Jotunheim: Niefelheim AAR

[Kelan]

I figured I would finally work on an AAR as I once hinted I would do quite a while ago . I took a little break from Dominions 2 for a couple months during the summer, but am back playing a lot and figure I will try to write one before I possibly get wrapped up into WoW when it comes out.

I just upgraded to Version 2.14 of Dominions from 2.11 so this will have some impact and some things I will have to adjust to. I also have enabled some mods for the first time and am going to use Zen’s 1.72 Version of the Pretender mod and his 1.4 conceptual spells mod. I also enabled Unwise’s flag mod from Illwinter’s site and copied in some new skins. Hopefully I will run into some interesting pretenders and see how this may impact how the game plays out.

For background, I have only played single-player so far so it may show in how I play the game. I am fairly skilled and have won before against Impossible Ais and beat Easy Ermor as part of a game, so I am at least somewhat competent .


NATION/PRETENDER:

I will be trying Jotunheim:Niefelheim for this AAR and it will be the second time I have tried them. I have been successful with Man and Arcoscephale in the past and once before with Niefelheim and would like to try them again.

For pretender I will be trying a Son of Niefel with 4 Air, 5 Water, 3 Order, 3 Cold, 2 Growth and 6 dominion. I will use the standard 80 pt castle with 40 admin. I have yet to try Air with Jotunheim and have used Earth a lot with Water, but I want to see how effective the Alteration buffs in air are on a pretender as a SC. I normally take Production and Luck to get Angerboda, but want to see how Growth works out and see if it can help with income later on in the game. I have yet to try Growth as a scale in my games in the past. I set my pretender name to Vaklidun, a name which I used back in my DAoC days in Midgard, and he is ready to go. All praise Vaklidun, God of Order, King of Rivers, Prince of Illusion and Masquerade.



MAP/SETUP:

For map I am going to try Zen’s Cradle Map v1.4. I have completed a game to the end on Parganos once and really enjoyed it and tried to get a couple games going on the original Cradle map, but didn’t continue for various reasons… once being due to some weird path/retreat pathing between provinces. I am hoping Zen’s new Version I will have better luck with.

For the game I have enabled 12 total nations with myself and 11 Impossible AI s. It is recommended to use 8-10 nations, but with using 2 water nations there should be plenty of provinces to go around with 220+ total. I will use Abysia, Atlantis, Pythium, C’tis, Arcoscephale, Caelum, Marignon, Vanheim, R’lyeh, Mictlan, and T’ien Ch’i. I will avoid Ermor for this game due to the ability of the AI to play them so well. It is a fun challenge, but I just played against them in my Last game and it was mostly just me and Ermor in the end game along with Ulm. I would rather combat some other nations in this game. I will also be trying to complete a game with underwater nations for the first time, and hopefully I will follow through this time .

The rest of the settings will be:
Starting Provinces: 1
Indep. Str.: 7 (seems to be the best to use for a good game against the AI)
Special site freq: 50
Normal richness
Common Events
Enabled graphs (should show some interesting info later in the game)
Hall of Fame to 15
Standard research
Standard victory (in case I want to play to the Last province)
Renaming allowed


GENERAL STRATEGY:

I intend to use armies of a couple Niefel Jarls with quickness and breath of winter along with a few Niefel Giants and small Groups of Jotuns. Eventually I will outfit the Jarls with equipment and hope they can take on anything that comes along.

Later on I hope to get some blood economy going and summon some ice and maybe arch devils, wraith lords, and later complement my armies with some arch angels and assistance with Ghost Riders late game. I will try to look for other rituals I have not tried in the past to see how they work also during the game and try to add some summons that have been helped in the latest spell mod.

[Kelan]

TURN 1:

Hugin is my starting Jotun Herse
Starkader is my Jotun Scout

Vaklidun is set to research Alteration with his 11 RPs

I plan to get Alteration 2 and maybe 3 for Quickness, Mirror Image, and Mistform, then go for Const 4 for making some clams, wraith swords, and other items.

