0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
| So, how does this all come together around the end of year one? You¿ve done an above average expansion against the indies, respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you. Your income, likewise is modest with your good scales being more than compensated by your focus on lower population indies. Your research, carried almost completely by your pretender is solid, among the leaders but likely not first place. Your gem income is probably at an impressive lead, heavily weighted to earth and death gems. With your very nice capital income of 4 death gems and having spent none, you should be looking at 60-80 death gems unless you¿ve just had abysmal luck searching, and you¿ve turned your earth gems into a couple hammers - if luck is with you, you might have as many as four by now, don¿t hesitate to alchemize anything other than death to get those initial hammers.
Right around the end of year one is when you¿ll finish research on construction-4. Now it¿s time to feel the rumble of that engine, let¿s get to concentrating that power. You¿re gonna start cranking out skull mentors like there¿s no tomorrow. You¿ll almost certainly have a death gem income in the double digits by now, with your capital income just two nice magic sites practically get you there. Given the death gems you¿ve stockpiled at this point you should be able to easily crank out 3-4 skull mentors per turn for a good while. Make sure you¿re only doing this with hammers, because of the way the rounding works out you¿re getting three of them for 21 gems instead of 2 of them for 20, so it¿s essentially a 50% increase in mentor production for a given amount of gems. Burn that nitro baby. Plenty of people are reluctant to forge skull mentors, of the mindset that this uses very valuable death gems to do something you can get done other ways. Stop thinking like Ulm! Gun that engine and, well, lets do some math. With a skull mentor those dwarves are spitting out 15 research points and once you run out of dwarves to stick them on the Vanjarls are clearing 13 (hey, the skull mentor is doing the research, so I maintain I¿m not using *Vanjarls* to research). Impressive! Another way to look at this is you¿re forging 9X3 = 27 research generators plus the mages you¿re recruiting (2 Vanjarls + a dwarf = 14 points), so 41 research points per turn out of three castles. That¿s the research generation of *ten* castles for some nations in magic-1 scales. Simple arithmetic means that if you can keep that up you¿re pulling in over 500 research points per turn *by the end of year two*! That¿s more research than some people pull in by the end of the game! 40+60+100+160+260+420+680+1100+1780 = 4600, so to put this in perspective you can research all the way from 0 to level 9 of a school in 9 turns. Damn the efficiency, I¿m winning the race. Research alone isn¿t gonna win for you, and that wicked hockey stick turn in your research graph will most definitely start giving you problems from your neighbors. That¿s ok, because as of this second you are ready to go on the offensive just as your research is starting to gear up. You¿ve hit construction 4, and hopefully have managed to scrape together a couple of fire gems with your site searching from fire random dwarves. You¿ll want to send your pretender out to site search now and let the skull mentors take over in the lab. This will give you a very nice spread of magic diversity for your income, which is the reason you¿ve got F2 on him. A few fire gems are going to go a long way because with a golden shield and almost any weapon you want to stick on him every one of those Vanjarls you¿ve been cranking out is a thug. Your rapidly exploding research will get you to alt-3 in no time, and blessing (reinvig + regen), air shield, plus mistform along with the awe from the golden shield will leave the Vanjarls essentially immune to anything short of anti-thug tactics. A short hop (for your rapidly increasing research) up to ench-4 means each and every one of them is able to cloud trapeze. Check out my guide to Eriu for some detailed suggestions (I use a very similar setup in it), but suffice it to say that this is a whole solid strategy by itself. This is why we took that expensive E9 blessing, that reinvig plus regen means you practically don¿t need to put any items on them at all, and in fact they can be used ¿naked¿ in a pinch, just field more than one together. You should be fielding dozens of thugs in year two, each with the utmost mobility and stealth. You¿ll also want to start recruiting Hangadrotts, they make even better thugs than Vanjarls once soul vortex is researched you don¿t even need to give them a magic weapon. This is just the opening act though. You will find that you¿ve got no problem setting up 3 provinces