Tips for Vanheim
 

The title says it all. I'm looking for any and all thoughts, hints, tips, strategies, etc. regarding playing Vanheim.

I realize that a double bless is the obvious thing at first, but I am mainly concerned with where to go from there. Vanheim has less than stellar research, without the ability to forge skull mentors ala Helheim. Also, what would be the best bless? F9W9 is obviously best for the troops, but its somewhat less than stellar for the commanders. Is an E9W9 bless feasible?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

You can squeeze N4W9S9 out of a monolith with
O3
S3
C3
D1
Misfortune2
Magic1

I'm not sure how the twist fate interacts with the glamour. If it works properly then, I think, you should basically get "two" twist fates. One for the glamour hit, and one for the twist fate hit. The quickness + dual wielding means they'll hit their targets after closing the distance with glamor and twist fate to protect them from archers. 16 defense isn't a lot, though, and these units are probably going to fatigue pretty quickly.

I wish this nation had the fountain as a pretender choice. It makes astral blesses a lot cheaper.

Jazzepi

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

CBM or non Cbm?

Also, vanheim gets ready access to dwarven hammers. Air quills are much sneered at. They shouldn't be.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Its CBM, and I was sneering at quills. How worth it are they? Also, I'm pretty leery of taking both death and misfortune, is d1 mis2 not that bad?

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

EA Vanheim?

Take EA Helheim, throw away the Helkarls/Valkyries and Death Magic access, replace the capital-only mages with one having one less magic path (A3B1? vs. A2D3?, E3? vs. E2D2?). What you get in exchange is extra Supplies in dominion (Fey Boar) and a dual-wielding berserking infantry that is also cap-only.
At least you have guaranteed E3/E4 access which is not bad for the buffs.
You could use most of the tactics described in the Helheim guide as you have the same access to air and Earth magic (and more to the latter). Your blood access is marginally better (B2 randoms) and you have guaranteed A3 with A4 (and lucky A5) randoms for Thunderstrike spam - the same air access as Caelum.

Mind you, the +5 berserking gets you to 18 attack skill and 24/25 damage but 7 or so defense without bless, you don't really need fire weapons unless facing ethereal troops, and they'd deal enough damage to pop Mistform. So they'd get hit and would be much less durable.

What about an imprisoned Dom6 Enchantress with say O2S3C3D2L1M0, A1E9S9N4. Your Vanhere's protection would be 16 (20 with legions of Steel) you automatically ignore two hits and you encumbrance is reduced to 3 (5 in Cold-3), and Twist Fate remains longer in melee. Get one scale for Dom-5.
Monolith would give you one better scale with above bless at Dom-6.

The E9 bless would also help your Vanadrotts and Vanjarls with fatigue.

All this CBM.
In CBM quills are lvl 0, you might need them.
You have Dwarven Elder multiheroes too, with some big research bonus and more magic, IIRC.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I'm currently in a CBM mp-game (if you really want to know which, dig it out yourselves) with a master lich who is imprisoned w4e4d9n4 order3 sloth1 cold3 magic1 with dom7. Worked quite well so far - though in retrospect I'd like to swap out that order for growth or get more sloth for growth. One possibility would be dom5 order3 sloth3 cold3 growth3 magic1, though it'd leave you with some extra points for one point of a random path of your choice (blood? astral?)

That lich is good for forging boosters and that's your d9 access right out of the box after he wakes up. Tartarians are easy to get with him, and ench8 and you got your liches. Only problem will be astral access, which I solved by finding some random s1 mages and working up from there.

The lack of good magic paths (air is pretty one trick pony, thunderstrikes, and confusion is good if thunderstrikes won't work).

d9 gives a nice starting boost for your Vanheres who also get some def, reinvig and a small regen. d9 also works wonders with sacred shroud + seeking arrows, which you will have plenty of access to (I recall that affliction chance does work with them).

