27:45 What would be really funny is if the shrink slap effect stacked. I think it can only apply once though. Imagine a prepared squad of gnomes slapping the shit of a supercombatant down to size 1 permanently.
5:00 It's worth mentioning* that 30HP and 15 protection is enough to survive a couple of hits from most enemies. This could very often going to be the difference between steady attrition and no attrition from victories. Some hits (almost) always get through and it makes a big difference if you can take those without losing anyone. 12:00 With 2 ammo the Hurler isn't a ranged troop (you get that many javelins!) -he's your siege troop! * from my zero experience actually playing this game (I own it now but hard as it's trying it hasn't made it to the front of the queue yet)
I'll have you know you made the Hurler team cry and crying ice giants are not a pretty sight. They are useful for taking care of dense high defense targets as they will work out to be more accurate due to the range they throw at compared to javelins.
It was good to try out the cold giants after watching what they did to my Mekone giants. I must say, I really like the Godihuskarl. They're pretty much the only units besides the big boys I've used, and I thoroughly enjoyed their ability to whittle down the other side when closing. I really wanted to have regen, but since I wanted to have great scales/dominion, I couldn't get the numbers to work out. I instead went with Recuperation, and am happy with the choice (I even tried to get both, but maybe another time). The in-battle prowess is certainly less, but I've lost so many fewer expensive units afterwards. Of course, one turn before my pretender woke up, I got a limp on a frost giant. But I left him in the zone as I continued, and he was good to go the next turn. The only real problems with battles were either luck based, flyers at my rear, or fighting in many different provinces at once. For the luck... sometimes you just get what you get. I captured a war throne, and even though I have Luck 2, lost FOUR provinces to independents the next turn. I've even had a new event, with Ry'leh creatures. The flyers problem was just being a little bit too cocky. I have both Arcoscephale and Berytos. I figured about four godihuskarls were enough, but not when they have an army size in the hundreds, haha. Even adding one Niefel giant to my bodyguards, which felt a bit weird, was a big help. That and eventually just placing a line of them farther back. I had the godihuskarls in the front, with Niefel giants a bit back, overtaking them as the enemy meets us. But having a second line of Niefel giants behind everything fixed the problem of huge numbers. I had Fomoria then attack me in five different provinces at once, so between that and the independents, I shrank quite a bit. I was a bit afraid of their size 9 giants, because they DID have regen. But it honestly wasn't close; I handily won every fight but one. The only other fight that was a problem was (no surprise to me, now) going into the caves. I always underestimate onis. A group of 40 completely dominated my small group of 2 Niefel giants and probably about 20 godihuskarls. For magic, I've pretty much just used Gygjas with undead summoning to fill in the lines. With cold provinces and our chill auras, I don't feel the need for area damage yet. I can grind em all out.
45:00 Lots of attractive research options... the problem I'm having is seeing where the researchers are coming from. I guess you really hope to find an efficient Indy researcher.
Yeah, those Gayjas are super expensive. They do give a good chunk of research each at least, so you can brute force it. Hoping for an interesting indie for sure!
23:00 I may be over-valuing the formations but 75 leadership looks to me like you're paying for the ability to ferry more troops on a nation that produces small numbers of elite troops. I'm taking H2 over 25 leadership all day every day and delighted to pay for it. If I'm taking two leaders one of them is the Hirdman* (25:45) though and the H2 only wins if the Bless is good for the army. * Strong Prophet candidate
We need science to find out! (I never even put that much thought into it as its not that good, but that is an interesting question! What if she just curses herself....can she just keep doing that?!)
@@BabelBuilder I'd presume she can get the curse but that wouldn't stop her casting it again that I can see and you could say "this is my cursing fort" and pack it with them. Feels like something that would be stronger in MP than SP though ...and human players are liable to retaliate.
At the end, you mentioned people possibly being put off by the graphics and/or complexity. I respectfully disagree a little bit. People who like games with high complexity probably don't care about the graphics. In these type of games it's all about the game play, If you let the graphics be a turn off, you probably would never take the time to learn the game.