I start in the NE corner of the map, which will help me in defense later in the game. I will scout W and S and determine which way I want my 1st main army to go first and send my 2nd army later in the other direction.

I recruit a Jotun Scout to send S and save the rest of my gold for recruiting a Niefel Jarl next turn.

Mercs:

Mercs available are Victor’s Villains with 10 men for 30 gold. Mercs are fun to use, but I will have my hands full just trying to get enough gold to form my first armies and get some research going so will only grab some mercs if someone like Orion comes along. I normally like to form my own armies and avoid mercs for the most part anyway plus I tend to forget them a lot and don’t re-hire when necessary.

Provinces:

J (207) Yldemir – Capitol
I (208) Farsen Forest - Forest
I (218) East Farsen Forest - Forest
I (202) High Yldemir - Forest
I (195) Oeversee – Forest

It looks like all surrounding provinces are forests, which should give me some decent resources for my capitol to draw from and some good sites with hopefully good nature gem income. I hope to have enough to forge rings of regeneration to prevent my giants from getting afflictions too easily and later plenty of bags of wine to keep my giants happy.

I send Starkader to (218) to check one of the nearest provinces. He will then continue on to the West and hang out around the nearest chokepoint to watch for enemy movements. My new scout I am recruiting will head South and monitor activity there.

I set the tax rate to 130 for a bit of extra gold and set Hugin to patrol with his 8 axemen.

Thinking ahead, I do some comparison between the Jotun Spearman and the Huskarl w/spear. I normally recruit only Spearmen, but will consider using the Huskarl and its lesser resource cost if I am in need of more units in a hurry plus the improved morale won’t hurt.

I have taken screenshots of my starting map position and the pretender list to see what pretenders I am up against and to notice the nation flags.

I will attach those here if I can get it to work properly . Hopefully these files aren't too big. I may have to try to get Gimp going to try to reduce the file size.

[Kelan]

It looks like I can only attach one file per message, so put the pretender list there and will attach the map file to this post.

TURN 2:

I will try to set a common order of events to make it a bit easier to read and follow this AAR. I will try to adhere to this order: Turn starting statistics, Messages, Battle results and comments, Merc report, Province report (after tax/unrest is adjusted for the turn), Recruiting, Troop movements, Forging, and Research.

Provinces: 1
Treasury: 598
Income: 208
Upkeep: 21
RP Total: 11
Forts: 1
Temples: 1
Max Dom: 6
Converted Prov: 3

Research
Conjuration:
Alteration: (+11)
Evocation:
Construction:
Enchantment:
Thaumaturgy:
Blood Magic:

Gem Income
Fire:
Air:
Water: 6 (+3)
Earth:
Astral:
Death: 4 (+2)
Nature:
Blood:


~ Patrolling troops in Yldemir have killed 6 filthy brigands and trouble makers.
~ Caelum has appointed a Storm General named Vidhisravah as its prophet.

Vanheim has recruited Victor’s Villains
Ferdinando’s Footmen are now available, 30 men for 160 gold.

For province reports I have printed out quite a few extra spreadsheets to track dominion, defender counts, income, resources, population, tax and unrest per turn. I will use these to try to track certain trends and to hopefully draw some interesting information during the game. In the past, I normally use two standard spreadsheets to write turn info on while playing the game to track information and may try to attach them later if people think they may be helpful. One has 25 turns on a page and tracks per turn # of provinces, treasury, income, upkeep, RP, total forts, total temples, max dominion, converted prov, research levels, gems and gem income.

Provinces:

Owner Dominion (#) Name – Terrain – Defenders or Province Info Tax/Unr (Pop, Inc, Res, Sup) Note: I am only going to track Province info ( ) every 5 turns or so. I will put the defenders of a province in ( ) when a scout is present in the province to see if this helps at all.

J=Jotunheim, I=Indep.

J 2 (207) Yldemir – Capitol – 100/0 (29560, 208, 80, 409)
I 1 (208) Farsen Forest – Forest – 70 Militias/Archers/Light Infantries
I 0 (218) East Farsen Forest – Forest – (50) Woodsmen/Woodsman Blowpipes
I 0 (202) High Yldemir – Forest – 40 Barbarians
I 1 (195) Oeversee – Forest – 70 Barbarians

I set taxes back to 100 for Yldemir as I have had bad fortune in the past when I try to tax high for more than one turn… unrest goes up, income goes down, and I lose valuable resources.

