Neifel giants suck?
 

Do you think having such a low attack and defense skills (11 and 11) is justified on such a costly unit? In my experience, they miss so much against the better melee units and conversely gets hit too often (though it takes a lot of blows to take them down).

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

These Giants were actually peaceful at one time which is why the stats are low... they've spent centuries spending most of their time fishing and farming.
Actually I don't know if any of that is true I thought it would add some smile to the topic tho. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

The main thing to do with them is bless them with nature 9 and they regenerate like crazy due to the high hitpoints (and have high protection too when berzerking). They seem pretty good to me, but what do I know...

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Their att/def Ratings are cold dependent, so you have to take it in consideration.

Also, I don't see anyone playing with Niefelheim without nature 9, so once they go berserk their att goes to 14 (normal temperature province).

Still, I like to save the money and get the Niefelheim commanders. Much better units, IMHO.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

You don't 'need' to get Nature 9, because the basic unit of Jotun is the Spearman; that makes up the bulk of your armies because it's cheap and very effective.

Try interspersing smaller units behind and around your Giants; the advantage of them is their strength. Even the normal units can kill most other normal units in one blow and have great hp.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Well if you don't have nature 9 or some other strong bless plan you're better of with another jotunheim theme than niefelheim.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Ordinary Jotun giants are plenty deadly, even without very high attack or defense. Not only do they have high resistance to damage, but they have very high strength and huge weapons, which squash other units with ease. I've lost many good units and decked out heroes to them. I haven't encountered Niefels yet but with blessings they sound like they could be very potent.

PvK

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Unless you are using another strategy. A strong bless plan isn't *needed*. There is Blood Giants with Nifel that work very well. As well as a few others.

Nature 9 is what you would like to assume since it makes the already strong units stronger; but I don't like playing the assumptive theme/races, just because they fit very well means that people think of that as a standard or norm.

Try Neif with 9 Fire pretender; that's fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Niefel Giants suck? Nah!

Like most other bless units Niefel giants are not that effective unless you abuse the whole bless concept. An important point to take into account in Dom II is that the value of sacred units includes the possibilities created by powerful bless effects and so if you don't use them they are often not great value.

My Niefel Giant strategy is Earth Mother (Earth9, Naure9) or Son of Niefel (Nature or Earth9, Water9). I have not found nature9 alone particularily impressive. You need a very high dominion with this race as well or else the warmth well melt away your protection and you will die due to low defence - beware of lizards!

I have found that only the most rounded sacred units (such as Machakan Hunters or Palidins of Marignon) or powerful (Van, Tuatha) work well with just one school of bless effects. I tried C'tis Dancers with just water 9 (no death fear effect) and found the increased length of combats a major concern and trashed that attempt.

My difficulty with bless effects at this point is how few genuine options there are to the Earth Mother. I don't like using the same pretender engine over and over and I like to limit myself to thematically appropriate pretender choices. However I'm only just starting to test astral and blood bless effects so I should find some more alternatives.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 25, 2003, 23:22: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

What I meant by strong bless plan was not necessarily 9 nature as such, but some race design with good bless effects. Like ulm IF theme, niefelheim isn't fully effective unless you have a good bless. The giants are still decent unblessed, but are pretty weak for their cost without any bless effects.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Joonie73-
The NGs are not supposed to be uberunits by themselves - their big problem is the low attack so high defense units can stall them. But like Zen said - with a strength that high they just destroy HI that have lower defense values and depend on ~18-20 protection to save them. And the chill effect means that if a high defense unit can't hurt the NG quickly, they will likely get frozen which reduces defense, so now they will get hit - hard.

But the bless effects can correct their weakness, and Nature is my fav there for them too. The +3 beserk is probably better than the +4 armor from earth or +4 attack from fire - they get +3 armor, +3 attack (which means now they can hit most high defense units every couple of rounds!), and +3 strength and no chance of fleeing. Their defense is only fair to start off with and they are so big they will get ganged up on, so the -3 defense is little loss IMHO. And 10 HP+ regen and high armor means that without high damage units around, they will win against most opponents with little loss.

Keir-
For a fun dual bless choice, have you tried a Baphomant with Marignon yet? Cheapest dual 9 magic pretender there is (I think - only 468 points), and twisted fate flaming attack flagellants are a whole lotta fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif It's good being the Astral King, too! Too bad no one else gets to choose him as a pretender...

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Marignon has always been a favourite of mine and Baphomet is certainly interesting now.

To be honest I had a few dissapointments when I tried out a race shortly after getting the full game. My race theme was "In you we trust" with Paladins running around questing. Unfortunately they kept dying to lucky blows (or Xbows) after having already used up the twist of fate. ToF works best with decent numbers of sacred troops with very high def as Paladins defence gets overwhelmed and they have to rely on their Prot which isn't quite high enough. The most successful Paladin I recall (Heroic ability Quickness) lost his arm to an archer (the shame of it!) while finishing off a battle and was quickly butchered. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Low HP supercombatents don't seem to work very well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I have been intending to have another try in which each questing Knight is accompanied by a small band of Zealots, who wish nothing more than to die in battle fighting beside their chosen hero, and a couple of Men at Arms to attract Xbow bolts. At present however I'm distracted by the tricky Tuatha and the intricacies of Mictlan.

I suspect it will take me awhile to get a setup I like with Marignon as I don't like depending on the throw away Flagellents - in general I don't like losing my troops. The trouble with using the Paladins is that the need for decent productivity really puts the squeeze on points. In search of more points I tried the Lady of Fortune water9, nature 4 and Turmoil3/luck3 and retitled the race "In Fortune we trust" but it wasn't a great success.

I have a nasty suspician that the best pretender for using Paladins with might be the Earth Mother (earth9, nature6-9) which is too inappropriate for me.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I thought they had made immobile pretenders truly immobile? I may well have misunderstood and being Astral King with Marignon would be very reassuring. If you are indeed right then Baphomet is significantly better than I had thought.

Re Niefel Giants:

I wouldn't underestimate the value of the reinvigoration effect of earth magic. I have also found that its hard to get too much prot. Often in the early game when my Niefel Giants came up against things that could kill them they died in moments (lack of support) and so the regeneration is perhaps not as important as berserk which is, as you point out Geo, very important - although it only
gave +2 prot in the examples I remember checking for Niefel Giants. Prot bonus from berserk seem to vary alot depending on starting prot so I suspect its a percentage adjustment and the difference could be what cold scale the Niefels are in - or I could just be completely confused. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The reduction in the amount of battle afflictions from regeneration is pretty key in the long term and in a mid-game big battle the regaining of HP's can be huge.

I have tried Son of Niefel with water 9, Earth 9 and it seemed to be very smooth early as the enemy get broken quicker. However it was only one test and though thematically appealing it just doesn't seem as tight as the Earth Mother approach - stay alive and freeze them.

Good to hear of anothers experiances with a dual bless race.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've wondered how much use earth 10 could be with pythium's mages, as a reinvigoration of 5 on every mage and communicant might be useful, although not in the early game.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's cheaper to get 2 maxed blessings with an immobile pretender, but is it really worth it? One of the advantages is having a Pretender who's tough, but this is little good if you're confined to your capitol (IIRC teleporting Immobile Pretenders is considered a bug). It's no fun being the Astral King if you can't lay down the law! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Still, there's definitely something to be said for playing a Disembodied Flaming Head...

I don't generally much care for Twist Fate as much as most of the other abilities, but it would be pretty good with Flagellents. Stacking it with Ethereal and Luck on Chalice Knights probably wouldn't be bad either.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Generally not I guess - although the research value can be important and sometimes its the only pretender you can afford to get the effects you want to make the race design work. My best efforts with Mictlan so far come from using the Fountain of Blood with blood5, water9. The added bonus here is that I intend lowering the tax rate in time and doing a little blood hunting at home. Still far from getting the details sorted but I'm hoping the Fountain of Blood is still a viable option.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

I haven't tried it yet, but the Smoking Mirror looks interesting to me for Mictlan. Perhaps 4 in Fire, Death, Blood, and Water.

+2 Attack, Defense, Strength, and Fear seems decent on their quite cheap sacred troops. I espeically like the Eagle warriors.

Their sacred troops are so cheap however that I'm not sure you can get much out of concentrating on them.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I tried Smoking Mirror first up without good results.

The decisive question for me with Mictlan is what do you use as the basis for your army? The slingers are, in my experiance, more danger to your own troops than the enemy and most of the infantry is simply not up to the job. The only thing I have found that has real shown promise early is the Warriors of the Sun who work well with the extra +2 strength, quickness and +4 def from the Fountain of Blood (blood5 water9). However I have along way to go before I'm comfortable with playing Mictlan.

The Eagle Warriors look very cute and might work well later but as yet I haven't got them to work early.

cheers

Keir

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

It's all about Warriors with javelins.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

Mictian is very cool and very frustrating. Especially the blood sacrifice need. And the Mercenary "Costs Double for you" situations.

Their base units (the standard bearer, warriors with slings and javs) are pitifully weak and get mowed down easily.

As a game progresses it gets harder and harder to put your sacred troops up to the front line of battle since they are capital only.

That's the only deal I have found with fighting MP with Mic.

Re: Neifel giants suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have always wanted to be able to use Spine Devils and other low level blood summons effectively and this is what I'm trying to do with Mictlan. Trouble I'm finding is the expense of the 2 blood mages undermines their value as Spine Devil summoners.

The only thing I'm researching early is construction for blood raising magc items (allows me to summon with blood1 priests) and sanguine dousing rods. Hopefully, if I can get the start right, I'll be able to get enough Spine devils to form the nucleus of an anti-player army.

Cheers

Keir