If this game battle map was 3d with simple aninations like rome 1 showing the scales of all the units and the spells it would be very epic and enticing to new players Oh and the atrocious UI must be improved
I was referring more to people who are not yet into highly complex games. Its both a real and a false barrier. Games tend to mostly exist an a sliding scale of accessibility/depth. For some people "good" graphics make a game feel accessible. The break out hits tend to find a way to bring more depth, while still being accessible. I have a friend that used to be really interested in the games I would talk about that are what I could only describe as "fiddly" or "janky". He loved the idea, theme and the deep mechanics, but every time he would get one, he would get frustrated and quit in a couple hours. He never made it over the learning curve to get to that yummy-fun core.
@@BabelBuilder I 'don't care about the graphics' but I find I actually do. I have minimum standards (not a fan of 'pixel' graphics) and prettier does make a difference. Dominions is fine -it's the autobattler bit that I'm less sure about
If you are willing to go rainbow, regen is definitively not needed, since you probably also can go emprisonned then, and as long as you're in the cold your geants will be untouchable, which is arguably better than regen since if you don't get hit you don't get afflictions.
Ice Giants time, and the nation that taught me the importance of temperature and Dominion spread. Gonna be interesting to see how the changes to their magic paths have hit them. Illusion spam is very viable now with the false damage changes, and might be a good idea to mix in with/instead of skelly spam. I know back when I ran them in 5 I would do either a Regen+Blood Bond Irminsul or an Awake Regen Son of Fenrir who I'd feed Bloodslaves to for a late game Illwinter. One of the nice things about the nation is that you can easily twiceborn/life after death your expensive Gygas due to all the easy Death access (very death gem expensive, but you have easy Drowning). Undead Sabbath Leaders/Slaves are very silly and I can see a late game focused meme build, probably Monolith, focused on recuperation (something your giants would like as they die to afflictions more than battle) and shroud of the battlesaint. All in All, looking forward to the stream.
Some nations really push you to learn, in more depth, mechanics that you don't really need to think too much about on other nations. I love that. It shows that there is a lot of design space for nations to mostly be so similar but also so different. One of the downsides to the time restraint I keep on these streams is late blooming builds really don't get a chance to shine. :(
@@BabelBuilder I would like to ask, formally and humbly, that you pronounce it “Knee Full Hime” going forward. I hear the effort you put into pronouncing Hirdman so I know you care kinda :) it’s that “ie” makes an “ee” sound and “ei” makes an “i” sound
Made a cracked out mega wolf pretender with quickness and regen in single player, can't wait to not use him when he breaks free from his prison because it's late game
32:40 Soul Vortex >> Regen! I still want that Regen Bless. I am aware that it's very expensive though so I'm looking for excuses to not need it. It's not *just* that I'm feeling contrary! Once you've got all that Nature I'm going to have to look hard at Recuperation too
38:40 I think you can get some extra efficiency by crafting an item or two? The Fear may be strong enough to make it worth it for getting into the water or even underground (though you probably just buff darkvision for that) -don't know how they stack up against alternatives if you do have the plentiful death gems but taking advantage of yould cold might swing it?
With all this talk of cold I fully expect to see you build a Temple in every province and look for a cave you can secure to make a Dominion fountain (also early thrones for the Dominion spread! -no excuses after you "accidentally" took one in practice!)
18:20 If you're ever not recruiting all the Niefel Giants you can get then you're doing it wrong. We can discuss the various ways to do it wrong but there's no debate allowed about whether to recruit the big boys! Regen Blessing is definitely attractive but possibly you can get it from spellcasters (though I think it stacks). I'm also aware that I tend to overvalue Regen -sometimes it's just not as good as simply having more HP (or Atk or Defences) but Som6 battles can definitely go long enough for it to pay off. I'd default to wanting Regen but it is worth experimenting.
Our big boys have the HP pool to really want regen. Sacreds are +7 and SC is +8 of of the box. If you gave the sacred a couple hp you could get them up to +8 too.
@@BabelBuilder It only matters if they lose those HP though -and *would* lose those HP with whatever you'd take instead (*and* the regen is enough to save them). It definitely is strong here but it's a mechanic that's easily over-valued.
29:40 You take Hp damage for Fatigue over the 200 but it's worth saying that it's only 1hp per 50 fatigue. That's still easy to rack up high enough to kill mages but even a little regen goes a very long way (20% regen on 37 Hp is worth about* 350pts of Reinvigoration!) * I think regen rounds up but I'm not sure
