EA Hinnom

[EldritchFog]

Im trying to get myself into blood and out of all the nations ive tried (mainly EA) this one seems to be my favourite. But im having trouble going about properly expanding and managing the massive cost for troops and commanders. Any tips?

What is a good bless for these Giants?

What are the best mages in my cap only i should focus on for armies?

[EldritchFog]

*just to add im playing single player. So trying to deal with the ubsurdly crazy doomstacks my Robo friends make is another problem im having!

[Traksimuss]

Toxix, answer is complex. Big armies can generally be defeated by cost effective thugs, or battlefield wide magic. You also have to leverage blood summons to support your armies, as most summons do not require upkeep.

In the beginning, try different blesses to support your expansion forces, decide which works best for you.

[Uncle Al]

Hah, the answer is complex because there's so many ways to play Hinnom.

A bless that focuses on your sacred giant infantry and thugs (Baals and Melquarts) pretty much requires a pretender that isn't imprisoned, because there are several very nice incarnate blesses (regeneration/hard skin/fortitude/heat aura) that are great on your giants. An awake pretender means you're doomed to a light bless or bad scales, and Hinnom really benefits from good scales in my experience.

You can choose to forget about expanding with giants and do it with chariots instead. Hinnom chariots murder independents. Chuck a horn blower in the group to keep their morale up if you like. He'll lag way behind the chariots and (usually) not get himself killed. Not having packs of giants eating all the population and causing unrest in the provinces that are going to form your heartland is also a bonus.

That frees you up to either go dormant with your thug/giant bless, or take a bless focused more on Se'irim. They're the amazing goat demons you can summon at blood 3 so long as you have a lab in a wasteland.

Se'irim are terrifying - size 3, 3 attacks and berserk. It's like having Vanheim's vanheres pumped up a size, except you can summon as many as you like rather than being tied to recruiting a handful a turn in your capital like Vanheim has to. Being blood crazed goat demons you also don't have to pay them.

Attack skill, defence skill, strength, blood surge and magic resistance (they're demons so get some trouble with priests) all make them even more horrible, and all those blesses can go on an imprisoned rainbow. Quickness is absolutely ludicrous on them too if you want to go dormant.

Or you can just go almost maximum in every scale and take an imprisoned pretender for useful late game stuff. One of the old Hinnom guide writers did this with a fountain of blood pumped up to Blood 7 so it could summon the lords of creation. They're outrageous late game Hinnom only blood summons. You need to research blood 9 to summon them (I've never done it) but they are absolutely crazy.

You have awesome troops, great mages, and giants that absolutely wreck your economy unless they're off in enemy territory or parked safely in a province where you don't mind them eating everyone. Balancing all those components is the joy of Hinnom but you can't generally have everything - a heavy giant bless won't leave enough scales for many troops and isn't that great on Se'irim for example.

One last thing. If you're playing fairly high levels of AI (you mentioned huge doomstacks) you'll probably find a thug bless and Baals and Melquarts will give you the easiest win, as it's much easier to win battles with AI hordes, and indeed take provinces with their inevitable 70+ province defence, with zero losses. Relying on troops and summons is harder because you'll get attrition on your forces to a greater degree. It's definitely doable though, and leverages blood much more than a thug strategy.

[AgentFransis]

Hinnom is a cool nation. You can use the Raphites, they can definitely be scary with a big bless (regeneration is of course very good on giants and quickness is the standard big-bless for any killy sacred), but you don't have to and personally when I played the nation I didn't want to deal with the nasty unrest and popkill from the sacreds.

Instead you can definitely play with a more scales oriented pretender to leverage you excellent mages and troops. You can expand quite easily with dawn guards (which are a fantastic unit all around) and/or chariots. Since you can expand well without a bless or an expander and you have great magic diversity (though lacking in crosspaths) the nation can benefit from an imprisoned rainbow that can leverage all the gems you're gonna get into items and rituals.

Some more quick tips:
- Your first research targets should be enchantment 3 for strength of giants, construction 3 for legions of steel and conjuration 3 for summon earth power. A solid line of Dawn guard or Avvite swordsmen with a few earth Ammi buffing them will shred through hordes of chaff like no tomorrow.

- Next you either want to run up evocation to activate your fire randoms as battle artillery of go up alteration and construction to activate your Melquart super combatants.

- Your earth and astral random Melquarts make excellent SCs and you have the paths to properly equip them. A Melquart with a vine shield, brand and a ring of regen and something to to give him reinvigoration with the right script will mow through endless hordes of AI crap. Earth ones should cast iron skin, temper flesh and summon earth power and astral ones should cast astral shield and body ethereal. If you're expecting a difficult fight you can also bring a mage to help buff him (for an earth Melquart bring an astral Ammi to cast body ethereal on him. For the astral bring an earth Ammi to cast iron warriors). Your fire random Melquarts are best used as blood hunters.

