Are Niefel Jarls too strong?

[Humer]

I wouldn't call them overpowered - more like underhanded. Yes, they have chill and BoW; yes, they have protection; yes, they are *nasty*. But it really balances out in race design.

Funny really: Niefelheim pretender should seriously be designed by terms of one of its leader-units! You can't afford not to take strong bless effects (i.e. nature-9, but is that enough?). That takes muchos DPs.

Niefelheims real mages cost 250gp apiece. Couple that with 500gp of NJ and 150gp per NG... Order-3 anyone? And their magic paths lack the vital elemental paths (except water) to *really* make the NJs rock. And they are starving for indep researchers!

500gp a pop, they are too pricy to be ganged upon and die, which means they WILL get afflictions (which in turn get them killed even quicker). You really can't mix regular units with them as NJs and NGs give chills and BoW kills. So that leaves you Jotun Giants, which get ganged upon easily...

As support mages? Not really.

- Humer

[Saber Cherry]

I'm starting to think that "Smite" is too strong. I lost an army of a heroic prophet Jarl and 5 giants in +3 cold friendly domain to a few Marginon crossbows and their 5-holy prophet and a mage... Marginon kept paralyzing my giants (hit one with paralyze 30, and one with paralyze 23, both of which seem to Last forever.) 2 got permanently paralyzed, and all the rest got taken out by smite. They were berserked and regenerating, with 66HP and over 23 protection... and smite takes them out in one hit!

I actually won the battle, because all my units died except one who was paralyzed... my army was "routing", but he couldn't move due to permanent paralysis. He regenerated faster than the crossbows could damage him, and had 99 morale. So, after like 20 turns of him just sitting there not being damaged (he was too far away for smite, I guess), I stopped watching, and was surprised to find out I had won the battle, considering I had only a single unit that was paralyzed and routing.

But, yeah... getting my $500 heroic regenerating berserked prophetic jarl and $600 worth of giants nuked in the first few turns by a wimpy prophet... makes me not want to use them anymore=)

[LordArioch]

If you were the defender you probably won because the turn limit attacker auto-retreat or die kicked in. But yeah, a few paralyze spells will knock out niefel giants...of course you could take an astral bless also but then the scales get too bad.

I bet curse then xbows would mess them up pretty fast too, even with regen.

The real question is whether they allow too fast expansion early. I haven't figured out their proper use yet so I can't really say. I'm much more entertained by vaetti hags + magic 3 Research!
And then make the nature ones summon vine men, the blood slavesearch, the astral...cast star fires? or you could make them desperate magic duel fighters...a chance at losing a 55 gold mage for a decent chance of killing a more expensive one? Sneak to his mages and do a mass magic duel with all your astral vaetti.
And the death are decent skeleton summoners I guess to accompany your stealthy armies.
Plus those new jotun spear huskarls are lovely troops. I couldn't get jotunheim to work before without them.

[ November 13, 2003, 21:39: Message edited by: LordArioch ]

[Saber Cherry]

That's the funny thing - I was the attacker, and I routed, and the giant was stuck paralyzed and seemed unable or unwilling to recover. I think to recover from paralysis you have to roll higher than the paralyze number... I'm not really sure. It doesn't go down from turn to turn as I would expect.

[LordArioch]

Maybe you finally broke free? I have a mystery fight too where apparently my paralyzed great mother broke free and won after all my troops routed somehow, even though all troops routing would cause her to rout too. I think i saved the turn in case I decide to watch the whole absurdly long fight. Paralysis seems really effective to me.

[licker]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
That's the funny thing - I was the attacker, and I routed, and the giant was stuck paralyzed and seemed unable or unwilling to recover. I think to recover from paralysis you have to roll higher than the paralyze number... I'm not really sure. It doesn't go down from turn to turn as I would expect.

Yah, paralyze is wicked wierd...

I was trying to take out Marg, and they kept on paralyzing my Great Mother! Nothing I could do, and she'd be stuck that way for the entire battle. It never seemed to fail either... Oh well good counter to the big SCs I guess, as long as you have enough high strength dudes to finish them off or whatnot

Stupid Ulm... doesn't get any decent astral pretenders for the bless either... unless you want an imobile

[Kristoffer O]

The paralyze number shown on a unit is the number of turns the paralyzation Lasts. Most paralyzing effects Lasts a couple of turns but the spell (beeing almost as powerful as soul slay - you don't die when you win) Lasts for 25-30 turns.

[HJ]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I actually won the battle, because all my units died except one who was paralyzed... my army was "routing", but he couldn't move due to permanent paralysis. He regenerated faster than the crossbows could damage him, and had 99 morale. So, after like 20 turns of him just sitting there not being damaged (he was too far away for smite, I guess), I stopped watching, and was surprised to find out I had won the battle, considering I had only a single unit that was paralyzed and routing.

As I just noted in the berzerking units thread. he went berserk and fought on his own - normal rules of routing do not apply when the unit goes berserk. So once he finally unfroze, and managed to get his hands on some of those annoying crossbowmen, it was enough to chase them away.