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| MA Vanarus; National Analasys/Discussion | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 8 2013, 10:49 PM (29,950 Views) | |
| TheAmazingPeanut | Oct 8 2013, 10:49 PM Post #1 |
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Troll
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Seeing as nobody around here has made a guide about these guys yet, I figured I would share some of my limited experience with them and get this discussion/guide started with a simple analasys of the recruit screen. Opening the recruit screen for the first time, I see that Vanarus is very similar to Vanheim in that it has a fairly solid lineup of light and medium infantry with a variety of weapons. It also includes dual-wielding berserkers and tough, but unarmored skinshifters, though there are several differences, both distinct and subtle, in both your troops, and in your commander lineup. Troops: -Vanarusian Archer: One of the more distinct differences between you and Vanheim is that you have a cheap, massable archer recruitable in any of your forts. Moreover you have the magic to make him freakishly effective, but we'll get to that in a minute. -Huskarls: Bog standard light infantry with a shield and javelin. They come in both Spear and Axe flavors, so pick your poison depending on your target's toughness and weapon length. A touch on the resource heavy side for light infantry, but with a bit better armor than most. -Hirdmen: "Elite" medium infantry with similar weapons to the Huskarls, but better armor. They come in Spear, Axe, and Sword flavors. Sword is probably the best for general use due to the high damage and defense bonus, but depending on what you need them for, any will do. They all come with javelins. -Chud Hirdmen: These guys are your true elites. Strong with good armor and HP, and dual-wielding two high damage weapons. Anything that isn't freakishly tough to kill should steer well clear of these crazies. The modest Berserking bonus helps keep them on the field when they would otherwise rout, not to mention helps their offense. -Chud Skinshifters: Capital only, and restricted to only 5 per month because they turn into goddamned BEARS. These guys are, unfortunately, not as badass as they sound. While they have boatloads of HP and a seriously painful offense, they suffer greatly from a lack of armor and even the Berserk protection doesn't help as much as it needs to. They're also extremely expensive, so stay away from them unless you are seriously strapped for resources. You already have great heavy hitters in the Chud Hirdmen. -Oath-Bound: Capital only Vanir infantry. Elite, stealthy, decent armor, shielded and Sacred. These would be interesting to use if they were more widely available. Alas, with your only stealthy priest being StR and Cap only, they are well in the "Highly Situational" bin. Edit: Seems that I was mostly wrong about them. Their high defense makes them extremely tough to kill, even without a bless. MM1 is irritating, but they're quite potent line holders, either with a bless or as is. Commanders: -Vanarusian Scout/Herse/Jarl/Gode: Very basic human commanders. Nothing too interesting here aside from the Jarl's 80 leadership. -Chud Jarl: He's got good HP and combat skills, and can bless himself, which makes for a dirt-cheap thug chassis if you have something to bless him with like E4 or higher. Also has a leadership of 80 so he can lead his own supporting army, but don't let him do that by himself. -Vanarusian Sage: Your best research mage, though he's not exactly cheap. 185 gold, nonsacred, and comes with A1 and some randoms, one at FAEN, and one at ADB. At a magic scale of 0, they give you a juicy 15 research and their upkeep works out to about 0.73 gold per Research per turn, making him not terribly efficient. It doesn't help that he's the ONLY mage recruitable in your non-forest forts (though the forest mages aren't any better), however he does have a few upsides compared to typical lab rats. For one, hiring him is like hiring two regular Research 7 guys at once, meaning he will get your research up twice as quick in the early game. He's also generally a more competent battle mage than the two other guys put together. You won't have as many of them as other people will have, but heaven help the guy that thought it was a good idea to siege your research hub without bringing any resistances. -Vyedma/Vyedun: Only recruitable in forests, these mages help round out your magic diversity, though they don't really look terribly useful as battle mages what with their somewhat random amalgamation of level 1 paths. Vyedmas have W1E1N1, and a random pick of FAWN. Vyedun are similar, but trade W1 for F1 and A1. What they do have going for them as battle mages though is their Stealth, and thanks to their wide selection of paths, there's quite a few things they can do if given a little help. In addition, these are the mages you'll likely be using to cast most, if not all of your national summons. -Vanabog: A mounted, sneaky, MM3 badass with A2, D1 and B1 to start with on top of being a H2 priest. They have 1 random pick of FADB, and a 10% random of the same picks. Unfortunately being Cap only