Dominions 5 Nation Overview - MA Jotunheim

As the ages pass and the Niefels fade mostly into memory, as the Rimtursar did before them, the baton of leadership in the frozen north passes to the Jotnar themselves, albeit with one last Niefel Jarl remaining to extoll the virtues of that dying race.
MA Jotun loses out on some of its top end tools, namely recruitable SCs and sacred Skrati, and in exchange gains the support of the Vaettir, little size one meatshields and 40 gold mages to help round out your roster of big scary things that hit hard.
So join me for a look through the tools available to MA Jotunheim, as they try to finish what the Niefels were never quite able to do. It's a tough crowd in the middle age, but I think Jotun has what it takes.

[@PerunAU]

Obligatory mea culpa comments (a bit late since Haerdalas is just too quick on the commentary and already caught some of them) - The Jarl summon is locked to illwinter, which makes unlocking it diplomatically difficult - but you're still likely to go blood into astral corruption against a lot of enemies eventually anyway, so it's still useful just probably AFTER you have already hit the blood 7 options instead. - If you really really need more patrol chaff, it's handy that those nature vaetti are there to give you packs of wolves early on when gold is tight and the tech for better options isn't there. Reanimation is also an option but death gems are usually pretty valuable to you for other purposes. - More could have been said about the relationship between your path access and what your standard kits should be for your thugs, i'll try to pick this up in the LA Video. - Rewarding you for having forested labs also tends to make blood hunting easier, it's a small gain optimisation wise but I found it a reasonable enough boon when jumping in to optimise a Jotun blood eco mid game.

[@humbugnonsens9098]

For patrol chaff, if you're rolling L3M3 don't forget your crossbreeders either. You'll get plenty of patrol chaff and some useful combat troops, several with special traits (eg magic weapons) that you somewhat lack as Jotun.

[@Mewobiba]

I think you're kinda giving H2s in general a bit of a too harsh treatment here. It's a bad path on an expensive mage chassi like the Thrymsgode, but alone it's a very useful path for banishment, preaching, and more effective blessing, and it's often cheaper than two H1 mages. As Jotun, you are gonna want a few Jotun Goder to bless your sacreds; I'd much rather pay 110 gold for a Gode than 260 gold for two Jarlar or 120 gold for two indie priests.

[@PerunAU]

@@Mewobiba Solid point, I'm just salty because, as you say, some really expensive and good mages are held back by the unnecessary price premium of carrying an H2 path they will very seldom use. Good H2 use cases do exist.

[@Haerdalas]

Its also worth noting that some of the giant troops have heavier armour than in the EA, which can make them much tankier than anything in the EA. 19 prot is enough to be largely immune to human spearman, for example.

[@Haerdalas]

One big thing you seem to have missed about the Niefel Jarl summons is that you can only do it whilst Illwinter is active. Aka, you can only do it after declaring war on the world. This is by far the biggest stumbling block in terms of actually using them at all except in the final moments of the world, most of the time.

[@MrThedumbbunny]

Yeah illwinter should be a war declaration from your neighbors.

[@Awesomewithaz]

Waiting on this to come back

[@emilsoderman3691]

Pfft, as if Vaetti are the favourite goblins when Bakemono-sho exist!

[@mewmeister8650]

Thing is that Vaettiheim is really good as well as being cute while the Bakemono languish under their incompetent Oni leaders. Justice for Bakemono, I say!

[@Mewobiba]

Having played around a bit with Glosor (fun fact: the name literally means "stare sow", and is pronounced gloosoo), I've grown warmer to them (pun intended). Now, I should caveat that while I have played Jotunheim in a friendly MP game, I didn't really utilize the glosor, so this is largely theorycrafting and testing things vs AI and in test games. They're basically a really jacked up version of Marverni's Great Boars that they get with Sounder of Boars, which was always a decent spell only vastly overshadowed by the Boar of Carnutes. Now, Jotunheim is obviously never gonna start a boarocalypse, the Gloso are gonna be supporting troops at most given their price, but 13 death gems for 9 is IMO very fair. It's about 40% more expensive than great boars are from Sounder, but I think you get a lot more than 40% extra value. When you compare a Gloso to a Great boar, they are both size 3 sacred animal tramplers. However: - The Gloso has better base stats across the board; 40% more HP, +1 att/def/mor, +2 prot and combat speed (which is important for a trampler), and importantly, it goes from 5 MR to 13 MR, making hard counters like Beast Mastery into very soft counters. - The Gloso is stealthy and disciplined, the Great Boar neither. You can do a lot of great raiding with stealthy, easily buffable size 3 tramplers; and Jotunheim has stealthy S1s and N1s spewing out their ears. Being disciplined is of course also excellent in an army setting. - The Heat aura and fire immunity are more useful than they first appear. As you mention in the video, the heat aura isn't something you expect from the Jötnar, adding another threat vector when invading heat nations. But the fire resistance is also quite useful since a common way for human-sized nations to counter tramplers is Fire Elementals. There's also the few minor bells and whistles in the form of darkvision and a better gore, but while I could absolutely see that coming up at some point in some game it's not really gonna impact whether you get them or not. Now, there's of course an elephant (or pig) in the room, and that is that Marverni is gonna go with a Larger bless and Jotun likely isn't. That is definitely a big point in favor of the Great Boar; a size 4 trampler is a lot more dangerous than a size 3 one. However, the bless Jotun most obviously wants - regen - isn't a *bad* bless for a creature like the Gloso. Not only is it gonna make it survive being surrounded better, but in addition tramplers often end up afflicted to hell even when they win a fight, and 10% regen is gonna halve that. I'm looking forward to testing out the Glosor in multiplayer at some point, and would love to hear from people who have used them, but my impression at this point is that they're a useful and actually rather useful tool in the toolkit for Jotunheim specifically, and competitively priced for what they do. I rate them much, *much* higher than the Draugr.

