How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Is there even an upper limit here?

I just kinda feel like when you have more than one per province (assuming you aren't losing provinces right and left) you've hit some kind of critical point...

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Lol, looks like it's time to jump to the neighbour's jugular ;)

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Indeed, though which neighbor?!?!?!

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

A) You have researched Wolven Winter, and you want to go after someone with high Heat scales, who will suffer terribly from your fearsome blizzards.

B) You have NOT researched Wolven Winter, and you want to go after someone with high Cold scales preferably, so you retain your Cold Power bonuses. ;)


(Oh and to answer the question, you never have enough, let alone too many, Niefel Jarls, unless you start the turn with >500g.) ;)

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Upper limit? Heh, as long as you can afford 'em... you're not playing Hinnom, after all.

Jump somebody who'd really, really want to have more time for research and site-finding, like TC.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Yep, attacking Bandar Log or TC early can be a pain for these nations, they really want the time to get to the late game. Just remember the early astral nation can (and will) curse and/or horror mark your Jarls, so expect to lose some. Even C'tis could be an option, before they start researching too many poisoning spells.

I dare not to agree with JimMorrison :o Nations with strong cold scales take them usually as their have some degree of CR. I.e. Ulm. Which is bad, as the cold aura of the Jarls is your main chaff killer. Better at this point some nation with neutral scales, your cold aura will be less strong (but IIRC you can boost the aura with Breath of Winter anyway) but you don't risk facing too many CRs, and expecially not to meet some cold immune thug. But it's just my opinion. :)

And yeah, unless you can cast Wolven Winter, avoid whoever can toss around too much fire! ;)

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

I don't think Jim was being entirely serious when he advocated taking on a cold nation. Game logic speaking (aka, say anything that sounds logical and avoids me getting attacked).

Niefle imo should absolutely *not* attack other cold player - so their cold dominion can spread.

Avoid hot players until you research wolven winter.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Actually, I was being totally serious. My point was, if you don't have Wolven Winter yet, you're probably still fairly early in the game. There are 4 other Cold scale nations in EA, let's look at them -

Vanheim: No Cold Resistant troops at all.

Helheim: No Cold Resistant troops at all.

Ulm: All troops are 50% CR, but in my experience, 50% doesn't really do that much to mitigate auras. Also of note, if your Jarls are Quickened (Personal Quickness is so fast to research), a few of them can cut through full sized early game armies without breaking a sweat.

Caelum: With 100% CR units, and some of the best research and evocation abilities, these are the most potentially troublesome, especially if they want to just raid you to death in counterattack. Again, however, if you can pin them into a fight, a few Quickened Jarls will devastate them, if they haven't brought enough Lightning to get you down in short order (if you did 8N, it's unlikely that they did).



There are distinct benefits to attacking a Cold scale nation early. First, your Cold Power will be assisting you. Second, each province that you take will be giving you much better income from day 1 (compared to even temp scales, you are -15% income, right off the top). Third, if it's an early war anyways, who cares if they spread Cold scales, any spread they have already done will be just fine as a base for your consolidation. Remember, early game you have no way to spread Cold scales without Temples or Preaching - later on you will want to religiously use Wolven Winter ahead of your armies, and so you are not reliant on hoping for an enemy to spread your Cold, you just do it yourself.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Too many Niefel Jarls = Damn, I won already?

Actually, if you have more than one Niefel Jarl per province-assuming you meant that you have 1 Niefel Jarl guarding each province-then it probably means you're not using them to their full potential.

Niefelheim's greatest weakness is that it must always be on the offensive. They don't defend well at all, on a cost-basis, so just gather up those Niefel Jarls and start slamming them into your enemy, starting with whoever's the greatest danger to you. There's a lot of tricks to making the most of them, but it sounds like your game may be stalling, anyway, so raw action might be the best thing you can do at this point, if only for the learning experience.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

... to change a lightbulb

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Well I'm not exactly stalling, just the diplo front has been very good to me so my options are 'limited'.

