Dominions 3: The Awakening/Nations/Helheim: Difference between revisions

I haven't been able to find anything, even Construction-7 Weapons of Sharpness, that lets Vanir stand up to Niefel giants in melee. The best tactic I've found so far is Alteration-6 (allows Darkness and Drain Life) combined with Enchantment-3 (Raise Dead) and possibly Construction-4 (Skull Staff to use Svartalfs instead instead of Hangadrotts). Have the low-level death mages spam skeletons while the high-level ones suck the life out. You don't actually need any Vanir troops present to make this work; if you have them with you set them all to Guard Commander so they stay out of the way and don't get killed. It's obviously better to maneuver around Niefelheim's forces and cut off his gold supply, but this way you can back up the manuever with a real threat of killing his pricey units. It's certainly hard enough to do...

Speaking of maneuver, Vanir excel at raiding behind enemy lines of course. Since all of Niefelheim's good units are capital-only, you can use the Alteration-4 spell Blight (E2D1) to raise unrest by 15 per casting and kill off population. However, this isn't nearly as cost-effective as Rain of Toads, which Vanir don't have. Something that works *almost* as well is to sneak into his capital and capture the province (pretty easy vs. militia with dual-blessed Valks or Helhirdlings), and instead of sieging the province, turn the tax rate up to 200 (like always) AND GO BLOOD HUNTING. Since your commander likely has no skill in blood-hunting, this nets no slaves but raises the unrest up to 83 or so in a single turn. If it gets above 100 he won't be able to produce any units at the capital, even after you leave, until it comes back down.