soon.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The thing is you have a very large cascade factor. You take an imprisoned pretender to get the design points for magic scales because 29 research points doesn’t seem like that much. Now you can take one of two choices, either essentially do no research in year one, or forego site searching and try to line up indie priests to lead and bless your troops (or not use your blessing at all). The difference between having constr-4 researched in time for your first engagement is *huge* considering the strategy I suggest of Vanjarl thugs. This is an extremely strong strategy at first which relatively rapidly loses steam as people tool up anti-thug tactics. These guys are pretty much unstoppable using normal troops, but not so much once enemy mages are a significant factor.

The thing is, almost everything in dominions has a very large inflation factor which drops its value as the game progresses. Getting an extra 3000 gold on turn one is game changing, towards the end of year one it’s very nice, in the end game it’s merely good. Extra gems at the point you’re trying to scrape up enough to site search is huge, in the middle of the game it’s very nice while one extra summon can make a significant impact, by the end of the game it’s barely noticeable. Likewise, you can’t compare the 350 research an awake pretender can contribute in the first year to what you can make up in the 3rd year – their values aren’t even close to the same. The difference between trying to fight a war with no research and modest research is huge, it’s the difference between having a swarm of thugs hitting everywhere at once and having just your recruitable troops which your opponent has been preparing counters for the second his scouts showed you as a neighbor.

I’d also like to expound upon my assertion that there is no way you can catch up to the skull mentor strategy using magic scales instead. Of course you can’t assume you’ll be the leader in research, and you can’t guarantee you’ll find death sites but for the sake of argument lets make a couple of fairly reasonable assumptions. Following my suggested strategy you’re explicitly targeting provinces with higher magic site levels, and this is EA which has a higher magic site rate. You’ve had several mages out site searching, you can expect to generally have found 3 or more sites by the end of year one. With just the income from your capital (4d) you’ve got 48 death gems at this point, so you can reasonably plan on having 60-80 D counting the income from sites you’ve found with an income of 10+. Of course it’s not guaranteed, but likely enough you can make plans around it. Likewise, you’ve got 1E income from your cap so we’ll assume you’ve either got or are close to having your 3rd dwarven hammer.

Cranking out 3 skull mentors per turn takes 21D, but remember you’re pulling in 10+ per turn, so net you’re only going down less than 11D per turn from your pool of 60-80. You’re still site searching remember, and just one or two more sites at this point can easily put you to the point you’re only dropping 7 or less D per turn, putting you roughly in the ball park of cranking out 3 skull mentors per turn for one full year, year two. You might be a little under that if my assumptions about finding sites is optimistic, but you should be in that ballpark and it’s not hard to imagine if you get lucky you’re doing more like 4 skull mentors per turn. It’s not *that* uncommon to hit two death sites when searching mountains/swamps/waste, and that’ll bump you up 3-5D per turn right there. At this point you’re probably not gonna keep cranking out the mentors anyway, it’s time to start saving for the well of misery.

So, 3 skull mentors + 3 mages puts you at the 41 research points per turn I suggested, and to the roughly 500 research points per turn by the end of year two I suggested. Yes, you can’t guarantee that you’re leading in research, but you certainly have a good shot at it and the strategy doesn’t exactly fall apart if you’re not the only guy hitting the research hard. To put it in perspective, that’s 100, 5rp mages hitting the books - it’ll be a very rare game that somebody is pulling in more than 500 research points per turn in two years.

Magic scales and skull mentors are not mutually exclusive…yet you suggest taking an imprisoned pretender and thus having no possible way to get to construction-4 in the same time frame I suggest – certainly not with the gem income necessary. Here’s the nature of the catchup, lets say you somehow manage to get in a position to crank out 3 skull mentors with a magic-3 scale a mere 6 turns later than you would with drain and an awake pretender (though I can’t imagine how you’d manage that). Just examine the impact that skull mentors make in those 6 turns I’ve generated 27 + 54 + 81 + 108 + 135 + 162 = 567 research points plus the 522 research my pretender outputs in those first 18 turns. That’s a hell of a hurdle to make up, even assuming you were able to close the gap in output immediately (which you won’t because I’m still cranking out more skull mentors myself)…particularly given the inflation time value of research I point out above. And for what exactly? You originally suggested that this would make sense if you didn’t want to burn your death gems, which would mean you’d most definitely remain far behind the skull mentor research. If you’re planning on skull mentors anyway why try so hard to play catchup? Number crunching aside let me just tell you anecdotally that the research output of this strategy is stunningly better than “standard” strong research, you’ve got to see it in the score graph to really appreciate it.

The real beauty of this to is that you’re not sacrificing your short term strength for the sake of a long term payoff – you’re pumping the other gems you managed to gather into swarms of thugs who are very competitive year two (and don’t really want your D gems anyway). This is important because as I mention (and KissBlade reiterates) you’re not gonna make many friends with this very aggressive muscle car approach, and you need to immediately have the teeth to back up the roar.

