Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous

[geo981010]

Regarding Keir's Niefel Strategy:
We'll have to see how abusive the Earth 9/Nature 9 is. Outside of the cold, the base armor can fall from 18 (3 cold) to 12 (3 hot), and large encumberance gains and I think loss of Att/Def. So your supercombatants may literally melt - have to play around with that.

I also suggested elsewhere that Bless effects be somehow modified by the dominion strength, and enemy dominion should reduce the effects. I suggested modifying magic skill level by 10% per candle, and subtracting for enemy dominion. That would definitely counter it - in one candle enemy dominion, you'd lose the two +9 bonuses!

Regarding the 9 Death strategy:
You may get afflictions and the soulless form is very easy to kill, though, so anyway to try and do upkeep free mage conVersions would be pretty risky. So saving on the income might be not very reliable, but getting two lives per mage would be a large perk and some of them would get converted to undead and then would be great free researchers. Plus your expensive non-holy summons could get the Shroud too, which should protect them from global spells too (they'd get killed by a seeking arrow, but would be revived as a Soulless right away).

You also have the bonus of converting commanders to have all the item slots - Coutyls are prime candidates for this but in Dom1 was hard to do (the Ankh was the best way). Coutyls can then use the Astral Helm and the +Nature items, so this is really quite helpful.

Plus, without the blessing effects, the Prince of Death with ~9 Death ~4 Earth was already an effective Super Combatant. Now with the bless bonuses (Life After Death and Reinvig), this is a very effective choice for holy mage nations. Abysia and Pythium rejoice!

[ November 03, 2003, 17:05: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

I'm starting to wonder if the Niefelheim theme isn't the worst choice for Jotunheim. Consider this:

(1) For the same price you can pick 'Heart of Winter' which is very beneficial to your dominion. This is also true for 'Ceremonial Faith' (if you use cheap human priests preachers) and 'Restless Worshippers' (if you can stand a bit of turmoil).

(2) For 25 points less you can pick the 'Utgard' them which gives you the cheap and dreaded Seithkona.

(3) If you want to play with uber-bless effects, 3 Woodsmen cost the same as a Niefel Giant, get slightly worse stats (except prot which is much worse), but get 50% more combined hp.

(4) The Niefel Jarl isn't a better mage than the Skratti or the Gygja (actually much worse cost-wise), and on the battlefield its best use seems to be the 'cast quickness/attack' routine. Sure he gets the chill aura and better stats than the Jotun Herse, but is it enough to justify the cost difference? 8 Herses cost 20 gp less, get you 3.5x more hp, 4x more attacks, equal or better protection, lesser morale (but it won't be an issue when blessed or berserked), lesser MR (but 8 times more MR checks to fail), lesser defense (but 8 times more targets to overcome).

Considering all this, I'd be tempted to pick nature 4 (for the berserk effect) and, hum, what else? Water 9 would be nice, but there's always the possibility to give Boots of Quickness to your better Herses at some point, and the defense bonus (especially with berserk on top of it) won't help much wrt the ganging effect. Nature 9, great, but you can forge Rings of Regen easily, ditto with Wraith/Hell swords (these don't don't help to reduce afflictions, but they give health back faster than nature-9 regen or rings). Astral 9, OK, but you can forge Rings of AM even more easily. Fire, cool, but the Herses can dish a lot of damage already. Earth, damn, they already get 18+ protection, and won't even need reinvig if you equip them with Wraith/Hell swords (which you can forge easily). Blood, then? They already have gobs of strength. Death, maybe? Their soulless Version isn't impressive enough to warrant the cost, and the lesser fear aura isn't that great. That leaves Air - which, considering the Herses' susceptibility to crossbows and lightning, seems the most versatile way to go, as your national mages have no proficiency in air magic.

What about:

Dominion: Heart of Winter, strength 6
Virtue - Air 9/Nature 4
Cold +3
Leaves 123 points to tune the remaining to your liking.

Or, if you plan to produce Hell Swords en masse (and therefore, don't need the nature 4):

Dominion: Utgard, strength 6
Virtue - Air 9
Cold +3
Order +3 (the Utgard theme requires order +1 at least, so why not go the whole route)
Leaves 120 points for extra goodies. At least perfectionnists will have the satisfaction of spending every available design point.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
I'm starting to wonder if the Niefelheim theme isn't the worst choice for Jotunheim.

I think we are getting to the stage its a case of what is the best approach to a particular game plan/theme rather than an entire race.

Back to the Ice Age is also a themtatic race based on turning the world into a frozen wastleland where civilisation dies out before a new thawing comes and the cycle begins again. It the Earth Mother saying start again - enough of these uptty patriachies! I wanted to do this in Dom I but didn't have tools there are now.

In terms of game play the idea is focused on cold based SC and mini SC's with a monster Earth mother somewhere nearby. So Niefelheim seems the logical approach as woodsmen don't look that promising (correct me if I'm wrong) and Niefel giant plus the commmander Version are really nice with bless. The Niefel giant commander is like being able to buy another pretender. Incidentily neither of the Niefel's look the strong to me without the powerful bless effects.

If you are looking for a more balenced Jotun race then Niefelhiem is obviously not the place to start and the Norna's and Siethkona's are very important.

What is going to be stronger? We can't answer that easily right now. We can work on getting the race tight - maximise the amount of elements which combine together to make themselves and whole more potent. Even weak looking features become powerful in the right context. Something I loved about M:TG deck design.

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

(3) If you want to play with uber-bless effects, 3 Woodsmen cost the same as a Niefel Giant, get slightly worse stats (except prot which is much worse), but get 50% more combined hp.

I'm not a supercomabatent expert as I've always found them to risky compared to building early killer armies - my favourite approach in the past. However I'm not convinced about the Woodsmen because of the protection. Its to low to survive and the key to SC's is being virtually impossible to kill vs your present opponent.

What about:

Dominion: Heart of Winter, strength 6
Virtue - Air 9/Nature 4
Cold +3
Leaves 123 points to tune the remaining to your liking.

Or, if you plan to produce Hell Swords en masse (and therefore, don't need the nature 4):

Dominion: Utgard, strength 6
Virtue - Air 9
Cold +3
Order +3 (the Utgard theme requires order +1 at least, so why not go the whole route)
Leaves 120 points for extra goodies. At least perfectionnists will have the satisfaction of spending every available design point.

Wondering what the air 9 is for? Orb lightning? Air bless effects arn't exactly inspiring but I guess with quickness Orb lightning could be worth it.

I like the Son of Niefel for Jotunheim - early it him and his wolves make all the difference.

What does quickness 50% do for blessed mages?

With Jotun or Abyssia I like a very high dominion - like 10. Using 8 for the "Back to the Ice Age" race is the compromise in race design I do not like - 6 is very low. Dominion is normally important in battle but for cold and hot races it is often crucial - playing Dom I I lost two moderately well equipped Ice Devil to 30 tritons in a hot sea! My own heat dominion to make it all the more embarrassing!

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

[HJ]

On a side note, there is definitely something strange happening with heat scales in DomII. All other scales seem fairly stable, but the heat/cold can vary greatly even in a very strong dominon provinces and irrespective of seasons (sometimes even contrary to them). Maybe it has something to do with provinces themselves?
Has anyone else noticed this? I remeber Nagot posting something about the first turn oddities, but this is happening later in the game as well.

[Wendigo]

HJ, I pointed to this instability somewhere in the bugs threadm, maybe you would like to expand on it there. I might understand a swift towards heat in summer or cold in winter, but I seem to be getting both a stronger swift than I would expect, and in the wrong seasons.

[Jasper]

There are sites that could do this; did you rule them out?