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| Now this brings me to the next prong of Niefelheim¿s strength fear. Ghosts adding a fear aura is good. Ghosts adding a fear aura while fighting troops starving in cold-3/death-3 hostile dominion territory is very good. Ghosts doing that while supported by both terror and panic is very, very good. Ghosts doing all that under blood rain¿well, you practically don¿t get to kill anybody. If you do this while cutting off their retreat though¿. (did I mention ubiquitous teleporting Gygja thugs? But wait, there¿s plenty more to come). Wailing winds stack this to ridiculous proportions if you¿ve got an air random Jarl.
At this point you¿re probably thinking Gygjas are the centerpiece of this Niefelheim strategy. Far from it, you¿ll have to appreciate this especially in light of the immensely useful purposes I¿ve suggested so far they¿re the second best mage you¿ve got, and the other isn¿t blue. You thought those skin shifters were badasses, let¿s look at the real big bad wolf. Before I start waxing poetic about my love for the Skratti, let me set the stage so you can really appreciate the scale. 250 gold a pop is mid range for a mage, but they don¿t need a temple and you¿re not going to really be recruiting many troops so you should be aiming to crank out a hell of a lot of Skratti, they¿re the bulk of what you¿ll be recruiting. For everything I¿m about to lay out, remember you¿re gonna have a bunch of them. I wanted to point out a potentially game breaking exploitable bug. It¿s listed on Edi¿s short list, but I think it¿s not been apparent how game breaking it can be. Normally I¿m all for playing the game as it is, but I can¿t in good conscious suggest that anybody really exploits what I¿m about to point out. Skratti in werewolf form have no upkeep. They go from 8 research to 6, but if you really ride this and switch all your skratti to werewolves while recruiting nothing else you quickly overcome this and the consequences are nauseating. I¿ll leave it as an exercise for the student the implications of doing this in conjunction with the next few paragraphs I lay out. Alright, so in general what¿s the bottleneck to Neifelheim¿s power? 1) You can only recruit one Jarl per turn 2) You¿ve got only so many gems to equip SCs. Let¿s design this from the ground to get rid of those two factors and see where it takes us. Fairly obviously by this point I¿m going with giant werewolves to get around #1. To get around #2 what I¿m gonna do is to see how few gems I need to get a real workable SC out of a skratti. First off I wanted to illustrate how awesome Skratti are at blood hunting. The ones with a blood random are B3, which means with no need to forge a sanguine rod they can optimally blood hunt in a province using just 2 of them (rather than the 3 blood -1 guys with rods which is typical). The fact that you can recruit them out of every castle and only need to recruit 2 per blood hunting province with no need for rods I think really puts Niefelheim up into the real blood powerhouse category. With a little effort you can rival Mictlan and Lanka for blood slave generation rapidly having the optimal blood hunters in every province you want to blood hunt. As you¿re closing in on constr-4 (your first research target) you¿ll start gearing up your blood hunting no reason to wait for sanguine rods. Once you get to constr-4, why you¿ve got a practically never ending supply of dirt cheap flesheater axes. Flesheater axes give you +3 berserk, which not only nicely helps your protection, but also raises your attack (with the axe) to an awesome 19, it raises your strength to 28, adding in the 14 damage from the axe and your 42 damage is cutting most humans in half even if they make a shield block. Dual wielding two of these, plus your natural bite (doing a ¿measly¿ 30 damage), then throw in a quicken self buff and you pretty much disintegrate two tiles of units per turn. You¿ve got a protection of 12 and a regeneration of 6 so this is not a SC, you¿re not going to be able to solo against real troops. Used in conjuction with troops though, where you¿re not being singled out and swarmed you¿ve got plenty of staying power and an immense amount of damage outlay. Not bad for not using any ¿real¿ gems. You should be able to crank out plenty of lucky pendants to, your pretender has been out site searching at astral 4 and has supplied hammers so they¿re only 3S. Just imagine what 5 or 6 of these playing support would do in a big fight trust me nothing is gonna last long enough that their lack of reinvig makes any difference at all. Use those big blue jocks as the big bull¿s-eyes while the wolfmen take out the trash. As awe inspiring as thinking about those guys is, realize this is just a stopgap if you get pinched before you can make it to constr-6. Once there, oh my are you sitting pretty. Empower a blood random skratti