How many Niefel Jarls is too many...

[Tifone]

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 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!

[chrispedersen]

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.

[JimMorrison]

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.