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| Ideas to Jotunheim | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 22 2015, 08:37 PM (2,626 Views) | |
| elfposer | Jun 22 2015, 08:37 PM Post #1 |
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Chud
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I made this little summary of Jotunheim for a friend i tried to teach the game, and thought why not post it here. But I have to admit i only played Jotunheim 2 times in an MP games. Ideas for Jotunheim Generally speaking i think Jotunheims are more their Commanders then their units. As most of their Commanders are sacred, they can very cost-effectivly be made to great thugs with the right bless can very cost-effectivly. On the other hands their sacred units and commanders all prefer a different bless. Skrattis prefer a E9 bless when wearing a shrout, sacred Commanders love a N9 bless and Jotunheims sacred units the Garmhirdings enjoy the W9 bless. But i feel Garmhirdings aren`t really great units anyway only 11 armor, no shield, only one attack and no chill aura. Commander: Gygja: They are quite random in their Magic schools, i normally use the D2/D3 as skelli spammers. The N2/N3 maybe used for buffs like Wooden Warriors. I use the Gygjas with astral mainly for Communions and the S1 Vaetti Hags as slaves. These Communions can spam Stellar cascades or Light of the Nothern Stars. ,wooden warriors, horde of skleletons depending on the enemy and research. Gygjas are capital only but not slow to recruit. And for me the only real battlemages u got, as i have problems with getting Scrattis to work as spellcasters on the battlefield. Vaetti Hag: For a lab in the woods and 40 Gold not the worst deal to get 5RP, especially if you have taken magic scales. And they are great to do job other more expensive Mages would have to do otherwise. B1 are great for bloodhunting or to forge Ring of the Warrior, Imp Familiar and Sanguine Dowsing Rods. S1 are communion slaves and can forge shrouts and Enchanted Ring Mail Armor. Also S1 can cast body ethernal for a Thug. Or with Light of the Nothern Stars (Conj4) all your S1 Vaettis can spam Stellar Cascades (Evo5). D1 can spam frighten. N1 i never found any real use for them. Jotun Jarl: With a N9E4 bless they only need a Vineshield and a Frostbrand to be a great thug. Skrattis: As Werewolf they are great thug chassis. They got good stats but have only 9 armor, 10% reg and are able to cast quicken self (Alt 2) liquid body(Alt4). One can reduce spell encumberance by casting the selfbuffs in human form and then shapechange on the battlefield. But i sometimes loose items by doing this and mostly it works. Skrattis are not sacred but u can forge a shroud for them. They profit most from E9 as armor and fatigue are the two major problems of the skratti. N9 gives them 20% reg and + 8hp, which help where skrattis are already very good. W9 only give +4 Def which doesnt hurt but isn`t that great. When not having some sort of an earth bless, Skrattis need at least one item with reinvigoration most likely Boots of the Messenger and/or Amulet of Resilience, when fighting longer battles. W2 Skratti have 32 Fatigue after casting quiken self and liquid body W3 Skratti have 24 Fatigue after casting quiken self and liquid body And when attacking twice a turn they make 4 fatigue a turn. When they shapechange into a wolf, they can sneak behind enemy lines. But u need a scout to carry the item for the skratti. As Skrattis are the only major mage Jotunheim can recruit outside of the capital, u never have gems to forge thug items for all of them, u also have to use them as battlefield mages. But i have real problems because falling frost (Evo6) and frozen heart (Alt6) are so late in the researchtree. And for Falling Frost you need Constr 6, so that u can forge the Water Bracelet, because only 25% Skrattis are W3. Quickness (Alt4) is a spell that might helpful and Jotunheim need Alteration 4 sooner or later. Units: Garmhirding: I don`t really like them and cap only. They lack amor, a shield and have only one attack. But in the first year i often find myself buying them because they cost so few production, even when i don`t have a bless. Jotun Javelinist: I quite like them, especially during expansion. And easier to mass then most other units. And with their huge strength those javelins, are more like ballista bolts. Jotun Hirdman: My favourite heavy infantery o Jotunheim, but there are not that great differences between them. Moose Riders + Wolf Rider: I find them really cool, but they are way too expensive. Vaettis: I think i should use them more often. I normally use them for patrolling provinces where i bloodhunt. And against humans u can use them as stealth raiders in time of war. And being only size 4 there can be 1 giant and 2 vaettis on one square. Thats 2 attacks more per square. Research: Early Research: Construction 4 (Thug Items,Skull Staff, Thistle Mace, Boots of Messanger) Thaumaturgy 1 (Comm. Slave/Frighten/Curse/Desication) Enchantment 3 (Raise Skeletons) Alteration 4 (Numbness, Liquid Body, Quicken Self, Body Ethereal, Quikness) Follow up Research: Conjugation: 4 (Stars of the Nothern Lights) Construction 6 (Thorn of Blood, Water Bracelet, Skullmentor, Moonshine Bracelet) Evocation 5 (Falling Frost, Stellar Casades) Enchantment 5 (Horde of Skeletons) Alteration 6 (Wooden Warriors, Frozen Heart, Mother Oak) Blood 3 (Blood Feast for