up to B4, who then starts cranking out blood thorns. Pass the first blood thorn to another blood random skratti, repeat until you¿re spitting out as many blood thorns as your heart desires. Now, your standard werewolf is going to have a flesheater, a bloodthorn, a lucky pendant, and one of the following rime haubrick, hydra skin, armor of souls, black steel plate, copper plate, fire plate. Other than the lucky pendant (which is nice, but optional) your only gem outlay is for the armor so you¿re getting darn near perfect efficiency for whatever gems you¿ve scraped up, or just going with the armor of souls if all you¿ve got is your very solid blood income. The hydra skin works particularly well as it stacks with their regeneration, making it the best choice if you¿ve got the N to burn. Now, these are real SCs. Their berserk protection is around 20, they¿ve got solid regeneration which their life drain stacks on as well as reinvigging them. They¿re doing absurd amounts of damage and are immensely hard to stop, each can easily solo up to moderate strength armies and chew up SCs. Realize this you¿ve only researched to constr-6, alt-2 and can basically field one from every castle you own every turn. The one real weakness is swarms of lifeless troops. Still, they¿re not quite the silver bullet because the damage outlay of these beasts is so immense they can easily overwhelm moderate skellispam before it can build up steam. You¿ll be fielding so many of them that you¿ll be using several together for any significant resistance, good luck trying to withstand that fury. Note, if you are having trouble with fatigue, consider foregoing the quicken self and use boots of the messenger and a lycanthrop¿s amulet for really sick regeneration and an auto berserk rather than waiting to be hit. This guide is getting on the long side, but I¿ve got so much more I want to say, the next few things I¿ll try to say briefly, realize there¿s several implications to each of them. Illwinter folds perfectly into your strategy. So does dark skies, if you manage to luck into a mage and gems to cast it. 2 Gygja steadily casting curse of blood will very rapidly build up an immortal flock. What¿s that? You already pushed your dominion all over the place? Hoard from hell is a great spell you should use liberally with your solid blood income. Use the devil leaders to fly vampires around. With wooden warriors & rush of strength these guys are fabulous flankers for the bigger fights. Blood vengeance. Yeah, this is a bit more micro than you¿re gonna want to do for all your raiders, but just thinking about using this with a bunch of Skratti in a big fight makes me drool. Use reinvigoration to get rid of the fatigue incurred. Sabbath you¿ve got no excuse for not having mass protection/regeneragion/will of the fates for big fights once they¿re researched. You can also do some *wicked* skellispam with Jotun skeletons, darkness, and reinvigoration. Don¿t forget, darkness works great with demons to, mild mannered ¿summon imps¿ turns rather viscous when your opponent can¿t see the little size one 14 defense buggers to hit and you¿ve charged them with blood lust. A few of your mages will be old, use boots of youth or rejuvenate to take even that little sting out of your death-3 scales. There are worse uses for death gems than skull mentors using hammers when constr-4 is your first target. In wolf form + black heart skratti make wicked assassins. Options include hellbind heart, leech, life for a life, frozen heart, falling frost, summon water elemental, or just shifting a second time into a giant werewolf and eating everybody. Water breathing items + skratti = water expansion before all the indies are taken. Strong water mages and income means some teeth in real fights. Ice elementals make nice mindless answers to R¿yleh and buffed krakens work great against Atlantis/Oceana. Check out my MA Atlantis guide for tips on underwater combat. You should be pretty competitive at landing the blood unique summons. When you¿re pulling in 100+ blood slaves per turn don¿t balk at empowering. Your pretender can easily summon father illearth and crank out the infernal crusades (more fear aura) as well as a few blood stones. You¿re forging astral boosters for your Gygja anyway, it¿s a shame not to gear up for some horror spam as well. Works very well with your fear strategy. Dome of corruption isn¿t too bad an idea when all your mages can eat horrors. Gift of health is of course fabulous with giants, it¿s double fabulous with the regeneration slant you¿re focusing on. There¿s worse uses for the earth gems your pretender shakes up than summoning a troll king to add earth buffs to your werewolves (both skinshifter and skratii. Try tossing iron warriors on that skratti for some fun). Hidden in the snow is expensive, but can also land you some earth mages which will add a lot to your strength. Don¿t forget all the obvious stuff like grip of winter, falling frost, shadow blast, etc. Also foul vapors works well with your high hitpoint regenerating troops even without poison resistance. Rain of toads spam is wicked awesome in the right circumstances. Cut off your opponents cap only troops, neuter his best income sites¿heck, lock down all his castles if he¿s only got a few. This is a single handed game winner spell under the right circumstances. Skratti with a blood thorn and armor of souls gets +2 to a potential base 3. No point in not leading that fight with a couple bloodlettings before rampaging into melee. 