Just got rolled by AI Neifel. What did I do wrong?

[Stryke11]

I just played a SP game as Helheim with a W9F9 bless and to make a long story short all pretenders but myself and Neifelheim were destroyed. We both controlled roughly half of the map. I eventually gave up on the game because I felt like I was wasting my time. I spent close to 4 hours on it and aside from an occasional breach that was fixed within two or three turns, it was a stalemate. The issue was mostly that it was producing giants (which I though would be expensive to have a lot of, but I guess I was wrong) to a much higher degree than I could combat. There was a new 300-500 giant army at random ends of the map every three turns or so. I beat them one by one but the tide never stopped and they'd get a province here and a province there. It seemed for every one standard Helheim infantry troop I produced, they got 5 or more giants. I feel that as a human of reasonable intelligence I should've been able to beat the AI, and I was wondering if anyone had any specific strategies for beating Neifelheim, either as Helheim or just in general.

My situation:

W9F9 bless - awesome for one army (the one led by my prophet). This army was unstoppable. It was about 80 units, the prophet, a screen of 20 infantry w/ glamour, about 10 valkyries and 50 Helhirdlings. I could easily take out 500 giants with this army, but the problem was it was my only one, and therefore where I won with it, I'd lose everywhere else. Problem was, prophet was only Helheim priest with enough holy to bless everyone, and I didn't want to take the chance of having some random priest cast blessing and maybe bless half of my sacred troops while the other half get slaughtered. They cost too darn much for that.

Bad income and production - the dual bless cost me at the scales. I think I managed order 1 and maybe productivity 1, but at the cost of imprisonment, cold 2, and maybe drain 1. (I don't recall specifics, but I know I didn't have bad order or production scales). I was making about 1000 gold a turn at this point and as such was severely hampered in national troop production. I don't know what I set my dominion as, but it wasn't high, yet seemed to spread very well, even though I could never afford more than a few temples.

Virtually magic-less - Since Helheim isn't a nation that is strong in water or fire, and therefore unless I tied up my pretender in site searching (rather than researching, which I chose because due to low income mages were rare), there was no way to get a fire or water gem income. As a result, pretender (red dragon, if it matters) didn't do much of anything but research and the occasional fires from above. My national dwarf mages I had research as well, but every three turns or so, due to a huge death gem income, I had them summon up an army led by a bane lord of ghosts, pale riders, behemoths, and that one shadow skull-head dog ethereal summon. These were formidable armies, but would all eventually fall to the huge masses of giants. As to my main living armies, I would have the Helkarl cast frighten and ghost grip, and the Vanjarls (I think) go with lightening bolt if they could, but other than that my battlefield magic was nonexistent. This is largely due to the poor choices available to the commanders, although I may have missed something, and my desire to leave the dwarves to research. Near the end, just for fun, I sent armies (like five castings) of arouse hunger into undefended rear provinces, and I won them, raised the taxes, pillaged, but lost them the next turn to 100+ giants I guess the AI was keeping in reserve. This strategy was fun, but did not slow down the giant war machine apparently at all.

It just seemed to me that they giants were building at an unbelievably fast rate. I would assume an army of giants would be harder to field as a check on their increased strength. I could have beat 100 or so giants per army but 500 was just insane. Especially when I could afford maybe 50 regular Vanir infantry (not even counting calvary or sacreds) a turn, spread out over three main fronts (left edge, right edge, center). We're also not talking all militia armies here (though there were some). There were plenty of skinshifters, frost giants, and all commanders. There was even an army of like 50 frost giants (the big blue chubby guys) near the end.

So, what did I do wrong? All AI's were set to difficult but that didn't stop me from steamrolling all the others. From what I could tell, despite a couple arrows from above, the Neifelheim pretender wasn't casting any enchantments, and neither of us had a global. Is Neifelheim overpowered, do giants not cost enough, or do I just suck? The map was the one french one available here on these forums, Tyrande I think. I was in top left corner and giants were in the bottom somewhere, I think to the right.

[Nerfix]

Such large Niefel armies do seem...very strange. What was the AI level? Also, Helkarls are better off decked with Stingers or something and sent to melee blessed than having them fiddle around with their pathetic magic. Enough Alteration would allow your Hangadrotts cast Soul Vortex which is a superb buff spell.

[Stryke11]

I never fielded one Hangadrott. At the beginning, it was cost, and at the end I just didn't think about it. That was likely a mistake .

AI was set to difficult I believe. I started with the max AI's for that map. 8 including me I think.

[Gandalf Parker]

The best "balance" of Dom3 is the rock-paper-scissors balance that some nations have over others. Giants eat ALOT of food so nations with powerful death scales tear them up.

Also a working tactic is to send a huge army to take their castle but just sit outside and rape it. Crank up the taxes, push the dominion, pillage, blood search, and starve them out.

Also in the last couple of games I played, the giants AI didnt use PD. So I was able to slip stealth armies in and harrass his backsides while my non-stealth army chewed up his front line. I switched off between the two keeping his big armies moving back and forth.

[Stryke11]

While yes, I like Ulm, and playing them is certainly fun for me, I think what I enjoy the most is trying new nations and new ideas I get here on this board and then learn to be more versatile. Dominions is just so full of content that I would feel like I wasn't getting the most out of it if I always played the same nation.