And you have blood. Blood is good and useful, except that you won't be getting much of anything from there until very late game (thanks to your abysmal research), at which point storm demons are not that much useful anymore

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I don't want to threadjack, but I suppose this is on topic. Owl quills are just plain bad in almost all situations. I'm speaking in general here, not just about Vanheim. Consider that the gap they're trying to fill is very early research which means also that you're very gem constrained. This means not only for the quills, but for dwarven hammers. If you've got a hammer, you're unlikely to have 2, and you're likely to have other things you'd like to use it on. This means, generally, the cost of the quill is often 5A (not 3) and you've not had time to build up a stockpile or income of them. For 5A you're probably getting a research boost less than one more cheap research mage (3RP +1 for a magic scale)....but you've used up a mage-turn forging (another if you insist you managed a hammer) and possibly many more if you're out manually site searching to try and get some early A gems for quills. All this to do the work of (generally) one extra castle spitting out research mages.

Compare this to my suggestion in my Helheim guide where 3 castles are doing the research output of 10 while picking up points being in a drain-2 environment - it's a completely different scale. Obviously it's an apples to oranges comparison, but my point is why it works for the strategy I suggest is because of the point of the game you're at (you've got gems to use) the fact you can have sufficient hammers (because you've got gems to use and need less hammers to process gems into research points) and because of the research concentration (you don't need many forgers or research mages for impressive results). Owl quills are too little bang for the buck, and too hard to output at the point of the game they fit because of your constraints.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I'm putting quills to good use in one of my games. I have a good air gem income, and air gems, to be honest, aren't really useful for gearing up SCs. Generally you want earth, fire, water, and nature gems for that, with some astral thrown in for MR amulets, and starshin skullcaps.

With that in mind, what /do/ you use air gems for?

1. Battle magic (fog warriors, etc)
2. Summoning air queens
3. Forging items like staff of storms

Outside of the above three applications, I don't see a ton of use for air gems. That said, 3 can be extremely expensive. Air boosters are 25 a pop, and a staff of storms will run you the same amount. Though, generally you only need two air boosters, and maybe one or two staves.

With that in mind, I'm having great success using quills to push my research up and above by forging them with hammers. They're upkeep free, and you'll have them until the end of the game, which is really nice.

I really think air quills could use a research boost to 4 instead of 3. That would bring them closer to lightless lanterns, but TBH, air magic is already really good. I don't think it needs to be able to forge great researching items as well.

Jazzepi

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Not to be argumentative, but what do you use any gems for outside of combat, summoning, and forging? Assuming I've got national air mages to use them air gems are often one of my most strategic gems.

Cloud trapeze - this spell at A2 is generally much more accessable than an S3 for teleport, which means you can move a lot more of your mages provided you've got the gems. Coincidentally, a lot of the national A2+ mages make good solo thugs - Vanheim/Helhiem, Eriu, Lanka, Formoria, etc. If not thuggin', then dropping in to lay down wind guide/arrow fend or more optimistically mass flight/fog warriors/wrathful skies. Or:

Thunderstrike. A2 mages are drastically more common than A3 ones. One owl quill = 5 thunderstrikes = a tremendous amount of damage out of research mages. Or better yet, storm + storm power...

Seeking arrow = pure awesome if you've got mages to spam it and A gems to dump in large numbers.

I've got lots more "good" uses for air gems, but those three are my "great" ones that I tend to jealously hoard my air gems over.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I would love to use all those, but I really need a way to try and negate Van's research problem, which is similar to Helheim's, but without the Skull mentor option.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Now you're just being silly if you're going to compare one owl quill to 5 thunderstrikes when I clearly said I was forging them with hammers.

I don't think forging quills without hammers is very useful, but you can generally trade for the latter in any given game.

Also, I was only trying to enumerate the big air gem sinks. I think it's useful to turn Ballz's statment around, since for the cost of one cloud trapeze, you can get +3 research a turn forever. I have traded air gems for mage mobility (those MA Man crones are ****ing slow), but in general you don't use cloud trapeze that much unless you've got trapeze thugs. Even then,once you launch them, they generally just move around doing their dirty work.