8.20 Vanheim, Midgard and Helheim 8.20.1 Vanheim 8.20.2 Midgard 8.20.2.1 OW's Guide to Midgard, Scales and Skinshifters Article Author: OmikronWarrior Broad Strategic Outline: The experts will tell you that Vanheim is an exceptionally powerful EA and maybe MA nation due to its glamor sacred units, though they have recently been made capitol only and given a cost increase. Give them a Water-9 bless, possibly add another bless with Fire-9 being particularly fearsome, and let them do your expansion stuff. Midgard does still have mounted, glamor sacred units, so in theory there is no reason why this bless strategy would not still work. Except, you do not need it. Bless strategies of this type come with incredibly high costs, usually paid for by reducing scales which means fewer mages in the long run. With Midgard comes a better way, Skinshifters. In a nutshell, 20 of these guys can take on almost all independent provinces with few losses. Thats 400 gold, 140 resources, plus a commander. The gold you should earn from your capitol alone in one turn, with resource limitations you can make that number in two turns and buy a mage to research in between commanders. Hence, you achieve the benefits of a bless strategy with out the gold deflating costs. Then, Midgard has a powerful mid-game tactic that encourages you to have a lot of gold to buy mages. The Galderman comes with Air-2 guaranteed, with Air-3 on 1 in 4. The Air-3 Galdermans can cast Storm, letting all the Air-2 mages cast Summon Storm Power to get Air-3 themselves, than everyone casts Thunderstrike to decimate opposing armies. Plus, Galderman have some interesting randoms that require a lot of them to be made to get the most advantageous combinations (Earth-2, Blood-2, and Death-2). By endgame, using Nature and Earth site searching, hopefully you will have found some independent mages to provide the necessary magic diversity for a strong end game. Fog Warriors is a very powerful spell which Midgard can easily cast and has great synergy with Skinshifters, giving Midgard an obvious end game. Also consider trying to summon the Air Queens to serve as Super Combatants and Troll Kings to plague enemy armies with Earthquake. Also, a couple of empowered blood mages casting disease demons. The usual end game strategies regarding Wish and Tartarians still apply. The Units (currently only including units of note): Einhere (20g, 20r): Despite my praise of Skinshifters earlier, you can actually debate which unit is better. Certainly, this unit has higher protection (14 vs 5) and is therefore less vulnerable to archer fire. It can also berserk (+5), which some players value highly. However, they cost three times the resources as Skinshifters, which makes them that much less desirable. Also, their default attacks are 10 and 9, making them vulnerable to higher defense and harder hitting units, such as barbarians. Obviously triggering that huge berserk bonus improves their attack and protection, but you have to be thinking of the limited utility of a unit which needs to be harmed to be most useful. In general, stick with Skinshifters as the core of your army, but keep these guys in mind for niche uses. Skinshifter (20g, 7r): The engine that lets Midgard get away with out having a Super Combatant Pretender or a bless. First off, realize that this unit has two forms, the second of which only reveals itself when the first runs out of HP. In effect, you have a 25 HP unit for the cost of 20 gold. The first form packs a high damage punch using its high strength and greatsword. The second form gets three attacks per round (a bite and two claw attacks) which erodes high defense units while still doing considerable damage thanks to having 14 Strength. Both forms regeneration 2 HP per round. This also lets them somewhat ignore the effects of disease and starvation and gives them just a bit more survivability. The major weakness of Skinshifters is their low protection. They wear furs, which only provide 7 protection, and nothing on their heads. The most obvious way to exploit this weakness is archers. Fortunately, Midgard has access to the spells Mists (halves base precision), Storm (removes half of all projectiles and halves base precision again), and Arrow Fend (the ultimate defense against arrows, but is