each with Vanjarls bloodhunting (all with sanguine rods now). This will pull you in around 50 or so blood slaves per turn, which means it won¿t take long to empower up 3 dwarves to crank out bloodstones. Three bloodstones per turn is gonna start adding up really fast, you should be looking at most of your people with skull mentors and bloodstones before you know it. Once you¿ve got those dwarves empowered you¿ll probably find that you¿re pulling in more blood slaves than you¿re using, that¿s good, just let your bloodslaves pile up for now we¿re gonna use them later. Any Vanjarls who don¿t have a skull mentor or a golden shield should be blood hunting so depending on how stuff plays out you may find yourself with quite an impressive stockpile of blood slaves. One thing to remember, you can easily blood sacrifice out of each of your castles (who all have temples of course) so there¿s no reason to fear a dominion push even with your dominion score of 3. There¿s also no reason not to make sure that order-3/luck-3 combination is pushed to all your provinces. Now that ever growing pile of earth gems is going to solve several problem for you. Crank out several gate cleavers and you¿ll have no problem with people hiding in castles when you raid just cloud trapeze in a half dozen gate cleavers who can sneak wherever you want them. Crumble is also easy to do once you¿ve got it researched (your pretender casts it gloriously). It¿s also going to fill in some mass for you when your thugs aren¿t the right tool for the job. Your E9 pretender (plus boots, bloodstone of course) can very efficiently pop out a bunch of enliven¿ed statues (who fit a lot better in this context than for Ulm because they fill a niche so far vacant) and hidden in the sand also makes sense when the earth gems start flowing. Gargoyles of course as well round out some nice choices all in one path, so that¿s where you¿ll want to bend your research if that¿s what you¿re wanting. Earth gems, boots & stones also of course turn your dwarves into earth monsters with all the yummy straight earth stuff from earthquake to petrify. As MaxWilson points out in the Helheim Dirty Tactic thread rain of stones is in easy reach and can be devastating using a Hangadrott with an earth random and a blood stone, but in general your combat mages are going to be your dwarves and summons while the Vanir are your thugs. In a pinch all those Vanjarls you¿ve been massing can spam thunderstrike if you can lay down a storm for them to power up, and don¿t neglect fun blood combat options like leech and hellbind heart. What I¿d do if you can get away with it though is focus on that concentrated raw power rather than diluting it by spreading out. Lean on your thugs for a bit and drive straight up to const-8 where your pretender forges the chalice. You shouldn¿t really have any problem snagging it with your blazing research and early focus on construction. Then straight into conjuration research while of course snagging any other artifacts that appeal to you (snag the unique death boosters). Your nitro powered research will let you blaze up the tree faster than you thought possible. As you gain momentum, stop forging more skull mentors and stockpile some death gems. You shouldn¿t have too much trouble hitting conj-8 with the 80 gems necessary to cast the Well of Misery (Hangadrott with a death random, staff and skull cap can cast it). That same Hangadrott with one of the death booster artifacts (or a ring of sorcery your pretender forged) can then start dropping tartarians. You¿ve now nitro boosted your way up into a very early tartarian factory as your Hangadrott¿s start cranking out a couple per turn, while you use the water income your pretender scraped up while site searching to summon a couple niads to cast haurespex with the gems your pretender lined up, then gift of reason. You¿re gonna be constrained on the nature gems, but between casting gift of reason every few turns and the lucky natural tartarian commander you¿re gonna build up a fleet of SCs before anybody can believe you¿ve got them. You¿ll also have an easy time summoning all the elemental royalty other than fire, as many as you can afford. This also is a solid strategy in its own right, but why stop now? As soon as you start raining tartarians at an absurdly early time, anyone who¿s so inclined will be mobilizing against you. You¿ll want to strongly consider leveraging all those death gems into burden of time, all your guys are practically immortal but it¿ll royally screw with plenty of your rivals. Burden of time is one of those very situational things, there are some nations it really hurts, some it doesn¿t hurt at all, and some who it¿s more an annoyance. It¿s not hard to line up other people who would like to see it up, so don¿t think you necessarily need to