From my little experience I know three ways of stopping an early E9N9 Nifel rush:
- Stealth - Niefelheim has no answer on early stealthy raiders.
- SC's - either awaken pretenders or recruitables of Fomoria, Hinom will work fine with just some basic items and early buffs.
- Heat 3 scale - this works wonders, but only until Nifelheim starts spaming Wolven Winter (Alt.4) and it's one of the research priorities for them.
I don't belive some of the proposed solutions would work:
- Death magic - great counter to Nifelheim, but later in the midgame (Drain Life, Ghost Grip). Skely spam can stop giants from advancing, but you need to kill or rout them before your mages collapse. Spaming Fear or Terror doesn't work on berserked units.
In early game death works if combined with nature (fatigue spells) or astral, but it's not an easy way either.
- Fire magic - I just can't imagine it working. Despite fire susceptibility on giants, early fire magic doesn't cause enough damage to even considering it worthwhile. Abysia with fire immune, heat aura spreading troops is the only exception.
- Lightning spells - AN damage that causes fatigue additionaly. Works good on paper. In practice many shots won't hit the target some killling your own chaff. Also, lightning spaming is fatigue intensive and after several turns it's over. Still, it could work with Caelum, but you need a lot of mages.
- Cursing and afflicting giants - won't stop the cold aura from killing all nearby not cold immune units.
- Fire bless - would work perfectly on cold immune sacreds. Caelum's Temple Guard with fire bless is a waste though. Other sacreds will die from cold before dealing enough damage. Still, Mictlan and Lanka can make a good use of their fire blessed sacreds if combined with other options these nations have.
- Assassination - could work with Lanka's or Arco's powerful seducers, but it's a risky bussines for very expensive commanders.
The fact is that some nations look pretty bad against Niefel rush (or any rush, actually). Intensive diplomatic efforts always help.
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