Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[Foodstamp]

Quick question about the earth bless everyone is proposing. Since he is taking nature so high, won't he have a TON of reinvigoration items he can forge for the jarls at a relatively cheap cost? Wouldn't this eliminate the need for earth being added to the bless? Also, I think two of the neifel casters get nature picks to make items with as well.

[Nerfix]

Casting Bless/Divine Bless is a lot cheaper than forging those ,mmmm, what was it, 10-15 Nature Gems items for them. And it also affects regular Niefel Giants.

[Foodstamp]

Ah, I didn't think about the regular niefel giants

[Endoperez]

Manual, page 76 lists fatique effects, and gives an example with 30 fatigue. Defence would be lowered by 3 (-1 /10 fatique), attack would be lowered by 1 (-1 /20 fatique) and if 2d6oe roll -2 (fatique/15) is lower than 2, a critical hit would be scored. 2d6oe means a simulated roll of 2 six-sided dice, with 6s added to the sum and rolled again. I won't bother to calculate how often the critical hits happen, but it's far less than 30%.

@Foodstamp: What Nerfix said. Besides, you want to start taking provinces with your Jarls ASAP, instead of waiting until you pull some research in construction (and you will most likely have a drain dominion).

@Endo: Heh, I have to get used to all the arcane knowledge we more or less guessed in past games being somewhere in the manual now, thanks for pointing that out.

[Foodstamp]

I never have problems taking provinces from the get go without earth bless. I figured the reinvigoration was for later on when you are fighting "put together armies" instead of independents.

[Sandman]

I've had a spin with Neifelheim, and I'd have to say that using nothing but Neifel giants wouldn't occur to me. I'd certainly build some to act as the core of the army, but mixed in with plenty of normal Jotuns as well. Say, 25 Jotun spearmen for every 5 Neifels. Much less chance of getting swarmed, so there's no need for an excessive nature bless.

[Daynarr]

You can start expanding fast with imprisoned N10 W9 Son of Fenrir (that Big wolf pretender) and still decent scales. Basically you can start expanding as soon as you buy 3-4 Niefel giants and starting troops on indie strength 9 with almost no losses. There is absolutely no need to wait who knows how many turns to get money and buy all at once. Other giant's are useful as well but cheaper so use them in combination with Niefel forces as support. This also works in MP.
DON'T make a prophet out of Niefel Jarl. You won't be buying him in first few turns and he’s already H2 so you only get additional 1 holy with him. You want to make a prophet of a unit that would usually sit back in battle and do nothing like scouts or army commanders. Don't make prophets of units that have 'so much to do so little time' syndrome in battle. Niefel Jarls are both SC's and casters so you definitely don't want to waste time with them on casting prophet spells someone else can do.

[alexti]

Wendigo_reloaded said:
Hey all,
Good to see so many old faces still around. I have been unable to recover my old identity, hope there is np with starting a new one.

Welcome back!

Wendigo_reloaded said:
Alexti is right, fatigue is a killer for SCs, particularly when quickened.

The worst part is not the penalty to defense, but the fact that it allows for armour piercing hits (IIRC from Dom:PPP & Dom2).
30 fatigue means opponents hitting through your defense have a 30% chance of scoring an armour piercing hit...thus why the Earth bless is even more important for Niefels than the Nature one: better not suffering any damage from mundane troops than trusting your regen to make up for it.

Good point about critical hits, I haven't thought about that. I think it's less than 30% at fatigue 30, but without reinvigoration fatigue will quickly get at the level where chances of critical hit will get to 30% and more.

Wendigo_reloaded said:
Besides, Niefels cannot trust any longer Breath of Winter to do the killing for them, so battles take longer, and that means still more fatigue.

But now many of them can cast Soul Vortex, which is even better

[Shovah32]

It keeps them fatigueless but it dosnt do high enough damage to be their main killer (a charcoal shield on the other hand...)