LA Utgard guide

[Viajero]

AFG at the moment but similar to the ones proposed a bit further up.

Otherwise I have not been recruiting just mages from day 1, I had to recruit several other leaders for expansion, a few died so had to replace, also 2 mages constantly casting ritual searches etc. that probably can epxlain the discrepancy?

[Dragar]

yeah perhaps. Ritual searches wouldn't, but if you have recruited a few extra leaders could make the difference

If you aren't already, use indy commanders for ferrying troops, keep your jarls just for the fighting/blessing

[Agema]

N9W9 will have significant problems, surely? It'll go through indies and most AI, but the minute you face another player you'll have severe trouble.

Woodsmen are large and few in number, so they'll rack up fatigue very quickly. Spammed summons and chaff will exhaust you, particularly if they have high defence or are ethereal (75% of hits don't count). Stun damage spells will be devastating. Once fatigue gets high, your woodsmen will be much less effective and become very vulnerable. Virtually every other nation will have at least one magic path to readily exploit your fatigue issues. You can make things slightly better with size 2 troops to accompany and mix in with the giants, but it doesn't fully resolve your big tactical weakness.

You're also a major thugging race with a bless of 1.5 attacks and more defence, but that's minimally useful for a thug: he mostly needs to stay alive (Def will not help if you're attacked multiple times) dishing out damage steadily until the PD runs.

[Viajero]

Does this mean that giant races are doomed tacticlaly becasue of the fatigue/focused dammage issue? or just Utgard in particular?

Or is it simply that N9W9 is not good enough and a different bless could work?

[thejeff]

I had a lot of trouble with Woodsmen up against crossbows. Fire large monsters avoids most of the standard arrow decoys. You can use giants as decoys, but they're expensive and shielded ones are resource intensive as well.
I've played MA Jotunheim more than late, but the sacreds are the same.

Even with a lesser bless (E4N4?) the Woodsmen make decent low resource troops for early expansion, but you need to have thugs rolling by the time you face anything but indies. I'd research construction first, manually site search and start blood hunting with Skrattis. Blood items are cheap and Skratti werewolves can be effective with just a couple cheap items (Flesh Eaters?). (That's shamelessly stolen from the Baalz Neifelheim guide)

[Illuminated One]

Not really.
Take an earth bless for reinvigoration instead of water and the fatigue from chaff is no (or a very small) issue. Meanwhile, while the enemy is just trying to fatigue you down you are killing his troops.
Mages with fatigue spells are more dangerous but every unit has a weakness and being vulnerable to fatigue is hardly worse than being vulnerable to archers or fire or having low mr.

[archaeolept]

e9 n6 is probably the canonical bless for any sort of giant sacreds. I'd add on f4 for the woodsmen, myself, if it is affordable.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Viajero

Does this mean that giant races are doomed tacticlaly becasue of the fatigue/focused dammage issue? or just Utgard in particular?

Or is it simply that N9W9 is not good enough and a different bless could work?

I think it's the Woodsmen rather than Utgård. Earth bless would reinvigorate your giants, but berserk and quickness are also good, and you don't want to spend too much on bless.

This means you'll have to be ready to do something else if you face summons (example: 10 Death2 mages casting Raise Skeletons, the Ench 3 spell), high-defense troops etc. Some Skratti thugs with reinvigorating items (enough to keep them at 0 fatigue throughout the battle) and area-of-effect weapons look like good options, but fatigue-causing spells will also hurt them. Against those, you might want to switch to using your own undead.

And so on. You can make a different pretender, but that means you will have other weaknesses you won't know about. W9N9 Woodsmen are good for expansion, so make the most of that. Start a couple of new games and try to get as many provinces as you can in the first 15 turns. I don't know how many you should aim for, perhaps 20 or 25. Once you can do that, see how much and how fast you can research, and find different ways to use it, and have fun.

If you don't like the sound of that, you can also keep playing single-player, and not worry about trying to find the kind of strategy you won't need against AI any way.

[Dragar]

everything has a weakness, i always play utgard with a good N bless but have enjoyed them with both W9 and E9. E9 is probably mor esolid, but W9 can be specatacular, and gievn that woodsmen have average prot even with E9, getting to the enemy quickly and killing them faster can reduce casualties. It is all about avoiding damage focus with woodsmen, they will never be great at avoiding damage.

Also, while E9 is normally better on a pretender for ritual/forging/combat purposes, you don't have any natural earth income or mages. A W9 pretender will have gems on hand by the time you get him free, letting you cast powerful spells requiring gems

If going for W9 I recommend the Son of Nifel. I played him in a MP game, and the W9 makes his defence and chill factor astounding. He was undefeated that game, singlehandedly resisting the onslaughts of the game leader at the time (midgard), who had decimated my main armies. I ended up having to leave that gaem as i went away for a month, but he was my most enjoyable pretender SC ever

I find E9N8 much more boring, though probably more reliable, especially as utgard doesn't need an SC

[Revolution]

In my opinion because woodsmen are kind of meh as far as sacred units go...if you're gonna go for a bless, tailor your bless for shrouds of the battle saint and put your skratti to work as wherewolf thugs. A side effect of this is that you can have a bless that makes your werewolves kick *** and still make early expansion a breeze by being good for your woodsmen.

Take an imprisoned great mother with E9 N6 S4
Dom 7
Order 3
sloth 2 (could shift to sloth 3)
cold 3
growth 0 (could shift to death 1)
misfortune 2
magic 1 (magic 1 is ideal because with it your seithkonas become really really efficient researchers and with enough castles you will be quite competitive in research)

With this bless your woodsmen will be quite solid and your shrouds of the battle saint will kick ***.
Your werewolves can/will be casting quicken self so there is not much point in having a W9 bless. N6 gives 10% regeneration which is quite solid and while berzerking can be nice it can also be a bit of a handicap. S4 gives a nice point of MR for your werewolves whos base MR is a little low, it also gives you easier access to forging a ring of wizardry.