Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous

[geo981010]

The 9 Nature 9 Earth is nice for Niefel Jotun, but probably too costly. If you stop at Earth 4, you save a lot of points so you can have an economy but still get the important regen/beserk combo (and a little reinvig too).

My fav so far:
Jotun
Niefel
Great Mother
Nature 9
Earth 4
Ord 3
Sloth -3
Cold 3
Growth 2
Magic -1
Luck 0

Dominion 5
40 Admin 80point castle

The loss of the +4 armor and extra reinvog is sad, but after getting Beserk+3 in the cold their armor is already 20 (15 base, +1 per cold scale, + 3 beserk (of which 2 count)). The Herse are only 60 gold and can be blessed, so you want to make one of them a turn and try and get some good HoF specials on them. Skip the indie Lizards (curse), knights/calvary, large barbs, and those fishmen (cause of those nets), but everything else is pretty viable with just flanking 2 NGs and a couple of Herse, and a handful of Spearmen to soak up the inital charge. The cold effect of the NGs go a long way in preventing damage - enemies freeze and lose attack/defense, and seem to only attack every other round (confirm on that?). You can crank out a new army by turn 5, and build a temple with 40GP priests to get some temple makers going asap.

I don't wait for a NJ leader - just take a Gode for holy +4, and you can always kill him off if you want an NJ prophet later. 500 GP is almost a new town/temple combo! And a new town means more blessed Herse.

Clear provinces around your capitol to allow recruiting 2-4 NGs a turn (probably can't afford that many anyway, which is why I traded sloth 3 for growth). You can get decent economy, and then you can throw up castles quick and flood the world with Herse.

You don't have cheap mages, but Skratti are only 250GP now and make great blood hunters and battle commanders. Gygja are ok researchers, and thanks to the random 2 sorcery picks you want to make lots of them to get the cool combos (the death/nature +3, or Astral +2 in particular). NJs I avoid since I don't want them going beserk, but since they have water 3 they are good for Winter Wolves and the Robe of the Sea (Ice Devils are Cold 3 Blood 3, so you can summon them with Construction 4 now with no pretender help) Mentors would probably be a good investment shortly too.

Research Conjuration 2 quickly - Neifel Jotun gets great water gem income, and having a couple of ice drakes behind the cold immune NGs and you can rack up the kills to win quickly enough to even take out larger battles. Ice Demons would be nice later too - again cold attacks and the option for some flying commander killing.

The luck is kind of risky - I still hate the flood in your capitol on turn #3 and you lose 1/4 of your population But with Order +3, you should only rarely get events. (Sidenote: it would be nice if castles protected your population from these effects - they do have a safe haven to go to!)

You can really get a good start with this, and have a decent late game too. Neifel starts off with the Illwinter spell too, so you can try that. And of course Ice Devils - as I mentioned elsewhere giving them a Shroud of the Battle Saint and they get the bless effects.

The main reason I take the GM and not the Green Dragon is so the IDs get the +2 reinvig - it really will help in longer battles with them. The big bonus is the regeneration and poison res, and at 5 gems is too cheap (and you get +5 armor too).

Taking a Dragon instead saves a lot of points and gives you a nice poison range attack early. Your blessed NGs/Herse resist 50% of poison, so would probably give a quicker start so that might be nicer.

Either way. late game your pretender will want to cast Gift of Health (100+ HP NGs!), Gift of Nature's Bounty (doubles income, so you can really crank out the expensive Neifel troops) and awaken Tarrasques (lordy they are nasty!).

Another nice combo:
Pythium
Serpent Cult
Great Mother
Earth 9
Nature 4
Order 3
Sloth -3
Cold 0
Growth 1
Luck 0
Magic -1

Dominion 4
50 Admin City

Serpent Cult means you get Holy Hydras! The +4 Armor here is very nice, and the reinvig gravy. The Nature 4 gives Beserk +1, so after the first hit they won't rout.

A Serpent Priest (their picture is too funny!) and a single Blessed Hydra can take out most 5th level indepents. The Hydra starts with 12 protection, and gets 16 after blessing, 17 after beserk, and regenerates 15 HP a turn. With the reinvig, it can take getting ganged up on without fatigue worries, and the poison effect will cause the enemy to rout all the faster. These Hydras also would be a prime candidate for Gift of Reason.

An army is just a Serpent Priest and a single Hydra, and they just destroy most indies. Serpent Cult mages kind of suck, but they will get the +4 reinvig and quickness. Without Howl being a viable option (it costs 2 gems each summoning now), they can do minor spells like vine arrow, sleep, heal, etc. Their magic is pretty limited compared to Arch Theurgs, but oh well.

Some armored Legion troops with flanking Serpent Cataphract (also blessed for the benefits, so they are pretty fierce) is a great army to build with unused resource points, for indies that can't be taken with Hydras.

Magically, this race seems a little less impressive in the long run, but Nature is a lot more useful than Dom 1. Lamia Queens will be helpful to get to the other paths (sorcery anyway). I haven't seen the heroes yet - if you get Bart the Arch Theurg that would be very nice! I suppose heroes are dependent on themes, however, so probably not.

Any other race suggestions?

