Tips for Vanheim

[Quitti]

I'm currently in a CBM mp-game (if you really want to know which, dig it out yourselves) with a master lich who is imprisoned w4e4d9n4 order3 sloth1 cold3 magic1 with dom7. Worked quite well so far - though in retrospect I'd like to swap out that order for growth or get more sloth for growth. One possibility would be dom5 order3 sloth3 cold3 growth3 magic1, though it'd leave you with some extra points for one point of a random path of your choice (blood? astral?)

That lich is good for forging boosters and that's your d9 access right out of the box after he wakes up. Tartarians are easy to get with him, and ench8 and you got your liches. Only problem will be astral access, which I solved by finding some random s1 mages and working up from there.

The lack of good magic paths (air is pretty one trick pony, thunderstrikes, and confusion is good if thunderstrikes won't work).

d9 gives a nice starting boost for your Vanheres who also get some def, reinvig and a small regen. d9 also works wonders with sacred shroud + seeking arrows, which you will have plenty of access to (I recall that affliction chance does work with them).

And you have blood. Blood is good and useful, except that you won't be getting much of anything from there until very late game (thanks to your abysmal research), at which point storm demons are not that much useful anymore

[Baalz]

Not to be argumentative, but what do you use any gems for outside of combat, summoning, and forging? Assuming I've got national air mages to use them air gems are often one of my most strategic gems.

Cloud trapeze - this spell at A2 is generally much more accessable than an S3 for teleport, which means you can move a lot more of your mages provided you've got the gems. Coincidentally, a lot of the national A2+ mages make good solo thugs - Vanheim/Helhiem, Eriu, Lanka, Formoria, etc. If not thuggin', then dropping in to lay down wind guide/arrow fend or more optimistically mass flight/fog warriors/wrathful skies. Or:

Thunderstrike. A2 mages are drastically more common than A3 ones. One owl quill = 5 thunderstrikes = a tremendous amount of damage out of research mages. Or better yet, storm + storm power...

Seeking arrow = pure awesome if you've got mages to spam it and A gems to dump in large numbers.

I've got lots more "good" uses for air gems, but those three are my "great" ones that I tend to jealously hoard my air gems over.

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Not to be argumentative, but what do you use any gems for outside of combat, summoning, and forging? Assuming I've got national air mages to use them air gems are often one of my most strategic gems.

Cloud trapeze - this spell at A2 is generally much more accessable than an S3 for teleport, which means you can move a lot more of your mages provided you've got the gems. Coincidentally, a lot of the national A2+ mages make good solo thugs - Vanheim/Helhiem, Eriu, Lanka, Formoria, etc. If not thuggin', then dropping in to lay down wind guide/arrow fend or more optimistically mass flight/fog warriors/wrathful skies. Or:

Thunderstrike. A2 mages are drastically more common than A3 ones. One owl quill = 5 thunderstrikes = a tremendous amount of damage out of research mages. Or better yet, storm + storm power...

Seeking arrow = pure awesome if you've got mages to spam it and A gems to dump in large numbers.

I've got lots more "good" uses for air gems, but those three are my "great" ones that I tend to jealously hoard my air gems over.

Now you're just being silly if you're going to compare one owl quill to 5 thunderstrikes when I clearly said I was forging them with hammers.

I don't think forging quills without hammers is very useful, but you can generally trade for the latter in any given game.

Also, I was only trying to enumerate the big air gem sinks. I think it's useful to turn Ballz's statment around, since for the cost of one cloud trapeze, you can get +3 research a turn forever. I have traded air gems for mage mobility (those MA Man crones are ****ing slow), but in general you don't use cloud trapeze that much unless you've got trapeze thugs. Even then,once you launch them, they generally just move around doing their dirty work.

At the end of the day, owl quills are a low priority. I've found that whenever I have free "hammer time" leftover for my air mages, I forge them, and that works out pretty well.

Jazzepi

[Torin]

What about a Titan with A9E9?
70 % lightning resistance, protection from arrows (a counter to glamour) and earth blessing takes care of the fatigue due to berserk (adds to berserk armor bonus) and helps battle mages.

A3 and 4 mages can orb lighning with minimal friendly casualties. Even wrathfulskies with sacred troops. Add Storm warriors enchantment and the massive lighning affects only enemies as your army is shock immune.

This gets room to a dom10 in picks and that can be 10 Vanheres a turn but you need to have at the most sloth 1.

Dwarves are the only cost effective researchers(maybe drain 2?), plus at earth 4 there's a lot you can do (I learned with the oracles of agartha), Earthquake, earthattack, Petrify, blight(death ones). They are your means to forge a dwarven hammer and kit some thugs with the other mages that are meant to be in battle.

[Trumanator]

I would love to use all those, but I really need a way to try and negate Van's research problem, which is similar to Helheim's, but without the Skull mentor option.

[Hoplosternum]

I am not really experienced enough to give advice so this is more to draw out some of the experts to critique it.