- Pick a province to dump all your popkill commanders in when you're not using them. Pick your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ province, hopefully a wasteland for the unique blood summons, build a lab there and move them there.

- Your heroes are amazing so strongly consider taking luck scales.

- This is a bit more advanced but your Baal's and Kohens can form turbo-communions, or sabbaths. Two Kohens with rings of regen and regeneration cast on them (either directly with an Acha but that's finnicky, or by plugging an Acha or a Horite shaman into the communion with a crystal matrix and casting self-regenration) can accept 10 master who can spam spells forever. Read more about it here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/722060/discussions/0/1621726179565564949/#c1621726179565604999

For a more in-depth overview and gameplay check out Lucid's let's play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDTLwKQgIk&list=PL-SHZMz9R6bepYWaJzDCdoP_7eD15EoN9

[EldritchFog]

Originally posted by Uncle Al:

Hah, the answer is complex because there's so many ways to play Hinnom.

A bless that focuses on your sacred giant infantry and thugs (Baals and Melquarts) pretty much requires a pretender that isn't imprisoned, because there are several very nice incarnate blesses (regeneration/hard skin/fortitude/heat aura) that are great on your giants. An awake pretender means you're doomed to a light bless or bad scales, and Hinnom really benefits from good scales in my experience.

You can choose to forget about expanding with giants and do it with chariots instead. Hinnom chariots murder independents. Chuck a horn blower in the group to keep their morale up if you like. He'll lag way behind the chariots and (usually) not get himself killed. Not having packs of giants eating all the population and causing unrest in the provinces that are going to form your heartland is also a bonus.

That frees you up to either go dormant with your thug/giant bless, or take a bless focused more on Se'irim. They're the amazing goat demons you can summon at blood 3 so long as you have a lab in a wasteland.

Se'irim are terrifying - size 3, 3 attacks and berserk. It's like having Vanheim's vanheres pumped up a size, except you can summon as many as you like rather than being tied to recruiting a handful a turn in your capital like Vanheim has to. Being blood crazed goat demons you also don't have to pay them.

Attack skill, defence skill, strength, blood surge and magic resistance (they're demons so get some trouble with priests) all make them even more horrible, and all those blesses can go on an imprisoned rainbow. Quickness is absolutely ludicrous on them too if you want to go dormant.

Or you can just go almost maximum in every scale and take an imprisoned pretender for useful late game stuff. One of the old Hinnom guide writers did this with a fountain of blood pumped up to Blood 7 so it could summon the lords of creation. They're outrageous late game Hinnom only blood summons. You need to research blood 9 to summon them (I've never done it) but they are absolutely crazy.

You have awesome troops, great mages, and giants that absolutely wreck your economy unless they're off in enemy territory or parked safely in a province where you don't mind them eating everyone. Balancing all those components is the joy of Hinnom but you can't generally have everything - a heavy giant bless won't leave enough scales for many troops and isn't that great on Se'irim for example.

One last thing. If you're playing fairly high levels of AI (you mentioned huge doomstacks) you'll probably find a thug bless and Baals and Melquarts will give you the easiest win, as it's much easier to win battles with AI hordes, and indeed take provinces with their inevitable 70+ province defence, with zero losses. Relying on troops and summons is harder because you'll get attrition on your forces to a greater degree. It's definitely doable though, and leverages blood much more than a thug strategy.

Thank you so much ive had a hard time getting into giant nations and Hinnom is by far the most interesting to me!

[EldritchFog]

Originally posted by AgentFransis:

Hinnom is a cool nation. You can use the Raphites, they can definitely be scary with a big bless (regeneration is of course very good on giants and quickness is the standard big-bless for any killy sacred), but you don't have to and personally when I played the nation I didn't want to deal with the nasty unrest and popkill from the sacreds.

Instead you can definitely play with a more scales oriented pretender to leverage you excellent mages and troops. You can expand quite easily with dawn guards (which are a fantastic unit all around) and/or chariots. Since you can expand well without a bless or an expander and you have great magic diversity (though lacking in crosspaths) the nation can benefit from an imprisoned rainbow that can leverage all the gems you're gonna get into items and rituals.

Some more quick tips:
- Your first research targets should be enchantment 3 for strength of giants, construction 3 for legions of steel and conjuration 3 for summon earth power. A solid line of Dawn guard or Avvite swordsmen with a few earth Ammi buffing them will shred through hordes of chaff like no tomorrow.

