Niefelheim - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

[AreaOfEffect]

@ Maxwell - What you need to understand about relief is that it doesn't give reinvigoration, but reinvigorates, which is a big difference. Relief reinvigorates each unit using a separate open-ended die roll. You can expect at least 1 point of fatigue to be recovered, but I average it much higher. Because its open-ended I've seen recovery as high as 17 points of fatigue.

@ Kissblade - Your thesis is based on the idea that a jarl without a E9-N4/6 bless is nothing. That isn't remotely close to the truth as that bless provides only a meager boost. A boost that is completely reproducible with magical items or battlefield spells. Jarls start out scary and their bless just makes them slightly scarier. The bless is just an add-on to an amazing unit. Take it away and they are still jarls. Also, you highly underestimate what 3 years of additional earth income amounts to. It isn't one or two extra hammers, but an income to actually do something with your pretender. As for being able to cast anything worth while, a pair of earth boots and the blood stone you picked up after empowering your god in blood lets you cast every earth spell in the game! Even with just the boots you lack the ability to cast Earth Blood Deep Well and that is all. A real earth pretender has skill in other paths so that he can do things like summon Golems, rain down meteors in combat, forge swords that deal non-resistible AoE damage with each swing, and make astral boosters for all his fellow astral mages. In my estimation, the real earth pretender is the master lich described, not some stupid one-eyed monster who got caught!

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

@ Kissblade - Your thesis is based on the idea that a jarl without a E9-N4/6 bless is nothing. That isn't remotely close to the truth as that bless provides only a meager boost. A boost that is completely reproducible with magical items or battlefield spells. Jarls start out scary and their bless just makes them slightly scarier. The bless is just an add-on to an amazing unit. Take it away and they are still jarls. Also, you highly underestimate what 3 years of additional earth income amounts to. It isn't one or two extra hammers, but an income to actually do something with your pretender. As for being able to cast anything worth while, a pair of earth boots and the blood stone you picked up after empowering your god in blood lets you cast every earth spell in the game! Even with just the boots you lack the ability to cast Earth Blood Deep Well and that is all. A real earth pretender has skill in other paths so that he can do things like summon Golems, rain down meteors in combat, forge swords that deal non-resistible AoE damage with each swing, and make astral boosters for all his fellow astral mages. In my estimation, the real earth pretender is the master lich described, not some stupid one-eyed monster who got caught!

Where do you get the idea my thesis is based on this? A) 3 years = dormant? Last time I checked it was one year. B) E9 globals are significantly tougher to dispel than e4. C) The pretender I mentioned can do all of this ju st as easily. I didn't say anything about a cyclops.

The point is build still allows you to use the same exact strats. NO good niefel players I know neglects skrattis or gygjas even when blessed, that thought's ridiculous. And the ability to toss on shrouds on your skratti's is just an alternative and as I said, regular jotun jarls become great thugs with just the bless. As for the bless being recoverable by items. ANYTHING can be pumped up by items. I can power my indie commanders to be SC's if I get enough gems but that's not cost effective. prot+4, reinvig +4, regen and the extra MR is a lot of slots and gems. Casting "bless" in battle is free.

[Renojustin]

Something very easy to consider here would be to drop your Magic level from 1 to -2. That's 120 points that are going to fall right into your lap for practically free. Any nation that can build skull mentors is losing very little for the trade, and Neifelheim also has nice, high-value researchers who aren't hurt by the research drain.

A nice bonus is that the drain dominion is yet another dominion penalty to force on your opponents, particularly when you're using Earth 9 bless for heavy reinvigoration regardless. (Which you can now do, among other things, with your 120 extra points.)