Now of course I’m not saying this is the only way you can play Helheim competitively, but it still works just fine even if you get a bit of bad luck or a slow start – 400 research per turn by year 3 is not gonna invalidate this strategy and you’ve always got to roll with the punches and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Via Tartarians, or is there some other path I'm missing? (Maybe spectral mages? I haven't used them much.) Tartarians require bootstrapping into Nature first for some builds without a N pretender. Obviously that's not a problem with the build Baalz has recommended but I want to understand KissBlade's comment.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Specters are 1d2random ,both of which has a 25% shot of being astrals.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Hmmm. S1 will get you site-searching, but it's really no better than you get from a lizard shaman. IMO you need S3 at minimum in order to really consider yourself to have opened up Astral, which means either hoping for an S2 spectre and forging him a skullcap, or empowering, or just waiting for Tartarians. Helheim for sure isn't going to be doing communions or Master Enslave.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Well, dipping into your pre-forging income, to keep the Mentors rolling, makes a lot of sense, I wasn't really thinking about the amount of momentum those initial gems would add.

Mentors are really quite powerful, if you can spare the gems. The difference from Drain2 to Magic1 is 2RP, making each Mentor make up the difference of 4.5 mages. Or looked at another way, even only forging 2 Mentors a turn, is 18RP, so if you and an opponent train 2 identical mages that turn, he still has 14RP to make up somewhere. At a certain point when you stop forging Mentors, that opponent can then more realistically begin to "catch up", but the disparity will be huge if you really focus on the strategy. Of course, if that opponent went Magic3 it changes the math a bit, but that's a lot of design points. There's only a couple of nations that I have built strats for involving Magic3, but it's not for "OMG these mages are such horrible researchers, I need to improve them", it's always "wow these researchers are SO cheap, I want to superpower them".

It just makes me wonder what Vanheim can do to bolster their similarly sad research prospects (other than train expensive indies). IMO forging Quills is like wearing a skirt in a prison.....

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Quills are much maligned - but they serve one useful purpose.
to cut the time down till con4 is available. if you have a low cost 1 air mage, it is well worth the time and gems to pump out 5-6 of these. Payback is on the order of 1-2 turns.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Payback in terms of investment of mage time vs RP gained from the Quill, sure. But I can't think of a single situation that I won't find myself in 20 turns with a dozen good uses for 25 Air gems that I don't have.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Yep, but you can get a lot out of 2 quills you make on turn 2 and 4 with some nations (CB), especially if you're on hard research or have drain scales, or you've got limited research mages you can hire because you need priests from your cap leading your armies.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I am loathe to spend air gems that could be used on cloud trapezes.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I had an idea about good scales strategy with Helheim - mostly based on their standart troops for early expansion. But probably this idea would be better for EA Vanaheim... I agree that Vans are good thugs and I used them as such in one game I was actually competing for victory in. :) Actually, I don't think that Helheim's research is THAT terrible - I had stable second place throughout all game and probably could get better.
Considering communions - Vanjarls can do them just fine by themselves, though this will burn slaves, of course. And Spectre or Unburied mage can capitalize on it with just the Mass Enslave somebody said was impossible for Helheim (by the way, Specter is almost as stealthy as Vans themselves!).
Quills I think aren't that bad, especially as you can have them cheaply with hammers. Probably an awakened researcher negates necessity for them, but still they are good enough - expecially if you don't have enough Death/Fire gems (or no research).

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

I've been wondering how you managed to have so high research :)
Did you use any special method?

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

The guide is good and I think following it will lead to a significant advantage but only so long as the nation expands. Some builds can benefit from sitting tight, but certainly not this one. The must expand builds suffer a diplomatic penalty b/c many times they'll face allied opposition. Of course it all depends on game settings: score graphs on/off, diplo on/off, map size etc.

I read you're considering doing a Yomi guide. Yommi :D
I was breaking my head how to play this nation right (as in efficiently) and the best I came up with is going with the nation power, the Dai Onis. I can wait to read your angle on this.

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

As far as I remember, I just didn't scorn Quills. :) Plus Magic +1 (which seemed to be the case with you, too) and Vans as researchers weren't too hard on upkeep, considering they are sacred. Of course, Svartalfar are better per turn - but they were also more busy, hammers and all. By the way, I also empowered Svartalf in Blood, as Baalz recommends. Anyway, I will write in more details if I actually manage to win with this setup... ;)

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Another thing worth mentioning: Helheim mages have naturally high precision, access to Air magic for Aim, dwarven hammers, and plenty of D1 Helkarls. If you're facing thugs or mages, to me this says "Black Bow of Botulf for 3 death gems, please, with 26 Precision."

This is one of the few legitimate uses IMHO for fire/fire/fire/fire/fire and flee, since the next time you come back the thug won't have any buffs (or MR). Later on, of course, this is a prelude to just Disintegrating everyone.

-Max

Re: Helheim - lets burn some rubber
 

Yeah, when I started putting together this guide one of the first things I tried to put together was a death bless with bows of war and super precision. Wasn't nearly cost effective though as anything you really want to afflict is well armored with a shield. Black bow is a good idea, particularly in concert with a black heart. I've also had a lot of luck with piercers, once you get up to like 10 of them they are exceptionally good human hitpoint stuff with good armor. I once played a game as Machaka vs dual blessed Knights of the Chalice and when I first deployed the piercers against a large group of knights who had until that point be dominating me it was immensely amusing - it looked just like the PD Machaka shortbows were suddenly mowing down the knights with a vengeance. I think a shield still blocks the AN damage due to the way the mechanics work, but it's still plenty effective against units without a tower shield and a bargain for 3E.