I recruit a Niefel Jarl for 500 gold and 60 resources and have 98 gold left. I normally make this Jarl my prophet, but since he is normally in melee, he doesn’t get a chance to fully utilize the 4 Holy. This time I am going to recruit a Jotun Gode next turn to be my prophet and let him sit in the back in battle and cast Divine Blessing and Fanatacism to keep my troops in battle. I think this will work out better overall and also allow the Niefel Jarl to not lose so many hit points fighting in enemy dominion later on.

I send Starkader the scout to (208) and my new scout Tunne to (202). It appears that (208) has 1 Death already as a scale so perhaps there is a death site there. Starkader will continue on West each turn and Tunne to the South. I figure whatever direction has the nearest enemy I will send my first army toward to try to secure as many provinces early as possible. I will my send my 2nd army in the other direction. Another thing I am realizing is my position is nice and far from the water, so I won’t be harassed early by R’lyeh or Atlantis .

Vaklidun will continue researching Alteration with his 11 RPs.

[Kelan]

I will try to update at least a turn a day, but I only have a couple hours after work to play each day and I am realizing this takes a while . I will see what I can do, though.

[Kelan]

TURN 3:

NOTE: RP Total and research additions listed at beginning of turn summary is the status of both when the turn ends.

Provinces: 1
Treasury: 268
Income: 219
Upkeep: 38
RP Total: 31
Forts: 1
Temples: 1
Max Dom: 6
Converted Prov: 5

Research
Conjuration:
Alteration: 1(+31)
Evocation:
Construction:
Enchantment:
Thaumaturgy:
Blood Magic:

Gem Income
Fire:
Air:
Water: 9 (+3)
Earth:
Astral:
Death: 6 (+2)
Nature:
Blood:


~ Alteration 1 completed.
~ Pythium has made the Patriarch named Bartholomeus its prophet
~ C’tis has made the Lizard King named Ishkur its prophet
~ Angerboda the Great Hag appeared at the gates of your Castle

!!! Holy cow! I didn’t even take luck and got her already. My Last game under Luck 1 it wasn’t until probably turn 25 or so before she showed up as my first hero. She is a 3S, 3D, 2N, 3B mage with 13 research. This is a great surprise and satisfies many uses that I will want eventually including a 3S mage!

Ferdinando’s Footmen were recruited by Marignon.
The Elephant Corps are now available, Hannibal commands 5 men for 80 gold

NOTE: In the Province reports the Pop, Inc, Res, and Supplies will only update every 5 turns or so. I will also add a , and new defender numbers after the previous if there are new reports.

J=Jotunheim, I=Indep.

J 3 (207) Yldemir – Capitol – 100/0 (29560, 208, 80, 409)
I 1 (208) Farsen Forest – Forest – 70, (50) Militias/Archers/Light Infantries
I 1 (218) East Farsen Forest – Forest – (50), 40 Woodsmen/Woodsman Blowpipes
I 1 (202) High Yldemir – Forest – 40, (40) Barbarians
I 2 (195) Oeversee – Forest – 70, 40 Barbarians
I 0 (212) West Farsen Forest – Forest
I 0 (183) North Horslund Forest – Forest

Surprise! More forests, heheh. At least they aren’t swamps .

Gotvid is my new Niefel Jarl. He is a 3W, 2D, 3H fighting machine.

This turn I recruit a Jotun Gode for 200 gold and save the remaining 68 gold. It will be a couple turns before I move out so I may as well save on a little upkeep and hold the gold to recruit the rest of my first army.

I send Starkader the scout on to (212) and Tunne to (195)

Vaklidun, Gotvid, and Angerboda are set to research giving me 31 total RP in Alteration. At this rate I may hit Alt 3 sooner than I expected.

[Daynarr]

Keep it up.
There is never too much AAR's.