Help me choose a pretender for EA Helhiem...

[FrontalAssault]

I am looking at either Son of Fenrer with W9N4 with dominion 3 and good scales or Father of Winters with W9E4 sames scales and Dominion 4.

I will be in a 8 to 10 player game on a good size map. Not sure if N4 is any good or if E4 is a good match for the other. Would love some advice.

Thanks alot!

[Micah]

Your scales aren't going to do much for you with such bad dominion scores, and you're looking at a strong possibility of dominion-kill, or at least a lot of resources sunk into avoiding it, with dom 3. I wouldn't go under 5, especially since it'll choke off your sacred recruitment which is probably their strongest point, especially with the huge nerf their magic took from the last patch.

I'd probably go with a w9e9 cyclops, dom 7 order 3 sloth 3 misf 3 magic 1 growth 0 cold 3...good sacred production and it abuses all of the easily abusable scales while still giving you a much-needed research boost. Magic 3 would be nice given the crappiness of Helheim's researchers, but I wouldn't go down to dom 4 for it, and dropping the order scale is asking for the misfortune to really bite you in the rear, so it's not worth the investment. Just hope for some good indies.

[thejeff]

It's Helheim.
Figure out the cheapest, imprisoned W9F9 dom7/8 pretender.

[FrontalAssault]

I know F9 gets the big attack bonus and E9 gets reinvigoration. Thoughts on whats better there or is it a personal preference?

I am such a noob I did not know that Dominion affected your scales. How does it do that?

[DrPraetorious]

Many people - including thejeff, evidently - regard W9F9 as a no-brainer. Certainly your ability to dish out hurt is impressive.

However, I maintain that W9N4 actually gives you more survivable helhirdings, and you can afford a strong dominion and good scales at the same time (try an imprisoned Father of Winters, cheaper than the son of Fenrir). W9F9 helhirdings *squish* W9N4 helhirdings, but W9N4 helhirdings take comparable or fewer losses (especially against archery-heavy independent opposition), and end up with fewer afflictions.

Given that EA Helheim also has powerful combat magic, I think this is actually a more robust choice.

In any case, you want an imprisoned pretender. I'll suggest some specific builds when I get home and have access to the executable.

[thejeff]

F9 get +4 attack and an armor negating attack
E9 gets +4 reinvig and +4 armor

The reinvig is nice with sacred mages, doesn't really help troops all that much.
The Earth protection bonus seems to help more with troops that already have a high protection. Helhirdings rely more on not being hit, with glamor and water bless for higher defense.

The higher your dominion the faster it will spread. Provinces with your dominion will adjust to your scales. I believe they will shift faster with a high dominion, but I don't know the formula.

You also can only buy 1 sacred unit per point of dominion.

[DrPraetorious]

E9 helhirdings is worth considering because you also have dwarves who can cast Legions of Steel.

Both together give them a prot, I think, of 20, which is pretty insane for the early era.

But I think F9 is better - and N4 is a lot cheaper.

A note on luck and misfortune - victory goes to the bold. The more points of luck OR misfortune you take, the higher the variance in your income between trials (it becomes "more random".) If you ever want to win, this is to your advantage. If four players take a lot of fortune or misfortune every game, and four players never take either, and they play a lot of games, the four players who take one or the other will, between them, win more games, all else being equal, because when they're lucky they'll do very well.

That said, take either Fortune 3 or Misfortune *2*. Misfortune 3 is a *lot* worse than misfortune 2.

Of course, you aren't allowed to quit when luck turns against you - nor should you, as you can still pull off an occasional win even with a dreadful start.

Imprisoned Father of Winters - W9N4, Domstr 7, Order 3, Sloth 3, Cold 2, Luck 3, Magic 1. This is the most income you can get (luck gives more money on average than growth, which gives more money on average than sloth,) and still have a decent bless for your helhirdings. Consider Domstr 6 and Sloth 2 if you're worried that you won't have enough resources to recruit 7 helhirdings a turn once you've conquered the surroundings of your capital.
Note that the extra cold point is worth it because temperatures ocillate - if you only take Cold 1, many of your provinces will be cold 0 a lot of the time, so you might as well have the extra 40 points.

or...
Imprisoned Father of Winters. W9F9, Domstr 6, Order 3, Sloth 3, Death 1, Misfortune 2, Magic 1. If it moves, stab it until it stops moving. Repeat as desired. With the Magic +1 and the cheap and powerful svartalf, you'll also be magically fearsome by mid to late game. Try E9 instead of F9 if it amuses you. You'll need to combine it with Legions of Steel for it to be really competitive, though. Your more powerful dark vanir are powerful spellcasters (especially with Shadow Blast), although you tend to run out of gems before you fill up your fatigue.

[thejeff]

I haven't actually tried the N4 version. I assume that's just for the affliction resistance. They don't have enough hp for the regeneration to really help with survival.

By comparable losses against independents, you mean almost none, right? More interesting would be losses against significant enemy armies, which if your opponents are smart will have lots of archers. N4 helps not get afflictions from the archers, F9 helps slaughter the melee troops to get to the archers (and mages) faster.

My take on Helhirdings is that they're all about speed. Cross the field as fast as possible, kill the enemy as fast as possible. N4 may keep you from getting an affliction once you've been hit, but once you've been hit your glamor is broken and you'll probably be hit again. Breaking the enemy faster decreases the number of times they can try to hit you, and thus increases your survivability.

The N4 bless being cheaper certainly helps, especially in a longer game. Better scales, more dominion => more helhirdings early and more mages all game.

[tibbs]

If you can fit in an air 4 or higher bless, that would help against archers since the change to glamour now makes it useless against arrows. You probably don't need it though as long as you put your troops with shields out front.

[Warhammer]

I was actually thinking the same thing about an Air bless. If you go to an A9 bless, you get 80% air shield and 70% shock resistance. This might work better with EA Vanheim though since you have strong air mages there that can cast Storm and Orb Lightning, etc., etc.