Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I posted some first impressions in another forum and thought I’d cut and paste some of it here for perusal.
Basically I’ve found a near invincible nation setup, here’s the text from the other forum, I’ve slightly edited it
to take into account some things I’ve learned since posting it originally:

----------------------------------------

I am currently happily playing a game on the large 480 land province map
(over 100 sea provinces) that comes with the game, and I may have found my
first nearly unbeatable race strategy.

Play the Giant Niefelheim race in the early era. For your pretender choose
the monolith and put him in jail. Then give him +3 cold +1 Order and +3
growth. For magic picks give him 10 nature, 4 astral and 4 fire, and you
should end up with no points left to spend.

The Astral pick lets you cast archaic record later in the game so you can
find all the gem sits and the fire pick allows you to forge fire armors for
your giants to negate their inherent weakness to fire. Taking picks of 4
instead of 2 or 3 lets your blessed troops gain a bonus from the picks. +1
Magic resist for 4 astral and +2 attack skill for the 4 fire.

The 10 in nature gives your blessed troops 20% regeneration and +2 berserk
which will make you Niefel Giants almost invulnerable in combat. They will
have a regeneration of 14 hit points a turn once blessed with the above
nature mod and it takes a real special enemy troop type or overwhelming
numbers to cause any kind of real damage at all to them once blessed.

I then do absolutely nothing for the first 10-20 turns and save up my gold
until I have at least 4,000 on hand. Then I queue up 20 Niefel Giants and 1
Niefel Jarl leader. I then build three more Niefel Jarl leaders over the
next few turns while my giant troops are being built and I end up with an
army of 4 Jarl’s and 20 sacred Giants (later in the game I upped it to 5 Jarl’s and 25 giants).
The Jarl’s themselves are also sacred, so my entire army is sacred and all troops will benefit
from the 20% regeneration buff along with the other buffs.

Give your Jarl’s (bless, bless, bless, attack closest) orders and you should get
all of you giants blessed in about 95% of your fights. The giants should
have (hold and attack) orders and be set up at the back of the battlefield
to keep enemy missile fire inaccurate while your busy blessing your troops.

Place 5 giants in a squad under the command of each commander and evenly space them
across the battlefield from top to bottom. Then place the commander into the middle of the
squad and then move him 1 pixel forward from the center.

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6...rmationzn6.jpg

This will create a line of 2 giants deep across the battlefield, thus maximizing your combat potential.

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2...tlelineee6.jpg

Bunched up giants are susceptible to fear spells and other area affect spells, so better to spread
them out. Also bunched up giants only see about 1/3rd of their number reach the melee while the
rest mill around behind. With this formation if you give the two end squads hold and attack rear
orders, you should see most of your giants engaged in the melee. This maximizes your damage
potential and also spreads damage you take out over as many giants as possible.

Once in a blue moon one or two will fail to get blessed and you’ll take a
loss. But in my current game with neutrals set to level 9 (the max), I’ve
only lost 3 giants and 1 Jarl while capturing in excess of 40 neutral
provinces.

These armies are almost unstoppable, I’ve seen them defeat regular armies
with more then 200 normal troops in them without taking a single loss. The
above army can capture 1 province a turn and once you have 2 or 3 armies
going you can dominate the province rush part of the game.

By not doing anything for the first 10-15 turns of the game, it seems to
make the AI players less aggressive towards you. I’ve gone without being
attacked for almost 50 turns. But once I started to close in on the leader
(the player with the most provinces) I was then attacked (they declared war
but not all invaded) by about 1/3rd of the AI players. But by then I had
three of the above armies in operation and easily pushed back any incursions
into my territory.

I’m not saying this is the best race or anything, it’s just a very winning
strategy with this particular race. I tried a nature bonus of 10%
regeneration, but ended up losing quite a few giants (too expensive to make
it a winning strategy). There is a big difference between 6 hit points
regenerated a turn and 14 in tactical combats.

I’m sure I’ll experiment with lots of other races in the future, but this is
my first at bat strategy and it’s been very fun to play. The AI has two
nations still ahead of me on provinces, but I feel confident I’ll be able to
hold my own whenever I finally come in contact with them.

