Counters to Niefelheim
 

Quick Version
How does Arcosephale (or anyone) counter Niefel giant armies (like 30) with good bless (regen, etc.)

Long Version
I was playing a game recently vs. another player (we're both noobish). I was arcosephale and he was niefelheim, and there were several average AIs. I was doing very well, huge research lead, good land lead, but falling behind in gold because I was stuck in wasteland and crazy independants (vampires, bogus and his heros) took all the provinces surrounding my capital. Anyway, I was still doing very well, but then got hit with ~ 30 giants. I threw hundreds of troops (mainly Cardaces, because I had low resources because of Bogus and vamps..) with a bunch of Oreliads and lesser mages at the giants and killed like one or two. Despite having 6+ research in just about every path I found my magic pretty useless. I hoped by outnumbering and using the magic I had I could fatigue or wear down the giants, but no such luck. Did I just not have enough troops? I did not have a SC.. would that have helped a ton? My pretender was a rainbow mage, I had no special heros. I know at least 3 big mistakes I made in this game, so I would do better a second time around.. but I'm just wondering was I doing the right thing, just not well enough, or was I doing completely the wrong counter.


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Thanks, and apologies for my noobishness. I'm trying and learning and hoping to join you folks in some "real" games eventually.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Arcosephale?

The chaff troops will do little to nothing. Might slow them down long enough for mages to kill them.

Soul Slay. Enslave Mind. Paralyze. Petrify. Use penetration boosters and/or communion to boost your chances.

Don't fight them in cold dominion if you can afford it.

Fire spells do extra damage. Flame Storm?

Does EA Arcosephale have elephants? Probably wouldn't be too effective anyway.


Mind Hunt his commanders!

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Niefelheim has above average magic resistance... But at that age and game stage it may be worth mind hunting them. It's pretty inexpensive at 2 pearls, and they aren't likely to have many ways to boost their magic resistance, while you're likely able to forge eyes of the void for a penetration bonus, maybe something else. Though I can't remember the requirements for mind hunts...

In general, counters depend on the bless. If its just nature, I'd focus on damage and numbers.

If they have a heavy water bless, ranged may be your best option.

As Agartha, I'd focus on armor of Achilles and other armor destruction spells.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Thanks for your advice.

I'll read up on the spells you mention. My guess is many are astral and many are single target? So I'd need a lot of astral mages? I still need chaff to slow the giants from getting to my mages I imagine. Dominion was neutral or warm, I didn't have anything beyond fire 1 (except on my pretender, who was far away, but had fire 6 after multiple items buffing him). I had tried using "Fire from afar" with my pretender, but that would usually weakly injure a few units, and kill none according to my opponent. My Oreliads had lots of air magic, but I had trobule using them. As a tangent - what is "Breath of Dragon" spell supposed to do? It seems like my wizards always cast it (even if I script something else) and I have never seen it do any damage to any troop.

For units, I thought having the bigger arco units (aside from myrmidons, which I couldnt resource afford because my cap had only 2 wasteland neighbors, one ruled by Bogus) wouldn't help because of the giants' size.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

thanks perfectionist.. hadn't seen your comments when I posted. I'll look into those spells also. I'm not sure their exact bless, but I know earth and nature are common on giants and water is just always popular so I should know how to stop that.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

The strength of Niefelheim's troops is really their cold aura. What you want roughly (specifics will vary depending on what you have available) is a couple of cold immune guys (undead, or give them relevant items) with high defense (25+). Because the giants are so large, only a few can attack at once, so for relatively cheap you can get a couple of linebackers that'll hold them back for a good amount of time so your mages have a chance to work. The typical bless for Niefelhiem is N/E, so I'm assuming its something like that. With Arcoscephale what'd work well is a communion of 8 or so mages casting..say...orb lightning. 4 masters + 4 slaves makes orb lightning practically free (you can cast it all day long) and if your masters start at 3a (seems like that's what EA Arco has available) you're throwing down 20 or so AN attacks per round. Fried giant in no time!

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I'm more familiar with the later Arcosephales. Wasn't it an astral nation in EA?

Try Charm as well. It's nature but short range. If you can make it work, they'll fight for you.

Air Magic? Thunderstrikes are good if you can get a lot of them. Fog Warriors might help, but not if he's got a F9 bless.

Against Neifel giants, single target one shot kill spells are what you want. They regenerate too fast to try to whittle them down.

Fires from Afar will damage a few troops. It'll kill normal humans, but the giants are too tough.

