Are Niefel Jarls too strong?

Treebeard · #1 November 11th, 2003, 01:22 PM

Pretty sure. The chill becomes visibly stronger and ice protection goes from 100 to 250 (I think that's how chill effect is measured).

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:
are you sure the innate chill effect cumulate with the breath of winter?

#2 November 11th, 2003, 07:06 PM

Maybe I play on a harder difficulty of Computer AI and Indies (Difficult AI standard and 7 on Indies).

The Jotun early advantage is kind of nulled in that aspect. Though that is just my perspective.

HJ · #3 November 11th, 2003, 07:42 PM

Aren't chill effect and Breath of winter two separate things/effects? Chill will cause fatigue and freezing, while BoW will actually cause damage like a cloud spell, if I understand correctly. That would mean that it's worth to cast it with your Jarls to make them even more deadly.

Humer · #4 November 13th, 2003, 07:30 AM

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 · #5 November 13th, 2003, 10:30 PM

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 · #6 November 13th, 2003, 11:33 PM

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 · #7 November 13th, 2003, 11:38 PM

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.