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| Fomorian Giant: Okay, for most purposes, these guys ARE vanity items. Honestly, there are only 2 compelling reasons to ever train these guys at all - Poor Amphibian (hey, it's better than nothing!), and 50%CR. The CR is really only useful in certain situations, like fighting Niefelheim, but the PAmph can leverage you into the water, which is usually a good thing. On the other hand, their base Prot and Def are both 2 lower than the Unmarked. Combine this with the significantly higher costs, and you see that really the Giants should only be trained for specific missions, while the Unmarked serve in general operations.
Nemedian Warrior: These guys are pretty sweet. 16Def with Glamour and a magic weapon, what's not to like? Well, I don't like that they compete with Unmarked, that's what. Perspective is mighty funny. Personally, I see these guys as the vanity items. You are not Vanheim. The mighty Fomorian Nation does not skulk around like brigands. See above about face-ripping. When we raid, we still tear off faces, but why Stealth when you can Fly? Still, I can't say never train these guys, but I don't see any special reason to recommend them, other than they are "so cool". 8.18.2.4 Commanders Firbolg Scout: You would train him over an indie Scout for why, Javelins? Never train one. Ever. I will come to your house and be mean to you. Really mean, like as mean as if you buy Fomorian Militia. Grrr. Fir Bolg Champion: See above - replace "indie scout" with "indie commander". Fomorian Scout: Stealthy +0. Seriously. NEVER. It's just a Fomorian Javelinist who can't actually Sneak anywhere effectively. I'm tired of threatening you, I may come to your house and be mean anyways, just to make sure you understand. Fomorian Champion: There really is little reason. Maybe once a game you take a castle from someone, and this is the best commander you can train to carry some Firbolgs to reinforce an army in a pinch. Otherwise these guys are better off in the fields, yet again. Unmarked Champion: Okay, repeat after me, "the Unmarked will carry our great nation to victory". For just 10g more, and 2 more Resources, you get a commander Unmarked. He is Sacred, Holy1, full slots, 15Def unblessed, and basically is like a miniature Chuck Norris clone. It is utterly hilarious what these guys are capable of with the suggested Bless and a little creativity, but that's for the strat section. Here I will just say - you want lots of these guys, they are the Butter, and the regular Unmarked are the Bread. Fomorian Druid: One of the weak points of this nation. This is your -only- recruitable anywhere Mage. With 1A and 1AWND pick for 150g, you are thanking the fates that they are Sacred, or you'd really be screwed. These bad boys get 5RP apiece with Magic1, and this is hardly impressive. Luckily, they all become quite useful. Even the 1A/1N variant, since most of them can just be dedicated as your Research backbone, as the others start to gain more responsibilities. On the bright side, they all come with 1A at least, so even in the darkest of times, Phantasmal Warrior spam, or Orb Lightning spam, or a Storm + A2 spells can make you glad that you have dozens of these guys coming out your ears (seriously, dozens, you will need a LOT of gold). Fomorian King: It's good to be the King! 500g and well worth it. These guys get 3A/2D out of the box with 110%AWD pick. 9RP with Magic1, you will want to hold as many of these back Researching in the early-mid game as possible. These are the weakest SC chassis of the 3 major giant nations, out of the box - damn that one eye, it offsets the Prec bonus from Air magic, slightly impacting their casting abilities as well. So, it sounds like I'm talking these guys down. Shhh. Yes, you will always want them supported, either being guarded by Unmarked, or operating in teams - but teamwork is something to be proud of. Look at it this way, you have 3 major variants (ignoring possible 10% picks, which are just incredible). You have 4A/2D, these guys are your Air booster forgers, your heavy Evocationists, and your Air Battlefield Enchant casters. They are indispensible, so you are going to smile every time you get one. You have 3A/3D, these guys will ultimately be your most powerful SC chassis, with Mistform and Soul Vortex. Bear in mind, they must be used solo (can support with non-mistformed units, mostly and especially if they regenerate), as Soul Vortex will kill Mistform in adjacent Kings - MR can mitigate this, but unless we are pushing past 25MR, it's best to avoid this scenario. The 3A/1W/2D Variant is interesting in combat. With a base Def of 13 on the King, +4 from Bless, and +3 from Personal Quickness, we're at 20, throw on a Frost Brand and it hits 24, and add a Weightless