tougher to research at Enchant-6). Try to set up decoys with Einheres or lesser shielded troops. Other attempts to take advantage of the low protection means facing Skinshifters in melee, in which Midgard almost always comes out ahead. Remember, its 25 HP with regeneration while facing heavy damage to kill a Skinshifter which Midgard can produce in mass quantities. Vans (90g, 16r): The Midgard sacred unit. It has a high defense (19 including parry), respectable protection (12), and glamor. However, it is capitol only and costs a lot. Basically, the cost assumes Vans will be recruited with a bless and with this in mind are not overpowering. If you did get a powerful bless, you would want to recruit these things right from the get go. If you're following my strategy and went with positive scales instead, they are a luxury best suited to be bought once you've established your territory, have multiple fortresses, and a solid gold income. Use them as raiders, powerful shock cavalry, and battlefield flankers. Mages and Commanders (Also not complete): Volva (120g, 1r): An Astral-2 mage with no randoms. This unit gives Midgard a solid Astral base. Send one out early to site search. In addition, each Volva has a 5% chance to stop an unlucky event from occurring in her current province. Not a bonus to build a strategy around, but one nonetheless. With the exception of Drain-3, these will be Midgard's most cost effective researchers. However, they are much harder to use on the battlefield. Low HP, a strategic move of 1, zero leadership, and no forest survival means they'll slow your army down while being vulnerable to Seeking Arrow and other remote spells. On the battlefield stray arrows and battlefield wide spells like Earthquake will easily kill them. Instead, rely more on Galdermen for your battlefield magic needs and try to keep Volva safely researching and adverting bad events. Obviously, when you need Astral magic bring them out. As with all Astral mages, they work wonders against low Magic Resistant units such as mammoths and elephants. Also, be sure to threaten horror marking on any SC that invades your dominion. Obviously, they can communion, and with a Starshine Skullcap can cast Dispel. For example, when against Ermor, create a communion of 5 Volva to cast Solar Brilliance. It would help to have a thug or SC to keep the hordes busy so the spell can do its work. Galderman (210g, 1r): Your most powerful and versatile mage, and in general you will want to build more of these than Volva to take advantage of rarer path combination. Comes with Air-2, and two random paths (Air, Earth, Blood, Death and Earth, Blood, Death, Nature). Both randoms appear 100% of the time. Scripting Aim, Summon Storm Power, and Thunder Strike three times is always an option when combined with a Storm, but I'll discuss some of the more interesting combination below. First, however, notice the descriptions HP and the ¿skinshifter¿ mark in the description. Does this mean Galdermen can change shape as well? Yes, into a slightly different werewolf build, one with 6 base protection and 20 base HP, though this only occurs when wounded in battle. Galdermen also have 2 HP of regeneration per round. What this translates into is a hard to kill unit, for a mage. Spells like Seeking Arrow will be ineffective against them. Thats just not to say they are invincible compared to other units, just compared to your typical mage. They also have strategic move 2 and forest survival, making sure they do not slow your armies down. -Air-3: 1 in 4 odds. These casters will serve as important catalysts on the battlefield and important ritualists on the home front. Notably you need one of these units to cast Storm, and the remaining Air-3 (soon to be Air-4) Galdermen will be able to cast Thunder Strike at half the fatigue, meaning more Thunder strikes. An Air-3 Galdermen is also capable of casting Seeking Arrow and Hurricane, and with boosters Dome of Solid Air. Once at Air-4, the Galderman can cast Fog Warriors. Air-5 (achieved by an item booster and Summon Storm Power) lets the Galdermen cast Wrathful Skies and Mists of Deception. -Death-2: A rare Galderman with 1 in 16 odds, so try to keep it out of harms way. This unit can build Skull Staffs letting you climb the Death magic ladder with summons. You only need Death-1 to site search, but with out a natural death income you'll need to either do some initial site searching or trade for gems. -Blood-2: Also rare at 1 in 16. A good candidate for empowering to let you build the typical blood boosters. In the interim, they can blood hunt, summon Storm Demons, and forge. Though it would be difficult to pull off, these units might be able to forge Robes of the Magi (requires Blood-5 and Air-5). -Earth-2: The final 1 in 16 rare Galderman. This one is probably the most useful as well, so really protect them. The most obvious use is Gnome Lore for