Brainstorming : LA Man, Vs LA Utgard

[st.patrik]

I would stop recruiting longbows and start recruiting crossbows. The AP damage really will make a difference against armoured units.

Of course you'll be able to recruit far fewer, which may be a problem if you don't have very many castles yet.

If you can either summon a storm (so you can cast 'summon storm power') or forge boosting items to get your magisters up to A3 you can stand at the back of the battlefield and cast Thunderstrike, which may not be enough to kill a Jotun outright, but will do a lot of damage (plus splash damage), while the giants run up the length of the battlefield to try to get to you. Combine this with crossbow fire (which will be most effective when they get close) and you'll cause them some grief.

Also at least some of your magisters should be able to cast Gifts from Heaven (after casting 'Summon Earthpower'), which is a great giant-killer.


If you have enough time to mount a long-term war I would start building castles so that you can start pouring out crossbows. And the spy thing that others are suggesting.

[Saxon]

Sorry, I have misled you. I fired up a game last night and Man does not have spies, just stealth units. Ignore what I said about spies for this nation. However, I stand by what I said about thinking strategically, not just tactically.

You could consider a stealth army to sneak in and raid his rich lowland provinces. Take the province, push the taxes up very high and leave. If he pushes his provincial defense up high, it costs a lot. One point of defense from 20 to 21 costs 20 gold. It is just not good value at the higher levels, but if he wants to spend the money, encourage him. Keep stealing his provinces, then running away. You will cut his gold income and probably his gem income. He also has to divert troops to try and catch you, easing the pressure on your home front.

Consider cheap troops out front, to slow the giants down while you shoot and spell blast them. Then your good infantry, for the real fight. The arrows keep falling while the infantry hold up the giants.. Try to maximize the power of your good longbow units by letting them fire as long as possible before giants reach them.

[JulienLeo]

Saxon said:
Sorry, I have misled you. I fired up a game last night and Man does not have spies, just stealth units. Ignore what I said about spies for this nation. However, I stand by what I said about thinking strategically, not just tactically.

Actually, you were right, Man Tower of Chelm got spies : the Magister (nice unit btw). I conducted a small test game yesterday were I was playing both side to see how some formations and units were standing against waves of giants.

However ... Your opponent will get a nice little message when one of your spies is at work in his province, so it can't really be a kind of stealth operation . He will notice, and if he does, he will start patrolling ...
But well, that may be an option gotta think about it ... too bad the magister are kinda useless magic wise.

[Micah]

Patrik, getting a storm going doesn't work well if you're relying on crossbows, it hoses their precision and causes half the shots to just get lost outright. Similarly, it sounds like the unit of choice is woodsmen, which are lightly armored and have no shields, and thus longbows (especially with flaming arrows) would be the ranged attack of choice.

I'd go tower guard to resource max and then fill out the rest of your gold with longbows, make sure to get flaming arrows...phoenix power burning a gem to cast and then another 2 gems to get off flaming arrows should work

What bless is he using? If he's not using fire bless you might want to try to find some high defense units to hold the line, if he is just suck it up and try to kill him first. Your guys will get hit, and they will die, don't worry about prot. If he's using E9 (or even if he's not) toss some destructions at him to pop his armor, it'll help a lot. Abuse PD if you know he's going to attack somewhere, fodder is good (especially if he has no earth bless for reinvig). Water bless will help, but you get multiple attacks on him which will bring the defense score back down, and it's not stellar to start with, you just have to out-swarm him.

Destruction works wonders though, try that out, plus longbows and the obligatory wind guide. If you're going tower guard make sure to get sermon of courage off so they'll pass their repel morale rolls as well...the one damage won't matter, so as long as they're not losing attacks to it they hit harder than long spears and have the defense to survive the occasional swing, especially if the giants aren't high fire bless.

[Saxon]

Huh, I will double check that. Also good to know about the message, that is new to me. Takes a fairly big bite out of the spy’s power, as it does not take much to boost PD up a bit and throw in a patrolling army. It will cost them, but the chance of really hitting a human is a lot lower.

[Kalin]

From the description, he's using Woodsman with a nature 9 bless, and water mages (Skrattis) set to cast quickness on them. This is a really effective giant setup because the giants will cross the battle way too fast for your archers do enough damage, and since they are berserked, they won't break due to morale. The giants effectively gains 2 str, 2 prot, from berserk, 1 def from quickness (3-2 from berserk), and 3 atk without touching experience. Effectively making them into powerhouses that you can't hope to compete with on even grounds.

Here's the choices you have:

1. Try to out strategize them. The above giant strategy is heavily gold dependent (and pratically zero resource). You can try various tactics such as spies or just out right raiding to cut his gold supply. Giants always lacks numbers, and their PD is absolutely abysmal, so this is probably the most effectly option, IMO.