- Next you either want to run up evocation to activate your fire randoms as battle artillery of go up alteration and construction to activate your Melquart super combatants.

- Your earth and astral random Melquarts make excellent SCs and you have the paths to properly equip them. A Melquart with a vine shield, brand and a ring of regen and something to to give him reinvigoration with the right script will mow through endless hordes of AI crap. Earth ones should cast iron skin, temper flesh and summon earth power and astral ones should cast astral shield and body ethereal. If you're expecting a difficult fight you can also bring a mage to help buff him (for an earth Melquart bring an astral Ammi to cast body ethereal on him. For the astral bring an earth Ammi to cast iron warriors). Your fire random Melquarts are best used as blood hunters.

- Pick a province to dump all your popkill commanders in when you're not using them. Pick your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ province, hopefully a wasteland for the unique blood summons, build a lab there and move them there.

- Your heroes are amazing so strongly consider taking luck scales.

- This is a bit more advanced but your Baal's and Kohens can form turbo-communions, or sabbaths. Two Kohens with rings of regen and regeneration cast on them (either directly with an Acha but that's finnicky, or by plugging an Acha or a Horite shaman into the communion with a crystal matrix and casting self-regenration) can accept 10 master who can spam spells forever. Read more about it here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/722060/discussions/0/1621726179565564949/#c1621726179565604999

For a more in-depth overview and gameplay check out Lucid's let's play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDTLwKQgIk&list=PL-SHZMz9R6bepYWaJzDCdoP_7eD15EoN9

I agree giants based on old Babylon lore? Hell yes. Thank you for the awesome tips and the link to another guide!

[AgentFransis]

It's Hebrew lore! Or Illwinter's delightfully twisted interpretation of it anyway.

[EldritchFog]

Originally posted by AgentFransis:

It's Hebrew lore! Or Illwinter's delightfully twisted interpretation of it anyway.

Ah! Sorry! Got my facts mixed up!! Youre right! I think its loosely based on the Gomorrah myth or somewhere along those lines!

[AgentFransis]

It's pretty directly based on the Nephilim myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim, and sprinkled with various other bits and pieces of biblical myth and history.

The hornblowers having a siege bonus is a reference to the Israelite siege of Jericho where god tells them to go around the walls seven times blowing their horns and then the walls come crashing down. Gomorrah is of course the famous city of sin. The other place names are real too, as well as the nation names. Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gath are real historical cities in Israel (and the first two are still cities today). Mount Hermon is also a real mountain in northern Israel and today houses a military base and a ski resort.

Hinnom itself is short for Guy Ben-Hinnom (Ben-Hinnom valley) which is a real place near Jerusalem which is maybe the source for the Hhebrew word for hell (Gehennom). At some point it was a place of blood sacrifice for this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch.

Finally, Hinnom and Ashdod are kind of prequals to the main story of the Israelites in the Hebrew bible where at first the land is inhabited by the giants, then it's more humans (the various peoples living in and around Canaan) and LA Gath is when the Israelites come and conquer the land and establish their great temple (all the unit names are references to the Israelite tribes from the bible).

[EldritchFog]

Originally posted by AgentFransis:

It's pretty directly based on the Nephilim myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim, and sprinkled with various other bits and pieces of biblical myth and history.

The hornblowers having a siege bonus is a reference to the Israelite siege of Jericho where god tells them to go around the walls seven times blowing their horns and then the walls come crashing down. Gomorrah is of course the famous city of sin. The other place names are real too, as well as the nation names. Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gath are real historical cities in Israel (and the first two are still cities today). Mount Hermon is also a real mountain in northern Israel and today houses a military base and a ski resort.

Hinnom itself is short for Guy Ben-Hinnom (Ben-Hinnom valley) which is a real place near Jerusalem which is maybe the source for the Hhebrew word for hell (Gehennom). At some point it was a place of blood sacrifice for this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch.

Finally, Hinnom and Ashdod are kind of prequals to the main story of the Israelites in the Hebrew bible where at first the land is inhabited by the giants, then it's more humans (the various peoples living in and around Canaan) and LA Gath is when the Israelites come and conquer the land and establish their great temple (all the unit names are references to the Israelite tribes from the bible).

holy crap. it really goes to show what depths this game will actually go into its nations connections. and also this is some great piece of facts thank you!

[EldritchFog]

Just kind of a little update. i tried all the tips you guys posted alongside watching Lucid play Hinomm and i am totally steam rolling 6 opponents. thank you guys so much! this community is honestly the best!

[Uncle Al]

Originally posted by Toxix_waste:

...i am totally steam rolling 6 opponents...

Literally, if you're using chariots. Glad to hear things are coming together, it's an awesome nation.