healing thugs) Pretender: When creating the Pretender there are many valid choices. Commander prefer having N9E4 while Skratti love E9 and your sacred units enjoy a W9 bless. Going scales with maybe only an E4-6 bless is not a bad choice either. But without a bless you need more gems to make your thugs work. Nature gems can be quite a bottleneck for Jotunheim. That Jotunheim seems to be so flexible with going bless or scales, makes them quite a good nation for a disiple game. Awake Earth Sepent E6 Dominion:6 Order:3 Productivity:2 Cold:3 Growth:2 Misfortune:1 Magic:1 Awake never hurts. Especially when you dont have a bless for the Garmhirdings. E6 helps the Skrattis enough to skip the boots of the messenger. And your God can built dwarven hammer, which also helps to save nature gems. And the Scales arn`t bad. But the Snake is cold blooded, but that doesn´t matter much in the early expansion. Imprisioned Irminsul E4N9 Dominion:6 Order:3 Productivity:2 Cold:3 Growth:2 Misfortune:1 Magic:1 The bless helps all sacreds somehow, especially your normal sacred commanders, They just need a frostbrrand and a vineshield. Scales arn`t bad either, and with N9 you might wanna rush alteration 5 for Mother Oak. Early Game Generally my game plan is to expand quickly either with an awake pretender and Jotun Spear Huskarls/Javelin or with a bless and Garmherding Jotun Spear Huskarls. Because all those future Thugs desperately need Gems for items, i send the first N3 Gygja out for site searching and try to get a scratti for water site searching in year one. Around turn 5-6 i try drop a lap in a wood, preferably with more then 5000 population. And i start pumping out vaetti hags to compensate the research lost from the early site searching. Also i use woods to produce vaettis to help my expansion parties to last longer. If you get lucky with an early B1 vaetti i start immediatly to bloodhunt. The second B1 vaetti starts forging Imp Familiar. If possible i always start a tiny blood economy at the end o year one. I normally start the first Fort at the end of year one, due to early lab and recruiting vaettis in the woods. Thats kind of late Normally I start research Alteration 2 or 4, especially if i chose an awake pretender. After that Constr 4, when i am lucky with the B1 vaettis quickly aim for constr. 2. After i got Alteration 4 and Constr 4 normally around turn 20-24, i normally go for enchanment 3-5 for Skelli spam which works nice together with thug backup. But i all depends of what enemy you have to face and what Gygja and Vaetti randoms you get. Around turn 28-34 i normally have the first 3-4 Thugs geared and ready to win the first war that i am fighting that time. If I got lucky and have not made myself a target, i would not start a real war before beginning of year 3. |
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| Executor | Jun 23 2015, 04:27 PM Post #2 |
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I'm the captain now
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A few observations; Jotunheim really isn't a nation where you'd ever want or need an awake pretender no matter how cheap or good. Even with no bless you'll still be sending out an army each turn (Garmhirdings) which can take 90% of provinces with no loses. As for bless, I'd highly recommend an N/B bless rather then N/E. Jotunheim doesn't suffer from the same problems as Neif so getting overwhelmed by undead and fatigued out isn't much of an issue. Even then all you need is a minimally thuged out Skratti to cut trough the undead chaff. In any other case the fatigue won't matter. Battles won't last long enough for sacreds to fatigue out. A blood bless however provides a lot of protection from mages which are the main counter to your sacreds and even Skratties. Skratties don't need an earth bless. Their fatigue is brokenly low, 2, so pretty all you need are some boots which you can forge easily. Shroud, boots, vine shield and a frost brand, being the usual items of choice. The protection is really irrelevant. Their defense is usually high as fuck (you effortlessly go 20+ def) so they rarely even get hit and then there's the vine shield to top it off. So unless you get a few critical hits in the head in a row you're safe from just about any troop type. For anything designed to fight skraties protection isn't going to help much anyways and in fact a blood bless would be much better. And lastly, I see you don't like Garmhirdings for some reason. While they might not look good on paper they are still one of the best sacreds in the game. They are cheap, easy to mass and afford you sloth 3 scales. Shield is not a problem if you have a blood bless since it takes at least 4-5 arrow hits to bring them down and they still have regeneration. Armor is mediocre but going berserk helps a bit and even knights can't do much to kill Garmhirdings due to their beefiness. They do have just a single attack and are huge so that can be a problem but they tend to kill anything they hit and if you have a blood bless if helps crap out crap quite fast. It also counters body ethereal which can really mess with Garmhirdings. Pretty much any strategy should be centered around Skratties and Garmhirdings backed by a few sneaky vaeti armies. |
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Dom 5 mod nation: Confluence - a compilation of 18 mod nations | |
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| elfposer | Jun 24 2015, 03:39 PM Post #3 |
