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

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.

Behemoths also have mediocre MR. Thus can be bLasted by anyone who has a reasonable mage with any variety of spells (Dust to Dust works if you don't want to worry about MR).

In the end, I'd probably rather have a Bane Lord for a Behemoth if I had enough of a Gem Income to equip it.

[Windreaper]

Besides, you don't necessarily have to fully equip your bane lords. I usually only equip my bane lords with stuff like regen rings, antimagic amulets and luck pendants. They already got a decent weapon (sorry mr. SC - one scratch is all I need) so I'd rather have another bane lord for the wraith sword. They actually serve as rather decent troops when supported by infantry, dispossessed, ghosts, you name it. There are other more suitable frames for real supercombatants, imo, so I'd just go for the numbers with bane lords.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Windreaper:
They already got a decent weapon (sorry mr. SC - one scratch is all I need) so I'd rather have another bane lord for the wraith sword.

A bane blade has to also succeed a MR check. That's pretty rare when MR gets into the mid twenties.

They actually serve as rather decent troops when supported by infantry, dispossessed, ghosts, you name it. There are other more suitable frames for real supercombatants, imo, so I'd just go for the numbers with bane lords.

What would you use for a SC besides bane lords at level 5 research? Ice devils are also available at blood 5, but they aren't death summons.

[Kelan]

Another way you could get your 4S/3N Coatl to 5N (if you really wanted to) is to forge a Ring of Sorcery. Use that with the Moonvine Bracelet and you could get to 5N, assuming the Coatl has 2 misc slots.

Then, you could pass the ring among your other Astral, Blood, Death, and Nature mages each turn for purpose of boosting them +1 for summons as necessary so it would still have some use after.

[ March 22, 2004, 16:07: Message edited by: Kelan ]