Breath of the Dragon does poison damage. It's nice, but does damage overtime and it probably canceled out by their regen.

Tougher/higher protection human units will still die in one hit so they aren't much use. Go for numbers but only as a meat shield. The mages do the killing. Massed summons can work too. Vine Ogres can make a decent wall. Living Statues or Mechanical Men if you've got the Earth magic.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Conventional forces are not effective vs. Niefel giants.

However, Your rainbow pretender as well as the Oreiads and Astrologers should be effective with the with the right scripting.

Some spells to consider:

Conjuration: Phoenix Power (F2), Summon Earth Power (E2), Power of the Spheres (S1), Light of the Northern Star (S3), and Will o' the Wisp (F1)

Alteration: Curse of Stones (E3) and Destruction (E3), Swarm (N1)

Evocation: Magma Bolts (E1, F1), Falling Fires (F3), Magma Eruption (E3, F1), and Thunder Strike (A3)

Thaumaturgy: Rage (F2), Prison of Fire (F3), Paralyze (S2), Confusion (A1), Soul Slay (S3), Enslave Mind (S4), and Hydrophobia (F1)

A couple of cold resistant thugs would be very helpful, especially if equipped with Fire Brands.

Fire Snakes also work pretty well vs. Niefels.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Thanks for the comments all. I've been avoiding learning about communion because it sounds tricky, but that's a lame excuse. Time to learn it. I did try orb lightning a little, but perhaps throwing it harder would have worked better.

Thanks!

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

What spells have you tried in combat?

If money is limited, but recruitment points aren't, consider mage engineers. You can also bootstrap fairly high into earth, though you'll be restricted by gems and fatigue limits.

Summon Earthpower will take you to earth two, and you can use further gems to cast as high as earth three. As many as two gems per spell, but earth three. So no fatigue 300 spells, since you can't use the minimum gems. Fortunately, a lot of earth spells are low fatigue, and you can cast some worthwhile ones without additional gems.

Earth Meld should be ignored, however, as should air's Fetters. They roll against strength and magic resistance.

That's about all I can offer at the moment, w/o a manual at hand or an online spell listing to refresh my memory.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

P.S. This community rocks. I've played other 4X type games, and I'm very impressed with the friendliness and helpfulness of the dominions community. I look forward to joining you useful folks.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Flaming arrows and indy archers will crushinate the sacred giant troops. With communion available or just a simple F2 + phoenix power + extra gem in casting it shouldn't even take much mage power. Just get some chaff to soak up the giants attacks halfway down the battlefield and watch the pain.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I'm not sure Flaming Arrows is that effective against Neifel Giants, but it's worth trying if you've got the mages.

Since you've got Air mages to spare, use Wind Guide to make every arrow count. (And minimize friendly fire.)

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I hadn't noticed the mystics had a chance at fire, along with the mage engineers.

I don't particularly recommend this for arco, I'd ruther spend gems on air elementals before I'd forge eyes of aiming on a nation with powerful air magic, but its good for some others, and you can use Wind Guide as effectively, I believe. Moreso, perhaps, because you're not wounding your mages to put it into use, and taking any attack or defense penalties.

Units with 8 to 10 precision capable of casting magma bolts will benefit greatly from an additional five precision. Most earth magic has a short range, however, and you might not be willing to move your mages so close to the front lines.

You won't get pinpoint accuracy, but bolts will be much more tightly grouped, and you'll be fearing friendly fire less.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I still think the best counter to Neifel Giants is to one-shot them. Even with a good mr, at least the ones you get die. (Or get enslaved, even better.)

With their regen you're going to have to hit them at least 2-3 times in quick succession to kill with magma bolts, or lighting, or fire arrows.
Maybe falling fires or better yet, magma eruption. Decent area, good damage and leaves a heat aura behind.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I would say that Charm, Thaumaturgi 7 is your best bet.

A N3 oreiad have 18% chance to charm a Niefel giant. With eye of the void (5 astral pearls) it is increased to 30%.

For the cost of fielding 30 niefel giants and a niefel jarl you should be able to field 10 oreiads with eyes of the void.

Just put the mages close to the enemy with chaff with hold and attack orders in front, so that they are within your 20 range.

With three giants deserting every turn you should be able to win the battle.

Your average Oreiad should be able to cast charm 5 times before passing out. Those with nature random should be able to cast it 9 times.

You can also forge rune smashers and spell focus with your mystics. With spell focus, rune smasher and eye of the void your Oreiads will charm 54% of the time.

