I can't seem get Vanheim to work. Need some help.

[HotNifeThruButr]

The subject pretty much explains what I'm looking for. I can't seem to get Vanheim to work! I see a whole lot of potential with this nation. I've been trying to tweak my game over a couple tests, and here's what I have so far. (I tend to be long winded, so I try to spice things up here and there... It's going to be really cheesy)

Which Pretender?: I have no clue here. I really want a pretender that would match my main magic school. I go with a Cyclops at the moment because I think Vanheim's earth magic from its dwarves is better than its air magic from Herse, Jarls, and Drott. Dwarves are more cost effective, and I've always got the human herse to lead my armies.

I've tried an Allfather with 4 air and 4 death as well as a 4 earth and 4 blood Cyclops, but they didn't work so well. I'll explain why below.

Finding balance in the Scales: I don't think I've had much of a problem with scales. In case they end up sucking, I'll talk about them anyways. I take 3 Order and 3 Magic, and pay for it with 1 misfortune and, if necessary, 1 sloth. I get a dominion of 5, no matter what my pretender is. As for my fortress, I take a fortress.

Making Magic: I'm completely blown away by the magical diversity Vanheim gets. I see a couple paths to take. Evocation focus, Alteration focus, or Blood focus.

1.Evocation focus seemed like a very good the first time I tried Vanheim. I research about 4 parts Evocation, 2 parts Alteration, and 1 part Construction. I've seen some lightning in action before and thought "I must have it!." The problem I run into here is that Vanherse can't cast any useful spells from Evocation with their 1st teir air magic while Jarls and Drott are too few (by which I mean expensive) to justify researching Evocation. Alteration is there to get some protection magic out of my dwarves because my "heavy infantry" (Hirdmen) are light weights with just 15 protection. I can't have my dwarves sitting around picking their noses too.

2.Alteration Focus was my second idea. Alteration sounded good because Dwarves are easier to produce than Vanjarls and have teir 3 earth magic each. I researched in 2 parts Alteration and 1 part Construction. It worked out pretty well, but didn't really kick too much ***. I'm still looking for something better.

3.I played around with Blood Focus too. It's too expensive to blood hunt, in the end. Since Vanjarls are the cheapest hunters I can get my hands on.

Da Boyz, AKA soldiers: I'm pick many different Vanheim units to use in many different roles.

1. Huskarls: Whenever possible, I try to get huskarls instead of Hirdmen. I often have the cash to sustain this because, for light infantry, they surprise me in costing more resources than gold. 10 gold and 11 resources each, to be exact. I love their javelins because they can do horrible horrible things to enemies with less than 15 protection. I draw the line between heavy and light armor at 15 protection. For hand to hand weapons, I like the axe huskarl better than the spears one. The spear, in my experience, just doesn't pack enough of a punch to break into heavy infantry. Axes, however, are pretty much always going to get repelled, since they have length 1. I think even broadswords can repel axes (really bad because most heavy infantry are armed with broadswords or longer weapons).

2. Hirdmen: I hate Hirdmen. I do use them when I run low on cash because they cost about double resources to gold. Otherwise, I can almost get two huskarls per hirdmen. Also, huskarls are more mobile on the map, with 2 moves instead of 1 and huskarls get javelins. For weapons, I always go broadsword on my hirdmen. Like huskarls, the spearmen just don't have enough bite to deal with heavy infantry and (Pretender forbid) Knights.

3. Skin Shifters: I don't use Skin Shifters unlike I have a huge gold surplus. And when I do have a huge gold surplus, I spend it on Vanjarls, dwarves, and Vanadrott. I'm also not in love with the idea of a 25-gold unit in less than 15 protection. The Greatsword is a nice touch, especially against Ulm and Jotunheim, but they exchange that for claws when they transform. I prefer Einheres in most situations.

4. Einheres: Einheres are nice. For about double the cost of a huskarl, I get a 13 protection unit that becomes 16 protection when he beserks (methinks). That 13 protection means Einheres aren't going to get massacred by arrow fire. In fact, I welcome arrows against Einheres because they usually just activate berserk in my einheres instead of actually killing them. For their weapons, einheres get an axe and a sword. Both are good general-purpose weapons, and having 2 weapons means they're effective against light infantry. Then, if the Einhere berserks and gets the strength bonus, they can crack enemies with 18 protection and up (at least that's what I've been using them for ) I'm usually pretty einhere-heavy when I can afford many of them.

5.Van and Valkyrie: I bunch them together because I don't use them. Their main perks seem to be redicululously high defense skills (18 on Van and 15 on Valkyrie) but they are too expensive for me to justify using them. They have trouble inflicting damage, since they're armed with just spears.

About my human troops as a whole, (I usually play with difficult or very difficult research, by the way, so this is kinda important) I wonder if Van and Valkyries are useful for anything, if Einheres have any flaws I overlooked, and if I should use spears instead of axes and swords on huskarls and hirdmen.

"We will conquer this entire world! A point at a time...": For my tactics, since you can't possibly come up with a set-in-stone "build order" (1st peon to gold, 2nd peon build a barracks...) I came up with a general guideline.

No matter what I do, on the first turn, I buy a dwarf if my Pretender isn't strong in Earth Magic and a Vanherse if my pretender is. Then, I get huskarls with axes.

1. Conquering is the first priority. Whenever I'm able, I go after those farmlands with low quality troops, because Huskarl javelins and Einheres always make short work of them. If the farmland is full of heavy cavalry or knights, I only challenge them if I know I can squash them. Basically, if I can take a high-gold province (and I say farmland above because they usually are farms) I take it.

2. For conquered provinces, I search all the provinces I get until I lose track of them because I need to bring my Pretender to a lab because I researched some awesome ritual only he can cast, or I lose track of all my provinces because eventually, I can start conquering 2-3 provinces at once.

3. For commanders, I get dwarves if I already have enough commanders, to boost my research. If I need commanders (I like to have twice as many leadership points total as I have troops) I get Herse or Vanherse, and I get Vanherse solely to use as priests. I get however much huskarls and einheres my resources allow after getting my commander. If I have more resources than gold, I go for Hirdmen instead.

4. For temples, I often can't buy all the temples I want (and I want a temple in every province) along with all the troops I want. Temple-money has a higher priority than money spent on Vanherse-money (probably because I have to have Vanherse to be able to buy temples... ) but a lower priority than troops-money.

5. I keep the peace by temporarily lowering taxes. 10% decrease per 5 unrest and then 10% more decrease (so if I have 5 unrest in an area, I lower taxes to 80%).

6. For Fortresses, I don't build them unless I find a really high resource province.

I think I've covered my whole style of play for Vanheim. I'm relatively new at Vanheim and would appreciate any advice anyone offers.