Help! Need some strategy advice in my game...

[Endoperez]

As you have noticed, Giants are awesome troops: they can kill almost any opposing units with one hit. Unfortunately, they are easily swarmed... If a unit is hit more than two (I think) times in one combat round his defense starts decreasing with every hit after that. The decrease only affects one combat round, but unfortunately it is often enough...

As giants are not useful versus masses you should try making other troops. Archers of any kind are wonderful versus enemies with low protection, but shields protect from missiles. Regardless, buy archers. Crossbowmen are really better versus tough troops, and as they fire only every other round normal archers are more useful in your situation.
You need some troops to protect your archers. Your province defense does quite well, but you have to get some smaller troops too. I quess you get Vaetti (vaetti hag atleast), so buy them. One giant and two vaettis can fit on one block (units worth 6 sizes can fit on one block, press g to see grid in battles). While Vaetti may die, they have shields to help them survive your archers and every hit killing Vaetti spares one giant. You might try amassing just vaetti and/or archers for a few turns.
If you have limited archers and wish to keep them alive you can either make them to Fire and Flee (though they would only shoot for three rounds) or have all commanders die/rout when your front line has died. You would need many commanders though...

There are quite a few spells that do very well versus masses of light units. The one that comes to my mind is earth spell Blade Wind at evoc. 4. You might not be able to cast it, but if you have any Earth-2 mage you can make Earth Boots to get your mage to required Earth-3. Also, remember to cast Earth Power in battle! It helps to lessen fatique, lets your Earth-2 mages cast Blade Wind and gives reinvigoration (removes fatique). In fact, you can make any Earht-sage to cast Blade Wind with few gems: Earth Power first (needs 2E or 1E+gem), Blade Wind second (needs 3E or 2E+gem).

There is a miscellanous item "Moonvine bracelet" that needs Nature and Astral and boosts one of them. I don't remember which one, but you could check it... Other than that, I think Vine King (or whatever he is) has Nature-3 and can wield items. I am not sure, though, so check it first... Any way, you could summon one, give him Thistle Mace (and Dwarven hammer if you have one), forge Staff of the Treelord (I think it needs Const. 6, Nature 4. It gives Nature+2). With that your Vine King can cast GoH. There propably is a cheaper way too, but I don't remember any...

Also, if you can make Fire Shields en masse you could do recruit lots of Jarls or Herses and give them shields. Put them to the frontline with some normal troops and watch the cheapies burn themnselves to death! This gets even more powerful after you get GoH. You can try other useful items too... Flying shoes are great, better armor would be nice (especially Chain mail of Displacement), regeneration helps but you should save those Nature gems for GoH.

Others have propably posted most of these things by now... Well, hopefully there is something useful in here.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
As giants are not useful versus masses you should try making other troops. Archers of any kind are wonderful versus enemies with low protection, but shields protect from missiles.

Yes: Archers are especially good when the enemy outnumbers you with swarms of low-prot troops, such as Pangaea: The more outnumbered you are, the harder it is to miss.

I quess you get Vaetti (vaetti hag atleast), so buy them. One giant and two vaettis can fit on one block (units worth 6 sizes can fit on one block, press g to see grid in battles). While Vaetti may die, they have shields to help them survive your archers and every hit killing Vaetti spares one giant.

That won't help him. Walkthru is Niefelheim, no Vaetti. Niefel doesn't get anything that isn't giant-sized as a national troop.

[ March 21, 2004, 06:45: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Zurai]

I use Winter Wolves to fill in the gaps with Niefelheim (Mainly cause I almost always do Niefelheim with a Son of Neifel pretender and thus have more winter wolves than I know what to do with), but it takes practice to group them so that they end up mixed together at the enemy since they're different speeds. You could also try Longdeads.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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I quess you get Vaetti (vaetti hag atleast), so buy them. One giant and two vaettis can fit on one block (units worth 6 sizes can fit on one block, press g to see grid in battles). While Vaetti may die, they have shields to help them survive your archers and every hit killing Vaetti spares one giant.

That won't help him. Walkthru is Niefelheim, no Vaetti. Niefel doesn't get anything that isn't giant-sized as a national troop.

---

Actually, I don't think it's Niefelheim - I'm not sure what the theme is , but I've got Vaetti, Vaetti Hags, Wolf and Moose Riders, and Chiefs. My captial-only units are Woodsman and Gygja.

Some follow up questions/comments for everyone:

My pretender can build 12 clockwork horrors for 12E, and/or 13 Claymen for 5E. (Clockwork horrors are fast, 5hp, 18 prot, while Claymen are slow, 15hp, regen, 6 prot) Would either of these serve as a superior "fill in the gaps" role instead of Winter Wolves or masses of Vaetti? (IIRC, I only get 5 Winter Wolves at a time, vs 12-13 constructs).

