Mod Nation Playing Guides

[Sombre]

With mod nations now being used in MP matches and more people expressing an interest in them, I thought it was time for a thread where we can collect together some short playing guides for the various nations. Nothing so detailed as exact pretender builds is needed, but it would be nice if players new to the mods had a bit more help starting out and salty dog veterans (such as llamabeast of Vaettiheim) could exchange a few tips. There are no rules for this thread, post whatever you want - after a while we might want to compile cleaned up and fleshed out guides for the more popular nations, but we'll see how it goes first.

[Sombre]

Vaettiheim SE

This mod nation is a pretty good one for greenhorns in that it builds on content already found in vanilla dom3, taking the goblin forces of MA Jotunheim and expanding them into a LA nation.

SCALES

Order+Misfortune or Turmoil+Luck: Vaetiiheim can certainly put gold income to good usage, with expensive units like the werewolves, trolls and spero fliers. On the other hand they have some access to 5 magic paths in total, so the random gems from the luck economy can be equally useful. It is worth remembering that Vaettiheim have nature and blood in sufficient quantity to use both Crossbreeding and Improved Crossbreeding, both of which benefit from luck scale.

Production/Sloth: Vaettiheim are NOT a production nation. All of their troops cost more in gold than resources, usually over twice as much. Additionally they have units such as werewolves who cost only one resource each, so in the early game it is gold rather than resources that will limit your troop production. Sloth 3 is entirely doable with Vaetti, though at such an extreme you won't be able to make use of indy troops like Heavy Infantry and Knights which are troop types that Vaettiheim has no national replacements for. Production is a nono, but sloth isn't a no brainer.

Growth/Death: Vaettiheim has access to nature spells which benefit from growth. Vaettiheim can certainly build numerically large armies, though with cavalry at size 2, troops at size 1, trolls not needing to eat, a mix of forest and mountain survival and nature mages it is unlikely they will need the supply bonus. The nation is entirely capable of going for blood - they are not a blood nation in the sense of Mictlan or Lanka, but all of their national mages have blood picks or blood randoms, Hags make cost effective blood hunters and Vaettiheim has access to a variety of excellent freespawn and recruitable patrollers, as well as flying commanders to ferry slaves. If you're planning on running a powerful blood economy, growth can be a boon. Finally, many Vaetti mages do suffer from old age, including quite a few of your expensive Gygjor and all of your Sorcerors. I think Death is therefore a mistake, but growth isn't strictly necssary.

Magic/Drain: The bonus or minus to MR isn't very important, though you do get astral mages so bear it in mind. The most important thing here is that you can build Vaetti Hags very cheaply - 55 gold in the current release for 130% magic. On top of that, they don't even require a lab to build. These cheap and cheerful hedge mages are an important feature of the race and with postivie magic scale you can really get some nice research done, because you can crank them at a crazy rate.

Hot/Cold: I believe Vaetti prefer 1 cold (I need to check this). You could go 2 I guess if you expect to fight coldbloods or heat dominion guys like Abysia.

Dominion: You have some troops with pretty low morale, so friendly dominion can be a pretty big help there, especially as you don't have access to a priest above H1. Your Wolf Lord H1 priest is stealthy, but H1 is simply too weak to help with any kind of domkill. On the sacreds front you have the exile guard for 30 gold which is a good unit and is massable if you take higher dom and then the Wolf Troll, which costs a whopping 100 gold and therefore probably isn't going to be limited by your dom strength so much as your gold. Both of these sacreds are cap only. Your nation can go blood, but it can't blood sacrifice. I personally think a mid strength dominion is fine.


Bless: Your two sacreds are very different units, but they don't necessarily require radically different blesses. Both are cap only and you only have H1 priests to do the blessing. A heavy (dual 9 for instance) bless is probably not a good idea.