[ November 02, 2003, 19:32: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[ywl]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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Originally posted by Pocus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
Hmmm... I tried a Death-9/Nature-4 Prince of Death with Pythium/Serpent Cult. I somewhat expected the 'Life of Death' effect would give me undead Hydras, but alas it doesn't work.

what did it gives?

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Room for a new hydra.

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Blessable, holy Hydrae?

For example, a pretender with 9 water can give you hydrae that regenerate, surrounded by poison cloud and have 1.5x9 (13.5) attack each turns. Your knights will also be holy and can have 4.5 (?) attacks each turn. All of these sound good on paper .

But. Requiring so much magic on the pretender, and the expensive cost of a hydra, it might be very hard to do though.

[Nerfix]

In a nutshell:
Abysia-9 Earth-Reinvig and protection for Lava Warriors and your sacred mages
Abysia-9 Air-75% Shock resistance and Air shield to compensate Lava Warrior's lack of shields.
Abysia-9 Fire-I've seen Lava Warriors moving down Knights with +4 attack and extra 8 armor piercing damage...

A theoretical one:
Marignon-9 Blood-Build Flagellants. Bless them. Let the enemy kill them. Watch enemies to get cursed.

[ November 02, 2003, 19:19: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[LordArioch]

Seems that nature blessing is pretty much the best. Adding to so many stats and no rout is worth a defense penalty, and regen at 9 means high prot units like black templar just get angry when injured and immediately regenerate.
Of course when somebody hurts your arch theurg for 1 damage and he goes beserk you might regret the nature.

[geo981010]

The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

[Pocus]

Originally posted by geo981010:
The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

Thats evil, but why taking death 9 if you are not evil.

[HJ]

Originally posted by Nerfix:

A theoretical one:
Marignon-9 Blood-Build Flagellants. Bless them. Let the enemy kill them. Watch enemies to get cursed.

So that's what death curse is? The unit that kills the blessed unit gets cursed?

I took nature 9 and air 4 for Niefelheim. I thought that the giants could use an arrow shield due to their size.

[Keir Maxwell]

I suspect I have understated my case somewhat as some people seem to have missed the point.

re retarded scales.

Who cares? Death is not really a big deal when all you run are super combatents. Sloth is ok as you don't need that many resources to go crazy.

There's actually alot of room to play with scales as I tried chaos 3 luck 3 and got a truly absurd start with a free 1000gp's on the second turn and lots of other useful freebies - although I didn't like getting free troops to upkeep until they have starved! As for the magic I doubt I would research anything other than construction for along time and there's no hurry with that - you start with powerful magic through the bless and everything you fight with can be blessed.

Its not like there are any spells you could research early to compare to the bless or anything you could buy with gold for that matter - thats is why these style of races will work. You start with the power from turn 1 or 2 and thus the speed of your start makes up for the weakness of your scales irrelevent.

If you have 20 provinces by turn 10 do you really think bad scales matter? Building a conquering army each turn after turn 5 or 6 is insanely fast. I've won in multi-player using death scale 3 before with a significantly slower race so I'm not just blowing smoke on this one.

re Death 9 Earth 9 to expensive?

Who cares about weakening dominion scales if you get pretty much everything you need at the beginning.

I should have made it a bit clearer in the first post - I suspect this race is so powerful as to be broken for mutli-player. So the question of wether paying the points for the effects is worth it just doesn't occur to me - I wouldn't seriously consider doing without the +4 protection for this race.

The only thing this race would really like it doesn't have is higher dominion.

Re Jotun Herse as a super combatent.

I would not say most independants can be taken by one Jasper - indie strength 5. You actually have to be very careful and I'm doubting the speculation I have read on early super combatents and the lack of counters to them. Anything with high damage (Lizard warriors, knights, Barbarians) will, and did in test, kill any of the early game super combatents in this race if the numbers are bad enough - I tried pushing the limits and even the Earth Mother bit the dust. However vs weak indies the Herse is pretty awesome and supporting the Niefel giants it makes all the difference as do the Jarls you use for blessings. The biggest problem with this race is actually getting enough blessers early so I turn my first Herse into a prophet.

re other possibilities.

I think there are a heap (everything from sacred Serpent Cataphracts to Heart Companions could go crazy) of other good potential races with high magic pretenders utilising bless. I really rate the water, earth, and nature bless abilites and I'm not writing the others off yet (except perhaps astral and air). One of the most important features is finding a pretender to get what you want cheap - Earth Mother is obviously useful but any pretender starting at lvl 3 can get to 9 for around 160pts which is no big deal.

Van with +4 defence and 50% quickness - Valkrie with +4 defense and 50% quickness! I'm keen to get my copy of the full game.

Through your preconceptions out the window - Dom II is not Dom I.

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by geo981010:
The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

Thanks Geo thats really fabulous news!!

At this point I'm struggling to say wether the new themes for races or the bless effects are the most interesting addition to design possibilities. To be honest I was critical of the lack of design possibilities with powerful/tight synergy in Dom I but Dom II, for me, is potentially even better than Stars! for race design possibilites.

Thanks for that Geo,

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

[Jasper]

Originally posted by geo981010:
Paraphrasing: life after death can yield mages with no maintenance cost

This seems potentially abusive to me. Typically a very large proportion of one's upkeep is for mages, and I bet it's fairly easy to figure out ways to arrange for one's mages to die once -- especially with a cooperative ally.