-------------------------------------------

Since I wrote this I’ve gotten to about level 6 magic research (toughest level of research) and
these armies still stand up pretty well. My worst battle against an AI opponent saw 300+ of
his troops attack one of my 25 giant armies. I lost 3 giants and killed over half his troops and
won the battle. Of course I have to put a minimum of 1 broth pot with each army, but once I’ve
done that only severely poor provinces see these guys starve.

I know it’s hard to sit on your hands for those opening turns, but trust me it’s worth it. Don’t
stop and search any provinces with your giant armies, build hags and other mages and
follow up behind with them. Keep you giants going every turn and you’ll easily surpass most
opponents in no time.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

A smaller force of those giants is enough to advance in the early game. In single-player, this is good enough. In multi-player, you'd be devastated. High Nature bless with Niefelheim is good, of course.

Remember that you can make one of your starting giants a prophet and thus don't have to recruit an expensive Jarl or Gode for your first army.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Might be problems in the case of Death Weapons or curse. Fight long enough, and you will accumulate crippling afflictions, even with regen.

Niefels are nasty, 'tho... and can be quite long-lived, which is good for the HoF. I've got a Jotun Scout with heroic obesity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Wow ... your strategy can use some tweaking ...

Mainly due to your not very optimal scales, lack of earth bless for the giants, lack of early expansion, extreme weakness to f9, no real mention of their battle mages, niefel thugs, etc ...

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Yeah, eventually you have to rotate your armies’ home and bring fresh blood into the mix. Since my god is fixed in place, I’ve created an old guard corps for him consisting solely of old veteran troops that have accumulated many afflictions.

I’ve got 5 on guard and about 15 on hold and attack currently, but the corps is slowly growing. Eventually I’ll cast Faery Court and Gift of health to try and heal them but for now they serve Lord Slab http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif in his personal guard.

My wounded Jarl’s are all heroic leaders (one has 337 personal kills) so they sit at home with Lord Slab and do research awaiting the healing spells.

Overall though I’ve only lost perhaps less than 10 giants and maybe 1 or 2 Jarl’s. I’ve taken well over 60 provinces now and have fought three major wars with huge (50+ provinces) opponents and held firm on all fronts.

Magic is becoming more potent now however, so I’m waiting to see if they can hold up in the end game or not.

Basically the 14 hit points a turn regen makes each little giant a mini SC.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

You can teleport monoliths to wreck provinces if they have the appropriate buff spells. With astral 4, you get body ethereal, luck, shield and f4 gives you fire shield.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Sheesh people. How about a rule that you have to say something nice before saying something nasty? He got some things right. Its a nice effort.

Felgar. All of these are opinions. The game is big enough for everyone to come up with their own strategies (and no one to come up with the perfect killer one).

Your plan looks 90% in line with how I would have gone. Nicely done. One thing Id mention is that during those first few turns when you are building up, you can put your armies on patrol and turn your taxes to the max. Be sure and turn it back down when you leave with them though.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I would make some skinshifters, give them a cheap commander and sendthem after the weaker (militia ect) provinces to give you a gold boost. I agree that some earth fitted into the bless somehow would be a great help but your bless is fine as it is. As said you could easily expand with far less than that and, you do start up too slow. Send out armies of 1 jarl and 4 giants and that should be enough for most provinces, before that use your skinshifters, they are very powerful for their cost (and great at soaking up attacks)

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

As was stated I would definately try to work something out for early expansion. The more you take the bigger your income is. Even if you want to run with that strategy, you can cut the wait time down significantly.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

That's strategy looks like a real overkill. I've tried Niefels with one of the human pretenders, imprisoned N6E4S3 or something like that. Dominion 5 or 6, Order+3,Cold+3,Sloth+1,Growth+1,Luck-2,Magic+1. Those Niefel Jarls is a real power from early on. With nature (regeneration is more to prevent afflictions than anything else) and earth (reinvigoration) blessing and with quicken oneself (alt-2) they can handle most of indies (and early AI army) alone. So I bought few Gigjas and Skrattis, went for Alt-2 while my starting army went to conquer indies from turn 2 (with scout who became prophet). In a 5-6 turns I had enough income to recruit Niefel Jarl per turn, Alt-2 was researched by that time, so they just went conquering everything around. Further research targets are Con-4 and Alt-6 - Niefel Jarls don't need any extras to deal with low-end armies, but when facing more advanced (and larger) armies they need soul vortex and few cheap items. Nothing AI can do against that. It will probably work as initial expansion plan in MP, might be a decent plan in blitz as well. If you attack your neighbour with 5 jarls (one per province) many nations will have problems defeating more than one jarl per turn so early in the game, which means they'll quickly lose their territory.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

IMO having a bless other than nature is not really needed, as well as the berserking ability (are niefels with 14 morale + bless + sermon + very rare losses, really routing often ?).

