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.