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| Water... is probably the most powerful bless (was the answer of a poll about them), as with quickness it's both a defensive and offensive boost. But very high level water magic isn't really usefull (except perhaps to cast maelstrom once you control some seas).
Earth... look weaker, but has many advantages. Reinvigoration helps your berserkers (units going berserk having an encumbrance penalty), and the protection bonus is good for your sacreds who just have protection 11 and no shield. But the main interest is to make shrouds of the battle saint first choice armors for your werewolves (no encumbrance, effective protection 16 and with a nature 10 bless + their natural regen + a regeneration ring they can reach... 40% regeneration !! = 23hp/55 per round). You may also use the shrouds as cheap reinvigoration items for your mages, with the risk to see a wounded one going berserk. If you plan to use a lot the shrouds on your nornas (and a strategy more based on magic instead of berserk thugs) an earth 9/nature 8 bless avoid the problem (and get you better scales). With two levels 9 you can have any double bless with high dominion, an humanoid imprisoned pretender, and scales like order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 1, misfortune 3, magic 1, using an imprisoned pretender. You need a little more sacrifice for nature 10 / something 9 : Fire 9 / Nature 10 would force you to use an human pretender and have a dominion around 6 (with an imprisoned druid). Water 9 / Nature 10 can be developped with an imprisoned son of fenrir (dominion 7 for the same scales) but you'll get a chassis with only 2 slots. Earth 9 / Nature 10 with an imprisoned earth mother reach dominion 8 with these scales, and you get a real SC chassis (with built in trample) and earth magic is far more usefull in endgame. 3.2 Really extreme multi-bless for thugs Being a thugs nation, Utgard can also base its whole strategy on them, just slowing a little its initial expansion to have a more powerful bless. As you can always recruit one leader per fort, and only them matter, you can go with a dominion of 4 or so for a stronger bless (but a very low dominion is a big risk in MP), also funded by a drain 2 instead of magic 1 scale. The best pretenders for that are the human ones, especially the great enchantress and frost father starting with 2 paths. A triple 9 bless would need extremely bad scales like death 3, or turmoil but no order. But a triple 9/9/8, quintuple bless 9/9/4/4/4, or quadruple 9/9/6/4 allow reasonable scales. For a secondary bless for thugs, astral (4-6) is IMO the best choice, as the main problem of your champions in late game will be magic resistance. And taking astral 4 or more on your pretender, also remove the need of a very rare norna to start to forge rings of sorcery, and if you go with 6+ on an human god, your pretender will be able to cast wishes without empowerement. A great enchantress starting with earth and astral, you can have E9N9S6 for a reasonable number of points, and so a correct dominion *or* magic scale (ie : order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 2, misfortune 3, magic 1, dominion 4 ; or order 3, sloth 3, death 1, misfortune 3, drain 2, dominion 6). You can also take both a bad dominion (4) and drain 2 for nature 10 (+e9s6) or one more bless at level 4 (fire, water or even air can be interesting), or target magic diversification with a build making boosters for all paths forgeable once you have a ring of wizardry (e9n9s6, ...+ air 3, fire 2, death 1), or allowing your enchantress to forge bloodstones (...+ blood 3, something 2). A quintuple bless with 3 level 4 and 2x9 is also possible with the same scales. 4. Research Priorities With a good bless to help woodsmen based forces you will have no difficulty to take one or more indie province / turn since turn 2, and can concentrate your first researchs on site searching spells. Try to get both evocation and conjuration 2, so your seithkonas can search death and astral sites (you can wait a little for nature searches as only 1/4 of your nornas have the required level ; and conjuration 3 for the water search spell is not a priority either, because it's better to recruit sethkonas for research and jarls to be your first thugs than the expensive skrattis in early game, even once a second fort is built -also your one or two first skrattis will be busy hunting blood slaves- ; finally the blood search is not as usefull as others as blood sites are rare and often bad, I'd only use it on a high site frequency province where all other searches have been done without result). Then alteration 3 or 4 is the magic to get, allowing to make your valuable sacreds or thugs ethearal (and lucky at level 4, you can of course give pendants of luck to your thugs but it's