and StR means you'll hardly ever see any of the 10% randoms you'd want. You'll only ever have a few, but with Cloud Trapeeze and Stealth, they could be anywhere at any time. They'd make great thugs if they weren't so hideously expensive, but they're fine settling for being good battle mages. Initial Thoughts With the changes from Dominions 3, the midgame has been extended, so Dom4 seems to favor those nations that normally do well during that time. With their powerful researchers, Vanarus seems to be a nation geared towards reaching that midgame before anyone else while rounding out their options when they get there with a lot of built in magic diversity. Your mages, however, are all quite expensive and have notably non-sacred upkeep, so Order 3 is a must, along with a good Growth scale as well. In addition to that, you're going to want a fast and efficient expansion to get you all the gold you'll need to keep recruiting them. Fortunately, Vanarus has access to just the guys you need for that: Chud Hirdmen are expensive, but you really only need a handful of them to have an expansion party that can stomp on all but the largest indy armies. Just 6 Chud will chew through even horrifically tough indies like heavy cavalry given just a little bit of support, either in the form of a few archers to help whittle down larger armies like tribals and barbarians, or Huskarls to catch enemy arrows and lances for them. Because of their multiple attacks, Chud are best when they can connect with the enemy first, so good positioning and scripting is essential to their survival. When going up against real enemy armies, two spells that really seem to stand out are Wind Guide and Flaming Arrows. Not only do you have a highly massable archer to use them on, but your national magic paths are uniquely suited to laying down both of them at once without assistance from boosters or communions. This is something that to my knowledge, very few, if any, other nations in MA can boast. With your research engine, you'll have both up likely before any other nations have even one. Don't forget that your ubiquitous Javelins benefit from Flaming Arrows as well. With a slew of mages with low levels in multiple paths, communions seem to be a good way to bring your battle magic up, but you don't really have any good ways of getting there. I find this is a good spot to bring in your pretender to shore up that hole. Taking at least E2S2 on your pretender will help immensely since he'll be able to forge Matrixes and Crystal Shields to help boost all your battle magic options, not to mention giving you access to other Astral goodies and higher levels of Earth magic, things you are noticably lacking in. If you want Blood Magic, you're not going to be doing it on the cheap. The cheapest hunters you have are the B1 random Sages. Fortunately, you don't need it very early on, and by the time you want to start looking into branching out into blood, you'll generally be at Const 4 and will already have access to Dowsing rods. Vanabogs can get you Storm Demons, which are great to have on their own, but to get more than that, you'll want some boosters, and in order to get Blood bosters, you'll need to look to your pretender. Taking N2B3 on your pretender will get you into Armor of Twisting Thorns, the only blood booster available before Const 6. You can give that and a pair of Earth Boots to a sage in order to get Demon Knights, which can be a great help since Vanarus has no real elite cavalry of its own. Once you hit Const 6, your pretender will be able to forge any of the blood boosters and can get you up to B6 on your pretender, or B5 on a Vanabog with the proper random. As far as Summons go, Vanarus has access to all of the unique summons that Bogarus has, as well as Vanheim's unique summon, the Draugar: a tough, Vanir wight with a fear aura. Though it's a bit slow and can't keep up well with the rest of your typical line holders, it's nice to mix in with your Hirdmen since they are resistant to it's cold aura, and the Draug will help break tougher, non-undead lines that the Hirdmen can't handle themselves. Unfortunately, I haven't had very much multiplayer experience with them, so that's as far as I've gotten. Here is where I'll open the floor to discussion: What do you see in Vanarus that will help it win in a multiplayer game, and what pretender builds do you think benefit it the most? |
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| Gregstrom | Oct 8 2013, 11:28 PM Post #2 |
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Serial Lurker
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I like Oath-Bound a little more than you do. They can take on indies quite nicely in handfuls, are nice and tough, and other players can't see them coming. Any bless you put on them is a bonus. |
