Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

Sitting reading a printout of the bless effects some nasty idea's occurred to me. Playing with the race design confirmed my suspicians - you can do some outrageous things with the new blessing system.

Jotun Niefelheim theme.

Earth Mother: Earth 9, Nature 9 - and they said it couldn't be done!
Order/chaos 0, lazy 2, cold 3, death 3, luck 1, drain 3
dominion 8
Fortified city (the 50 admin one ?), 40 admin Castle might be better in some environment.

The details could vary quite alot as this is my first test run.

The plan is simple: build Niefel and bless them - they get reinvigorate 4, +4 prot, berserk 3, regenerate and some poison immunity. Even a Jotun Herse or Jarl will act as a super combatent against a weak independant. Lizards, Barbarians and Knights etc require care but the run of the mill hummies have no chance. Don't be misled though - the early supercombatents will die facing a decent group of high damage dealing creatures unless in numbers. This indicates that you don't need complicated counters to kill early game super combatents.

While I have only done initial testing my assessment is that this is faster than anything I have come up with under Dom I. The key is that the bless effects provide the equivelent of magic items right from the start (and for those who can't sue magic items) without any research done or gems found and spent. Effects you can use right from the start have the potential to be very powerful and with alot of magic weaker the bless effects look some of the better things one can do for quite awhile.

This is just a start as there seem to be a heap races with strong sacred troops in the Dom II. I worry that bless effects and high magic pretenders might be a bit nasty but I do really enjoy the possiblities they add to design.

Cheers

Keir

ps. I seem to remember reading something about anchovy pizza's and I'm wondering where that bet is at now the demo's been around a bit?

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

Sure they migth be nasty, but you took quite "retarded" scales...

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">LOL, I had the same feeling about that.

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

Keir's point is that he thinks this setup is more than fast enough to make up for it's 30+% reduction in initial income; I imagine he's well aware his scales are weak. :-p

Keir, I'm curious what strength independents you used? Did you find that a single Jotun Herse was enough to take most independents? That would make for a pretty damn fast start...

It would be sad if the only thing to make high magic Pretenders usefull were a super fast start. :-(

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Jotun Niefelheim theme.
Son of Niefel: Nature 9, Water 9
Order/chaos 0, lazy 0, cold 3, growth/death 0, luck 0, drain 3
dominion 4

Bad quick-start. It takes until turn 4 to start on the rampage (The Commander you want as a prophet costs 500 Gold so you don't get him until turn 3 and it takes a turn to make him the prophet). Once you start you should be able to take almost a provence a turn for about 10 turns.

The problem I have in the demo is my Pretender and my Prophet get a nice long list of battle afflections by turn 40 and the spell to remove them is not in the demo.

The other problem I have is my Domain is too low. I have to put a temple in every other provence I take or my prophet has no hitpoints.

Sammual

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm... I tried a Death-9/Nature-4 Prince of Death with Pythium/Serpent Cult. I somewhat expected the 'Life of Death' effect would give me undead Hydras, but alas it doesn't work.

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you want to maximize your income, instead of order 0/luck 0 pick order 3/luck -3, and set events to rare.

Water 9 is costly, and the Niefel Jarls are water mages so they already get the Quickness built in after Alteration 2 (a measly 60 points of research). Sure you lose the effect on the regular Niefel giants, but if you want to focus on Jarls, I think water is not the way to go.

What about

Monolith nature 9/astral 9
Order +3
Luck -3
Dominion 8

This leaves 6 x 40s' of points to spent on your castle and the reamaining scales.

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I always play the same world settings (I assume that I will not be the host and the standard settings + Indy strength 6 will be standard in Multi) so I can't monkey with luck and event rareity.

I will try a immoble pretender next (I liked having 2 SC on turn 4 but I can live without one).

Sammual

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm... I tried a Death-9/Nature-4 Prince of Death with Pythium/Serpent Cult. I somewhat expected the 'Life of Death' effect would give me undead Hydras, but alas it doesn't work. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">what did it gives? I saw that vestales become - useless - zombies, but what about hydras? I hope giants change into undead giants though, as the sprites are there.

Re: Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">what did it gives?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Room for a new hydra. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif