Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[Twan]

IMO having a bless other than nature is not really needed, as well as the berserking ability (are niefels with 14 morale + bless + sermon + very rare losses, really routing often ?).

So this kind of strategy would work well with an awake green dragon, order 3, production 1, cold 3, misfortune 2, nature 8, dom 6, and this kind of pretender allow you to take 10-20 provinces instead of staling the first turns (and spread more your dominion since the beginning, so the dom 6 is not as weak as on an imprisoned one). Of course, it's at a price : no fire magic and no akashic record but the first isn't really hard to find on indie mages (and you just need fire 1 for some rings) and the second is not especially needed for a strategy based on brute force.

Also you can make big economies by using some Jotun Godes instead of Niefel Jarls (say for a 5 squads army 3 godes casting blessx2 and sermon and 2 well equiped jarls casting blessx2 then attacking).

[Humer]

My Niefels are merrily frolicking the fields w/ F4E4S4N6, courtesy of the Monolith. Order-3 is a must, as is at least Growth-1. No drain. You are already behind in research.

My thoughts on the blessing:
- Most things that a Niefel (or even a Jotun) hit, die so why not make them hit a little better; I'll also be fielding fewer troops than my opponents -> F4 for +2 att.
- Since I'm fielding fewer troops, my troops must make more hits to get rid of enemy troops; also my Jarls need to buff and NOT get hit while too much fatigued -> E4 for reinvigoration +2.
- Magic Resistance: Goooood for Jarls -> S4
- To drive the affliction chance down and 10% regeneration -> N6

This means that sacred leaders other than Jarls under this bless are very effective and early expansion NOT using Jarls is (read: should be) very effective. After a few indies, many your leaders should be in HoF. Jarls, after Quicken Self and Blessing, are able to singlehandedly take on indies (watch out for heavy cavalry). Keep recruiting the sacred leaders and use them as mini-thugs. Hand out Amulets of Luck, if pearls can be spared.

Start bloodhunting now - Skrattis. Your research will suffer for it but bloodsummons are easy way to fill the giants' ranks with size-2 chaff - Jotuns are size-4, that means a human-sized thing can occupy same grid with a Jotun. Recruit infantry from indies for this purpose also. Blood also gives you access to Boots of Youth for your Gygjas (and Sages), although a well-placed Thistle Mace should accomplish same thing.

Prophetize your first scout and use her to spread your dominion, which also spreads cold scale.

And your pretender can forge a plethora of VERY useful things.

I haven't yet tried skratti's second form for thug chassis, so anyone want to chip in on that? Quicken self, Breath of Winter at least, maybe a Shroud of Battle Saint? They have been too precious for me as my bloodhunters.

Oh, and how this cuts out in MP? I have no idea

- Humer, a dabbler

[Folket]

i do not think he is concerned about beserking. He just wants 20% regen and beserk is a nice bonus.

But earth blessing is very useful, as sleeping giants do no harm.

[Kelan]

A neat idea there, Felgar. I normally go around with smaller armies like some of the others here have mentioned, but I bet that is fun as heck wielding a large army of that many Niefels.

The only thing that struck me when looking at your battle formation is that with your leaders being forward a bit, most AI armies will target those first and especially with their archers, it seems. Even if other troops move out in front during the battle, archers seem to continue to target the troops that were at the front at the start of the battle, even if they fall back later. This may help you avoid some lucky hits on your more expensive and more valuable commander units.

Another thing that works well at times is to put your Jarls on the flanks with personal Quickness casted and let them try to flank and do some damage that way. Even if they push ahead later in the battle, the other giants still take the brunt of the armies attacks if they were positioned a little forward at the start. This is from a single-player perspective anyway. I have yet to play around with MP yet. The quickness will make them tire out faster, though, so now you have a new problem in trying to keep them invigorated. That is where the Earth blessing can help and some of the nice easier to create reinvigorate boots which seem to be easier to get than in Dom 2.

[Felgar]

To all,

Thanks for your thoughts. Instead of answering 1 poster at a time I thought I’d address everything I can in a single post.