At the end of the day, owl quills are a low priority. I've found that whenever I have free "hammer time" leftover for my air mages, I forge them, and that works out pretty well.

Jazzepi

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

What about a Titan with A9E9?
70 % lightning resistance, protection from arrows (a counter to glamour) and earth blessing takes care of the fatigue due to berserk (adds to berserk armor bonus) and helps battle mages.

A3 and 4 mages can orb lighning with minimal friendly casualties. Even wrathfulskies with sacred troops. Add Storm warriors enchantment and the massive lighning affects only enemies as your army is shock immune.

This gets room to a dom10 in picks and that can be 10 Vanheres a turn but you need to have at the most sloth 1.

Dwarves are the only cost effective researchers(maybe drain 2?), plus at earth 4 there's a lot you can do (I learned with the oracles of agartha), Earthquake, earthattack, Petrify, blight(death ones). They are your means to forge a dwarven hammer and kit some thugs with the other mages that are meant to be in battle.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I am not really experienced enough to give advice so this is more to draw out some of the experts to critique it.

But here is my take on EA Vanheim's strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths -
Excellent battle magic - Smiths are good earth mages with decent other variety paths for some cross path spell casting and awesome air magic through the Vanadrotts, who can be put in Sabbath Communions if you are feeling fancy.

Very good basic troops - The Mounted Hirdlings and the glamour infantry should cut through indies and once you have access to some magic can be buffed by your battle mages. You probably don't NEED an awake SC Pretender to have good early expansion.

Stealthy Troops & Commander

Decent sacred troop - The Vanhere is good and can be made excellent with a good bless. But you already have decent troops for early expansion and spending all your points early on a decent double bless means your Pretender will usually be imprisoned. It's capital only too so you will never be able to really mass it compared to those nations that have none capital only sacreds. And you don't have sacred summons or recruitable sacred Thugs (really) that can use it. Nor will the blesses that really help the vanhere (Water, Fire, Astral) really boost your spell casting sacreds who would most benefit from earth.

Weaknesses

Poor research - Your only really good mages are capital only. You are reduced to spending a small fortune on Vanjarls (280 for 5rp+magic bonus) or Vanherse (180 for 3rp+magic bonus) at all secondary Castles.

No recruitable Thugs - While the Vanadrott may work in MA I just don't think it has the staying power in the EA when many of your opponents can recruit Thug/SC chassis like Fomorian Kings, Basalt kings, Neifel Jarls, Dai Oni from Turn 2 onwards. Although you have blood you don't have a cheap enough blood hunter to make competing with the likes of Mictlan and Lanka for a dash to early blood summons viable.

Lack of Paths - Little death and no nature, water or astral. This reduces forging, summons and global casting options later.

The easiest way to address - at least partially - all these weaknesses is to abandon the idea of an Imprisoned double blessed Pretender and go for an awake Rainbow instead. You can pick up 5 or 6 minor blesses on a Crone easily and still have tolerable scales. That should get you in to nature, astral, death plus extras for flavour. Astrals crucial for forging and death gets you in to decent Thugs and synergises with Seeking arrow. And crucially gives you reserach in the mid 20s on your Pretender. Plus it gives you sight searching and stacks of forging, summoning and overland spell options later. And minor blesses still boost the vanhere and your sacred commanders.

Of course your main concern might be that you simply don't have a decent Thug/SC counter and many of your EA opponents have these as recruitable commanders or national summons. So you will be meeting them :) Unfortunately I think this is simply a weakness of EA Vanheim. You could perhaps make the Vanhere - with say a heavy bless in to an anti Thug/SC unit. Or go with an awake SC Pretender. But I think you are probably better off boosting your battle magic with early research so when they come for you your smiths and air magic have something decent to cast.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Vanheim starts with an a1 mage that can be profitably turned to filling in and making Owl quills as necessary.