Kite, and we hit 27 Def. These guys are your anti-SC patrol. Try to get them a couple stars, and then keep them parked so you can Cloud Trapeze them on anyone silly enough to raid into your lands unsupported. Nemedian Champion: Again - trophy commander. "I destroyed the Nemedian civilization, and all I got was this Nemedian Champion, and one eye". Okay, base Def18 and self Blessable, they can technically be thugged. They are capital only. You should probably buy a few of these guys at the start of the game, before you can afford Kings. Check this out, they are A1/D1/H1, and Glamoured. Right, you're saying, "I thought I don't build Nemedian Warriors?". Forget those pansies. Think Flying Shoes, and 30 Undead Leadership. Chew on that for a bit, and I'll talk to you later. Nemedian Sorceress: A2/D2 1AWND pick. The game that I won, I had 7 of these, from the first year when I couldn't reliably buy Kings. I've since determined that since their upkeep (non-sacred!) is actually higher than for a King, that there is actually little to no reason to hire one of these nice ladies. Maybe if you dabble into Blood, and you want a chassis for a Black Heart, I can technically see that. Otherwise you have 2 other capital only options that are more cost effective, and more useful. 8.18.2.5 Volume 3: The Early Game Yes, you made it, we're finally on turn 1. Savor this moment. Turn 1: You want to purchase 2 Unmarked, and a Nemedian Champion. You should have a little Resources left, buy Firbolgs. I suggest Prohetizing your initial commander, it just moves things along. Here you have a choice, first research goal can be either Alt3 for Mistform, or Evo2 for Lightning Bolt. Whichever one you pick, I sternly recommend you take the other as your second goal. Turn 2: Attach your Unmarked to the Firbolg squad, set your Prophet to Divine Bless + Smitex4 + Spells. Avoid the hard indies with this force, and be amazed. Your Unmarked always rush ahead of the Firbolgs, screwing up incoming archer fire. Between how bad *** Unmarked are, and your Smites, it is entirely likely that this force will be able to proceed through weak-moderate indies until initial expansion is over. I'm serious. Relish it. Turn 3+: Priority 1 will always be Unmarked. Do not overflow them, use any remainder of Resources for a few Firbolgs to toss in with them. If you can afford a King, do the Dance of Joy, if you cannot, smile because you still get a Nemedian Champion. When you get 10 Unmarked together, package them with a Champion, set them in the far back field with orders to Hold and Attack Closest. Set Champion to BlessX3, and either Spells, or Fire Closest depending on your confidence level and research. Repeat deployment of these squads until all indies are conquered. 10 Unmarked will devastate 99% of indie spawns without any real chance of a casualty. You can technically launch with 8 but it slightly increases risk factor in favor of expedience. Now, once your expansion gets nicely underway, you will likely find that you are comfortably maxing your queue with Unmarked + Kings, and generating a healthy surplus. Here is where Fomoria starts to get funny - as much as disposable cash will allow, start dropping castles wherever they look good. Insure a Temple in each, but you should only need Labs in 2-3 of them for the time being. As long as you can avoid even making Firbolg chaff, your cash flow should allow you to easily put out Unmarked, a King, a few Druids, and a large handful of Unmarked Champions every turn. Set the Champions on Preach duty for now, and/or throw them in with your other forces to gain stars - these guys are an investment. Your initial Research thrust will eventually get you to Alt3+Evo5, this gives you access to Mistform, Orb Lightning, Thunder Strike, Storm, and Personal Quickness. These spells can carry you quite a long way. At this point, you want to grab Thaum2, and Conj3, and have your A2 Druids cast Auspex, and your A1/D1 Druids cast Dark Knowledge until the cows come home. Additionally, depending on potential random Gem events, or N0 sites yielding gems, you may either want to just Empower a Druid to N2 and get him spamming Haruspex, or send an A1/N1 Druid out manually searching. Bear in mind you will have to manually target Auspex on those provinces if you manually search at A1, which can be a hassle. Also, sooner or later you must also decide (partially based on serendipitous supply of free early Water gems) whether to just Empower an A1/W1 Druid to start casting Voice of Apsu, or to wait until you get to Cons6 and build a few Water Bracelets first. Here I want to pause, and point out one specific thing about this strategy that clashes with something that I complain to people about. The simple fact is, you are looking at a start with absolutely *zero* access to Astral, and I will not kid you, S1 and S2 forgings will be very valuable to you by late game - indispensible in fact. However, unlike any other path in the game (except Blood, but though Blood access is undeniable, it's also undeniably a pain), you are almost guaranteed to at least get Lizard Shaman, or Crystal Amazons in your initial expansion. I've run hundreds of SP tests through at least the first year (not just with Fomoria, eesh ), and honestly, while it's minorly inconvenient, just keep your eyes peeled, and the first access you get to Astral, jump on it. Also bear in mind, if nothing else, between Gem events, cross-path gem sites, potential S0 gem sites, and the relative efficiency of Alchemy to get starting Pearls, you should be able to put something together by some time in the third year, in time to develop it enough for what you really need out of it. Also it bears mentioning, that even with that, you still also lack any native access to Fire, or to Earth. The Earth hurts, I will admit, and it's one of the benefits of the 9W/4E/4N variant, as you can at least compensate slightly as soon as your pretender is out. But bear in mind also, how relatively common Earth is especially, in conjunction with Nature in magic sites. Not just gems, but recruitables like Gnomes and Witches, not to mention the fairly common Enchantresses, which will give you access to all elements, plus many useful cross-path forging options. Again, you can't count on any of that, and it's entirely possible that you make it to end game with little to no Earth access (most likely, "little", as you should eventually be able to Empower someone and get the boulder rolling). 8.18.2.6 Tertiary Research Goals Conj: 4=Barghests (these guys are pretty effective with the W/N Bless), 6=Morrigans, 8=Dance of the Morrigans, Queens of Air (not entirely necessary, but keep them away from more fragile Air powers) - Manifestation - Well of Misery (as you can see, Conj8 is BIG for Fomoria, getting the Well up is crucial to push from competitive, to dominating), 9=Ghost Riders, Tartarian Gate (A note here, some may argue it's not needed, but you can compete with EA C'tis as premier Tartarian summmoner, and they may not even be in the game, leaving you on top - Tarts may not be necessary, but they add numbers and diversity well worth the expense) Alt: 6=Soul Vortex - Darkness, 7+Fog Warriors, 8=Disintegrate Evo: 6=Wrathful Skies - Wind of Death (both, used sparingly, are potent - your HP will allow you to outlast most enemies against Wrathful Skies, and you have 100+ years to spare on Unmarked, 200+ on Kings and Nemedians), 7=Shimmering Fields (not my cup of tea mostly, but has its uses) - Cloud of Death Cons: Cons4 opens up most of the doors you need for most applications - but beware, getting Cons8 early (I did in the game I won) is a huge boon, even if you don't "need" it, per se, the Scepter of Dark Regency is like a "free Tart a turn" card for you, and there are numerous other goodies that are very nice to monopolize, even before accounting for any magic path diversification. Ench: 3=Raise Skeletons (come on, sometimes it's the tool for the job, Niefel got you down?), 4=Cloud Trapeze (better sooner than later, I say), 5=Thunder Ward - Foul Vapors (again, you have the HP to suck up a bit of it, do they?), 6=Rigor Mortis (not for use with Quickened melee troops but can be useful in extreme late game), 7=Mass Flight (mixed bag, as most late game encounters you will want a Storm up, we'll find out why shortly), 8=Storm Warriors = Mists of Deception Thaum: 3=Leeching Darkness, 4=Terror, 6=Wither Bones - Leprosy 8.18.2.7 Magic Use I have 1 word for you, 1 word to describe the crux of your superiority in late game, over all other elements - Death Gems. No wait, that's 2 words..... oh I've got it - Morrigans. That's what the Death Gems are for. In time, you will want to churn out several Skull Staves, and you will give these to A1/D1 Druids, and set them to (M)onthly cast Summon Morrigan. Beyond that, you need Dance of the Morrigans. It is seriously, undoubtedly, the most powerful Battlefield Enchant in the entire game. The way it operates, is similar to Mists of Deception, in that you get Morrigan spawns at the edges of the battlefield, and they continuously spawn throughout the combat. Well, that's neat, right? Well yes, except Morrigans are like Valkyries on PCP. And they come with Life Draining weapons. Oh, and they can fly in Storms. Let me explain how you can devastate army after army in the late game, with little likelihood of defeat except by the most contrived of circumstances - For this, you probably want 4 Kings, 2 of them need a Bag of Winds, and a Winged Helmet - the other 2 need Skull Staves and Skull Helms, and don't leave home without