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Chud
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Interesting approach going N9B9. Do you make any use of B9 other then the bless, meaning you aiming for something in blood magic that your normal bloodmages can`t do? Imprisoned Irminsul N9 B9 Dominion: 6 Order:3 Sloth:3 Cold:3Growth:1Misfortune:1 Would you go something like that? I am a bit worried about the money. What Battlemagic do you use? |
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| elfposer | Jun 24 2015, 03:56 PM Post #4 |
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Chud
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How does that work exactly, is there a special trick how you position your troops. And i guess you mean every two turn? Because even with bless i loose Garmhirdings, and babarians are really tough to beat. |
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| Executor | Jun 24 2015, 04:39 PM Post #5 |
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I'm the captain now
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You always want to position your troops so they hit first but yeah, massive hoards of barbarians are one of those provinces you want to avoid early on. It's pretty much barbarians, lizardman and knights, though knights can usually be somewhat disarmed by placed a few vaeti in front to soak up the lances which do the most damage. But yeah, apart from that you should be able to buy at least 6 Garmhirdings a turn no matter you scales. Likely it will be around 8 and that is quite sufficient. As for armies, the limiting factor are really the priests since those national ones are quite a bit expensive if I remember and they take up valuable mage turns. Troop vice, you can field a new army each turn without much effort. Since the nation isn't production dependent there's no need to force all capital adjacent provinces too, so you can just expand wide trough easier indies and then circle back to take those tougher provinces inland. At least that's how I play it. Jotun is one of the fastest expanding nations in the game and I'm really not exaggerating. It's right up there with Mitclan. |
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Dom 5 mod nation: Confluence - a compilation of 18 mod nations | |
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| elfposer | Jun 26 2015, 02:47 PM Post #6 |
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Chud
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Tested your ideas ad it worked. Still the downside to doublebless and dominion 8-9 is that you really run into money problems and with sloth 3 it takes 3-4 turns to get enough recources for full production. But N9B9 idea shows how flexible this nation is, because i still think other tactics for Jotunheim are valid, too. Have to try that Nation in my first diciple game i guess. Ulm/Jotunheim or Vanheim/Jotunheim maybe. Mictlan/Jotunheim is a bit difficult with their different taste for temperature. |
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| Executor | Jun 27 2015, 12:48 PM Post #7 |
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I'm the captain now
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Totally missed this post. Don't use the B9 on my pretender but the N9 is quite useful. Usually I try to stockpille as many nature gems as I can so I have the option to cast a powerful Gift of Health if get attacked by multiple nations, or if I want to deter anyone from attacking me. As for magic, whenever I have D/B mages I tend to aim for Vamp Lords. They are a bit tricky with Jotunheim since you usually need a lucky Gygja and some boosters and/or empowerment, but I've had it done successfully. Yeah, that's about the standard pretender for Jotun. I tend to trade the growth scales for some magic but no reason for it really, just a personal preference. The money will likely be a problem at one point, yeah. That's one of the reason sticking to sacreds only is a good option. The regular troops are expensive and cost more gold to maintain then the sacreds. The Skratti are going to cost a lot too and you likely want quite a few of them for bloodhunting which should be one of the main goals of the nation. Luckily research isn't something Jotun needs desperately so you can afford to have your research suffer a bit. The vaeti mages are the most gold efficient obviously but to make them work you need quite a few forts, and at least some magic scales. I don't usually make a lot of Gygjas. I stop once I get all the randoms I need (for forging and summoning) and switch to Skratti entirely. My research goals tend to focus on these; Const 4 Enc 7 Blood 7 Alt 4 The order in which I research them tend to shift depending on need of course but like you said, const 4 is something you must rush, for the thug items and for blood rods. After the main research is done I try to aim for Blood 8 and life for life. If's a very spamable spell for Jotun, especially if you get Vamp Lords and should make you invulnerable to SC's. But yeah, Jotun is flexible. I have no doubt they can pull off a build with no bless, good scales and just blood hunt to oblivion and summon a shit ton of devils, vamps and whatnot. |
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Dom 5 mod nation: Confluence - a compilation of 18 mod nations | |
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