Water: If you're going water, usually best to go W9. It's a powerul bless for Vaetti because it speeds up your Wolf Trolls, makes them even harder to kill and makes more use of their one very powerful attack. Exile Guards thrive on W9 bless, being extremely fast and extremely difficult to hit in close combat, due to being size 2 cav. They also have two attacks before the bless, sword and bite, so they can take out high def units. They have trouble against stuff with good prot though.

Fire: The exile guard would seemingly benefit greatly from F9 bless, because they can struggle to do damage and they have two attacks (does the bite become a flaming bite?). Wolf Trolls don't have stellar att rating, but they don't need the fire for damage as pretty much anything they hit goes down anyway.

Earth: Pretty useless on the Exile Guard. The Wolf Trolls can benefit from prot and reinvig both and you have two sacred casters, one of which is your best mage.

Nature: Wolf Trolls already have regen - the boost from nature would make them very hard to kill. They can also benefit greatly from berserk, because at size 3 they usually end up getting their def cut and getting hit anyway - the berserk makes them more likely to land shots and means they keep on fighting till they drop, which can be a while. Exile Guard simply have too low hp/prot to make use of this bless. They usually die if they get hit.

Air: Basically pretty worthless. Exile Guard are vulnerable to missiles, but they're fast cav so they shouldn't be getting shot up in the first place. Wolf Trolls don't worry about missiles, they worry about spells.

Death: Hmm. D9 for the Exile Guard is like an inferior fire bless. For the trolls it's simply not needed. A minor death bless might possibly help with some spells cast by the Gygjor, but I doubt it. Give it a miss.

Astral: The mr can be a boon to the Wolf Trolls, who don't want to run into stuff like paralyze. Twist fate would help the Exile Guard a fair amount, but be pretty useless on the trolls. Doesn't seem worth it.

Blood: Strength is not needed on the Wolf Trolls but could help the Exile Guard quite a lot. The B9 effect is far too costly and weird to be used with anything but chaff sacreds of some kind, so forget that.



UNITS OF NOTE


1. The Wolf Lord. Here is perhaps the best utility commander in the game. He's H1. He's stealthy. He's ok at fighting. He has forest survival and mapmove 3. He has 120 leadership AND standard. He can summon 3 wolves per turn. He's also very cheap. This commander is a total workhorse - the backbone of the Vaetti. He does it all. I'm tempted to nerf them just on principle. The thing is, as great a deal as he is, when you're building him you aren't building another of the more specialised Vaetti commanders. Wolves are great patrollers and good flanker chaff to surprise mages, but they'll lose in a fight with just about anything. These guys are also a bit expensive to be using as scouts.

[Sombre]

I'm bumping this thread. Clearly it largely failed the first time around, but I think brief playing guides for mod nations would still be useful and attract more players to the mod scene.

I'm going to link to it in the mod list, though if the lack of interest in the thread continues, I will remove the link :]

[SlipperyJim]

Sure, I'll take a stab at it....

Ulm Reborn (Late-Age Ulm mod by Sombre)

SCALES

Order / Turmoil: Well, your troops can be a bit expensive, especially the White Priests. On the other hand, your troops are also extremely resource-heavy. I mean, this is Ulm, right? So gold is not likely to be your limiting factor. Also, you can get some really nifty heroes, which argues for the Turmoil + Luck synergy. Overall, I'd probably go for a big zero here, and save your points for other scales, such as...

Production / Sloth: Production +3 is basically a requirement. All of your troops are super-heavy armored guys who need a lot of resources. We are talking about an Ulm variant here!

Growth / Death: With a lot of excellent troops and commanders, I'd encourage a little bit of Growth. Not only would the supply bonus be nice, but a little extra help to avoid aging is always appreciated.

Hot / Cold: Ulm Reborn prefers a balanced climate. If you really need the points, you can shift your scales a notch in either direction ... but I wouldn't go too far.

