Fun with Jotunheim - Utgard theme

[Humer]

Originally posted by Truper:

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I'm hoping summon Lamia's will be very impressive with the high nature and the Naga's special ability of getting more. Are Lamia's sacred or is that just my memory being hopeful?

I don't believe they are sacred, but I *am* sure they are cold-blooded. A point to consider.

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They are not sacred and are cold-blooded. So they get VERY fatigued pretty quickly. OTOH, you get +2 lamias for every point of nature magic beyond minimum, so 10N mage makes *really* good use of 5 nature gems. What was it, now... 3 lamias per casting, 3N requisite... that makes 3+2*7 = 17 lamias per casting, IIRC. Not too shabby at all!

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One of the big questions is what to mix in to the giants as small creatures can occupy the same space as a giant making up for reduced number of attacks per square. Winter wolves were great for this in Dom1 but not so easy to get with this race early.

Consider Manikins to mix with the giants. Since you're concentrating on construction anyway, they'll give you a good way to use your nature gems.

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No to Manikins, yes to Mandragoras. They're the ones that get additional units for higher nature skill, unlike Manikins (was it 10 per 10 gems?).

Point is that Jotunheim desperately needs bulk troops to mix with giants. You cannot rely on indies unless you find and fortify a decent province. I'd go for a mix of both Mandragoras and Lamias (if high-nature pretender) for mass-summons so that not all of the army is banished to oblivion. Mix in the occasional clockwork horror.

I kinda like the Ether Gate too, ethereal troops with magic weapons, but they are expensive - 90 pearls for 20-ish troops and leader (which seem to have same magics than nornas). Mix in dispossessed spirits and you have your frontline troops. BTW, do Ether Gate's troops' moon blades and -lance do double damage to magic beings as per forgable moon blade?

- Humer

[Keir Maxwell]

I'm up to turn 24. 30 provinces magic alt1, evo3, con4, ench2, thaum2. I'm over twice the nearist opponent in gold and provinces, equal top in gems, well back in research and ther abouts in dom.

Things have been busy with lots of pressure from AI's as the starting to position is in the narrows on the dragon eye map. I've been attacked by Caelum at one end, Arco in the middle and lately C'tis at the other end.

The war with Caelum was the first one and Caelum is simply to far away from my main area (eastern section of the Eye map) for me to want to commit against. I drove off their intial attack and grabbed 3 provinces but since then have only fenced with them as Arco in the middle was a far more serious threat.

Arco jumped my castle in the mid lower western rich area despite my best attempts to leave them an expansion route around the bottom of it. They had a big army with elephants and I had sent my prophet and n.1 hero east vs Caelum so they got to break down the walls before I could get a releaving army there. Attacking someone an assault is really strong in dom and thats what I did. I saillied forth with ~7 giant axemen/spearmen, one Gode and 4 Herses and a relieving army of 7 woodesmen, a herse, and a Norna with mind burn charged in. Twas brutal. The Norna took out the elephants on morale but the Axe/Spear unit broke reasonably early (they got to retreat to - is that a gliche). The main weight of my blessed troops fell on the Arco left and as these were berserkers nobody ran. By the time they were killed off Arco had lost all bar 2 commanders and 60 odd trooper out of their army of 120. And then the assualt. I only had a scout holding but their assualt force ended up being two commanders so it was an easy repulse. Two turns later I have relieved the Castle and Arco has been jumped by Tien Ch'i and is in big trouble - I will leave them to it.

C'tis must have suffered from an ego rush as they decided to jump in on the fun and have a go at me at my western extreme. As this is the area I had only just finished conquering indies in I had a fair few Heroes around , two castles and a moderate number of troops. C'tis was pretty weak and is taking a good thrashing. This is good as its acutally the most logical direction for me to develop as I won't have any land borders with other players from the newly captured territores. Unfortunately Caelum is running around in the northen Sea with a Wyrm (Shad Foth the n.1 Hall of Famer) but its got no real troopers and I've got Seithkona and Totems shields waiting for it.

Mind Burn is great vs elephants, Healing light is good with Seithkona backing Giants and I'm going to throw in some nasty shooty spells. I have a couple of fire2 air1 enchantresses out searching but once they find some fire gems I'll use them as battle mages with aim and fireball for starters.

In terms of future research I'll go evoc 4 this turn, con 5 to try Mandragora's, then its either thaum6, conj6 or evoc7. Research will go better if I can find some more death gems - income of 2. Once I do it should flow naturally enough.