your Staff of Storms. Also, if one of your Air casters can carry one of the Holy boosting artifacts, all the better, or bring your Prophet along, as this army is both Hammer and Anvil as one. Another nice trick to throw in, if you can gain access to Crystal/Slave Matrices, is to bring along 4 Druids with Slave Matrices, and your Kings with Crystals, but this is doable without either (and without Divine Bless, it is just the au jous for your sandwich). Your combat will look much like this - Turn 1 - everyone casts Summon Storm Power, except for your 5D casters, who cast Dance of the Morrigans, and Darkness (oh did I forget to mention, since they're Undead, they also have 100% DV). Second round of combat, you cast Fog Warriors, Wrathful Skies, and Storm Warriors. By the time you are in the third round of combat, you really don't have to do anything - though now casting your Divine Bless will leave you with an awful lot of Quickened Morrigans. If you brought some extra Morrigans with you (it's a good idea), say 30-40 of them, have them set to Hold and Attack Closest. Let your Kings rain down whatever they want, it literally doesn't matter at this point. By the end of combat, the last few enemies will be literally engulfed in a sea of Glamoured, Quickened, Life Draining, super high Defense Morrigans. Your opponent will probably set to AI. Now, aside from this, I promised to talk about your Unmarked Champions a bit. Here's the thing, in the early game, especially with a handful of Unmarked set to Guard Commander, to bulk up numbers a bit, squads of these guys can tear up almost anything. Adding in a few Druids to throw down Phantasmal Warriors (Phantasm = size 2, Unmarked = size 4, you do the math), and some supporting Lightning, make these very effective auxilliary forces. Also, as mentioned, throwing in 10-20 Firbolgs will also dramatically enhance staying power in many circumstances. As your research and gem income increase, you will want to look towards giving these guys a Frost Brand, and a Pendant of Luck. If you managed to secure a source of Hammers, that is 6 gems for a very potent thug. Due to potential Fatigue issues, they are not meant for solo use, but they are so cheap to purchase, maintain, and gear, that squads of 6-10 of these become trivial to deploy into multiple weak points, defensively or offensively. Eventually you can mix and match other low cost items to tailor them to specific enemies - 4 of these guys with Dusk Daggers make quick work of any less mobile thugs the enemy employs, to free up Kings for the more high tech challenges. Also with enough Unmarked Champions at your disposal, you can very effectively use them to discourage enemy raiding forces - your PD may suck, but who knows where your thug patrols will be this turn? Remember those Nemedian Champions? I bet you know what they do, now. 1xFlying Shoes + 10 or more Morrigans + 1 Nemedian Champion = very potent, highly mobile, fully Glamoured raiding force. The Champions can even Bless the Morrigans in combat, it's like a dream come true. Just remember, with Fomoria, Speed = Brutality. Lightning is great and all, but you can resist Lightning, you cannot resist the Blitzkrieg. 8.18.3 8.19 Niefelheim, Jotunheim, Utgard 8.19.1 Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era I am currently happily playing a game on the large 480 land province map (over 100 sea provinces) that comes with the game, and I may have found my first nearly unbeatable race strategy.
the monolith and put him in jail. Then give him +3 cold +1 Order and +3 growth. For magic picks give him 10 nature, 4 astral and 4 fire, and you should end up with no points left to spend. The Astral pick lets you cast archaic record later in the game so you can find all the gem sits and the fire pick allows you to forge fire armors for your giants to negate their inherent weakness to fire. Taking picks of 4 instead of 2 or 3 lets your blessed troops gain a bonus from the picks. +1 Magic resist for 4 astral and +2 attack skill for the 4 fire.
which will make you Niefel Giants almost invulnerable in combat. They will have a regeneration of 14 hit points a turn once blessed with the above nature mod and it takes a real special enemy troop type or overwhelming numbers to cause any kind of real damage at all to them once blessed.
until I have at least 4,000 on hand. Then I queue up 20 Niefel Giants and 1 Niefel Jarl leader. I then build three more Niefel Jarl leaders over the next few turns while my giant troops are being built and I end up with an army of 4 Jarl¿s and 20 sacred Giants (later in the game I upped it to 5 Jarl¿s and 25 giants). The Jarl¿s themselves are also sacred, so my entire army is sacred and all troops will benefit from the 20% regeneration buff along with the other buffs.