Luck / Misfortune: See the above comment about nifty heroes. I'd take at least a little bit of Luck in order to encourage your heroes to join you. Seriously, they're that cool.

Magic / Drain: Um, Drain. Once again, this is an Ulm variant.

DOMINION

You have some seriously good sacred units and a number of great priests with which to bless them. Granted, your resources will probably limit your recruitment more than your dominion ... but don't slack too much here. Also, your terrific preachers can easily score a dominion kill if you have enough candle-power to support them. I'd go for at least five (5) candles or more....

BLESS STRATEGY

You have heavy-hitting, heavily-armored sacred troops. Lots of 'em. Make good use of them!

Nature, Earth, and Fire blesses are probably the best for you:
Nature gives you Regeneration, which will keep you sacreds alive longer and keep them from racking up the afflictions too quickly. But all of your mages are also sacred (and squishy), so don't take so much Nature that you get a Berserk effect.
Earth will give you Reinvigoration to keep your sacred troops fighting longer and your mages casting longer. What's not to like? Lots of Earth will give your sacred troops extra armor, which is probably not needed. Stick with a mid-level Earth bless.
Fire is terrific for your sacred troops. Not only will they be able to hit better, but a high-level Fire bless will give them Flaming Weapons. Reborn Guardians and Black Templars with Flaming Weapons are really, really scary. The only downside to a Fire bless is that it won't help your mages. Well, you can't have everything....

Death bless could be useful, but not as much as the first three blesses. Then again, a Death-blessed Blade Wind can cause a lot of afflictions.

Astral bless could also be handy. Magic is Ulm's big weakness, and a little extra MR might be nice.

Blood bless is useless to you. Your sacred troops are plenty strong.

Air bless is basically useless to Ulm Reborn. Your sacred troops are so heavily armored that they laugh at arrows. The shock resistance might be handy, but that's a lot of points that could be used elsewhere, and the benefit is highly situational.

Water bless is basically useless to you. Ulm's defense is in their armor, not being hard to hit.

PRETENDER

Go ahead and throw your god in prison. Ulm Reborn has more than enough muscle to handle the early expansion phase without a pretender to help them, and you could certainly use the extra points.

Along those same lines, forget about a SC pretender. Not needed. Just pick the cheapest chassis that will give you the bless effects you want.

TROOPS OF NOTE

Um, all of them? Honestly, Ulm Reborn has so many cool troops that you'll never be at a loss for what to recruit.

Reborn Guardians and Black Templars will probably form the bulk of your killing armies. These guys are expensive and resource-heavy, but they're worth it. Buy lots of them.

Ulm's Crossbowmen are okay, but nothing too special. Augment them with some indy Longbowmen if you get the opportunity to do so. In fact, if you can switch over to nothing but Longbowmen, then you'll gain a few significant advantages. Your range and rate-of-fire will increase, and you'll also be effectively immune to "friendly" fire. Nifty, huh?

The lowly Penitent is actually useful. Free cheese with which to swarm your enemies! Simply add a couple of Black Priests to every army, and you'll have a nearly-endless supply of arrow fodder. Furthermore, when beefed up with a Fire-9 bless, any Penitents who survive long enough to engage the enemy will do some significant damage.

COMMANDERS

They're all good, each for his own purpose. Make that second castle a high priority, because you'll want to recruit more then one commander at a time.

[Burnsaber]

SlipperyJim, mind if I disagree a bit with your views? I have a slight beef with your assesments on blesses.

When deciding for a bless with Ulm Reborn, you need to take into account that you have 3 notably different sacred troop chassises - since you most likely will be using all of them, you need to find a bless that serves them all.

You have the Penitents, good attack power but the resilience of a air balloon. You'll have tons of these lying around in no time (since they are freespawns), why not give them a bless take actually benefit on?

You have the Anchorite, it's your only recruitable sacred outside capitol -> you'll also have lots of these lying around. They're tough as nails, but low hp.