I think your second best shot is living clouds and lightning.
With storm and storm power your Oreaiads with air random should be able to cast living clouds twice. On average it will take the niefel giant 13 attacks to kill an air elemental. Slightly less if the elemtal is attack several time a round. So if you manage to summon 30 air elemental, the giants will be stuck for a while. The air elementals will do AN damage and will not be hurt by lightning spells you cast. Air elementals will also work well as chaff if you are casting charm.

You can give a crystal matrix to an Oreiad with air random. Use her with 8 mystics casting communion slave. After storm power each casting of living clouds will give you 7 air elementals. Theoretically you should be able to cast living clouds 8 times before your communion is to tired. But the AI will probably burn to many gems for that to happen. On the other hand if the AI burn more gems then needed you will get 8 elementals.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

To get neifel giants have a fire bless, takes them down so easy, if your not planning on fighting them before game though, flame arrows a re good too, um the incinerate spells.

Oo maybe a thug commander with something like a Gate Cleaver, half there health down in one hit from him, even if he hits the shield

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I've been messing around with the Sons of Winter a lot lately, single player only but I'm scheduled to be in an MP game with them sometime soon. Anyways, others have already suggested ways to handle them in battle, so I won't elaborate there. Except, they are incredibly tough with a good bless and you're going to have to pull out all the stops to beat them. One thing to keep in mind is their stats (Strength, Attack and Defense Skill, and AP) are all adjusted by the temperature scale. So, lure them into a hot territory (or make the territory their in hot) to get a much better shot at beating them. The difference between a 3-cold and 3-hot territory is -6. That isn't cheap change.

On the broader strategic level, Neifelheim's key weakness is its incredibly poor PD. Yeah, I know the manual says they have great PD, but its dead wrong. Developers must have changed something. Use stealth or flying troops to RAID, RAID and RAID some more. I see you're getting a new hard drive, considering a RAID configuration? Whats with all the bugs in the bathroom, somebody needs to spray some RAID. Pop in some of your own PD (assumming it isn't worthless), raise taxes, and make his economy cry.

You see, those sacred ice giants cost 150 gold apiece. To assemble 30+ in a single battle represents an enormous amount of resources. So, he's likely not producing much of anything else. Convince him he has to be in two, or three, or four places at once and he'll start spliting that giant army up into peices (of course, putting 30 of those guys together in one place is criminally inefficient anyways, but thats another story), to sizes you can actually have a shot at beating. Didn't say it'd be easy, but it would be doable.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

The thing is, fire is AP (or regular damage) while lightning is AN. With an earth bless in a cold dominion the giants have over 20 protection so even with their fire weakness you've got quite the uphill battle...plus AOE is less effective because theres only one per square. Lightning, OTOH, benefits by there being only one per tile (damage is concentrated) as well as the air mage prescison bonus. Throwing down ~20 orb ligtnings per turn and you won't have much trouble lighting up each giant several times in short order. Besides, you're generally gonna have to hit each one several times to make a soul slay stick as well...

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Given that Niefel's sacreds should have a 19 MR after Antimagic goes off I really can't get behind an MR-spell based counter to them.

It might work in this case since the Niefel player is new, but it's not a good general strategy.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Strange, no one seems to have listed my favorites. Mages with two earths are common randoms in Arco. So mages with one fire and one astral.

(With a Oreiad casting Wind guide and one mage casting Light of the Northern Star)
Two earth mages: Summon Earthpower, Gifts from the Sky
Fire/Star mages: Astral Fires
Oreiads: Lightning bolt/Thunder strike

Dead, dead giants.

Forgot to say: All above are armour negating, or don't matter (150 damage kills giants, or anything)

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Good call on Gifts from Heaven.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

In the category of smackdown...

The original poster mentioned an army of giants... I'd made a mistake. I'd thought of them all as a giants, but the op was probably refering to the Niefel Giants, not Jotun Huskarls.

Well... I'll withdraw from commenting for now. My advice was geared to somewhat wimpier units. I don't have much experience facing the big guys with a regen.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

For Niefelheim to cast anti magic you would need a rare S2 Gygja or a Gygja casting power of the spheres and then sleeping a turn before casting anti magic. Arco should be able to kill the Gygja with magic duel.

I would like to compare lightning spells to fire spells against Niefel giants.

Niefels with E9 blessing have 18 in protection. Could be more in cold provinces.