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| Edi | Oct 9 2013, 08:40 AM Post #3 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Since when are hirdmen medium infantry? Hurkarls are medium, hirdmen are heavies. Abysian and MA Ulm heavy infantry are not baseline heavies, they're in the very heavy class. That said, you're writing off the chud skinshifters a little too easily. you only need ten of them and they will chew through anything on normal settings and they won't take losses because the bear shape can take enormous amount of punishment and has three attacks. So their attack density is unaffected by troop density. Mix with a few chud hirdmen and it gets even better. The heavy battleaxe combined with their strength also means that it doesn't mean if the enemy is wearing plate armor. They'll still be dead. They have the recruitment cap of 5 per turn and high cost for a good reason. The first time they appeared, they were 25 gold a pop and unlimited recruitment and you could have taken sloth 3 and still rushed an entire map with the guys. The one thing Vanarus sucks at is priests. If you start next to Ermor or Asphodel, your only hope is rushing their capital instantly and prevent the freespawn generation from kicking into gear. If you can't, you might as well bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, because there is nothing you can do to counter those hordes conventionally. As for the Vyedun and Vyedma, those two are fantastic forgers and depending on what paths they get, can be decent combat mages. They are also excellent for magic diversity because you can find a shitload of sites with them. |
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| Johannes | Oct 9 2013, 11:02 AM Post #4 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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They arent really that great. Big bags of HP for the most part, but sub-par def and prot. So they won't last long against any enemy that doesn't rout near-instantly. Bear shape has 2 attacks btw, not 3. At 25 gold they would be really nice, sure, but alas they are a bit expensive for what they are now. Compared to the Chud Hirdman mostly the low resource cost stands out as favorable. |
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| Ohlmann | Oct 9 2013, 11:16 AM Post #5 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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I believe blood should not be your main concern with your pretender. Astral and death are better in my opinion. That's because the nation have great cross path capacity, including thing like rune smasher. So the death cheap (and less cheap) thug chassis and some astral capacity to benefit of some of the most powerful MR negate spell (and be able to forge the eye of the void item) seem a natural fit. Now, B9 pretender is never wasted. It's more that I would put emphasis on astral and death more than on blood, the nation is not very good in it and the path does not complement that well your strengths. |
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| TheAmazingPeanut | Oct 9 2013, 02:25 PM Post #6 |
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Troll
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I've been Ulm for a lot of my singleplayer time in Dom2 and 3, so maybe my perception of "heavy" is a bit skewed. Perhaps you are right in that I was writing off the skinshifters a bit too easily, but in my singleplayer tests, during expansion they took far more casualties than I really expected them to for their cost. Since I started trying the Chud Hirdmen, I'd been able to recruit a 6 man expansion party of them each turn under Sloth 1 scales with very few casualties. I admit I'm not the best at scripting though, so it could be that I'm using protection as a crutch for poor positioning. I'll try and practice that a bit more during testing. Also, I agree with you on the priest thing. In my MP game using Vanarus, I started next to Sceleria who was using S9 blessed Shadow Vestals. I didn't really get the chance to fight them, but I wracked my brain to come up with an answer for them if something happened, and the best thing I could come up with was F2 Vyeduns chucking fireballs. In addition, poor priests means that in a Thrones game, you're going to want a mobile pretender, and your prophet is going to be that much more valuable to you. |
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| Sombre | Oct 9 2013, 03:56 PM Post #7 |
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Leader of the Community
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I tend to think prot 0-10 = light, 11-15 = medium, 16-19 = heavy. Anything 20+ is nearly immune to typical weapons. But depends on the weapons they're carrying too. Shadow Vestals are best just pelted with missile fire aka your archer. |
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I mod for free and fun. But if you want to tip me for work I've done, you can do so through PayPal to rabbitoflegend@gmail.com General Mods: No PopType Recruitment (NI), No Mercs Mod Nations: Warhammer Empire, Warhammer Lizardmen, Warhammer Skaven, Warhammer Chaos Dwarfs, Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms Maps: Warhammer World Older mods not yet ported: AI Recruitment, Ulm Reborn, Black Ulm, Jomon Broken, Avernum, Tharoon, Arga Dis, Daikaiju, Epic Magic Fail, Dromeda | |
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| Johannes | Oct 9 2013, 05:19 PM Post #8 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Dust to Dust those Vestals. |
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| TheAmazingPeanut | Oct 10 2013, 01:40 AM Post #9 |