Then you have the capitol only sacreds -> Black Templars and Neugeboren Guards. Tough elites with high encumberance and low mr with only weaknesess's.

Fire bless is cool, but your sacreds already have good weapons, good strenght and good attack values (expect for Anchorties, but you can't have everything), why try to fix something that's not broken?

Yeah, Air bless just sucks.

Water, 50% quickness is just plain awesome, believe me. The defense bonus is good for your Black Templars. 16 def is pretty nice. Makes your slow sacreds reach melee faster (good for Anchorites especially). This bless is useful for all of your sacreds.

Earth, it's obvious that this bless is good for your Black Templars and Neugeborens. They need that reinvogration. The thing is; it's not that hot on Anchorites and Penitents. Anchorites have enc 0 and already amazing prot. Besides, most your opponent will be bringing AP and AN weapons against you anyways, raising your prot doesn't really help then. Also, why take a pretender with high earth magic? You've got that path well covered by your national mages.

Astral, this doesn't seem like much of a bless, but you need to remember that it's DIRT CHEAP (just look at Oracle). The MR bonus is very good for all of your sacred, who'll be facing a lot of magic in the battlefield. Most players also make the mistake of underestimating the "Twist Fate" effect. It basically doubles the estimated lifetime of your Penitents. And ingoring that first rain of crossbow bolts on your Anchorites? Freaking priceless.

Death, nothing to see here, move along.

Nature, regeneration is only good for troops that have either 1) high hp (over 15+) 2) good survival time on the battlefield. your sacreds have neither. Sure, Neugeborens and Templars can survive, but ot for long before they die to fatique. What's the use of regenerating 2 hp per turn when your opponent can puch through your armor? It's also quite useless on Penitens and Archorites.

Blood, nothing to see here.

IMHO, when deciding for a bless with Ulm Reborn, I think that it's critical that you assess it's power for all of your sacred troops. You can't really focus on only one of them. Sure Neugeborens and Templars are really nice, but they're capital only and they can't be everywhere.

I'm currently playing W9S9 Oracle with Ulm Reborn on MP and it's working out great. Sure, my Black Templars tire out fast, but DAMN are they excellent shock troops.

[Shovah32]

You guys aren't using E9 on the Ulm Reborn sacreds? I find that weird. Sure, it doesn't help pentients but the reinvigoration is great for capitol only sacreds and your mages and the protection bonus is great - E9 is usually quite poor on low-medium protection troops but even a slight protection boost on high protection troops gives them a huge boost.

[llamabeast]

I'm playing Marmoset as Ulm Reborn at the moment, and did the opposite of SlipperyJim on virtually every point. I find that quite pleasing really - there are always so many ways to play Dominions!

I'll say more when the game's over, if I remember.

[Sombre]

Nice to see a bit of debate going on regarding the best UR bless. Let me weigh in on this briefly


Bless: Your sacreds are many and varied; recruitable Neugeboren Guard (elite heavy infantry), Black Templars (Knights), Penitent (Upgraded freespawn flagellants), Anchorites (High prot armour mini-golems who turn into penitent when hurt). Virtually all your commanders are sacred and you get quite a variety of sacred mages. You also get a flying undead sacred troop summon. Clearly a good bless is very iportant for this nation. Arguably, so is a high dominion if you're going to make extensive use of anchorites or penitent (you'll need high dom to mass them). The cap only sacreds are expesive enough that you won't be too restricted by the holy limit.

Water: A low water bless isn't a good pick. It's marginally useful on the Templars but that's about it. W9 is very nice on the Templars and greatly helps the NG/Penitent/Anchorites get to combat before taking too much ranged damage.

Fire: NG and Templar don't need that much help hitting or dealing damage, while anchorites deal enough damage but can sometimes find it hard to hit. The real unit that benefits from the F9 bless is the Penitent - they have a weapon with two attacks and with F9 they suddenly become hard hitting though fragile suicide troops. If you're going to use some sort of penitent heavy strat, it's probably the best 9 bless available.

