Help with Vanheim

[Shovah32]

If your trying a f9/w9 bless go with an imprisoned *insert name of pretender who can easy get f9w9* with 1 or 2 sloth, or 2 misfortune and as much order and dominion as you can afford.

[Truper]

One thing to notice is that your troops all have a fairly high gold to resource cost. This means that you can fairly comfortably use Sloth to get design points. If you want to go for a bless strategy, I would personally go for F9 and skip Water. Glamour already does a lot to keep your troops alive, and your sacred troops and leaders all have multiple attacks, so you might as well ensure they hit insanely hard. Sticking to a single bless is a *lot* cheaper than going for a dual bless, and the better scales that you can afford may solve your problem of not having enough troops.

I wouldn't worry about putting Air on your pretender to gain access to the better Air spells, that is after all what Vanadrotts are for

If you are having difficulty researching, you are probably not buying enough Dwarven Smiths. They are your best researchers. You can also research Construction 2 early on, and build some Owl Quills.

An outline for a design incorporating the points I've mentioned:

Take an Awake Red Dragon. Give him Fire 9. Take Order 1, Sloth 3, Cold 1, Luck 1, Magic 1, Dominion 6. These scale choices can be tweaked to taste, but are probably how I would do it.

On the 1st turn, buy a Vanjarl and a couple of Vanheres. Leave your Dragon in human form, and have him research Construction. On turn 2, make your Vanjarl your Prophet, buy a Dwarven Smith, and whatever other troops you can reasonably afford. Switch your Dragon to his Dragon form, script him to Fire Closest, place him about 1/4 of the way away from the front of the battle board, and send him out to take the most weakly-defended province next to your castle. You want to start conquering ASAP to minimize the affects of all that Sloth by using the admin value of your Fortified City to gather resources. On turn 3, your Prophet can lead your army out to begin conquering as well.

Once you hit Construction 2, you can make Bracers of Defence and an Amulet of Missle Protection for your Dragon, and start forging some Owl Quills to boost your research.

Your next research goal might be Evocation 2, so your Vanjarls can start tossing lightning bolts at the enemy with their superb precision.

Hope this helps.

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, how much the Owl Quils will speed up research? And were they 1 or 2 Air?

[Warhammer]

I think owl quills are two air.

How do you turn the dragon from man to dragon? I think part of my problem might be derring do. I could be expanding too slowly rather than risk battles with few troops. Plus, I am researching Evo to 2/3 before researching Const, I should probably reverse that.

[The DarkOne]

Endoperez said:
Be careful about fighting bigger armies, though, because your Vanir will get fatiqued (bad!) and their defense goes down when they are targeted by many attacks (-1 def for every time they've been already attacked that turn).

Actually its -2 def per attack in dom3, at least according to the manual.

[josh_f]

Early on you can use Vandrotts to take weak independents using shock wave. Remember to get lightning resistance to 100% before doing this.

Later in the game give a Vandrott a Staff of Storms, a ring of tame lightning, and some air gems, and then cloud trapeze him onto armies scripted to cast summon storm power and then Wrathful Skies. This combo can destroy small armies if they are not prepared.

[Meglobob]

Warhammer said:
I think owl quills are two air.

How do you turn the dragon from man to dragon? I think part of my problem might be derring do. I could be expanding too slowly rather than risk battles with few troops. Plus, I am researching Evo to 2/3 before researching Const, I should probably reverse that.

Select change shape (instead of defend order), u can do it in tactical combat, (just script, cast spell, change shape or whatever), as well. I start off as mage, cast spells, then change to dragon to play with the little people.

[thejeff]

Actually Wrathful Skies can destroy large armies in they're not prepared.
Unless they can kill the caster before it goes off. Which since they can't fly and arrows are hampered by the storm...

[Boron]

josh_f said:
Early on you can use Vandrotts to take weak independents using shock wave. Remember to get lightning resistance to 100% before doing this.

Later in the game give a Vandrott a Staff of Storms, a ring of tame lightning, and some air gems, and then cloud trapeze him onto armies scripted to cast summon storm power and then Wrathful Skies. This combo can destroy small armies if they are not prepared.

For this combo imho Turins old AQ combo works best.

1 SC AQ, and 1-2 supporting AQs, which have a staff of storms, cast wrathful skies and living clouds.

This combo, when executed properly, can kill almost any army.

Well at least could in Dom2, have not seen it yet in a Dom3 mp .

[Warhammer]

What is an AQ?