Fire darts, evocation lvl 1. 3 x 15 damage against niefel giants. That is 18 damage after armour.
20 fatigue. F1
range 25+
precision 4

lightning bolt, evocation lvl 2. 14 damage
10 fatigue, A2
range 35+
precision 4

Two out of three mystics will be able to cast fire darts. I do not see why I would like to recruit an oreiad for 400 gold to get some more range over a mystic for 150 gold.

Seems to me that most things will be cost effective against niefel giants this late into to the game. Earlier in the game it would have been hard to mass the mages needed.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Folket, one does recruit Oreiads rathers than Astrologers in capital because one can recruit Astrologers everywhere else. It's nice to have many Oreiads. Once you got, and giants are stomping your troops, you just use them. When giants come, and you have research, you send a castle of mages to the fight, and each script for whatever is best.

(EE) -> summon earthpower, gifts from the sky
(FS) -> astral fires (with Light of the northers star)
(FF) -> phoenix power, falling fires
(F) -> fire darts
(AAA) -> thunderstrike
(AA) -> lightning bolt
(NN) -> thorn storm (won't hurt much, but will waste a move)
(S) -> soul slay
(-) -> mind burn

Last ones suck, but hey, you fight with what you got. If you have bow and flaming arrows, you are better with them on the field than with them a province apart.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, when it comes to air counters. Roughly a fourth of all Niefel Jarls will have access to air magic, and that's roughly enough to ruin your day if all you're trying is lightning bolts and shock spells.

The biggest weakness Niefel has is it's provinces. Province defense sucks bigtime, you need a huge amount of gold and supplies to purchase and field your troops, and it's very hard to defend that huge area with those few, expensive troops. So, the best advice is to attack the infrastructure-hit them in their income and their bellies.

Spellwise, curse works really well. They can also be Feared out of existence, so consider horror helmets. They have really good morale, but not ironclad, and less ways to boost it-no morale, low numbers-than other nations.

Etheriality is great: 1 because if they don't have fire bless, then it makes your troops a lot harder to hit, and 2, if they DO have it, then you don't even need to research it, it's already done it's part since Fire bless is not the best bless out there for Niefels. It's not bad, but it's definitely not 1st choice.

Barbarians are terrific, and fairly cheap, against small parties of giants, or individual Niefel Jarls-even really tough, boosted, SC Niefels. Get enough barbarians together, supported by heavy calvaly, and you can pick Niefels off. Wolf Tribe warriors are even better, in numbers.

Provinces being hard for nIEFELHEIM to defend over a large area, also leaves them somewhat vulnerable to dom-killing. The cheapest Niefel priest is 200 gold a pop, so consider a praying war, especially since every unit they use to counter you is another few pounds of gold you've just committed to *not* building an unstoppable army. It's worked against me, and it should work against your opponent.

Finally, consider mass-producing the shields that inflict curse and blindness every time they're struck. These are great to pepper in with your chaff. So are medallions of vengeance and any cursed items you have lying around that a Niefel Jarl might pick up.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

This won’t help in this game, but you might want to re-examine how you research. You state you have level 6 in almost all the areas. There are times that strategy is useful, but there are other times that you would prefer to have a certain high level spell and have built a strategy around it.

Next time you are creating your nation, think about where you want there magic to be in mid game. Look at the high level spells and how they will work with your nation. Then plan your research to get those spells early, focusing all your research on those key spells. What usually happens to me is that I get “the spell” and can implement a powerful strategy much earlier than if I spread my research around.

Many people plan an early, mid and late game plan, even as they are designing their god and nation. What you need and what you have available at each stage is different.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I am a little surprised that I haven't seen very many prior posts about problems with Nief giants before. As a SP, I have found them to be all but invincible against the AI. And I would just use a relatively inexpensive rainbow FWEN (4 to 6) bless.

In games when I would play myself, I found a death bless very effective in stopping invincible forces. You may not kill them right away, but if you can pile up 3 or 4 afflictions on a unit, they soon become quite vulnerable.

But this isn't useful to the chap who originally posted the question.

The advice previously given that you attack Nief's provinces is probably the easiest to implement. You should be able to take 2 or 3 provinces for every one that you lose. It is a permutation of Russian strategy where you retreat to win, but it is effective. No one likes to lose 2 provinces for one, so that should reverse the advance. Then you will have the time to acquire the manpower and research to use the spells that were suggested. A good variant of this is to attack a province just behind the unstoppable force. Set the tax rate to 200. If they turn to attack you, you just keep your army moving through his provinces avoiding battle and he wastes his good army taking back his provinces unopposed.