declare war on everybody to put it up. Plus, what¿s more thematic than Helheim breaking down the gates of Tartarus and releasing death to stalk the land? Continuing in the same vein you could throw in foul air, you do have the chalice after all for your own owies. Rounding out this brutal research blitz is all those blood slaves burning a hole in your pocket. You¿ve slammed down on the gas pedal and never let up, so that death dominion probably hasn¿t been hampering you much but when provinces do start burning out it¿s time to conquer some new lands! If you¿ve done everything right you¿re probably sitting on several hundred blood slaves at this point, and with that nasty research engine blood-9 is not that far away. A couple boosters and cheap empowerings and you¿re going to be adding infernal crusade and infernal tempest to your monthly ritual list. Skip the blood SC¿s, you¿ll be competing with the other blood nations for them and tartarians will cover that role. A blazing blood economy, game leading research, obscene amounts of earth and death gems, the ability to simultaneously raid every single province in an enemy nation simultaneously, and a tartarian factory before anybody else can even think about it. Lets see you manage that efficiently. So, I hope I¿ve illustrated how driving Helheim like the muscle car it is can be immensely satisfying though you¿re gonna be disappointed if you¿re trying to drive her like a commuter car, watching her gas mileage. Don¿t worry about using 280 gold bloodhunters, it¿s far worse to ignore your blood roots. Don¿t worry about taking drain and death scales, it¿s far worse to try and nurse along what will never be good. Don¿t worry about efficiency (well, at least all the time), worry about power and let that nitro burn! 8.20.3.3 Driver's Ed: A Vanilla Quickstart Companion to Baalz's Helheim Guide Article Author: Cleveland Follow up on on Helheim Guide (Baalz) 8.20.3.3.1 Article If you haven't read Baalz's excellent guide to Helheim, do it. It's really fantastic. But along with a few other folks, I had trouble making the expansion portion of this awesome strat work. Even with careful target selection, scripting, and placement, I was losing expansion parties at least 1/2 the time. Not to suggest that Baalz's expansion parties are bad, just that a mere mortal like myself couldn't get them to work with any consistency. Anywho, after some experimenting, I found a way to more reliably expand that's actually cheaper then what's recommended(!) Further, it works equally well for the Vanilla version of the game as it does for CBM, hence the "Vanilla Quickstart Companion." So first, a few words on the Vanilla pretender selection, then a discussion of expansion parties, then onto the Quickstart. If CBM Helheim is a '69 Pontiac GTO, then Vanilla Helheim is a Mack Truck pulling a trailer full of iron ore. Your strength isn't necessarily your power, it's your inertia. You're gonna struggle to get up to speed, belching thick black smoke while your engine strains and the residents of Helheim revolt. But once you hit 5th gear...let's just say, I certainly wouldn't want to be standing in the road with you barreling toward me. Vanilla requires a completely different pretender, as you won't be able to scratch Baalz's (rimshot!) suggestion. An awake Great Sage with E9N4S2, Dom3, Order3, Sloth3, Cold2, Death3, Luck3, Drain2 gets you that critical major Earth/minor Nature bless while still putting up a respectable 24 research/turn, just keep him away from Magic Duelers. At 24 research/turn, you're exactly 15 turns from the 360 research points needed to open the critical Construction-4. Your expansion party is also going to look different (but again, this works equally well with CBM). Instead of 1 Helkarl + 1 Helhirding + some Huskarls, as Baalz suggests, use 1 Dis + 1 Valkyrie (and maybe 1 Serf Warrior when possible). Since Dis and Valkyries are both fliers, it's MUCH easier to pick your targets, and to survive when the battle starts going south. Dis also have 2 higher defense than Helkarls, which isn't insignificant when you're relying on defense to keep you alive, rather then protection. Most importantly, Dis have A1, and can therefore cast Air Shield, neutering the #1 cause of Helkarl loss. As an added bonus, since the Valkyrie bodyguard (who will stay glued to the Dis's square, just like the Helhirding would with a Helkarl) is only size 2, any arrows/javelins that land in the square will be more likely to target the size 3 Air Shielded Dis. Placement & Scripting: Plant the Dis and the Valkyrie in the back corner. Set the Valkyrie to Guard Commander, script the Dis with (Blessing)(Air Shield)(hold)(hold)(hold)Attack Rear. If you're bringing a Serf Warrior, put him slightly forward on the other flank on Hold and Attack. He'll draw the enemy out