wasting gems when you can recruit in every forts sethkonas to buff them ; alteration 4 also give the non-personnal quickness to your skrattis, but the too long range make this spell not really reliable to buff thugs). As soon you have body ethearal to protect them you can start to script your giant leaders to (hold and) attack against independants. If, without gear, they are not better than giant troopers, getting some kills early may allow them to enter the hall of fame and get interesting heroic abilities. Construction is of course one of the most valuable school for a thug nation. You must have construction 4 to start to use thugs against other nations, starting with 13 to 15 MR they absolutely need an amulet of antimagic (even if your opponent don't have astral for the best MR based spells, a simple sleep/sleep cloud can be very dangerous for them). This level also offer you a large choice of gear, and the skull mentors to boost your research. You can for the moment stop construction research there (construction 6 of course is great, as it allow the forge of skullcaps for your astral mages, water bracelets for the skrattis, and better thug weaponry, but if you have to fight before late game like it's probable with a rush nation, battle magic is more a priority -- but if you think you can stay at peace, with a good gem income and in the firsts in research, it's a good idea to try to race for artefacts with this nation, your death magic allow you to forge the best ones). Thaumaturgy 4 (paralyze), enchantment 3 (raise spells) and evocation 4 (nether bolt) are your first tier objectives in battle magic (after alteration 4). You may research them all or concentrate research on one school to get second tier spells faster (if it's the case, going for evocation 7 for the terrible nether darts all your human mages can use, seem the best choice, only equaled by alteration 8 -will of the fates, quickening-, level 6-7 enchantment has some interesting spells but isn't very powerful, and thaumaturgy 6-7 is only a good idea if you fight particular nations - like Arcocephale/Caelum -giving you low MR valuable units to enslave- or Ermor/Ct'is -wither bones cast by the master of a large communion is better than anything against undead hordes-). Another strategy is to base your research choices on interesting globals your pretender can cast. Assuming you use a N8+ / E9 earth mother you have many good ones to cast, which will be very hard to dispell due to her level. Mother Oak (alteration 5) is a good first objective, then you'll have plenty of N gems to cast an undispellable Gift of Health (enchant 6), making your thugs with regeneration real SCs in your dominion (and as you probably started with high dom strength to recruit many woodsmen, a dominion-push based strategy is not hard to developp). With this level in enchantment, earth may allow you to compensate your probable high sloth, with the underestimated Riches from Beneath, or at level 7 to cast Earth blood deep well, one of the best gem-income spells. Then your pretender has of course access to the Forge of the Ancients (construction 7), the best earth global (but without an excellent magical economy, to cast it with 200+ bonus gems, you will have difficulties to keep it up in MP). Finally, you have also have an interesting national global in blood magic, Illwinter, to cast with one of your skrattis, but increasing unrest and cold everywhere usually mean war against the entire world, so it's probably clever to use it only if it's already the case (or if you think you can win one). As you have seen I've skipped blood. Not because it's not a powerful school, but because I can't see blood above level 1 as a priority for Utgard. Blood is mostly interesting for uniques thugs/SCs/mages, and there are more specialized blood nations which will beat you for them -except if you make huge sacrifices in schools far more usefull for a nation already having national thugs and good mages-. If you are the only water-blood nation you will probably have the ice devils even if you research blood in late game only ; if LA Mictlan is in the game, it will focus research on blood and you won't have them. In all cases there is no reason to rush blood research like with a true blood nation. Once the other blood powers are destroyed, blood will allow you to re-summon their uniques, and it's never too late for that. Out of that, in all blood magic the only spells you'll use a lot are level 1, reinvigoration and the sabbath spells ; and your blood slaves income is better used to make gear than to summon units not far better than the giants you can recruit everywhere. As well conjuration offer the best death summons, but with all your thugs and good mages you can wait to develoopp this school. 5. Equiping Thugs 5.1 Low level gear for Herse and Jarls Your herse and jarls come with protection 17 armor and a dmg 9 weapon, but need some more gear to start to be callable "thugs" instead of "just one more giant". If you don't have a fire bless, all your giant leaders have only 12 in attack (11 for the gode), meaning they only hit common (def 10) infantry 62% of the time, and have about 62% to miss most (def 13) mounted units (this even considering giant strength allow to go through an eventual shield) ; and of course would have negligible chances to hit ennemy equiped thugs. You may/will of course try to use quickness on your jarls, boosting both attack and defense, but the spell is not really reliable (the long range mean your skratti will often target troops if placement isn't perfect), and the boots are construction 6. So one of the first priorities for early thugs is an item boosting their attack skill. The Ring of the Warrior (blood 1) is the best one, giving +5 to attack, and you can forge it even for early thugs (construction 2), giving your jarls a reasonable attack skill of 17 with their built-in longsword (and as a side effect a +2 morale, mostly usefull if you don't have the N9 bless to give them the berserking ability). If you have access to fire 1, the burning pearl may be more interesting (+4 att, but 50% FR as a bonus). Another evident (cumulative) option is to replace the jotun longsword by a more offensive weapon (also allowing him to hit ethearals), but the best your national mages can forge at construction 2 only give +2 to attack. Then, at cons 4, you have several options : - for 5 water gems the cheap and very efective frost brand (one handed, +4 attack and 2 def, 16 dmg and cold area effect) - or for the same price, the demon bane (two handed and not doing far more dammage, but giving +6 att, x3 dmg against demons, and fire immunity). - or for 5 slaves the flesh eater, a little inferior (+3 att, 0 def, 14 dmg) but only costing blood (and causing chest wounds as a secondary effect, interesting against other thugs nations) Defense is far less usefull than protection (especially with a nature bless) and jarls have a sufficient one (especially with an earth bless, and as you'll have body ethearal and luck cast on them) so keeping your natural 13 def / 17 prot (with built-in standard shield and armor) is not a problem. Your nature magic allow to forge great shields with other interest than defense, the vine and eye ones, but as they cost 10 gems they are more for your elite thugs, the werewolves. The armor of jarls is not extremely heavy (encumbrance 6, when many heavy humans have 9 for this protection), so if you have an earth bless (or won't use quickness) they don't really need reinvigoration items. If you have no reinvigoration in your bless and plan to use quickened jarls, boots of the messenger can be a good idea. The final piece of gear all your thugs should have is a no-brainer, as soon you fight other nations : an amulet of antimagic. But against indies (or if you fight nations not having access to good MR spells) you can skip it. Finally for 15 gems/slaves (9 with a hammer) you get a jarl with frostbrand, aamulet and ring of the warrior, able to hit about anything with attack 21, and resisting as often as a good mage. It's all your need for an early war, as long your ennemy don't use his own thugs, or casters with penetration items. 5.2 Armors for the light thugs Scouts and godes need about the same gear as jarls, except they also want a better armor. If you have an E9 bless, the shroud of the battle saint is the best one for the scouts, as it allow your stealthy thug to be blessed, when you have no stealthy priest for raiding. Without an earth bless, the shroud protection is weak but can be exploitable if you have another good one (ie : a water bless + a magic shield, can make your scouts good defense based thugs). Out of this, without air and earth, your national mages don't have access to good armors before construction 6. At cons 6, your choice suddenly become large, with rime hauberk, hydra skin, blue and green dragon mail, and (with death boosters) bone armor. Rime hauberk is the best for defensive thugs (if you fight in your cold dominion where its protection is better) and if your ennemies are not cold immune (breath of winter is not really usefull if you fight Ermor). As your giants are already cold immune, blue dragon mail may only have an interest if you plan fight in hot dominion and have only water gems to make an armor (in heat 1+ provinces protection is better than with a rime hauberk). Green dragon mail or hydra skin are preferable if you have nature gems (and if your ennemies risk to use poison). Offering +10% regeneration (at the price of some protection) and 100% instead of 75% PR, this last one is usually the best choice, but the dragon armors can have an interest for your scouts : the +4 morale they give can save them from routing when they fight without a bless/sermon. The bone armor, finally, may worth its cost for this kind of thugs, only if your ennemy use zerg of weak units + fatigue spells to kill them. Its low protection and defense make it less an armor than a reinvigoration/regeneration item, and only working if a lot of low MR living units are around (it's finally a better item for mages reinvigoration, via the drained life of big bodyguards like jotun militia -note that if you use communion matrixes a communion master with it will give soul vortex to all slaves ; with bodyguards for all it mean an huge global reinvigoration-). 