Earth: Anchorites, NG and Templar already have stellar protection and as such an E9 blessing is mixed. On the one hand it makes them /very/ hard to kill, on the other their main vulnerability is to stuff that ignores prot anyway like poison, mr spells, shock etc. The reinvig bonus doesn't help the anchorites but is very effective on the NG and pretty good on the Templar. Additionally you have a slew of sacred mages who benefit quite a bit from it. The problem with E9 is that the penitent don't benefit from it AT ALL, so if you're going to be using them as a major part of your forces, you shouldn't take it.

Nature: Basically Penitent and Anchorites have no interest in this bless at all. Black Templars have some interest in it, but it isn't optimal for them. To the thug commanders it is useful and a nature heavy pretender isn't a bad idea at all, because UR have no access to nature. NGs do benefit quite a bit from this because of their solid hp, high price and tendency to survive a long time in combat, but it isn't the hottest bless for them imo. UR doesn't really have old age problems, so the regeneration vs disease trick isn't very important.

Air: Obviously don't take A9 here. But a minor bless must be considered. For NG and Templar, it's worthless. For Anchorites it's actually ok as they hate crossbow bolts and turn into penitent who retain the bless. For penitent this is obviously rather useful. However even with a relatively high air shield, if the shot gets through, the penitent is most likely dead, so it doesn't allow you to stick them right in the line of fire.

Death: Theoretically this would be good for Penitent to chip away at high prot units. Also be aware you have many sacred casters and they are capable of casting stuff like blade wind, earthquake, rain of stones etc.

Astral: All UR troops can use the mr, that's for sure. Twist fate is also very handy on penitent who die in the face of a slight breeze. If you're planning on using penitent extensively, it might be an idea. It's also ok for anchorites, but basically worthless for NG and Black Templar, who can afford to get hit.

Blood: The strength is unimportant for all units except the penitent, who benefit greatly from it. Still, offensively fire bless is better for them. I tried F9B9 in one build and it was overkill. Why B9 you ask? Because if you're using a million penitent you expect them to die /a lot/ and you'll actually have to lose them fairly often to avoid starvation. If they die and leave behind curse and horror mark, they get a bit more annoying for the enemy. Penitent are almost the tailor made unit to redeem B9, but it still isn't actually that good.

[SlipperyJim]

Um, wow. I didn't mean to kick off any controversy!

So ... here's the thing. I don't really care for the Anchorites (no offense, Sombre!), so I don't use 'em. My offensive armies are made of Black Templars and Reborn Guards. Swarms of the free Penitent cheese provide arrow-fodder. Every army gets at least one White Priest, a few Black Priests (for Penitent reinforcements), and one or more of Ulm Reborn's spectacular "thug" commanders.

Those choices undoubtedly bias my bless strategy. I really like a F9N6 bless for Ulm Reborn. My sacreds hit really, really hard. Better yet, they can counter Ethereal troops without any magical backup. Regeneration protects them from the odd scratch that manages to penetrate their lovely armor. A Nature-skilled pretender also allows me to craft the Nature supply items (Cauldrons, Wineskins), and it gives me a chance to cast my favorite global: Gift of Health. F9N6-blessed Ulm Reborn troops tear through the opposition like an acetylene torch through tissue paper, and they're very hard to stop.

Then again, as Llamabeast wrote:

I find that quite pleasing really - there are always so many ways to play Dominions!

Amen, my friend. Maybe I'll try a W9N4 bless the next time I play Ulm Reborn....

...

Anyway, does anyone have anything to add about the rest of my strategy guide? Did I actually manage to get the rest of it right?

[Morkilus]

Ulm Reborn is a blast to play, and is pretty well-balanced. I'm not surprised there's a variety of opinion on how to do it best! Maybe I'll put my Avernum strategy guide up soon