Mod Nation Playing Guides

[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.