all of you giants blessed in about 95% of your fights. The giants should have (hold and attack) orders and be set up at the back of the battlefield to keep enemy missile fire inaccurate while your busy blessing your troops. Place 5 giants in a squad under the command of each commander and evenly space them across the battlefield from top to bottom. Then place the commander into the middle of the squad and then move him 1 pixel forward from the center. This will create a line of 2 giants deep across the battlefield, thus maximizing your combat potential. Bunched up giants are susceptible to fear spells and other area affect spells, so better to spread them out. Also bunched up giants only see about 1/3rd of their number reach the melee while the rest mill around behind. With this formation if you give the two end squads hold and attack rear orders, you should see most of your giants engaged in the melee. This maximizes your damage potential and also spreads damage you take out over as many giants as possible.
loss. But in my current game with neutrals set to level 9 (the max), I¿ve only lost 3 giants and 1 Jarl while capturing in excess of 40 neutral provinces. These armies are almost unstoppable, I¿ve seen them defeat regular armies with more then 200 normal troops in them without taking a single loss. The above army can capture 1 province a turn and once you have 2 or 3 armies going you can dominate the province rush part of the game. By not doing anything for the first 10-15 turns of the game, it seems to make the AI players less aggressive towards you. I¿ve gone without being attacked for almost 50 turns. But once I started to close in on the leader (the player with the most provinces) I was then attacked (they declared war but not all invaded) by about 1/3rd of the AI players. But by then I had three of the above armies in operation and easily pushed back any incursions into my territory.
strategy with this particular race. I tried a nature bonus of 10% regeneration, but ended up losing quite a few giants (too expensive to make it a winning strategy). There is a big difference between 6 hit points regenerated a turn and 14 in tactical combats.
my first at bat strategy and it¿s been very fun to play. The AI has two nations still ahead of me on provinces, but I feel confident I¿ll be able to hold my own whenever I finally come in contact with them. Comments: -> A smaller force of those giants is enough to advance in the early game. In single-player, this is good enough. In multi-player, you'd be devastated. High Nature bless with Niefelheim is good, of course. Remember that you can make one of your starting giants a prophet and thus don't have to recruit an expensive Jarl or Gode for your first army. -> Might be problems in the case of Death Weapons or curse. Fight long enough, and you will accumulate crippling afflictions, even with regen. Niefels are nasty, 'tho... and can be quite long-lived, which is good for the HoF. I've got a Jotun Scout with heroic obesity. -> Wow ... your strategy can use some tweaking ... Mainly due to your not very optimal scales, lack of earth bless for the giants, lack of early expansion, extreme weakness to f9, no real mention of their battle mages, niefel thugs, etc ... -> I would make some skinshifters, give them a cheap commander and sendthem after the weaker (militia ect) provinces to give you a gold boost. I agree that some earth fitted into the bless somehow would be a great help but your bless is fine as it is. As said you could easily expand with far less than that and, you do start up too slow. Send out armies of 1 jarl and 4 giants and that should be enough for most provinces, before that use your skinshifters, they are very powerful for their cost (and great at soaking up attacks) -> That's strategy looks like a real overkill. I've tried Niefels with one of the human pretenders, imprisoned N6E4S3 or something like that. Dominion 5 or 6, Order+3,Cold+3,Sloth+1,Growth+1,Luck-2,Magic+1. Those Niefel Jarls is a real power from early on. With nature (regeneration is more to prevent afflictions than anything else) and earth (reinvigoration) blessing and with quicken oneself (alt-2) they can handle most of indies (and early AI army) alone. So I bought few Gigjas and Skrattis, went for Alt-2 while my starting army went to conquer indies from turn 2 (with scout who became prophet). In a 5-6 turns I had enough income to recruit Niefel Jarl per turn, Alt-2 was researched by that time, so they just went conquering everything around. Further research targets are Con-4 and Alt-6 - Niefel Jarls don't need any extras to deal with low-end armies, but when facing more advanced (and larger) armies they need soul vortex and few cheap items. Nothing AI can do against that. It will probably work as initial expansion plan in MP, might be a decent plan in blitz as well. If you attack your neighbour with 5 jarls (one per province) many nations will have problems defeating more than one jarl per turn so early in the game, which means they'll quickly lose their territory. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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