of the way, increasing the chance that the Dis will make it to the leaders. If the Valkyrie bodyguard dies, which isn't uncommon, resist the urge to send your Dis solo. It's only a 1-turn delay to fly back home for a new bodyguard, then fly back on the offensive. A note on Dis & encumbrance: Since you'll be flying and casting more spells then before, fatigue will be an issue if you're not careful. Do not attack swamps, which add +2 encumbrance. Do not attack provinces effected by extreme heat/cold dominion (like if you boarder Caelum). A Chest Wound affliction means instant retirement, as does the dreaded Unequaled Obesity heroic trait. As with most small expansion parties, bypass Barbarians and Heavy Cav. Also avoid Wolf Tribes, as they wield dual daggers, negating your defense advantage. If you can help it, don't attack anything defended by more than 40 troops, as you want to minimize the number of defense DRNs your Dis need to pass. You'll still lose probably 1/3 of the time, but your Dis will usually (50%?) survive to fight another day. OK, without further ado, the Quickstart Guide. Turn 1, recruit 1 Dis, 1 Valkyrie, and queue up a bunch of Serf Warriors. Scout --> Prophet. Helkarl --> Patrol. Ram the taxes up as high as you're comfortable. I'm comfortable at 200% Turn 2, recruit a Svartalf & a mass of Serf Warriors. Script your Dis/Valkyrie team supported by a Serf Warrior decoy as suggested, and your prophet to (Sermon of Courage)(cast)(cast)(cast)(cast)Cast Spells [this is critical, otherwise he'll rush forward]. Make sure your prophet is far enough from the Dis to avoid any stray arrows. Send this group at the weakest looking indy that'll allow you to immediately recruit a commander. Turn 3: Same capital recruitment as Turn 1. Same attack strategy as Turn 2, but target a land where you want a fortress. Send your Svartalf to your newly conquered province, where you recruit a commander (and militia, if possible). Give the new Serf Warriors to your Helkarl, who's probably having trouble keeping the rowdy citizens of Helheim under control. Turn 4: Same capital recruitment as Turn 1. Prophet builds a fortress (or a temple if cash is tight), both Dis parties expand as recommended. New commander goes to capital to take over patrolling duties. Svartalf searches for magic sites. Turns 5-10: Get that fortress/temple/lab up and running as soon as possible...your newly idle Helkarl will come in handy here. Keep churning our Dis/Valkyrie teams until it's up, then ease back on the capital taxes such that you're clearing 550g per turn; this will go to 1 Svartalf (180g), 1 Helhirding (90g) and 1 Vanjarl (280g). Each Vanjarl is paired with the Helhirding (and a Serf Warrior! I love those guys), who can then operate identically to the Dis/Valkrie team (with decreased mobility). All Svartalfs are dedicated to site searching, though after you amass 15E gems your first E3 makes a Dwarven Hammer. Turns 10-15: When choice indies are gone, redirect your Vanjarls to blood hunting, as Baalz instructs. Cash flow should be sufficient that you can cut your capital taxes to a reasonable 120% or lower, with any surplus going toward amassing an archer army (i.e. an anti-barbarian army) and scouts. If any elephants start marching your way, make a quick diversion to Alteration-1 for False Fetters and deploy those Vanjarls en mass. If Hinnom starts eating you, head over to Evo-2 for lighting bolt. Palankashas got you down? Blood-2 for Reinvigorated-Sabbath-backed Banish Demon (or Your Favorite Exploit, if you're so inclined). Turns 15-25: Const-4 is now open...commence Operation Skull Mentor. Alt-3 for Mistform is still your next target, but without CBM, the Shield of Gleaming Gold isn't an option, and your E gems are too valuable to use on Charcoal Shields. But a regenerating Vanjarl with a Flesh Eater scripted for (Blessing)(Air Shield)(Mistform)(hold)(hold)Attack Rear makes a fine thug by himself. If you're really aching for a pseudo-SC, add a Chain Mail of Displacement and Pendant of Luck. When blessed, those Vanjarls are now 25 defense & 21 protection, dealing 27 points of Chest-Wound-Inflicting damage at 17 attack. At zero encumbrance. While mistformed. And regenerating. And lucky. Turn 25 and beyond: Baalz's guide takes over. Get Cloud Trapeze, land on your most unsuspecting neighbor like a ton of bricks. But stay away from extreme temperatures! Eriu's downfall in Kingmaker is that he didn't account for the fact that both Utgard & Jotunheim are Cold-3 nations. Keep cranking out archers, as they'll be your wall-breaker-downers. NAPs are your worst enemy, avoid them like the plague. Keep your eye on your dominion, and don't hesitate to blood-sacrifice. Write humorous AARs in the game thread. A final note on Air Svartalfs: In addition to being your Rain-of-Stoners, these guys are