Anyway, I started sending a few of them into the sea ;)

And then I started empowering a few of them to A2 for some extra fun!

And actually I don't think I achieved the 1:1 ratio (and no, they are not spread out) yet. I guess it was just kinda odd that I seemed to have 'too many' Jarls for what I really need them for.

Now that I can cloud trapeze and fly and walk underwater... Well it should be interesting to see how it plays out.

I took down a Heat love already, since I didn't want that on my border, but yes, I waited for the real assults until I had WW to tackle them.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Huh, empowering Jarls? And not having the game won by then? It's 1000 prov map or what?

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

No, just insanely lucky with early searching.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

11. It takes 10 to tear down the walls and squish all the mages inside, and 1 to screw it in.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

I bit offtopic, but I just discovered how much the Niefelheim pd sucks.

I had a lot of pd to give me at least some protection against a large incoming AI force. The AI force pounded my pd into mush, causing my Jarl to rout, without ever coming into combat. :doh: At least my Jarl survived.

Funny fact, if my Jarl had fought alone, he would probably have won.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

As a general rule, I find that mixing super combatants with substantial PD is never that effective. PD benefit more from magical support. If you had sent in a mage to cast buffs or to deliver evocation spells, then that would have been more effective.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Indeed the PD is only useful early in the game when you can stick a decent amount somewhere important that you cannot otherwise defend.

By mid game you hopefully have flying jarls and can afford to keep one or two in centralized locations (forging, researching, ...) who can react to any kind of barbarian incursion, or other province loss.

My issue with the jarls is what kind of shield to give them, or to just equip them with 2 weapons. Of course if you have good nature/astral income you can easilly make lucky coins or vine shields, but these are not really that exciting, and you are probably going to be saving your nature income for a gift of health at some point anyway.

I'm thinking lantern shield is interesting, but you have to get the fire death combo somewhere.

Three or four jarls with lantern shields and soul contracts (though imps dont synergize with cold exactly) would be a nice amount of auto chaff to take some attention off your jarls.

Also I forget... does regen stack at all? If you need poison resistance is there any additional point in going for hydra skins?

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

It stacks.

In my current sp game I tend not to give my Jarls shields. The base shield is rather good. And I need the gems and item forgers for other things.

But the gleaming gold shield, together with a fear helmet is nice. But it is also a bit hard to get. You have to get indy lucky.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

I like the Charcoal Shield, both for crowd control and to counter the Jarls' vulnerability to fire. However, you will have to get indy lucky, as Soyweiser puts it....

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Funny thing, next to my capital is a province where I can recruit mages that can craft gleaming gold shields. Of course I only discovered this in year 6.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

How many Jarls is enough? There are never enough Jarls believe you me.

Best combination on Jarls for me,>
Frost brend, gold shiel, rainbow armor, winged boots, anitmag.amulet, pendant of luck.
All relatively cheap.

If you have heroic toughness you put ring of reg. hydra skin armor and girdle of might or something make him a prophet if he's really lucky and has 1 air and empower him in 2 air. You should get something like 200+HP Jarls with 40 HP reg without a bless. Would be good to put a star cap also.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

About giant PD...

Just run a funny test :p Niefelheim capital with starting PD (what's it, 25?) + starting army patrolling... beaten by 100 monkeys (and not the expensive kind) :D

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Arouse Hunger can take out as much as 5-10 PD.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

In these cases, does the PD actually get beaten, or do they just rout too easily? The difference is huge in determining what will best assist them.

Re: How many Niefel Jarls is too many...
 

Jotun Militia sucks.
They have normal morale (10). The problem is the low defense score (base 8, effective 9), and the low attack score (base 8, effective 7). Having high hp is nice, but you must still be able to hit the enemy back. The size 4 giants are also easily swamped.

And they aren't even cheap (20g, 17r).