But here is my take on EA Vanheim's strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths -
Excellent battle magic - Smiths are good earth mages with decent other variety paths for some cross path spell casting and awesome air magic through the Vanadrotts, who can be put in Sabbath Communions if you are feeling fancy.

Very good basic troops - The Mounted Hirdlings and the glamour infantry should cut through indies and once you have access to some magic can be buffed by your battle mages. You probably don't NEED an awake SC Pretender to have good early expansion.

Stealthy Troops & Commander

Decent sacred troop - The Vanhere is good and can be made excellent with a good bless. But you already have decent troops for early expansion and spending all your points early on a decent double bless means your Pretender will usually be imprisoned. It's capital only too so you will never be able to really mass it compared to those nations that have none capital only sacreds. And you don't have sacred summons or recruitable sacred Thugs (really) that can use it. Nor will the blesses that really help the vanhere (Water, Fire, Astral) really boost your spell casting sacreds who would most benefit from earth.

Weaknesses

Poor research - Your only really good mages are capital only. You are reduced to spending a small fortune on Vanjarls (280 for 5rp+magic bonus) or Vanherse (180 for 3rp+magic bonus) at all secondary Castles.

No recruitable Thugs - While the Vanadrott may work in MA I just don't think it has the staying power in the EA when many of your opponents can recruit Thug/SC chassis like Fomorian Kings, Basalt kings, Neifel Jarls, Dai Oni from Turn 2 onwards. Although you have blood you don't have a cheap enough blood hunter to make competing with the likes of Mictlan and Lanka for a dash to early blood summons viable.

Lack of Paths - Little death and no nature, water or astral. This reduces forging, summons and global casting options later.

The easiest way to address - at least partially - all these weaknesses is to abandon the idea of an Imprisoned double blessed Pretender and go for an awake Rainbow instead. You can pick up 5 or 6 minor blesses on a Crone easily and still have tolerable scales. That should get you in to nature, astral, death plus extras for flavour. Astrals crucial for forging and death gets you in to decent Thugs and synergises with Seeking arrow. And crucially gives you reserach in the mid 20s on your Pretender. Plus it gives you sight searching and stacks of forging, summoning and overland spell options later. And minor blesses still boost the vanhere and your sacred commanders.

Of course your main concern might be that you simply don't have a decent Thug/SC counter and many of your EA opponents have these as recruitable commanders or national summons. So you will be meeting them Unfortunately I think this is simply a weakness of EA Vanheim. You could perhaps make the Vanhere - with say a heavy bless in to an anti Thug/SC unit. Or go with an awake SC Pretender. But I think you are probably better off boosting your battle magic with early research so when they come for you your smiths and air magic have something decent to cast.

[Agema]

Vanjarls/Vanadrott should be adequate thugs against a lot of PD, in pairs if not singly. Mistform, missile shield, mirror image should make them extremely hard to hit and suffer 1HP damage when they are. Some Vanadrott can also cast ironskin. Might want regen and reinvig, by bless or item, magic weapon and resistance where necessary.

They'll not stand up well against other thugs, magic weapon troops, and mages, granted, but they've got the capacity to be effective raiders.

[Wrana]

I'd say good scales are the way to go here. I tried a similar approach with Helheim once and it wasn't disappointing even though Helheim has better sacred troops. Early expansion with non-sacred Van troops is quite easy and when you add Legions of Steel...
As for Pretender itself, I'd think either Rainbow or something like Ghost King (SC/Rainbow) to add to magic diversity. What I would like to include here are Earth (for bless), Nature and Water. Astral if possible, but this will have to be at least 4 just to not be killed by Duels. I am not sure it's worth it. If going Astral it's probably better to go 5-6 initially for later heavy spells and Rings...
I also agree with chrispedersen on subject of Quills.

[Ironhawk]

Using air gems for owl quills instead of transport / combat magic is a shameful waste of a precious resource.

Vanjarls with Golden Shields can spam Shockwave to devastating effect. In basically the same way as Eagle Kings can spam it. And they can cloud trap as well, of course.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

Using air gems for owl quills instead of transport / combat magic is a shameful waste of a precious resource.

You are free to not doing it, of course. At the same time, there was a game where my Helheim was second in research due to them...
Of course, a mobility in mid-to-late game is very important. But it doesn't matter that you have gems for Trapeze if you hadn't researched it in time...

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

Vanjarls with Golden Shields can spam Shockwave to devastating effect. In basically the same way as Eagle Kings can spam it. And they can cloud trap as well, of course.

Yes. I even think they can spam it without those shields. And they are also relatively good thugs if armed with Brands instead (by the way, this is one of the reasons I think Water path is quite useful for these nations in early-mid game).

Considering a question about cheap SC Pretender - I think it should be stressed that they are CHEAP. Meaning - this is mainly a scales strategy made possible by Heims excellent non-sacred troops with strong combat mages. The thing is it's risky as you depend on independents for magic diversity. On the other hand taking a Rainbow Pretender is risky as you could be rushed. I think that latter risk is smaller as you have strong normal troops which can both withstand many things face-to-face and raid an opponent with too strong an army. Still, it depends on map and opposition...