Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[DrPraetorious]

Oh, no, someone could win!

There are plenty of workable strategies that do quite well against vanheim - I suggest trying a really archer-heavy position; or Abyssia or Jotunheim, both of which have sacred units that beat vanheimers like red-headed nordic stepchildren, glamour or no glamour (with an earth blessing and nature blessing, the vanheim units kill themselves faster than they kill Burning Ones with stabbing.)

You can put void eyes on thugs and send them in to dispel the illusions. You can cast big area of effect spells, against which the illusions provide no defense. Once you've done that, vanheim has mediocre magic (the dwarves are nice), and it has dudes, with axes! This is me, trembling in terror.

Now, occasionally you are going to get rushed and eliminated. You can reduce the viability of rush strategies by playing on larger maps. If you want to play a game without rush strategies - forbid the rush positions. I don't want to play in such games - sometimes you just lose. Them's the breaks. But in any case, if you're going to nerf Vanheim so it isn't viable as a rush position (and by viable, I mean you have a significant chance of taking your first opponent and eliminating him,) it might as well not even be in the game.

[CaptainGimpy]

I usually put the void eyes on my thugs too, I just don't feel like adapting my entire army to the vans when I could just change the strategy on one guy.

[curtadams]

Archer-heavy does not cut the mustard against Vanheim. Between armour, shields, and the fact that half the arrows hit holograms, archers aren't cost-effective at all. Big AOE spells (not 1 hex ones) are not available for some time and most nations can't conventiently cast them anyway. 75% or so of nation designs will have no good counter to Vanheim for 20-30 turns or so and many for considerably longer than that. And that's *without* double-bless strategies. With double bless - (shudder)

And what's wrong with nerfing Vanheim? God knows it doesn't need to be uber in the first few years to be playable. It has good magic, thuggable leaders (a rarity), and even if moderately nerfed those units would be excellent.

[Shovah32]

Curt, not going to comletely dismiss your point but list the nations you find have the most trouble against van(without being 100% tailored for them) and lets see if some people cant work out a way to make them work(to help the community)

[NickW]

Shovah32 said:
Curt, not going to comletely dismiss your point but list the nations you find have the most trouble against van(without being 100% tailored for them) and lets see if some people cant work out a way to make them work(to help the community)

I'm sorry but that's a silly request. Do you seriously want us to type out a list of all the nations in the game save one or two?

If you need a specific scenario to get the conversation rolling, try telling me how to beat a F9/W9 Van rush with EA Ctis. That's a real scenario from a game I'm in.

[Foodstamp]

I can give you a list...

EVERY nation except possibly:

Mictlan
Neifelheim
Helheim
Abysia

These nations are only exceptions if they are tailored to fight Vanheim.

NickW, It is unlikely you can beat such a rush with any nation. People will tell you to mass archers and use AE spells, but when Vanheim rushes, they have all the same tools that you have, with the bonus of being able to mass one of the most superior units in the game.

[mivayan]

Foodstamp said:
NickW, It is unlikely you can beat such a rush with any nation. People will tell you to mass archers (..)

They will? How odd. Flaming arrows can get past shield + protection, shortbows without that... no way.

[Huzurdaddi]

NickW said:
If you need a specific scenario to get the conversation rolling, try telling me how to beat a F9/W9 Van rush with EA Ctis. That's a real scenario from a game I'm in.

Skell spam is, I think, your only hope for survival. But there are a number of problems with that strategy.

1) It needs enc-3
2) you need something to keep the vans off of you for a couple a castings or 2 ( IIRC vans have something like move 39 when W9 blessed ).
3) even when it goes right I'm not 100% sure what the ratio is of Vans to sauramancers to make it work. I would guess something like 1 sauramancer for every 4 vans or something like that but I have not tested.

Of course his counter would be to make a good number of Holy-Preists and then you are doomed. No hope.

And that is only talking about set-piece battles. Due to glamour he can raid you like crazy and there is nothing you can do about it.

The only nations which can deal with Van are:

1) abysia ( all ages ), since flame weapons do not affect their troops and Vans without flaming weapons are not that scary.
2) Niefelheim since the cold aura kills the vans.
3) as we saw in a post recently: Caelum since Caelum raiding is very hard to stop.
4) *maybe* ermor -- although this is more conjecture than fact.
5) maybe C'tis Miasma -- no one likes attacking Miasma with expensive troops.

Other than those nations you are SOL if you are near Vanheim ( have not tried Age of Vanir they seem somewhat less powerful ).

As for Van not breaking the game, they sure break it for the 1 or two empires that start next to them

[Foodstamp]

^^^ Totally agree, if your next to an aggressive Vanheim player in a multiplayer game, your pretty much SOL.

Later on in the game, players can team up against vanheim, but early in the game, no one wants to be the guy unfortunate enough to be their neighbor.