So this kind of strategy would work well with an awake green dragon, order 3, production 1, cold 3, misfortune 2, nature 8, dom 6, and this kind of pretender allow you to take 10-20 provinces instead of staling the first turns (and spread more your dominion since the beginning, so the dom 6 is not as weak as on an imprisoned one). Of course, it's at a price : no fire magic and no akashic record but the first isn't really hard to find on indie mages (and you just need fire 1 for some rings) and the second is not especially needed for a strategy based on brute force.

Also you can make big economies by using some Jotun Godes instead of Niefel Jarls (say for a 5 squads army 3 godes casting blessx2 and sermon and 2 well equiped jarls casting blessx2 then attacking).

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

My Niefels are merrily frolicking the fields w/ F4E4S4N6, courtesy of the Monolith. Order-3 is a must, as is at least Growth-1. No drain. You are already behind in research.

My thoughts on the blessing:
- Most things that a Niefel (or even a Jotun) hit, die so why not make them hit a little better; I'll also be fielding fewer troops than my opponents -> F4 for +2 att.
- Since I'm fielding fewer troops, my troops must make more hits to get rid of enemy troops; also my Jarls need to buff and NOT get hit while too much fatigued -> E4 for reinvigoration +2.
- Magic Resistance: Goooood for Jarls -> S4
- To drive the affliction chance down and 10% regeneration -> N6

This means that sacred leaders other than Jarls under this bless are very effective and early expansion NOT using Jarls is (read: should be) very effective. After a few indies, many your leaders should be in HoF. Jarls, after Quicken Self and Blessing, are able to singlehandedly take on indies (watch out for heavy cavalry). Keep recruiting the sacred leaders and use them as mini-thugs. Hand out Amulets of Luck, if pearls can be spared.

Start bloodhunting now - Skrattis. Your research will suffer for it but bloodsummons are easy way to fill the giants' ranks with size-2 chaff - Jotuns are size-4, that means a human-sized thing can occupy same grid with a Jotun. Recruit infantry from indies for this purpose also. Blood also gives you access to Boots of Youth for your Gygjas (and Sages), although a well-placed Thistle Mace should accomplish same thing.

Prophetize your first scout and use her to spread your dominion, which also spreads cold scale.

And your pretender can forge a plethora of VERY useful things.

I haven't yet tried skratti's second form for thug chassis, so anyone want to chip in on that? Quicken self, Breath of Winter at least, maybe a Shroud of Battle Saint? They have been too precious for me as my bloodhunters.

Oh, and how this cuts out in MP? I have no idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Humer, a dabbler

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

i do not think he is concerned about beserking. He just wants 20% regen and beserk is a nice bonus.

But earth blessing is very useful, as sleeping giants do no harm.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

A neat idea there, Felgar. I normally go around with smaller armies like some of the others here have mentioned, but I bet that is fun as heck wielding a large army of that many Niefels.

The only thing that struck me when looking at your battle formation is that with your leaders being forward a bit, most AI armies will target those first and especially with their archers, it seems. Even if other troops move out in front during the battle, archers seem to continue to target the troops that were at the front at the start of the battle, even if they fall back later. This may help you avoid some lucky hits on your more expensive and more valuable commander units.

Another thing that works well at times is to put your Jarls on the flanks with personal Quickness casted and let them try to flank and do some damage that way. Even if they push ahead later in the battle, the other giants still take the brunt of the armies attacks if they were positioned a little forward at the start. This is from a single-player perspective anyway. I have yet to play around with MP yet. The quickness will make them tire out faster, though, so now you have a new problem in trying to keep them invigorated. That is where the Earth blessing can help and some of the nice easier to create reinvigorate boots which seem to be easier to get than in Dom 2.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

To all,

Thanks for your thoughts. Instead of answering 1 poster at a time I thought I’d address everything I can in a single post.

