Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[HoneyBadger]

Earth, nature, and water are pretty equally good for Niefel giants, especially when you consider their high defense and the ability for quickness (the spell) to stack with quickness (the blessing) and quickness (the heroic ability).

Nature's maybe the best of the three, and water's maybe the worst, but by a *very* small margin.

[DrPraetorious]

Here's my quick advice. I tend to do rather well with Niefelheim.

The best bless is E9N9.
* W9 (with all respect to HB) only stacks for Defense stat, not for AP or blows. This is less than totally sexy.
* S9 is pointless - one hit (even a fire hit) seldom does much, and your Jarls are already MR 18 and can't benefit from that.
* F9 is nice, but not as good as E9 or W9.
* A9, likewise.
* D9 is only good on massed sacreds, which you do not have.
* B9 is silly, frankly - and the strength boost from any blood at all is essentially redundant on a niefel giant of any kind.

The best chassis for this blessing is probably an imprisoned Cyclops, who is also pretty useful and scary in his own right when he wakes up.

*One* niefel giant, with an E9W9 blessing and no equipment, can often knock over an independent province all by himself. This is an undesirable risk, however - ideally an early province conquest squad should be one niefel jarl and 3 niefel giants. Your initial army (with a prophet) plus a single niefel giant can take almost any province on turn 2, and should do so. After that expand as fast as you can get groups of 3 giants together.

As soon as you can afford it, start buying a Niefel Jarl out of your capital every turn and never stop. If you can only afford Jarls and nothing else, that's fine, as 2 of them make a perfectly respectable conquest squad.

When you meet your first neighbor - whoever he is - kill him. You might make an exception for Abysia, since fighting in that heat dominion is a real killer.

Research priorities include:
- Construction. Your research sucks so you will *need* skull mentors at const 4. Also, you'll really want to kit out your niefel jarls.
- the various searching spells (thats Thaum 2, Conj 3, Evoc 2, Blood 2.) One of the big strengths of this position is that you can find all sites but fire, earth and air remotely. Do not, however, wait until you have this to do site searching. You'll need the gem income.
- Alteration. This gives you access to Wolven Winter and Soul Vortex. You should probably cast wolven winter in every province where you might have a battle. Soul Vortex greatly increases the survivability of your Jarl-thugs.
- Enchantment. Here's the deal - have a gygja cast white mage (give her a skull staff if needed). Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, she can now *see in the dark*, which will enable her to hurl mighty and destructive magics even in darkness. Do this with a couple of skratti as well. Your enemies *will* try to use darkness against you in their desperation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against wight mages casting..
- Evocation. Your niefel giants are absolutely outstanding meat-shields, but even with soul vortex up the jarls just don't kill people that fast. You'll need mighty battle magics (and sooner than you think). Since you only need evocation in some battles, Shadow Blast is even better for you than it is for everyone else. Cast it a lot and love it. Falling Frost and Cleansing Water are also useful in a lot of situations.

I hope this was helpful.
(I slightly revised it just now).

[Lingchih]

Excellent post Dr. Praetorius. So many great points. I find that I had already followed most of them in my current Neifel game, but the Darkness being used against me was giving me fits. I had never considered how useful making wight mages out of my Gygjas could be.

Question? What would you do against an army of Pans (25-30) spam-casting Charm with a large meat shield in front of them to soak up the blows? In this same game, that's what I ran into, until eventually Pan had as many Jarls as I did. I finally just made peace with him... never did find an effective counter. Even with my Jarl's MR bumped up into the 20s, they would eventually get charmed if the battle went on long enough.

[DenStoreFrelser]

I would think that the pans would have to be dealt with by use of grip of winter. That should at least counter Relief and reduce the amount of Charm spells that are cast, and if he doesn't use Relief he'll be losing his pans unless they're set to flee. Enchantment 6 might be a long time away, but if you have Tjatse (Who is way too useful to be risked in prolonged combat, by the way.) there's at least three other spells there that might come in handy (Maybe not against Pangea), namely Ziz and Arrow Fend. This is based on SP experience, so in MP this might be bad advice.