5.3 Gearing the Elite (werewolves) Skrattis in werewolf form are by far your best thugs (with 20 more hp than your giants, natural regeneration, bonus bite attack, 13 base attack and defense -16 with the quicken self they can cast-) and desserve the most powerful gear you can forge. They have the same armor concerns as the light thugs described above. As they will cast one or two spells and then be quickened, attacking 4 or more times per round, the main weakness of werewolves would be fatigue if you give them an heavy armor, so even if you have earth mages avoid all the black steel/elemental plates. If your bless include E9, it's one more reason to use the encumbrance 0 shrouds of the battle saint (with a possible exception if you have to face mages with full penetration gear, with their 14 base MR werewolves would need both an antimagic amulet and an armour of souls to be quiet). If you can forge them, the rainbow armors, giving both magic resistance and reinvigoration, are also a good (and more cost effective) choice in this case. Out of the classic antimagic amulet, the other pieces of gear mostly depend of who you expect to fight. Against human armies, you can go with the classic frost brand (or other AE weapons, the fire or shadow brand being better if you can forge them) and a vine shield (you don't want all the small humans around attacking your thug at the same time). Eventually you can add an horror helmet to make your opponents check morale more often, or an horned one to kill one more weak guy per round (or reduce defense of stronger ennemies) and boots of the messenger if you fear a big battle don't have reinvigoration on your armor (not really needed with a shroud + E9 bless as long you are not dual wielding). If you expect to fight bigger creatures you won't kill even in 2-3 shots, especially beasts with low MR like elephants or mammoths, rather equip your thug with the heart finder sword (MR check or die -for non-lifeless being only iirc-, 3b, construction 4). This sword is also a good anti-thug weapon, if the ennemy use bad MR chassis or forget amulets, with your werewolf attacking with it 2 times per round, you can expect some success even against MR 15-18 ennemies (or it will at least force your opponents to invest in MR gear). But against thugs or other creatures having both correct hp and MR, it shouldn't be your unique gun. A team of two werewolves, one with this sword and one with good non MR based weapons, is a better idea, as it's rare to have an ennemy with both good MR and resists. In general, due to armors defense penalty and items sharing the same slots, thugs are very high defense OR protection based, and/or very high MR OR very high regeneration OR resists based ; or they try to be all at a time and are finally killable by anything. Your werewolf himself will usually be regeneration based, as maxing this capacity (shroud with a good N bless or hydra skin + regeneration ring -but avoid the lycanthropos amulet, it may transform your werewolf to a smaller one losing his magic power-) + natural regeneration give him an insane survavibility against anything but slay/control spells (and even, if you add an antimagic amulet and a lead shield you can get a thug with excellent MR too). Life draining weapons can also be considered a good way to play with this strength, assuming your thug hit two times with a wraith sword it adds 10 to the number of hp he will recover per round (if you can empower one of your B mage to fire, a hell sword is even better, as it boosts berserking too). But these two weapons have the disavantadge to be two-handed. Werewolf are generally great against defense based ennemies, due to their multiple attacks, each one after the first reducing defense by 2. You can maximize this if needed, giving a thug 2 swords of quickness and an horned helmet, so your quickened werewolf will have 12 attacks per round (you may even add more if you have air for chi shoes, stone bird or dancing trident). Of course it will also mean huge fatigue for the wolf, so it's better to give him boots of the messenger and a resilience amulet even if he has an E9 shroud. Such a thug will hit often, but won't be a killer alone if the ennemy has