some site searching. They can also forge Earth Boots letting any Earth-1 Galderman site search as well. Using the boots themselves lets the Galderman reach Earth-3, where the magic happens. He can now forge Dwarven Hammers, which gives a 25% forging cost reduction, considering the high cost of Air boosters this is well worth it. Also, Earth-3 allows the summoning of Troll Kings, and very tough Earth-3 mage who excels at casting Earthquake, Bladewind, and various other battlefield wide enchantments. -Blood-1 and Nature-1: Still 1 in 16 chance. Capable of building Jade Knives out the gate, which is useful as Midgard is a Blood Sacrifice nation. With boosters and perhaps empowerment these guys can make Armor of Twisting Thorns (Requires Blood-3, Nature-2 and boosts both paths by one). Finally, with Blood-3 these Galdermen can cast the Rain of Toads. -Death-1 and Earth-1: Reasonable odds of appearing, 1 in 8 in fact. Throw some Earth Boots on and this guy can cast Blight. -Blood-1 and Earth-1: 1 in 8 odds. Add boosters to build Bloodstones (require Blood-3 and Earth-2). Vanjarls (280g, 16r): Your best commander and priest, but capitol only. Its very useful to try to buy one of these per turn by the midgame. Their main benefit is sailing, letting you attack opponents from unexpected directions and quickly move across the map. Meanwhile, all Vanjarls are Air-2, Blood-1, and Holy-2 mages with no randoms. The Air-2 lets them participate in Thunder Strike spamming. Or, if operating independent of Galdermen, which can easily happen due to sailing movement, add Air boosters and a Staff of Storms to cast spells that way. Their glamor makes them hard to catch scouts (especially useful for transferring gems or boosters to a main army which may involve crossing enemy provinces). Be sure to use them to site search when not otherwise occupied, mainly for the blood and holy paths. Holy sites tend to be a good source of Astral Pearls. Since they are guaranteed Blood mages, adding a Sanguine Dousing rod mades them effective Blood hunters. Finally, they can be made thugs, or even assassins with a Black Heart. The thug works best with some minor blesses helping the unit out. Pretender Design: With the above strategy of focusing on positive scales, Midgard has some leeway in Pretender design. It does not need a Pretender to expand, nor does Midgard need to figure out the cheapest way to get W9N4 or W9S9 (and there is no totally free way). There are two things to consider with your Pretender: do you want an SC chasis and what magic does your Pretender give you. First, however, a discussion of scales are in order. Order/Turmoil: Since Midgard likes money (Skinshifter and Galdermen), Order-3 is easy to recommend. It will be a good, constant money maker through out the game. Hot/Cold: Midgard has a natural affinity for Cold-1, so thats an obvious decision. The choice to proceed to Cold-2 is less obvious. Since the game starts in summer, there is a very good chance that there will be a seasonal shift of 1 tick towards hot. This means you might actually maximize income for the first 6 to 8 turns by taking an unfavorable scale. However, in the long run this will work against you. Cold-2 turns into Cold-3 in the winter turns, resulting in a devastating -10% income penalty and slaps a +2 encumbrance penalty on all units. If you absolutely have to have points, maybe, but I'd recommend sticking with Cold-1. Growth/Death: Midgard does not have any mages at risk for old age, except for recruitable independents such as sages. Hence, the usual motivation for Growth (avoiding crippling or killing afflictions on old mages) does not apply. However, Growth is a very good money maker, noticeable in the short term and as good as Order in the long term. Remember, Midgard likes gold. Combining Order-3 and Growth-3 is a great strategy for Midgard. Less than Growth-3, however, is a little more questionable. Exponential population growth means Growth-3 is disproportionally better than Growth-1 considering the same cost per tick. If not Growth-3, than consider putting points into Production instead. Stay away from Death, however, as that will allow devastating plague events to cripple your income. Production/Sloth: This scale determines two things: how long you can go before needing to build a second fortress to produce Skinshifters and how quickly you can amass Skinshifters should you go to war. Positive production on resource rich maps lets you 'bank' your money during peace time, and rapidly mobilize during war time. It also lets you consider building Einheres more freely and helps maximize income. However, Sloth is hardly crippling, as with enough fortresses gold is almost always going to be the limiting factor in unit production. Still, going below Sloth-1 requires more forts and starts to hurt your income. Download 5.74 Mb. 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