I've also forge a number of "Bottle of Living Water" water elemental summoning items in the hopes of having some "free" good shock troops in every battle. Are these worth it over, say building swords of swiftness/boots of quickness/blue scale mail/clam of pearls at the same cost?

Also, in Arryn's AAR, she mentioned the effectiveness of forging sceptres of authority for her priests... I'm starting to do this as well, but was wondering if it would also be worthwhile to construct some of the assorted magic bows/crossbows available (Thunder Bow, Just Man's Cross, Ethereal Crossbow, Longbow of accuracy, Black Bow, etc)

Would Call of the Wild and/or Call of the winds be useful for stealing some of Pan's presumably unguarded rear provinces?

Zen: my Jarls have no magic paths, just 2 Holy, so I don't know how they'd cast quickness and Breath of Winter (maybe that's a Niefel theme ability?)

Endoperez: I'm not sure about fire shields - the best I have is a sage empowered to 2F, and I don't see that item on the list of things he can forge.

Thanks everyone for all the tips. Alas that it's now almost 4AM here and I have to wait until tomorrow night to try any of them out!

I thought that the walkthrough was Niefelheim, but I may be mistaken, I have never played it.

If it's not Niefelheim, you can turn Bane Lords into Stompers.

Bane Lord (10N)

Wraith Sword (or Blood Thorn)
Jade Armor (1E1W)
Flying Boots
Antimagic Amulet
Luck Amulet
Then for a hat you can use a Horror Helm or Wraith Crown.

Or you can put it on your normal Jarls, thought they will be slightly fatigued until they start cutting into units. Just depends.

I'd just use Vaetti to fill the gaps if you wanted. Clockwork horrors are a bad pick in my opinion since they run down so quick, unless you can chaincast Relief. If you can't, try using Mechanical Men to fill the gaps.

Edit: The reason I prefer stompers, is because they are highly manuverable, can take out armies by themselves or in pairs (no worries about moving massive armies or getting mages to command undead/magic beings) and can be switched from offense to defense on the drop of a dime. It's certainly not for everyone, just how I prefer.

[ March 21, 2004, 09:51: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Zurai]

Or you can do Longdeads Or if you have Conjuration high enough and a high enough Death caster, Ghosts. Ghosts mixed in with giants is just mean.

As for Winter Wolves vs clockworks: I prefer Winter Wolves because it's fairly easy to get them with Jotunheim and it can be extremely difficult to get enough earth to pump out earth summons. 3W is simple to get - your pretender has it (in the walkthrough, anyway) and Skrattis start with 2W and 1?, so you can either forge a Water Bracelet or get lucky. Also at 3W in the conjuration school is Sea King's Court, which is a very good summon; you get a Sea King, who is a 3W mage who generates his own water gems for battle casting, and 15 Sea Trolls. One Sea King's Court is enough to take over most independant water provinces, and don't forget the Sea King can cast Contact Sea Troll for another troll for 1 water gem (or contact another Court for another 45 gems) to refill his stock.

Other good summons... Pale Riders is nice, 20 Longdead Horse for 30 gems... Summon Ghosts is very nice, 1 ghost per point in death for less than 10 gems... any of the reanimation spells cast by Jotunheim will return about 1/4 or 1/5 Longdead/Souless Jotuns, which are pretty potent. If you can get a 3N Gygja you can forge a Treelord's Staff (well, have to forge a Thistle Mace first) and cast Summon Ivy King, then give the staff to him and get 5 Moss Ogres per turn for 1 nature gem. If you get Angerboda the Great Hag as a hero, forge her a Starshine Skullcap and she can make Rings of Sorcery and Rings of Wizardry, plus summon the powerful Astral summons.

Another good way to kill hordes of weak units as a nation with decent Death magic is to create a few Behemoths - they're mindless undead elephants, size 6 tramplers that WON'T rout (which is a rarity for tramplers... usually they take a couple hits then rout and trample your own troops). If you can get 5 or so Behemoths to your front line, they'll quite happily crush your opponent's satyrs and minotaurs to goo. They even have somewhat decent magic resist and good hp, so they're hard to Banish.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zurai:
Another good way to kill hordes of weak units as a nation with decent Death magic is to create a few Behemoths - they're mindless undead elephants, size 6 tramplers that WON'T rout (which is a rarity for tramplers... usually they take a couple hits then rout and trample your own troops). If you can get 5 or so Behemoths to your front line, they'll quite happily crush your opponent's satyrs and minotaurs to goo. They even have somewhat decent magic resist and good hp, so they're hard to Banish.

Zurai is correct that Behemoths will happily trample and crush Pangaea units in great numbers, and that they will not rout, but Behemoths are NOT mindless. This distinction is important when facing, say, R'lyeh: Behemoths AREN'T mindless and CAN be bLasted. Also, should your commander bite it, the Behemoths, not being mindless, will retreat, rather than dissolve.