going to open up Water and high-level Fire for you, believe it or not. Consider this: At some point, you're going to empower a Hangdrott to open up those Air boosters. But why stop there? For a scant 30 more Air gems, empower an Air Svartalf, give him a Bag of Winds, Winged Helmet, Earth Boots, and a Blood Stone, for the all-important A4E4...let the Staffs of Elemental Mastery flow. A SoEM & a Water Bracelet on a Jade Sorceress gives you Robes of the Sea and Naiads. Naiads then give you Water Queens. A SoEM, a Flaming Skull, and 30F gems gets you a F4 Svartalf, which gets you an Flame Helmets. Flame Helmets then get you Fire Kings and the King of Banefires. Volcanic Eruption spam! And don't forget: The Air/Earth SoEM comes with an automatic Stoneskin...quite convenient for a Cloud Trapeezing Rain-of-Stoner. Tack on Earth Boots and a Blood Stone, and you've got a teleporting, first-round-petrify-spamming SC killer. 8.20.3.3.2 Comments 8.20.3.4 8.21 Lanka 8.21.1 Lanka Guide(and Mini-Blood Guide) 3.10 Patch Author: K So, you've decided to play with Lanka. Most likely you've heard that they are a powerful race, and this is true in that like most races that are easy to play then even newbies can play well. They do have weaknesses, and a wise player will keep these in mind. 1. Strengths and Weaknesses 2. Unit Overview 3. Province Defense 4. Magic Overview 5. Best Strategies 6. More Strategies 7. Mini-Blood Guide
Powerful units: Lanka has high HP Sacred Demons with powerful attacks. They cost a small fortune to mass, but Blessed properly they cut through indies and other poor units like a hurricane. Powerful blood summons: Lanka gets blood summons that mass a decent number of units, and they are all Sacred so you can incorporate them into your Bless Strategy. Archers: You get a variety of archers like longbowman on an expensive high HP Bandar chassis to super crap and cheap markata small bow users. Great Reanimating Priests: Not only does every priest you recruit or summon have the ability to reanimate undead, but you also sometimes get undead monkeys like powerful Bandar, weak chaff-like markata, and strong bandar ghouls called pisacha.
Everyone's A Demon!: You best mages and combat units are demons, so even the weakest indie priest can throw down a savage beating on you. Average priests: For a Bless nation, you get really poor priests. H3 brings you Divine Blessing, and any essential Bless strategy requires it, and until you get Blood 8 researched (or find a way to make Crystal Shields) you don't have access to it. Low unit numbers: While your units are made of liquid awesome, they are extremely expensive and are Gluttonous large units which means you are fielding small numbers of them. This means that you are wickedly vulnerable to volleys of arrows and battle magic. This also means that a few battles with heavy losses can mean that you are out of units altogether and can be steamrolled. Sacred Mages: Normally a good thing, this is a weakness on a Nature 9+ Bless. Berserking mages is all bad. Best Mages are Summons or Capital-only: Nuff said. UNIT OVERVIEW: Commanders: Raksharaja (270 gold, 22 resources, capital-only, base H2/A2/D1/B2/ADB/10%ADBN): This is the heavy lifter of your mages. Your D2 mages make Skull Mentors, the A3's throw down battlefield Air magics, and your B3s are you best blood mages for summoning and blood battlefield magic, and at base 8 Research they tend to make really good researchers(and you get turn advantage by recruiting them rather than other guys). They even make decent thugs with enough Alteration (more on this later in Strategies). Rakshasi (350 gold, 2 resources, capital-only, base H1/A1/D1/B1/N1/ADBN/ADBN/10%ADBN): Expensive Seducers, this mage makes a decent site search and is your best source of D3. With wildly unpredictable picks, I tend to not use them as battle mages, Succubus are better Seducers, Raksharaja are cheaper researchers and better Blessers, and I prefer to site search via rituals. Kala-mukha (160 gold, 5 resources, H2/B1/BDN)-This unit pulls double duty as your prime Longdead reanimator and Commander for throwing down Blesses. Good candidate for Prophet. Yogini(110 gold, 1 resource, B1/N2/D1): With N2, they add Supply for your hungry troops, and make decent researchers with 6 research points. Toss on a Thistle Mace and you can toss down Poison Clouds and Sleep Clouds. They are also perfect for Wooden Warriors. In the short term, they are the best priced researcher, but I like the Raksharaja for raw unity and Research turn advantage. Raktapata (90 gold, 4 resources, H1/B1): These guys are your classic blood hunters, and they also make cheap thugs since they can self-bless. Avoid trying to use them to bless Sacred troops since their Bless effect if quite small. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|