As to my scale picks, I agree they are probably less than optimum. I chose growth +3 because giants need to eat and the Niefels cost a fortune to build. Nothing increases income over time as well as growth +3 in my opinion.

Its spring in the year 11 in my game and my starting province has a population of 63,000 (I have no idea if bad events have killed any pop there). I think I started with about 25,000-30,000, so I’ve already doubled my population in about 10 years. Of course double pop means twice the gold and supplies as well, so this is far better than 21% gold for order +3 or 30% extra recourses for prod +3 since its gold cost that prevents me from building more Niefels, not recourses.

Sure order or Prod gives you gold right away, but over time you’ll make far more money with growth than either of those two. Growth is also giving me +6% gold, so order would only be +15% more gold without the growth. Also the extra 45% supplies (the manuals stated 60% is wrong) make life a lot easier until you can start making some broth pots.

I don’t like to take negative scales if possible, but I guess it’s possible to come up with a good negative scale strategy tailored to the race. I’m simply not familiar enough with the game to feel comfortable taking a negative scale.

The fire and astral picks were basically forced upon me as I wanted 10 nature picks no matter what. There just weren’t enough points left to get two other magic paths both to level 4, so I went with the magic path he already starts with some skill in (astral) and then chose fire since the giants have no fire mages.

After reading everyone’s posts here, perhaps earth would have been better, but my question is why? I haven’t seen a single giant fall over from fatigue yet, so is earth really that essential?

I tested this strategy with lower level nature picks with 10% or 15% regeneration, but lost far too many Niefel giants to make it a cost effective choice. If you’re going to go with lower level nature picks then don’t bother using Niefels as you’ll lose too many to make it cost effective.

You’d be better off using Skin Shifters instead for your main force. Their ability to shape change into werewolves when killed is pretty awesome in itself. A large pack of 40 Skin Shifters would do almost as well as 15 or 20 giants without the huge gold cost associated with the Neifels.

With 20% regeneration, your opponent has to do more than 14 damage to a unit every single turn if he hopes to eventually kill it. And with 50+ hit points, even then chances are the giant will kill you before you can whittle down his hit points enough to kill him.

The only time I lose giants right now is when they are massively outnumbered. If enough units swarm around them their total damage adds up (8 little guys doing 2 damage each is 16 a turn), that’s why I upped my army to 25 giants and 5 leaders, it guarantees I have a solid line across the entire field which prevents their opponents from swarming around to the sides and rear.

The +2 berserk guarantees units will not retreat since they inevitably go berserk long before their hit points are low enough to threaten death.

I’ve never seen my giant troops fall over from fatigue, so I can’t see Reinvigoration +2 being that big of a deal. By the time powerful magic rolls around, I can equip all my jarls with reinvigoration items so they won’t fall out due to hostile spells. I also doubt +2 reinvigoration will help the troops much against powerful mages later in the game.

I don’t know the magic system all that well yet so I could well be wrong, but the difference between 14 hit points a turn and less than 10 is too good to pass up. I was losing about 1 or 2 giants per province at the lower levels, but 20% seems to be the sweet spot. I now only lose a giant if my bless fails and I’ve seen these armies defeat huge enemy armies filled with powerful troops.

The only time I ever lost with this strategy so far was to some kind of fear spell. I had initially bunched up my commanders in the center of a large squad, but the spell forced all my commanders to flee and my army fled after them (no one died, they just ran away). That’s why I split my squads into small groups and spread them out. If one or two Jarl’s flee due to a nasty spell, you still have a chance at winning.

I should also stress I play with level 9 neutrals and the hardest possible research, so if you play with default settings large armies like this won’t be needed. But with level 9 neutrals I’ve seen over 30 knights plus heavy infantry and longbowmen both with squads of about 50 each, so a small force of giants at that level won’t work for tougher provinces.

Against militia or other low damage troops you can probably start an earlier expansion than I did, but be warned Barbarians are your nemesis if you don’t have large numbers of giants. They do enough damage that they can wipe out 5-10 giants easily even if they are 100% all blessed. Those blasted great swords and mauls do lots of damage and can chew up giants better than most other neutral troop types if they can gang up on them.