As to my scale picks, I agree they are probably less than optimum. I chose growth +3 because giants need to eat and the Niefels cost a fortune to build. Nothing increases income over time as well as growth +3 in my opinion.

Its spring in the year 11 in my game and my starting province has a population of 63,000 (I have no idea if bad events have killed any pop there). I think I started with about 25,000-30,000, so I’ve already doubled my population in about 10 years. Of course double pop means twice the gold and supplies as well, so this is far better than 21% gold for order +3 or 30% extra recourses for prod +3 since its gold cost that prevents me from building more Niefels, not recourses.

Sure order or Prod gives you gold right away, but over time you’ll make far more money with growth than either of those two. Growth is also giving me +6% gold, so order would only be +15% more gold without the growth. Also the extra 45% supplies (the manuals stated 60% is wrong) make life a lot easier until you can start making some broth pots.

I don’t like to take negative scales if possible, but I guess it’s possible to come up with a good negative scale strategy tailored to the race. I’m simply not familiar enough with the game to feel comfortable taking a negative scale.

The fire and astral picks were basically forced upon me as I wanted 10 nature picks no matter what. There just weren’t enough points left to get two other magic paths both to level 4, so I went with the magic path he already starts with some skill in (astral) and then chose fire since the giants have no fire mages.

After reading everyone’s posts here, perhaps earth would have been better, but my question is why? I haven’t seen a single giant fall over from fatigue yet, so is earth really that essential?

I tested this strategy with lower level nature picks with 10% or 15% regeneration, but lost far too many Niefel giants to make it a cost effective choice. If you’re going to go with lower level nature picks then don’t bother using Niefels as you’ll lose too many to make it cost effective.

You’d be better off using Skin Shifters instead for your main force. Their ability to shape change into werewolves when killed is pretty awesome in itself. A large pack of 40 Skin Shifters would do almost as well as 15 or 20 giants without the huge gold cost associated with the Neifels.

With 20% regeneration, your opponent has to do more than 14 damage to a unit every single turn if he hopes to eventually kill it. And with 50+ hit points, even then chances are the giant will kill you before you can whittle down his hit points enough to kill him.

The only time I lose giants right now is when they are massively outnumbered. If enough units swarm around them their total damage adds up (8 little guys doing 2 damage each is 16 a turn), that’s why I upped my army to 25 giants and 5 leaders, it guarantees I have a solid line across the entire field which prevents their opponents from swarming around to the sides and rear.

The +2 berserk guarantees units will not retreat since they inevitably go berserk long before their hit points are low enough to threaten death.

I’ve never seen my giant troops fall over from fatigue, so I can’t see Reinvigoration +2 being that big of a deal. By the time powerful magic rolls around, I can equip all my jarls with reinvigoration items so they won’t fall out due to hostile spells. I also doubt +2 reinvigoration will help the troops much against powerful mages later in the game.

I don’t know the magic system all that well yet so I could well be wrong, but the difference between 14 hit points a turn and less than 10 is too good to pass up. I was losing about 1 or 2 giants per province at the lower levels, but 20% seems to be the sweet spot. I now only lose a giant if my bless fails and I’ve seen these armies defeat huge enemy armies filled with powerful troops.

The only time I ever lost with this strategy so far was to some kind of fear spell. I had initially bunched up my commanders in the center of a large squad, but the spell forced all my commanders to flee and my army fled after them (no one died, they just ran away). That’s why I split my squads into small groups and spread them out. If one or two Jarl’s flee due to a nasty spell, you still have a chance at winning.

I should also stress I play with level 9 neutrals and the hardest possible research, so if you play with default settings large armies like this won’t be needed. But with level 9 neutrals I’ve seen over 30 knights plus heavy infantry and longbowmen both with squads of about 50 each, so a small force of giants at that level won’t work for tougher provinces.

Against militia or other low damage troops you can probably start an earlier expansion than I did, but be warned Barbarians are your nemesis if you don’t have large numbers of giants. They do enough damage that they can wipe out 5-10 giants easily even if they are 100% all blessed. Those blasted great swords and mauls do lots of damage and can chew up giants better than most other neutral troop types if they can gang up on them.