reasonable protection, and will be himself very vulnerable. But in a team he will ease a lot the killing of very high defense ennemies. Against protection based thugs, astral-death give you access to the armor-negating duskdagger. It's a good idea to couple this 2 dmg weapon with a strength item if you can forge some, and a ring of the warrior as its attack bonus is mediocre. Then your werewolf is able to kill any high protection midgame thug in one round (assuming he hits two times). As it's a length 1 weapon, you can even dual wield duskdaggers without too much penalty, to have a damage potential of more than 100hp per round no matter ennemy protection (but sending a werewolf with two daggers giving no defense is risky business). Usually it's better to use shields, especially the ones with cool secondary effects your opponent risk to trigger no matter his defense or protection (if he don't have an huge attack skill). Your magic offer a large choice of secondary effects with the eye shield, vine shield, totem and accursed... The vine shield has only an immediate effect, but offers an excellent synergy with high regeneration (if one round / 2 your ennemies are busy with the vines, your werewolf has high chances to win). But note it doesn't work against fliers. The eye shield has both an immediate and permanent effect, and is of course especially good against one eyed ennemies (like agarthans). Finally once some research have been done in blood, a shield of the accursed become one of the most terrible weapons, as your nornas with blood pick can call horrors. 8.19.4 Counters to Niefelheim -> Soul Slay. Enslave Mind. Paralyze. Petrify. Use penetration boosters and/or communion to boost your chances. Don't fight them in cold dominion if you can afford it. Fire spells do extra damage. Flame Storm? Mind Hunt his commanders! -> Niefelheim has above average magic resistance... But at that age and game stage it may be worth mind hunting them. It's pretty inexpensive at 2 pearls, and they aren't likely to have many ways to boost their magic resistance, while you're likely able to forge eyes of the void for a penetration bonus, maybe something else. Though I can't remember the requirements for mind hunts... In general, counters depend on the bless. If its just nature, I'd focus on damage and numbers. If they have a heavy water bless, ranged may be your best option. As Agartha, I'd focus on armor of Achilles and other armor destruction spells. -> The strength of Niefelheim's troops is really their cold aura. What you want roughly (specifics will vary depending on what you have available) is a couple of cold immune guys (undead, or give them relevant items) with high defense (25+). Because the giants are so large, only a few can attack at once, so for relatively cheap you can get a couple of linebackers that'll hold them back for a good amount of time so your mages have a chance to work. The typical bless for Niefelhiem is N/E, so I'm assuming its something like that. With Arcoscephale what'd work well is a communion of 8 or so mages casting..say...orb lightning. 4 masters + 4 slaves makes orb lightning practically free (you can cast it all day long) and if your masters start at 3a (seems like that's what EA Arco has available) you're throwing down 20 or so AN attacks per round. Fried giant in no time! -> Try Charm as well. It's nature but short range. If you can make it work, they'll fight for you. Air Magic? Thunderstrikes are good if you can get a lot of them. Fog Warriors might help, but not if he's got a F9 bless. Against Neifel giants, single target one shot kill spells are what you want. They regenerate too fast to try to whittle them down. Fires from Afar will damage a few troops. It'll kill normal humans, but the giants are too tough. Breath of the Dragon does poison damage. It's nice, but does damage overtime and it probably canceled out by their regen. Tougher/higher protection human units will still die in one hit so they aren't much use. Go for numbers but only as a meat shield. The mages do the killing. Massed summons can work too. Vine Ogres can make a decent wall. Living Statues or Mechanical Men if you've got the Earth magic. -> Some spells to consider: Conjuration: Phoenix Power (F2), Summon Earth Power (E2), Power of the Spheres (S1), Light of the Northern Star (S3), and Will o' the Wisp (F1) Alteration: Curse of Stones (E3) and Destruction (E3), Swarm (N1) Evocation: Magma Bolts (E1, F1), Falling Fires (F3), Magma Eruption (E3, F1), and Thunder Strike (A3) Thaumaturgy: Rage (F2), Prison of Fire (F3), Paralyze (S2), Confusion (A1), Soul Slay (S3), Enslave Mind (S4), and Hydrophobia (F1) A couple of cold resistant thugs would be very helpful, especially if equipped with Fire Brands. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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