Another stategy that might work is to put up a castle in a wasteland or marsh if it has good blocking capability. Fill the castle with enough troops and engineers to offset the besiegers, give cauldrens and wines sacks to every commander and hope your opponent is foolish enough to starve himself into serious affliction issues. If this works it also buys you time to acquire effective head-on counters.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I do not play with blesses against the AI. The AI has no way to adapt. Once you defeat him without looses you will not have any more looses.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

The real key to beating Niefelheim is making them build those Niefel Giants; it's almost impossible for Niefelheim to afford both building lots of giants and fortifying his conquests. When Niefelheim a dramatic reverse, a Giant based strategy tends to suffer total collapse syndrome and crumples not long afterwords.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

That's a good point. You can't play Niefelheim successfully or competitively, purely by creating Niefel giants.

As tough as they are, they're too expensive to use as a main army until late game, and you've got lots of other tough, useful troops.

Niefel giants are there to make a good army unbeatable, they're not there to provide that army, all by themselves.

To do so would be like building a navy that consisted only of battleships.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

A very effective tactic against Niefelhiem is ritual spells which cause unrest. Get unrest to over 100 in their capital and keep it there. Boom, no more Frost Giants. Rain of Toads, Raging Hearts, Plague of Locusts, Baleful Star, Blight and Hurricane are the spells you want.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Foul Air may be nice... Incredibly slow, but nice. And not readily available to you.

How good are these giants at sieges? Can they be starved easily? I know I tend to take death scales as Agartha and I have a province as low as 86 food- and this is only two provinces distant from my capital. Size five, 30 Niefels, 120 food? You could probably starve them.

On the other hand, with a strength of 25, they'd have a siege strength of 6.25 x 30, or 187. It would be difficult (though not impossible) to hold off that force, but if your armies will be defeated in the field, than why not fort up? (other than losing the chance to counter-raid).

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I had a 50 or so giant army of sacreds with a N8, E9 bless destroyed very easily by EA Ctis casting darkness and spamming raise skeletons.

Up till then the army had been virtually invincible.

EA Niefelheim is powerful but has many exploitable weaknesses. Many of which have been listed already.

EA Nielfelheim can recruit specific troops for sieging, the rock hurlers. They get a decent siege bonus.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Quite right Folket, I'd completely forgotten about magic duel for some reason. That'd pretty much gank their MR though.

I still stand by Flaming Arrows though, they cut through E9N4 giants without any trouble at all...maybe the extra regen at N9 changes things though, I haven't tried it. A couple of volleys and their whole army is on fire though, which helps negate some of the regen. Even if you're doing some other strat dropping a FA only takes a single mage, so why not add it on?

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Of course, as Niefel, you are always concerned about Flaming Arrows and other instances of concentrated fire magic. Casting Rain on the first round of combat is a good idea for the Niefel player. With Rain and a nature bless, Niefel giants can hold up to large volleys of Flaming Arrows.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

When I play Niefel, I seldom, if ever, buy the Niefel giants. I stick to the
Jotun hirdmen. In the early game the big guys are too expensive. In the middle
game, buying Niefel jarls at the capital is so important that there is no money
to spend on Niefel giants. In the late game, the Niefel giants are irrelevant.
Nice to have, maybe, but if my opponent is worth anything, he is loaded for jarl,
and in that case the giants are just chafe. The Jotun hirdmen do most of what
Niefel giants do, at a fraction of the price.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

They were spamming disintegrate too Meglobob. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I have often blamed KO for prejudice in favor of the cold races. There is a cheap spell that can be cast before battle to allow the battle to be in a cold climate, but no similar spell for heat?!

I would like to drag KO out of his cool climate and have him live here in New Orleans for a year. He would have a new appreciation for Swamps!

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

There is a spell that heats up the entire world to be fair, second sun.

Oh, how did I miss that? Where any disintegrated? I thought your skele hordes hacked them to death.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

But when he found that the lack of world affecting cold he invented Ilearth!

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

I'm really glad that the spells aren't symmetirical. There's nothing as boring as a game that has.

Fireball and Iceball
Fireblast and Iceblast

No, fire and water are completely different paths, and I like it that way! Also, fire has firestorm, and water has a semi-similar spell that deals /fatigue/ damage, but is not nearly as good.

Jazzepi

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Good point Jazz. Just a tad suspicious that KO resides in the dreary north, and the MA cold races appear to be far better than the MA heat races. Obviously someone who lives in New Orleans, if he was a developer, might favor some swamp race!