As to the Skrattis I too use them for bloodhunting and research. Their werewolf form allows them to command more troops and gives them regeneration abilities, but what good is the wolf form? Does anyone have a use for the wolf form? I thought perhaps wolves come to their aid in battle or something, but I’ve never used them in wolf form yet so I don’t know.

That’s a good trick with the scout. I prophetized the starting general so he could go around with my magic site search party and search for holy. But I like your scout idea better. He can head into neutral territory and get the cold scale up for the early attacks, so perhaps only 10 or 15 giants would be good for a starting army. I’ll test it the next time I play a game as the Niefels.

About the leaders in the front row. I tried putting them 1 pixel behind or in the center, but it scrambles the setup and I had trouble getting everyone blessed. The above formation is the only way I could get everyone densely packed enough that 95% of the time 100% of them get blessed with 5 casters casting. If there is even 1 more rank of giants (3 rows instead of just 2), it screws up the casts.

This is also the reason why I set them up all the way in the backfield. The enemy archers that can reach that far generally miss and I haven’t suffered any afflictions by archer fire yet.

All my Jarl’s afflictions came from melee combat, that is why I have now switched their orders to bless, bless, bless, cast spells. Early on they don’t really have many spells to cast, but now that all my research is up to level 6 they are better off as spell casters now than melee guys. In future games I may just nix using Jarl’s in melee period. I have 5 heroic Jarls with afflictions now, and they do nothing but research until I can heal them. Not a game breaker, but a nuisance for sure.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

If you're not going to use Neifel Jarls for melee, I probably wouldn't even buy them.

Honestly I wouldn't even buy them to use as melee army commanders. With the right bless and a few items, they make SCs. Short of that I wouldn't use them.
Regular Godes should be able to handle the leading and blessing job and are much cheaper.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I liked most of your choices. I think that the problem many have with it is that you are playing Neifelheim the way I liked to play it. As strong defense over time. Others tend to prefer swarm and rush short-term tactics.

But I have found giants really difficult to create armies out of. You might shift thinking to using more independents, with giants as support units. Have you taken the provinces that connect to your castle? What kinds of independents can you make?

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

It's all about the regeneration. The smaller giants just don't have enough hit points to make the 20% regeneration that big of a deal for them. But the Niefel Jarl's have 60+ hit points, so get something like 15 or 16 points a turn in regeneration. That makes a huge difference in their survivability.

But you’re right if you're going with less than 10 nature picks then the huge Niefels (commanders or troops) aren't worth it really. This strategy focuses on the hit point regeneration and only works for the large Niefels.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

The shapeshifting Skrattis are a new addition to Dom3. They didn't change forms earlier. Any way, I think the Wolf form is stealthy, unlike the other forms.

As others have said, they make good Super-Combatants (SCs). That is, if you give them magical items and script them to cast spells that enchance their battle prowess, the afflictions become much more rare, and if you stack the oddss high enough, they can eventually wipe out whole armies. As an example, forge them an Ice Sword, or Sword of Quickness, and perhaps better armor. Look out for the armor's encumberance value, though. Quickness it also very good; Personal Quickness is Alteration 3.

Earth bless gives reinvigoration, which lowers fatique. Fatique hurts even before your giants fall unconscious. See page 76 of the manual. The example is nice.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I'm well into my game now (year 11) and am far ahead of most other nations. There are two very powerful opponents with about 50-60 provinces like me, the rest have about 20-40 provinces and can't field large enough armies to threaten my 25 troop armies.

But I do use a lot of independent troops to augment my militia defenses. Without a ranged troop type (they used to have boulder throwers) giant militia defense is a pushover, so I try and assign 40-60 archers or other ranged troops on patrol in all my border provinces.

Combined with defenses in the 60-100 range I’m able to hold off most attacks while I finish taking out all the neutrals within my borders. Once I’ve done that I’ll switch to offense and see if the late game magic spells spell doom for my Niefels.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

The Order scale is really nice early though.

I didn't see it mentioned so if it was my bad, but if you make a Niefel Jarl a prophet he can use Divine Blessing to bless the entire battlefield instead of using many of them, that way you can use other mages to buff your troops or use the Jarls themselves to use other spells.

I just quickly looked at Niefelheim EA and don't know how it would work out, but another possible pretender design is to use the Son of Fennerer for a W9 N7 or something. W9 give you quickness, which is great especially for these guys, and defence skill. Both of which will help you not get hit because you're killing faster and getting hit less, might be worth it not to stock up on nature so high.

The Drain scale might not be too bad, you'll be behind in research even farther but you get increased MR on all troops in exchange and more points to use for other scales or magic for blessing.

Anyway, just a few things to think about.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Niefel Jarls only have 2 holy, so making them a prophet won't allow the divine blessing (have to wait for the unique swords).

I've seen two of their heroes (the hag and a Jarl that transforms to an eagle) and neither had holy 3, so I'm hoping the last one (if it ever shows up) will have holy 3. Anyone know what the last hero is for the giants in early era?

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Isn't it the armor they wear that allows them to shapeshift? I'll have to test it and see if new armor takes away their ability to shift forms.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I started a new game in EA Niefelheim, waited a turn, recruited a Niefel Jarl and set him to become a prophet, hit end turn, and Divine Blessing is on list at Holy 3. Try it for yourself, it worked for me.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Oops ok, I thought you needed holy 4 for that. Been searching for holy sites the entire game with my prophet... D'oh!

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

My thought was more to use the Neifels as troops with the full blessing. Godes would bless them and cast spells staying out of the fight, so the lesser hp and regen wouldn't be a drawback.

Since the Godes are much cheaper, you could field more Neifels for the same cost and rough effectiveness.

Essentially it seems a waste of Neifel Jarls to be fighting on the line, and they're not that effective as artillery until you're fairly high up in research. Skratti may still be more effective for that.

In dom2 at least, I'd happily send a Jarl out solo against any indies other than Knights or Heavy Cavalry, even at Indies 9. With a good bless, Luck Pendant, maybe horror Helm? Cast Quickness, Breath of Winter.
Haven't done much with them in Dom3.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Divine blessing is a holy 3 spell. Any prophet is capable of casting it.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

First, I haven't tested it but other shape-shifting creatures don't have limits with what armor they can wear. They might lose the armor they have when they change shape, but they won't lose their ability to change just from wearing strange armor. Furthermore, I think it'd have been easier to just have Skrattis not have a body slot than to program a new mechanic that'd be used just for them.


Also, my message had an annoying typo. While I hope Skrattis can make good SCs, I meant Niefel Jarls in my post. They are much tougher, have much better starting equipment, more resistances, and have better magics. Death and Blood are both quite weak in the buff spell department, but Blood Vengeance is harder to get than Soul Vortex.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

To Felgar: you're losing Niefel Jarls because you don't have earth bless. After casting quickness and blessing you get around 30 fatigue which gives you -3 defense and as jarls attack it quickly gets worse. Even though they don't fall unconcious they're getting hit so often that you need high regeneration just to survive (and of course, it causes you moral difficulties). With Earth bless you manage your fatigue on somewhat acceptable level which means you maintain good defense and don't get hit often.

So essentially, that's lack of earth bless that causes you to go in massive armies instead of being able to send your jarls alone.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Hey all,
Good to see so many old faces still around. I have been unable to recover my old identity, hope there is np with starting a new one.


Alexti is right, fatigue is a killer for SCs, particularly when quickened.

The worst part is not the penalty to defense, but the fact that it allows for armour piercing hits (IIRC from Dom:PPP & Dom2).
30 fatigue means opponents hitting through your defense have a 30% chance of scoring an armour piercing hit...thus why the Earth bless is even more important for Niefels than the Nature one: better not suffering any damage from mundane troops than trusting your regen to make up for it.

Besides, Niefels cannot trust any longer Breath of Winter to do the killing for them, so battles take longer, and that means still more fatigue.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Quick question about the earth bless everyone is proposing. Since he is taking nature so high, won't he have a TON of reinvigoration items he can forge for the jarls at a relatively cheap cost? Wouldn't this eliminate the need for earth being added to the bless? Also, I think two of the neifel casters get nature picks to make items with as well.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Casting Bless/Divine Bless is a lot cheaper than forging those ,mmmm, what was it, 10-15 Nature Gems items for them. And it also affects regular Niefel Giants.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Ah, I didn't think about the regular niefel giants http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Manual, page 76 lists fatique effects, and gives an example with 30 fatigue. Defence would be lowered by 3 (-1 /10 fatique), attack would be lowered by 1 (-1 /20 fatique) and if 2d6oe roll -2 (fatique/15) is lower than 2, a critical hit would be scored. 2d6oe means a simulated roll of 2 six-sided dice, with 6s added to the sum and rolled again. I won't bother to calculate how often the critical hits happen, but it's far less than 30%.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

@Foodstamp: What Nerfix said. Besides, you want to start taking provinces with your Jarls ASAP, instead of waiting until you pull some research in construction (and you will most likely have a drain dominion).