As to the Skrattis I too use them for bloodhunting and research. Their werewolf form allows them to command more troops and gives them regeneration abilities, but what good is the wolf form? Does anyone have a use for the wolf form? I thought perhaps wolves come to their aid in battle or something, but I’ve never used them in wolf form yet so I don’t know.

That’s a good trick with the scout. I prophetized the starting general so he could go around with my magic site search party and search for holy. But I like your scout idea better. He can head into neutral territory and get the cold scale up for the early attacks, so perhaps only 10 or 15 giants would be good for a starting army. I’ll test it the next time I play a game as the Niefels.

About the leaders in the front row. I tried putting them 1 pixel behind or in the center, but it scrambles the setup and I had trouble getting everyone blessed. The above formation is the only way I could get everyone densely packed enough that 95% of the time 100% of them get blessed with 5 casters casting. If there is even 1 more rank of giants (3 rows instead of just 2), it screws up the casts.

This is also the reason why I set them up all the way in the backfield. The enemy archers that can reach that far generally miss and I haven’t suffered any afflictions by archer fire yet.

All my Jarl’s afflictions came from melee combat, that is why I have now switched their orders to bless, bless, bless, cast spells. Early on they don’t really have many spells to cast, but now that all my research is up to level 6 they are better off as spell casters now than melee guys. In future games I may just nix using Jarl’s in melee period. I have 5 heroic Jarls with afflictions now, and they do nothing but research until I can heal them. Not a game breaker, but a nuisance for sure.

[thejeff]

If you're not going to use Neifel Jarls for melee, I probably wouldn't even buy them.

Honestly I wouldn't even buy them to use as melee army commanders. With the right bless and a few items, they make SCs. Short of that I wouldn't use them.
Regular Godes should be able to handle the leading and blessing job and are much cheaper.

[Gandalf Parker]

I liked most of your choices. I think that the problem many have with it is that you are playing Neifelheim the way I liked to play it. As strong defense over time. Others tend to prefer swarm and rush short-term tactics.

But I have found giants really difficult to create armies out of. You might shift thinking to using more independents, with giants as support units. Have you taken the provinces that connect to your castle? What kinds of independents can you make?

[Felgar]

It's all about the regeneration. The smaller giants just don't have enough hit points to make the 20% regeneration that big of a deal for them. But the Niefel Jarl's have 60+ hit points, so get something like 15 or 16 points a turn in regeneration. That makes a huge difference in their survivability.

But you’re right if you're going with less than 10 nature picks then the huge Niefels (commanders or troops) aren't worth it really. This strategy focuses on the hit point regeneration and only works for the large Niefels.

[Endoperez]

The shapeshifting Skrattis are a new addition to Dom3. They didn't change forms earlier. Any way, I think the Wolf form is stealthy, unlike the other forms.

As others have said, they make good Super-Combatants (SCs). That is, if you give them magical items and script them to cast spells that enchance their battle prowess, the afflictions become much more rare, and if you stack the oddss high enough, they can eventually wipe out whole armies. As an example, forge them an Ice Sword, or Sword of Quickness, and perhaps better armor. Look out for the armor's encumberance value, though. Quickness it also very good; Personal Quickness is Alteration 3.

Earth bless gives reinvigoration, which lowers fatique. Fatique hurts even before your giants fall unconscious. See page 76 of the manual. The example is nice.

[Felgar]

I'm well into my game now (year 11) and am far ahead of most other nations. There are two very powerful opponents with about 50-60 provinces like me, the rest have about 20-40 provinces and can't field large enough armies to threaten my 25 troop armies.

But I do use a lot of independent troops to augment my militia defenses. Without a ranged troop type (they used to have boulder throwers) giant militia defense is a pushover, so I try and assign 40-60 archers or other ranged troops on patrol in all my border provinces.

Combined with defenses in the 60-100 range I’m able to hold off most attacks while I finish taking out all the neutrals within my borders. Once I’ve done that I’ll switch to offense and see if the late game magic spells spell doom for my Niefels.