[@Doombot221]

Yayyyyyy! Been so looking forward for your next video!

[@tornielsen2888]

Hilariously enough. Jotun hurlers are likely one of the best arguments there will ever be, for the Stygian Skin bless on an elf. Since without it a str 36 boulder will indeed go right though the shield and maim the guy behind. Else i would dare the claim, that the only nations that its really relevant to compare Jotunheim to, IS the actual dangers of the Middle age. It does not matter much how you look compared to EA nations, when there is a long list of MA ones ready to steal your things.

[@mrbrasga]

Welcome back and happy holidays, Merry Christmas.

[@Bill_Garthright]

Great job, Perun. I watched it three times. Admittedly, the first two times, it was late at night, and I fell asleep partway through it. Heh, heh. Just wait until you get to be _my_ age. It's easy to fall asleep when you don't want to, especially since my nights are bad, so I put off going to bed as long as possible. :) But one thing I've learned is that Dominions 5 is a lot more fun to play - and even to watch - the more you know about it. I've really become hooked on these videos from you and Lucid and Saquenay and... well, pretty much all I can get from KZbin. :)

[@acoasma829]

@Perun As someone whos most palyed nation is Jotunheim, I have to disagree with you, that Jotun shouldn't take a titan. In fact one of my favorite pretenders for them is a dormant the keeper of the bridge with major+minor shockres 2xreinvigoration and regen. Jotunheim scales extremely well into the late game and having an equitable titan, that can cloud trapeze that early on is a nice safety net. it also opens up some forging possibilities and dwarf of the four directions (for the memes) and is only slightly more expansive than an immobile idol of the beast (1 scale) with that bless. the bless itself is great because it helps everyone who you would want to give it to, shrouds are a great tool for this. you can equip them on skratti to improve their capabilities as slaves or make them even better thugs with high reinvigoration and 20%regen for just 5 (or 3 gems with dwarven hammer, that your god can craft). Later in the game that bless enables your niefel jarls similar to what you would want as EA Niefelheim. Just a thought Overall you are right, that jotunheim can do a lot of different things pretty well :)

[@Reverberon]

Those super hags are nice candidates for the transformation game if you are Into that. Also your thrymgode can roll air so you can at least get quills going.

[@acoasma829]

if you want to play transformation, go with la vaetti. their hags are size 1, which lets you twiceborn them for 5D gems, then transform. once you hit a siz5 or 6 result you can suicide them and get a big ass size 6 Undead chassis. if you are lucky (in fact luck is recommended here) you can get it for 13gems...on average its probably more like 3 transformations to get that result, but it is for sure funny and you can do it relatively early in the game compared to other ways to get SC or big Thugg chasis

[@TheAleatoriorandom]

Nice video! A pity the moose riders aren´t very useful, but I like to imagine that they are mostly there as fun unit and a silly reference to conquest of Elysium since for some reason they "prove to be a most fierce beast in battle" and they are a pretty nasty critter in CoE (Admitedly, almost everything in CoE is far more dangerous and violent than it usually is).

[@Kaiser282]

Man eating deer and potato stealing bears for example.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

Vaetti Hags are great, only thing that would've made them even better is if they had f1 instead of d1

[@Leif_Nobody]

Switch back to this and do a Dom6 review.

[@dazeen9591]

Hey Perun, do you know where I could find a beginner multiplayer group? I don't really feel comfortable joining some public lobby which has experienced players because I'm really awful at the game.

[@MrThedumbbunny]

They pop up on the servers relatively frequently. Just keep an eye out for noobie games or games with new players only in the description. There will be a range of skill levels but generally you arent to join if you have won a game before.

[@dazeen9591]

@@MrThedumbbunny Cheers I guess, I guess I have to join the discord to actually see announcements about the games since the game itself doesn't have server browser from what I see

[@MrThedumbbunny]

@@dazeen9591 yes you do. The servers hosting the games are usually tied to the server bots that handle things like turn times. Edit: id wait a month though. The bots/servers are boing upgraded and interfering with game turns right now. Will be fixed sometime soonish but its a pain right now.

[@dazeen9591]

@@MrThedumbbunny cool thx for the tips

[@LordMoriar]

Vetti would pronouce like ve-tea. Gode you should rather pronouce as Go-di if that makes sense. Thanks for a great video!

[@stephenvavasseur8826]

I’m here having watched 90% of your defense economics videos…I intend to watch this, your gaming channel, and every video you put forth on any topic. You’ve provided opinions with factual backing that I appreciate so so much. Keep up the good fight!

[@blaf55]

i love giants

[@sauronmordor7494]

ok

[@thesmilyguyguy9799]

:D