Instead of Vans being feared, people on the forums would be crying about the unstoppable nutria of MA Ctis!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

While i agree on the theory I think there should be an equivalent in power, possibly not necessarily the same power battlefield spell but possibly a ritual or buff for example.

I do find water to be a relatively weak path unless a water nation, but if a water nation its fine.

For instance, summon earthpower, summon phoenix power, the astral one... all pretty easy to cast and do similar things (astral is the more powerful version but has drawbacks such as gem and fatigue). Summon earthpower probably the best due to reinvig.

Then you have
Air, needs storm, but 1A only?
Water, needs to be in water - real bummer.
Nature, needs high research/paths
Death - nothing?
Blood - horrors, cost, fatigue

Or site searching
A,F,E,N - all thaut 2, nice
D - conj 2, fine, death has very good summons and still early
W - conj 3? WTF?
B - blood 2, makes sense
S - evo 2 - huh?, but still only lvl 2 and evo is pretty popular early

Why does water get screwed here?

There are certain spells where I think parity would be good. Although only the 2 water versions of the 2 above categories annoy me.

Then there are some that kind of make no sense -
Why is murdering winter 50 gems and flames from the sky 35? Level earlier? Aren't both boosted by the temp of the target province? I'm just unaware of the reasoning, although it probably exists.

I can definitely see the draw of having the two paths be different in some sense, but when you have 2 spells that essentially do relatively similar affects, I think it would be nice to have more reasoning behind the different requirements.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

The unstoppable nutria gave me quite a chuckle. I can see them now, with their big, nasty fangs and miasma auras. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

> Why does water get screwed here?

Because it is way more difficult to tap into the dreams of Apsu, the underground ocean, than it is to speak with the dead. To listen to Tiamat, a being of eaven greater powers, is even more difficult, thus it is more difficult to cast voice of Tiamat, which might seem strange http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In short: balance has little to do with it.

I have had thoughts about making voice of Apsu 2W1E, but that might be going a bit too far.

> Then there are some that kind of make no sense -
Why is murdering winter 50 gems and flames from the sky 35? Level earlier? Aren't both boosted by the temp of the target province? I'm just unaware of the reasoning, although it probably exists.

Flames have no temperature effects. It is not armor negating. There is a Wolven Winter to pre-boost the climate for ideal casting temp.

> I can definitely see the draw of having the two paths be different in some sense, but when you have 2 spells that essentially do relatively similar affects, I think it would be nice to have more reasoning behind the different requirements.

Mechanic-wise or thematically?

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

You are wrong! It is the fire nations that have no protagonist.

I'm in favour of cold, but JK likes swamps and mud-baths. He was the one that made the swamp feature and the Quagmire spell. It was he who went to India, although he didn't like the crowds and all the people. He prefers undisturbed festering swamps. He's also allergic to fur animals, so he probably likes lizards http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif JK is the friend of swamps!

I prefer mooses.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Mooses? You mean meese?

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

Comparatively, although Niefelheim seems strong because you get big huge tough giants etc. they're actually the weakest of the Heims.

The Niefels themselves are far too specialized to taking on individual, tough foes with their axes, one at a time, but they're so expensive that you're pretty much going to be throwing them against masses of troops.

It's like outfitting someone with an elephant gun and having him go shoot rats.

To expand upon this: the fact is, giants-especially Niefels, do NOT need to be specialized. They're big, tough, powerful, etc.

They're basically tanks.

To maximize their abilities and strengths, they should be equipped much differently than they are, with metal armor-preferrably scale, blunt impact weapons with spread effect-appropriately designed maces, flails, hammers, etc., and mounts, to increase their speed and protect their biggest weakness-their knees.

It's doubtful they'd even see a real need to invent a combat axe or a sword, let alone use them exclusively in combat. Axes and swords are far too precise of weapons, not to mention fragile and expensive, and they do different kinds of damage-axes increase damage from impact, swords are versatile-than what such large beings would want to do in combat.

Smaller giants might use those kinds of weapons for some combat purposes, but for Niefels, it's really inappropriate and wasteful. Swords and axes of that size would become stuck in bodies, especially armored bodies and mounts, which would leave the Niefel vulnerable and off balance in the middle of a combat.

Re: Counters to Niefelheim
 

> Mooses? You mean meese?

What??? For real? Is meese the plural form? Gosh! I will say 'meese' a lot the upcoming week http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif