Quote:
Originally Posted by MaxWilson
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
|
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.