That being said, I'd rather not re-invent the wheel, so before playing a nation I like to read up on strategies you experts have used. That's what influenced me to try a dual bless Helheim in the first place.

[Foodstamp]

A few points about what probably went wrong...

I have found versus the AI, and I imagine versus other players, one army does not cut it.

Your vanguard army sounded fine, but you should have had multiple armies of say 12-20ish helherdings/1-2 vankarls. This gives you a small stealth force with a leader that can cast lightning bolt and bless. I place them on a flank with hold position--->attack rearmost units with the vankarl placed directly in the middle of them scripted to blessing/lightning bolt/lightning bolt/lightning bolt!

As shown by this video clip, giants are no match for lightning bolts!

Btw, when playing helheim there is no scissors/rock/paper if your using F9W9. You are the scissors, the rock, and the paper. Helhirdings are cheap to produce, atm can be recruited in any province with a keep, and they are GODS on the battlefield.

[PDF]

Stryke11 said:
While yes, I like Ulm, and playing them is certainly fun for me, I think what I enjoy the most is trying new nations and new ideas I get here on this board and then learn to be more versatile. Dominions is just so full of content that I would feel like I wasn't getting the most out of it if I always played the same nation.

That being said, I'd rather not re-invent the wheel, so before playing a nation I like to read up on strategies you experts have used. That's what influenced me to try a dual bless Helheim in the first place.

Well, the problem is that Dual9-bless are high-power setup not that useful to "learn" strategies because they'll force you to poor scales and will not give you a pretender that will "come along" nicely with your nation.

[Peter Ebbesen]

You really do seem to have underused magic to a spectacular degree in what is a long game against the AI.

Put it like this, using site-searching spells, you should have completely found all earth, death, and fire sites in your realm courtesy of Svartalfs (1 in 4 has 1 fire and with FD you can make the cheap fire path booster...), and all air sites using Vanjarls. The Hangadrotts can also be used to find holy sites up to 3 by manual search.

...and you SHOULD be using site-searching spells. They pay off handsomely in the long run and, against the AI on a larger map, you are playing a long game. If you consider Helheim "nearly magicless" you are doing something dreadfully wrong.

With a bit of spectre summoning using your big death gem income, you'll end up with some spectres with W (which is enough to make a water bracelet) and some with S (which needs a 20 gem empowering to start making pathboosters - a one-time expense), so even if you don't use your pretender for early searching and even if you don't hire the caster mercenaries (or they don't show up) you should get all water sites searched as well.

That's FAWEDH covered, completely and fairly cheaply, using just national troops and death summons, you only lack access to natural and blood (actually, you have access to blood, but it isn't worth it for Helheim). If you don't want to use death summons, astral will have to rely on independents and water on your pretender casting voice of apsu each round - which he should be doing. If you go this way, your death gems should (as soon as you've made your first dwarven hammer) be spent on creating skulls for research. That does wonders for the research graph. Either way, you'll want some skulls to get research to be tolerable, and that means beelining for construction 4 early on.

That's way more magical access than most nations have, and you should exploit it.

With the national magic available to you (with constructed pathboosters or bootstrapping through the elemental royalty and then using them with pathboosters) and your F9W9 pretender, you have access to...

Global enchants like: Well of Misery, Eternal Pyre, Maelstrom, Dark Skies, Gale Gate,... and more.

Summons such as: All elemental Royals, Legion of Wights, Trolls and Sea Trolls, Catoplepas (AOE death attack... you can use squads of these as very heavy artillery), and more, and more...

[And that's not counting kitting out some of the better commander summons as thugs to really help your armies put the boot in or kitting your Hangadrott's out as Soul Vortex thugs or alternatively using them as Shadow Blast devastators]

And, of course, if even that isn't enough to break the stalemate, then you can just start killing his population using bane venom charm carrying scouts and casting deadly rituals at his civilians instead. See how how long the AI can continue to afford and recruit monster armies when you kill its source of income.

With EA Helheim in any longer game you have easy access to a high gem income and most of the magic in the game, even if you have chosen income-minimizing scales - use it!

Short game vs humans would be something else, of course.

[Quietly]

I'd also like to suggest you are missing out bigtime in your strategy, in treating your bless troops...

you should have been regularly buying helharkl and vanherses... with w9f9, you can make a perfectly acceptable army of a herse or harkl per 5-7 helhirdlings... you just set them all at the back of battlefield, set the commander to bless 3x, and have the hirdlings hold and attack... 3 blesses is adequate coverage for a small force, and the small force is adequate for taking neutral provinces or normal amounts of pd... you should have many many of these tiny armies roaming everywhere...

you should also have their territories covered in little neutral scouts, so that there is no more suprise armies of giants, and you can take appropriate actions.

the above poster already covered the magical aspect, so thats my 2 cents

[PDF]

Playing Dom without magic is like ...well, making a car race on 1st gear !!
Yet I'm surprised at the build rate you're describing : what was the map size and what were your gold income ? Did the AI cast some globals that could have changed things ?

Building 100 Jotun a turn costs like 4000+ gold, with upkeep only of 100 giants at 500+ gold, I can't see how it's possible to reach that except very late on a very large map. And I didn't even mention the resources problems...
I'm not sure of the kind of bonuses the AI gets but they don't attain such rates.