Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[alexti]

The beauty of Niefel Jarls is that with abundance of gold in Dom3 you can buy one SC per turn which already comes equipped (default shield is pretty good). They may not be good enough to stand real challenges, but they dispatch regular armies just fine as long as they don't get tired

[Foodstamp]

Daynarr said:
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.

This is the exact setup I used last time I played niefelheim. Fenrir is an excellent pretender because he is also stealthy. In his own domain, he can reach upwards to 700 hit points btw. For a prophet, I usually use the starting commander, standard sacred commander with cold resist.

In my single player games, this has been the best setup so far, the lack of earth bless was no big deal once I got construction up, first priority for me in that game.

[Frostmourne27]

Ummm... if the 20% nature bless is that important, why not an imprisoned cyclops. Taking no scales other than cold 3, and without a higher dominion strength, you can do a 9/9 nature earth bless. If you took some negative scales you could actually HAVE a dominion, and maybe push one of the nines up to ten. Also, if you feel that +4 protection is unneeded, you could drop the earth down to eight and save some points there. For nothing but the magic, the cyclops is 19 points more expensive than the son of fenrir, and probably has a better bless.

[alexti]

If you take E9, you probably don't need more than N4 - that would save a lot of points.

[Frostmourne27]

Maybe, but since people here seem to be going Earth 9.... NO Nature 9... Earth 9... Nature 9...
I though it was an interesting compromise.

[tibbs]

I think an Earth/Nature bless would be better than a Water/Nature bless. I also like to do drain 3 and s4 for the extra +3 to magic resist if possible. It hurts your research and combat spellcasting but you won't rely on spellcasting as much as other nations, and you can forge the death research item at construction 4 so as not to far too far behind.

Give them enough nature to at least get berzerk and enough earth to get them reinvig 6 if possible. I've found that it is hard to get nature and earth gems so it is hard to rely on forging reinvig items for the commanders.I like to equip the Neifel Jarls with a wavebreaker and horror helm. Then you have them cast quicken self and maybe a mirror image if they have air, at the beginning of battle. That gives them 6 attacks. They can really mow through the enemies.

Another problem for these guys can be supply issues. Since the nature gem supply may be low you probably won't want to spend your limited supply of gems making supply items. I use the Skodas?(old ladies) in my armies. They ususally start with +10 or +20 supply due to their nature magic. Putting some of them in your army can help. You can then use the onces that get astral picks to cast luck and body ethereal on some of your giants. Of course if you can find nature indies it's much more cost effective.

Research order - I think I'd start researching Alteration? until Wolven Winter is researched and then move to construction4, then enchantment 2 for raise dead and then evocation until falling frost is reached. From there, maybe blood. It would be nice to be able to summon some fliers for help in storming castles.

[Rytek]

I dunno. Without some reinvigoration and no range I am betting 10 or so D3 mages would really wallup one of these armies with just raise skeletons..

[HoneyBadger]

Earth, nature, and water are pretty equally good for Niefel giants, especially when you consider their high defense and the ability for quickness (the spell) to stack with quickness (the blessing) and quickness (the heroic ability).

Nature's maybe the best of the three, and water's maybe the worst, but by a *very* small margin.

[DrPraetorious]

Here's my quick advice. I tend to do rather well with Niefelheim.

The best bless is E9N9.
* W9 (with all respect to HB) only stacks for Defense stat, not for AP or blows. This is less than totally sexy.
* S9 is pointless - one hit (even a fire hit) seldom does much, and your Jarls are already MR 18 and can't benefit from that.
* F9 is nice, but not as good as E9 or W9.
* A9, likewise.
* D9 is only good on massed sacreds, which you do not have.
* B9 is silly, frankly - and the strength boost from any blood at all is essentially redundant on a niefel giant of any kind.

The best chassis for this blessing is probably an imprisoned Cyclops, who is also pretty useful and scary in his own right when he wakes up.

*One* niefel giant, with an E9W9 blessing and no equipment, can often knock over an independent province all by himself. This is an undesirable risk, however - ideally an early province conquest squad should be one niefel jarl and 3 niefel giants. Your initial army (with a prophet) plus a single niefel giant can take almost any province on turn 2, and should do so. After that expand as fast as you can get groups of 3 giants together.

As soon as you can afford it, start buying a Niefel Jarl out of your capital every turn and never stop. If you can only afford Jarls and nothing else, that's fine, as 2 of them make a perfectly respectable conquest squad.

When you meet your first neighbor - whoever he is - kill him. You might make an exception for Abysia, since fighting in that heat dominion is a real killer.

Research priorities include:
- Construction. Your research sucks so you will *need* skull mentors at const 4. Also, you'll really want to kit out your niefel jarls.
- the various searching spells (thats Thaum 2, Conj 3, Evoc 2, Blood 2.) One of the big strengths of this position is that you can find all sites but fire, earth and air remotely. Do not, however, wait until you have this to do site searching. You'll need the gem income.
- Alteration. This gives you access to Wolven Winter and Soul Vortex. You should probably cast wolven winter in every province where you might have a battle. Soul Vortex greatly increases the survivability of your Jarl-thugs.
- Enchantment. Here's the deal - have a gygja cast white mage (give her a skull staff if needed). Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, she can now *see in the dark*, which will enable her to hurl mighty and destructive magics even in darkness. Do this with a couple of skratti as well. Your enemies *will* try to use darkness against you in their desperation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against wight mages casting..
- Evocation. Your niefel giants are absolutely outstanding meat-shields, but even with soul vortex up the jarls just don't kill people that fast. You'll need mighty battle magics (and sooner than you think). Since you only need evocation in some battles, Shadow Blast is even better for you than it is for everyone else. Cast it a lot and love it. Falling Frost and Cleansing Water are also useful in a lot of situations.

I hope this was helpful.
(I slightly revised it just now).

[Lingchih]

Excellent post Dr. Praetorius. So many great points. I find that I had already followed most of them in my current Neifel game, but the Darkness being used against me was giving me fits. I had never considered how useful making wight mages out of my Gygjas could be.

Question? What would you do against an army of Pans (25-30) spam-casting Charm with a large meat shield in front of them to soak up the blows? In this same game, that's what I ran into, until eventually Pan had as many Jarls as I did. I finally just made peace with him... never did find an effective counter. Even with my Jarl's MR bumped up into the 20s, they would eventually get charmed if the battle went on long enough.