Item wise Pendants of Luck have been replaced by Lucky Coins as my staple and Rainbow armour for Seithkona is awesome (gets all my air gems) and Totem Shields are working well vs the big nasties starting to abound. I've built a couple of Frost brands for serious damage dealing and one of the Herses with one butchered a slightly damaged elephant in one blow.[paragraph edited for mistakes]

Its a good game with lots of challenges and requiring extremely carefully strategic play. My starting position made long borders inevitable and I have worked hard not to be to greedy and make them longer than necessary, I'm having to keep my best army in reserve which is a pain but also has been a life saver.

My two best hero's are my first Herse, Grodvitner, who has tough skin and a prot of 23 and the Herse Gymer who has quickness. However the Jarls are close behind and there ability to bless and fight saved me from taking a heavy blow when C'tis first attacked as they attacked on a wide front and I sent the Jarls off with a couple of Woodsmen each, on guard commander, and they did the job. Their flexibility is really great and they save you from making the mistake of ending up with a big stack of Herse's and only 1 (or none) Gode. I really wish the Gode looked more different from the Herse. You end up with alot of commanders.

I've had a go with Manikins but as I only had one squad with an army they proved banishment bait. Still could be good with lots in one army deployed behind the giants and coming through them to support.

I will try Mandragora's but I will need to empower my present pretender to be able to really abuse it. As you say Hummer getting little guys to support the big guys is the big question. I suspect having some armies with undead and some not is a good idea as you will need alot of undead to be worth it.

Lamia's are still going to be useful vs heat nations as with a low dominion there is a lot of heat around.

The Iron Woods theme would be cute and the extra points could get death1 for Mandragora abuse. However Seithkona are awesome mages - one of the best in dom. The amount of things you can do with one astral1, nature1, or with death1, astral1 is really crazy. The only major weakness is fatigue and this time round Rainbow armour is doing a good job there - yay for the Enchantresses. Norna's are not bad but need a way of moving faster. Do boots of long strides increase strat movement? Boots of flying for a few key character is probably next.

Anyway I got visitors so its bye for now,

Ciao

Keir

[ January 09, 2004, 00:28: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Humer]

Oh, take some time to whip out the Gift of Health. This makes the berserking giants real powerhouses. My Hall of Fame Jarl got heroic toughness and combined w/ GoH the HP's were around 100. And I believe regeneration is based on maximum HP... And if they ever bother to take afflictions, they heal in only a few turns.

Get a squad of woodsmen and herses, bless them and talk about staying power!

Only problem, though, is GoH is in effect only in your dominion, but you can't have everything...

- Humer

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Humer:
Oh, take some time to whip out the Gift of Health.

I'm working on it - so many magical targets! Jotun has always had alot of magical potential.

It turn 33 and research is taking off with the death gems coming in but war is the priority. Ulm has joined in the attacks on me and they have huge armies. Their HI are not a great threat to my Giants as their armour isn't enough so its just a matter of spending a few turns killing their armies, losing a few provinces if necessary and then looking at going forward.

Been playing too late and I made the sin of deciding to move my reserve the first turn of war and then forgeting - giving Ulm a free valuable province. The next turn when I counter attacked half I forgot to give orders to my new unit of 12 woodsmen *sigh* they got massacred unblessed and in the fight that followed I lost 16 giants killing over 100 Ulmites when their main army turned up. Not bad but it would have gone much better had they all been blessed.

What is the spell where you get an army of mad buggers? It seems to work well. I have three ai's casting it at me and its capable of taking out any Giant province with less than 15 defence and even they are not entirely safe. I've lost two provinces to it so far which is worse than I normally suffer - and I've got giants for local defense. I'm impressed.

Reflecting on the way things are going the main issue is need for more gold to build more Seithkona. As its good to build a Herse or better at every castle so its hard to fit the Seithkona's in. For this reason I think the race needs more and cheaper casltes so its the wizards tower. The dominion is to low at 6 and as a consequence you lose alot of revenue to provinces which arn't cold enough. So this is my new look race where I have gone back to the Earth Mother for the higher dominion.

Earth Mother, Nature10, Earth2, dom9
order3, sloth3, cold2, growth1, misfortune3, drain2
Wizards tower.

Hopefully this design will make it easier to come up with more Seithkona as they do an amazing job with a reinvigoration item like boots of the messenger. Really like Healing light - they seem to pick the commanders to heal more often than not.

The other thing I would like to do different is start searching earlier. The centrality of skulls to research demands death gems in serious numbers.

Cheers

Keir

[Taqwus]

"Mad buggers" -- mad priest, flagellants and madmen = Imprint Souls. The AI seems to like this spell.