Its gem income is 3e and 3 air. Vanheim is capable of researching Con-2 by turn 5, even without a researching pretender. And on turn 5 he will have precisely the gems needed to build the hammer - and unless he has had luck - no other gems *but* air.

It isn't a question of building a 3rd research castle. At this point in the game you are presumably building a *2nd* research castle. Just like all the other nations.... and like them you will also build a 3rd castle.

The question is getting the maximum return on every investment you make in the game.

Building a dwarf hammer on turn 5 will save you 2 gems (or more) every turn - its equivalent to increasing your gem income by 2 (almost).

Early in the game, you have no better use for your air gems. Getting 180 rp for a 3 gem investment, over a 65 turn game is a pretty good investment.

Buying 1 quill per turn over 5 turns is equivalent to *one* additional research level. Over 10 turns.. its 165 rp, or two additional research levels.

I doubt there is a better return on investment than investing in construction early as vanheim.

15 turns of constant one dwarf per turn yeilds you 420 research points. It gets you to cloud trapeze, and one level of research.

15 turns of constant dwarf plus 10 turns of owl quills gets you 585 research points. Ie., it gets you Con-2 plus ench-4 plus *two* levels of research.

And this ignores that you will likely be making a second hammer before turn 15.

In other words, taking construction and building owl quills *pays for itself* before turn 15.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Vanjarls/Vanadrott should be adequate thugs against a lot of PD, in pairs if not singly. Mistform, missile shield, mirror image should make them extremely hard to hit and suffer 1HP damage when they are. Some Vanadrott can also cast ironskin. Might want regen and reinvig, by bless or item, magic weapon and resistance where necessary.

They'll not stand up well against other thugs, magic weapon troops, and mages, granted, but they've got the capacity to be effective raiders.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I took a closer look at this nation today and came to this conclusion:

Dual bless vanheres are an awful trap. Because of your weak magic diversity, and the availability of other nations with cheaper / better blesses than yours, there's no reason to try to bless out this nation.

If you ignore the idea of going double bless, then there's a couple of possibilities left.

1. Single bless relying on Vanhere's as a good starting point.
2. Rainbow pretender w/ good scales
3. Awake pretender

I really think that it's easy enough to expand with the Hirdman troops. They're /excellent/. When's the last time you've seen heavy infantry with 17 defense, 12 morale, and 12 attack skill? Oh, and they have glamor which is like getting twist fate for free!

Since we're going to go with an awake/sleeping rainbow pretender and you already have access to great earth and air I would probably focus on what you /don't/ have great access to when picking magic paths.

Fire - I really hate fire on pretenders like this unless you're doing one of two things with it. Forging rune smashers / summoning the fire kings. You shouldn't be doing either with Vanheim. So no fire.

Air - No need. You'll easily have air 4, even 5. Throw in air 1 if you've got points left over.

Water - You've really got no way to use this besides diversifying into water off of mage sites. You can summon up Naiads and clam horde which is a good enough reason for me to recommend water 3.

Earth - I'd probably put 1 on a rainbow mage. Give the mage earth boots, then have them forge crystal coins if you need extra astral boosting.

Astral - I always throw this on my rainbow mages. Astral pearls are easy to convert into other types since they're each worth .5 of any other gem. It also helps forging great boosters for when you inevitably find an astral 1 mage site. Being able to forge starshine skullcaps, and crystal coins, makes leveraging them a lot easier. You also want access to rings of wizardy and sorcery, a ladder that you can climb easily with S3.

Death - Death 3 is a must here. It's a great late game investment that gives you access to tartarians late in the game. It's not an easy ladder to climb, but mound fiends + skull staffs + +1 death masks + rings can get you there. Just being able to summon mound fiends at least allows you to get an undead factory going.

Nature - Nature 3 is definitely a great pick for a pretender. It gives you easy access to mother oak through nature +1 stick + moonvine bracelet. You can also spend the gems to summon other nature mages early on that can turn your gems into an army of vine ogres, or simply cast mass protection for your troops.