2. Should you have to face the gaints in battle, the one thing that they do seem vulnerable to is fatigue. So my suggestion is to try using Curse of Stones and a lot of chaff units to get the giants to tire themselves out. Bringing some priests along to sermon the troops if you try this, they will take massive innitial losses.

3. The third option isn't too reliable by itself, but can work with the above, but would need a lot more mages. Essentially, try to put some few elite infantry(wardens/defenders) together and set your mages to cast Body Ethereal and Luck. If you space them correctly, while the giants are busy with your chaff, your mages will be able to buff your units into something capable of taking the giants on.

4. The fourth option requires that you be able to forge Bags of Winds. If you can get one of your mages high enough to do so, forging this and equiping your Magister Arcane with them will do wonders. Script them to spam Thunder Strike. The Air Elemental that comes with the bag of wind will distract the giants long enough for you to pull this off. (Without them, the giants will be in your face, and you will kill your own troops.)

[Master Shake]

If you have access to astral 2 mages, Soul Slay is probably your best option. Giants rely on few, very tough units. Soul Slay kills units regardless of the nunber of HP. Northern Lights banner is expensive (40 astral gems and I think Constr 6). A Starshine Skullcap (+1 astral - requires 2 or 3 astral to build) and Crystal Coin (+1 Astral - requires s2e2 to build) are cheaper, but only affect one mage. If he desn't have mages out in the field, use the +1 astral empowerment that boosts all mages on the field. Also, stick a Medallion of Focus on.

[Kalin]

Hmmm... I dunno, with that kind of setup, you're talking about at least 3 mage turn for one giant per turn (for the items alone). I'm not saying that it won't work, but I bet Utgard can pump out giants faster than that, and unless you put down a ton of chaff like I mentioned, a bunch of berserk, quickened giants will be in your face in a few turns. You'll be lucky if you can kill 2 giants with one of those mages. Losing a battle with a bunch of mage decked out in items would be disastrous. I don't think he will have enough astral gems to pull it off more than once. Also keep in mind that Utgard has no problem casting Antimagic.

[st.patrik]

Micah said:
Patrik, getting a storm going doesn't work well if you're relying on crossbows, it hoses their precision and causes half the shots to just get lost outright. Similarly, it sounds like the unit of choice is woodsmen, which are lightly armored and have no shields, and thus longbows (especially with flaming arrows) would be the ranged attack of choice.

I'd go tower guard to resource max and then fill out the rest of your gold with longbows, make sure to get flaming arrows...phoenix power burning a gem to cast and then another 2 gems to get off flaming arrows should work

You're absolutely right about Storm - I was not clear in saying that what I was proposing was not one big strategy but several ideas. If you can summon storm and have lots of magisters you can just pound him from the back of the field with thunder strikes, with a meatshield protecting your mages when they get close. But you'd need a lot of Magisters to make this work.

Woodsmen IIRC have a prot of 11, which is not super high. With longbows you're definitely going to do some damage - just not as much as with crossbows. However, Flaming Arrows changes this (as you rightly point out) because then quantity of projectiles matters more.

However I still stand by my suggestion that if you can tweak your economy to be churning out significant numbers of crossbows (resource-intensive) and magisters (gold-intensive) this is better than longbows. Of course, the catch is you need a lot of castles to make this work. Best of all is Magisters with Bags of Wind (as someone suggested) combined with crossbows.

[JulienLeo]

Kalin said:
From the description, he's using Woodsman with a nature 9 bless, and water mages (Skrattis) set to cast quickness on them. This is a really effective giant setup because the giants will cross the battle way too fast for your archers do enough damage, and since they are berserked, they won't break due to morale. The giants effectively gains 2 str, 2 prot, from berserk, 1 def from quickness (3-2 from berserk), and 3 atk without touching experience. Effectively making them into powerhouses that you can't hope to compete with on even grounds.

Actually, it is even a bit worse than that ... He is indeed using woodsmen, but he is not using Skrattis at all. The quickness effect looks like it is part of the bless, so I think he got a W9N9 pretender ... the bless effect of water add a got bit of defence to the giants, making them really tough. He is just using one or two priest to spam bless ... *frowns*

Well, the goods news are that, according to the score graphs (which were kept enabled) he really really sucks in research ... but well, as it was said, the woodmens are real powerhouse ... and even if I haven't seen a single Skratti on the battle field, well ... honestly it is not as if it looks like he was really needing them.

Curse of stone looks like a great idea, but I don't seems to get the idea about the bags of winds ... I think the air elemental won't last a few seconds against a horde of giant.