[Cammorak]

Quite frankly, I was in a pretty poor position to be hit. I had gone light on mages in an effort for quick expansion and was caught with my pants down about one or two turns before I was going to consolidate my army.

So I think Neifel has fine counter-raiding potential with teleporting thugs and comparatively low opportunity-cost thug item construction. Making a smooth transition is critical to the success of this though, which is something I failed to do well.

It actually seems like luck scales are a reasonable boon for raided nations as well. Though they're all different scenarios, my limited game experience sees me responding much better when random events supplement my crippled income or provide extra gems/items for counters.

Though counter raiding is great, the danger is that you still have an enemy stomping around in your territory, so you have to develop your counter-raiding force and still create an answer.

I had a little success with indy archer supplementation, but I'm not sure if it's worth the price either.