@Endo: Heh, I have to get used to all the arcane knowledge we more or less guessed in past games being somewhere in the manual now, thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I never have problems taking provinces from the get go without earth bless. I figured the reinvigoration was for later on when you are fighting "put together armies" instead of independents.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I've had a spin with Neifelheim, and I'd have to say that using nothing but Neifel giants wouldn't occur to me. I'd certainly build some to act as the core of the army, but mixed in with plenty of normal Jotuns as well. Say, 25 Jotun spearmen for every 5 Neifels. Much less chance of getting swarmed, so there's no need for an excessive nature bless.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

You can start expanding fast with imprisoned N10 W9 Son of Fenrir (that Big wolf pretender) and still decent scales. Basically you can start expanding as soon as you buy 3-4 Niefel giants and starting troops on indie strength 9 with almost no losses. There is absolutely no need to wait who knows how many turns to get money and buy all at once. Other giant's are useful as well but cheaper so use them in combination with Niefel forces as support. This also works in MP.
DON'T make a prophet out of Niefel Jarl. You won't be buying him in first few turns and he’s already H2 so you only get additional 1 holy with him. You want to make a prophet of a unit that would usually sit back in battle and do nothing like scouts or army commanders. Don't make prophets of units that have 'so much to do so little time' syndrome in battle. Niefel Jarls are both SC's and casters so you definitely don't want to waste time with them on casting prophet spells someone else can do.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Welcome back! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Good point about critical hits, I haven't thought about that. I think it's less than 30% at fatigue 30, but without reinvigoration fatigue will quickly get at the level where chances of critical hit will get to 30% and more.

But now many of them can cast Soul Vortex, which is even better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

It keeps them fatigueless but it dosnt do high enough damage to be their main killer (a charcoal shield on the other hand...)

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

The beauty of Niefel Jarls is that with abundance of gold in Dom3 you can buy one SC per turn which already comes equipped (default shield is pretty good). They may not be good enough to stand real challenges, but they dispatch regular armies just fine as long as they don't get tired http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

This is the exact setup I used last time I played niefelheim. Fenrir is an excellent pretender because he is also stealthy. In his own domain, he can reach upwards to 700 hit points btw. For a prophet, I usually use the starting commander, standard sacred commander with cold resist.

In my single player games, this has been the best setup so far, the lack of earth bless was no big deal once I got construction up, first priority for me in that game.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Ummm... if the 20% nature bless is that important, why not an imprisoned cyclops. Taking no scales other than cold 3, and without a higher dominion strength, you can do a 9/9 nature earth bless. If you took some negative scales you could actually HAVE a dominion, and maybe push one of the nines up to ten. Also, if you feel that +4 protection is unneeded, you could drop the earth down to eight and save some points there. For nothing but the magic, the cyclops is 19 points more expensive than the son of fenrir, and probably has a better bless.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

If you take E9, you probably don't need more than N4 - that would save a lot of points.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Maybe, but since people here seem to be going Earth 9.... NO Nature 9... Earth 9... Nature 9...
I though it was an interesting compromise.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I think an Earth/Nature bless would be better than a Water/Nature bless. I also like to do drain 3 and s4 for the extra +3 to magic resist if possible. It hurts your research and combat spellcasting but you won't rely on spellcasting as much as other nations, and you can forge the death research item at construction 4 so as not to far too far behind.

Give them enough nature to at least get berzerk and enough earth to get them reinvig 6 if possible. I've found that it is hard to get nature and earth gems so it is hard to rely on forging reinvig items for the commanders.I like to equip the Neifel Jarls with a wavebreaker and horror helm. Then you have them cast quicken self and maybe a mirror image if they have air, at the beginning of battle. That gives them 6 attacks. They can really mow through the enemies.

Another problem for these guys can be supply issues. Since the nature gem supply may be low you probably won't want to spend your limited supply of gems making supply items. I use the Skodas?(old ladies) in my armies. They ususally start with +10 or +20 supply due to their nature magic. Putting some of them in your army can help. You can then use the onces that get astral picks to cast luck and body ethereal on some of your giants. Of course if you can find nature indies it's much more cost effective.

Research order - I think I'd start researching Alteration? until Wolven Winter is researched and then move to construction4, then enchantment 2 for raise dead and then evocation until falling frost is reached. From there, maybe blood. It would be nice to be able to summon some fliers for help in storming castles.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

I dunno. Without some reinvigoration and no range I am betting 10 or so D3 mages would really wallup one of these armies with just raise skeletons..

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Earth, nature, and water are pretty equally good for Niefel giants, especially when you consider their high defense and the ability for quickness (the spell) to stack with quickness (the blessing) and quickness (the heroic ability).

Nature's maybe the best of the three, and water's maybe the worst, but by a *very* small margin.

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Here's my quick advice. I tend to do rather well with Niefelheim.

The best bless is E9N9.
* W9 (with all respect to HB) only stacks for Defense stat, not for AP or blows. This is less than totally sexy.
* S9 is pointless - one hit (even a fire hit) seldom does much, and your Jarls are already MR 18 and can't benefit from that.
* F9 is nice, but not as good as E9 or W9.
* A9, likewise.
* D9 is only good on massed sacreds, which you do not have.
* B9 is silly, frankly - and the strength boost from any blood at all is essentially redundant on a niefel giant of any kind.

The best chassis for this blessing is probably an imprisoned Cyclops, who is also pretty useful and scary in his own right when he wakes up.

*One* niefel giant, with an E9W9 blessing and no equipment, can often knock over an independent province all by himself. This is an undesirable risk, however - ideally an early province conquest squad should be one niefel jarl and 3 niefel giants. Your initial army (with a prophet) plus a single niefel giant can take almost any province on turn 2, and should do so. After that expand as fast as you can get groups of 3 giants together.

As soon as you can afford it, start buying a Niefel Jarl out of your capital every turn and never stop. If you can only afford Jarls and nothing else, that's fine, as 2 of them make a perfectly respectable conquest squad.

When you meet your first neighbor - whoever he is - kill him. You might make an exception for Abysia, since fighting in that heat dominion is a real killer.

Research priorities include:
- Construction. Your research sucks so you will *need* skull mentors at const 4. Also, you'll really want to kit out your niefel jarls.
- the various searching spells (thats Thaum 2, Conj 3, Evoc 2, Blood 2.) One of the big strengths of this position is that you can find all sites but fire, earth and air remotely. Do not, however, wait until you have this to do site searching. You'll need the gem income.
- Alteration. This gives you access to Wolven Winter and Soul Vortex. You should probably cast wolven winter in every province where you might have a battle. Soul Vortex greatly increases the survivability of your Jarl-thugs.
- Enchantment. Here's the deal - have a gygja cast white mage (give her a skull staff if needed). Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, she can now *see in the dark*, which will enable her to hurl mighty and destructive magics even in darkness. Do this with a couple of skratti as well. Your enemies *will* try to use darkness against you in their desperation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against wight mages casting..
- Evocation. Your niefel giants are absolutely outstanding meat-shields, but even with soul vortex up the jarls just don't kill people that fast. You'll need mighty battle magics (and sooner than you think). Since you only need evocation in some battles, Shadow Blast is even better for you than it is for everyone else. Cast it a lot and love it. Falling Frost and Cleansing Water are also useful in a lot of situations.

I hope this was helpful.
(I slightly revised it just now).

Re: Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era
 

Excellent post Dr. Praetorius. So many great points. I find that I had already followed most of them in my current Neifel game, but the Darkness being used against me was giving me fits. I had never considered how useful making wight mages out of my Gygjas could be.

Question? What would you do against an army of Pans (25-30) spam-casting Charm with a large meat shield in front of them to soak up the blows? In this same game, that's what I ran into, until eventually Pan had as many Jarls as I did. I finally just made peace with him... never did find an effective counter. Even with my Jarl's MR bumped up into the 20s, they would eventually get charmed if the battle went on long enough.