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Troll
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I've done a bit of messing around with bless-less Oath-Bound in SP and perhaps I haven't given them enough credit. During expansion, they're great at holding a line with their armor and very high defense skill, and they usually come out of expansion with far less afflictions than the Chud Hirdmen. The only problem I see with them is their MM1. In my last few games, I've tended towards starting in a bit of a corner, forcing me to expand in a single direction. By midgame my front lines are often pushed well away from my capital, and it just becomes far too time consuming to get Oath-Bound reinforcements to where they need to be. They're great during that early phase though. Half a dozen of them along with another half dozen Chud make for a nearly invincible expansion party. I've seen them take on indies 3-4 times their numbers and win with maybe one or two casualties at most. |
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| lourdes | Oct 10 2013, 02:15 AM Post #10 |
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militarist
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Chud skinshifters loose to vahieim skinshifter for the same gold without any serious resistance - their bigger size just kills them. I'm sure there are some specific situations where they could be better (I didn't test, but potentially - against heavy ptotected and not much fatigued targets, which do not try to swarm them, also when you use mass regen on them - which doesn't sound like frequent situation though). But if you just seed the field with vanheim skinshifters from one side and chud skinshifters from the other and let them fight, chud skinshifters start to seem extremely overpriced. You start to dream about access to elephants at this moment. If you pay expencive for something, you at least want something worthy in return. They are not that bad either but I avoid buying them by any prce, and buy only if I can't buy anything else because of resources. And unlike Vanheim you can't really build all strategy on them. Edited: Tested again few times. Mixed results. So they are not so bad in quantities as I thought from first tests.. Oath-Bound kill Vans for the same price. Getting to account changes in movement mechanics, they seem to me quite cool unit (because of Van's move's nerf and because in enemy territories both have move one). I dont' think I'd take bless with Vanarus, but with proper bless I'm sure they are extremely dangerous and bless can be unexpected and deadly. And they benefit from many blesses more then Vans. And if Vans are blessable, I don't see why Oath-Bound - not. |
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| hypocritelecteur | Oct 10 2013, 03:31 AM Post #11 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Chiming in to add another voice to the chorus of skinshifter naysayers. Far too expensive for their effectiveness. They low protection just kills their use as a damage soak and their size and unspectacular attacks make them mediocre as heavy hitters. They don't do anything even as well as van skinshifters and cost much more unit per unit. Maybe with a ludicrously large berserker bonus. Like +6 or higher. If a nation is going to let me recruit something as badass as were-battlebears then they should be as awesome as they sound! |
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| lourdes | Oct 10 2013, 06:39 PM Post #12 |
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militarist
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>That said, you're writing off the chud skinshifters a little too easily. you only need ten of them and they will chew through anything on normal settings and they won't take losses because the bear shape can take enormous amount of punishment and has three attacks. They have 2 attacks with size 4 (23,21) vs skinshifters 3 attacks size 3 (14,16,16). |
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| hypocritelecteur | Oct 10 2013, 07:28 PM Post #13 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Huge amount of punishment is a stretch. The bears have fewer effective hitpoints than most heavy infantry. A neat solution might be to make the bearshape sacred, but keep the human troop mundane. |
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| Johannes | Oct 10 2013, 08:34 PM Post #14 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Would be ridiculously hard to bless them. |
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| Kref | Nov 1 2013, 10:58 AM Post #15 |
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Tartarian
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Bear skinshifters are exsellent units. They are particulary good for expansion on indies, where you can plan battle so that you would win before much losses. If bear looses 30 hitpoints per battle, it is as if you earned 3 liightly-armored but heavy-hitting infantries for free. Of cause they won't kill sacreds under proper heavy bless, but without that bless bears generally would trash them. |
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