Helheim - lets burn some rubber

[Omnirizon]

In practice, you will almost never get the initial expansion during an actual MP game that you get in build testing. Other players also expand fast, and will attack an overexpanded player who pushes into what they consider their 'implicit territory' (the provinces surrounding their cap, and probably many of those within two steps of cap too). For these reasons (and the latter one especially) metrics like initial expansion are over-hyped.

Initial expansion capacity possesses some minimum requirement to be competitive, but with some threshold beyond which it is pointless. For most MP games (which have about 12 provinces per player) most nations will not get 15 initial provinces. Most will get whatever the mean number of provinces per player is, regardless of how well they do in testing (unless they do just really really bad).

[chrispedersen]

Baalz,

Perhaps you would be good enough to rank the nations you create guides for?

And whether you consider them top tier, second tier etc.

I think this would go a long way toward giving perspecitve.

For example, how would you rank niefle, sauromatia, Helheim, and pick some other races you've made guides for.

I've no problem with some hyperbole but I think it lacks a bit of perspective to put Niefle and yomi, sauro and man in the same boat, regardless of the strength of the guide.


You can't burn rubber with all of them. Some burn rubber. Others burn oil.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, if you've got Order-3/Luck-3 then Death-3 isn't nearly enough to push you into "poor income" territory, particularly in the early game. No doubt you can always run out of money, but I don't think you can blame the scales for that one. Sounds like pretty early fighting if skellie amulets carried the day, but from a theoretical point of view I'm having a hard time picturing how skellie amulets are going to be much of a problem for lots of (net) 0-enc thugs wielding firebrands supported by 0-enc heavy cav and well blessed flying sacreds (who fly in and kill the back row before the skeletons get critical mass). If you're going for skellispam for yourself did you try leveraging sabbaths with reinvigoration? That's a powerful way to raise a whole lot of undead. Your pretender could forge master/slave matrixes as needed to get svartalfs in on the action throwing summon earthpower on top of an E9 blessing on top of reinvigoration. Those master matrixes can pull double duty if you're clever by letting you stack invulnerability and fire shield on your fire brand wielding 0-enc thugs (followed by reinvigoration of course)...which basically turns them into the ideal skellispam counter. If you're feeling particularly fancy you can add on summon earthpower to the mix which will let you quicken self (via your pretender if you've no better options) and breath of winter...which doesn't help against skeletons, but does work very nice against most other things when you've got several thugs working together for big fights. I don't doubt what you're saying, but I have a hard time picturing how in an early fight Vanheim has enough death income to be anywhere near competitive with Helheim in dropping skeletons if that's the route you wanted to take...considering you're leveraging all that on D3/D4 Hangadrotts each one should be an almost never ending vomit of shuffling dead if you really focus on skellispam. If you're that hard pressed and are pushing skellispam forge a couple skull staffs rather than skull mentors and you're looking at D4/D5 guys with 8 reinvigoration hitting turn 6 with no fatigue (due to the reinvigoration blood spell). As to magic bows it seems like your first target in this strategy is thugs who can drop air shield, which seems like an ideal counter.

It sounds like you just got out played. No shame in that if you're playing against a skilled opponent, but unless I'm missing something it doesn't sound like the build itself failed you.

[Trumanator]

The only good thing about Orb Lightning is that A1 mages can spam it. Other than that, there isn't really anything good.

[Tolkien]

Honestly, I really don't see why it's Evo-5. I don't see why it has to be higher then Thunderstrike. Anyone care to enlighten me to the reasoning?

(makes a mental note to suggest a lowering in CBM)

[Immaculate]

You've totally sold me on this tolkien- i can't wait to try this.

[Micah]

Right, and don't forget that the real fatigue cost for orb lightning with an A3 mage is even lower than stated, at around 3, not 10.

[Psycho]

And don't forget that orb lightning does stun damage as well (per lightning, which amounts to far more than that of thunder strike for higher path mages, but it's not AoE).

[Tolkien]

Well, thanks for the correction: I was basing this on a human-sized units. I forgot about giants (in which case, Orb Lightning is going to be more useful).

My main problem with Orb Lightning is the range (15 is rather small), and that the fatigue for Thunderstrike, if you're reverse sabbathing with reinvigoration (which was the discussion that sparked the whole Orb Lightning vs. Thunderstrike debate), is more or less irrelevant, as fatigue won't be much of an issue in that case.

[Immaculate]

I tried to run a reverse communion with the thunderstrikes and blood sabbaths and it didn't work. If you'll bear with me, maybe you can explain what i did wrong.

i was breaking a seige from formoria (i hate formoria) and they had lots of troops of various sorts and i had about 12 helherdlings and some infantry and 8 vanjarls.

the first four vanjarls were scripted with:
sabbath slave, blessing, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike
the next 3 were scripted with:
sabbath salve, thunderstrike, thunderstrike, thunderstike, thunderstrike
and the last was scripted with:
sabbath master, mistform, reinvigoration, air shield, reinvigoration


Instead they sat around casting holy avenger and sermon of courage and the sabbath master casted fanatacism.

Why didn't they cast as i was hoping they would? thanks for any help- i am still having lots of trouble with my sabbaths/communions.

Thanks ahead of time.