I would probably pick an awake enchantress with these paths.
F0
A1
W3
E1
S3
D3
N3

Scales
Dom 6
O3
S1
C2
G2
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

You can easily go with a dormant enchantress and pickup 151 points which translates into better scales, but I think the awake research + extra gems is worth more.

Jazzepi

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I'd put Fire 1 on the Rainbow, that'd give you access Flaming skull. You can forge the AE Elemental Staff easiest by an E3A1 Dwarf+2 air Boosters+ring or EA3 Vanadrott + Bloodstone + Boots + RoW (or Robe for that matter). Now you have F4 on your F random Dwarves.

I made some experiments with ES-dual bless, but the Vanheres are still more fragile than ideal. I also realized that the Strength of Steel path is not the best for expansion - it requires a Dwarf and a Vanhere to lead. So go with a Rainbow and EN(W?) minor bless for thugs/spellcasters and let her sleep.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Was wondering if anyone else thought there was a better way for Vanheim than "OMG huge bless!".

I tried multiple times to get a good start with Van with a heavy bless, and at highest difficulty the AI was able to expand faster than I was, due to unavoidable attrition of the Sacreds.

So (this is with CBM, mind you) I decided to try the "ultra cheap, disposable Awake SC" route, and took the Asynja for 25 points, just giving her 4 Air. This afforded excellent scales, which you desperately need considering how voracious Vanheim is for gold.

Anyway, the Asynja comes with starting gear and can comfortably conquer most indies from turn 2, saving heavy cav and barbs and whatnot for when you get her buffs researched.

Sure, she brings little to the table other than what she is, but she is a rather capable chassis for defending your homeland, and she buys you incredible expansion, while still allowing very nice scales. The idea is to leverage your cash into any indy mages you find, building mages like crazy (you do not need castles for research, only Labs - castles are mostly just for troops), and manually site searching any new paths until you get the income to upgrade to remotes, and begin wholesale bootstrapping.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

I'd say good scales are the way to go here. I tried a similar approach with Helheim once and it wasn't disappointing even though Helheim has better sacred troops. Early expansion with non-sacred Van troops is quite easy and when you add Legions of Steel...
As for Pretender itself, I'd think either Rainbow or something like Ghost King (SC/Rainbow) to add to magic diversity. What I would like to include here are Earth (for bless), Nature and Water. Astral if possible, but this will have to be at least 4 just to not be killed by Duels. I am not sure it's worth it. If going Astral it's probably better to go 5-6 initially for later heavy spells and Rings...
I also agree with chrispedersen on subject of Quills.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

A bit of a old thread but hopefully the contributors are still around. Wondering if this ultracheap pretender strtaegy is really viable. What about the end game? with no major magic access, and no major S, how would you propose to face other nations "spamming" tartarians, royalty etc?

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

Using air gems for owl quills instead of transport / combat magic is a shameful waste of a precious resource.

Vanjarls with Golden Shields can spam Shockwave to devastating effect. In basically the same way as Eagle Kings can spam it. And they can cloud trap as well, of course.

Re: Tips for Vanheim
 

You are free to not doing it, of course. At the same time, there was a game where my Helheim was second in research due to them... ;)
Of course, a mobility in mid-to-late game is very important. But it doesn't matter that you have gems for Trapeze if you hadn't researched it in time...

Yes. I even think they can spam it without those shields. :) And they are also relatively good thugs if armed with Brands instead (by the way, this is one of the reasons I think Water path is quite useful for these nations in early-mid game).

Considering a question about cheap SC Pretender - I think it should be stressed that they are CHEAP. Meaning - this is mainly a scales strategy made possible by Heims excellent non-sacred troops with strong combat mages. The thing is it's risky as you depend on independents for magic diversity. On the other hand taking a Rainbow Pretender is risky as you could be rushed. I think that latter risk is smaller as you have strong normal troops which can both withstand many things face-to-face and raid an opponent with too strong an army. Still, it depends on map and opposition...