Niefelheim - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

[Sombre]

I don't think anyone seriously thinks HB has a leg to stand on criticising Baalz.

The blood forged weapons are what interested me.

[Endoperez]

I agree with HB on the fact that this isn't revolutionary in the same way as, say, Baalz's guide to Marverni. This probably doesn't offer much new stuff for veterans of many Niefel-wars, but I doubt they'd need guides any way.

For those of use who don't play multiplayer or haven't played with/against Niefelheim in MP, this gives a very nice vision of what it can be like.

[AreaOfEffect]

I just don't understand. Its hard to say an idea has been stolen when the concept applied is amazingly simple. Nobody needs to read anybody else's work to understand that a Skratti thug is worth investigating. All you need to do is play Jotunheim or Utgard once. That's all it took for me. The same applies to a dominion push strategy. The instant you realize they can push cold scales past their dominion it becomes an important consideration for anyone.

I would say that this is the first time I've read up on Neifelheim at all and I'm not overwhelmed with many ideas that I haven't already had myself. There are all sorts of mini-strats one can apply. Pieces to a puzzle. The question isn't identifying them, its figuring out how many of them you can apply before you overextend yourself. Which ones are synergistic and could be kept and which ones you need to forego for the sake of the rest.

[Juffos]

You people are arguing on who is copying who? By writing these guides and by helping other people out, we all are urinating into the same big pool of piss. It is collective.

[thejeff]

Inspired by this guide, I've been playing around with Skratti thugs in Jotunheim. MA doesn't have the skinshifters and the regular troops are resource intensive and unimpressive. This means it's hard to expand with the lousy scales Neifelheim can use: sloth3 particularly.

I was trying to see what was the minimum Skratti needed to be able to clear indies with some efficiency. In EA, they did well with Quicken Self and a pair of ice swords. In MA, you don't have the starting water income and my trials with other weapons ended in early death.
Anyone have thoughts on how to get quickly get them up and taking at least the weaker indies? I'd rather not wait for Const 4 & blood income.

Once you're using Baalz's Skratti build, how do they handle archers? It seems the lack of a shield would leave them vulnerable. I've used them before with Frost Brand and whatever shield I could afford and that was brutal.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Inspired by this guide, I've been playing around with Skratti thugs in Jotunheim. MA doesn't have the skinshifters and the regular troops are resource intensive and unimpressive. This means it's hard to expand with the lousy scales Neifelheim can use: sloth3 particularly.

I was trying to see what was the minimum Skratti needed to be able to clear indies with some efficiency. In EA, they did well with Quicken Self and a pair of ice swords. In MA, you don't have the starting water income and my trials with other weapons ended in early death.
Anyone have thoughts on how to get quickly get them up and taking at least the weaker indies? I'd rather not wait for Const 4 & blood income.

Once you're using Baalz's Skratti build, how do they handle archers? It seems the lack of a shield would leave them vulnerable. I've used them before with Frost Brand and whatever shield I could afford and that was brutal.

You're gonna have a hard time fielding them effectively before const-4, really most of your options before that aren't much better than just using their default claws and as you say arrows/javelins are going to eat you alive if you're planning on attacking without support. Even at const-4 you've got a relatively fragile offense machine who's certainly not going to be soloing anything significant - the build I suggest at this point with no armor very much assumes no concentrated attack - Niefels are great for drawing fire and tanking it out, but you've still got some good well shielded hitpoint sinks in MA. For initial expansion you might try using a handful of hirdmen to draw the attacks while a quickened skratti does the damage from the flank...but that's going to be dicey. Once you've got some research leeway you're definitely going to want to tweak some of my default suggestions according to what you're expecting to face. Using shields trips up the very low gem usage target as you're looking at adding 50%-100% to the gems you need for each guy (not counting blood slaves), but obviously is the way to go anyway in some situations. One option to consider is that amulet which gives air shield, with a 20 protection and regen you're very resistant to occasional arrow hits. Nothing really beats a good shield though if you're expecting very heavy archer fire.

[AreaOfEffect]

I've played extensively with Utgard in this respect. I find that taking two Skratti casting Quicken and one size 2 astral mage casting body ethereal twice works very effectively. Unfortunately this is best with Utgard as they have cheep mages with reliable access to astral. You could try your luck with Vaetti hags as one in four are astral. You'd have better luck with the Gygjas though. Use a few militia set to body guard and placed up front to screen arrow fire.

As for gear, I wouldn't ignore two-handed items for the purpose of expansion. Even the thorn staff can be useful as it allows you to parry most attacks and raises your defense by 5. There isn't many appealing choices against missile fire aside from the body ethereal.

[HoneyBadger]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Most of the disparate ideas Baalz presents are quite familiar for a very long time. Like the most noticeable Skratti SCs and Dominion push. However the way he bound them together in his guide and added to them new perspective and the sheer balls it takes to make some of his suggestions (skip triple/dual bless, don't rely only on Niefel Jarls) - I find all this innovative and I think the credit for the innovation and the nice presentation does belong to Baalz.

That of course doesn't take anything from the ppl that came first with some tactics or ideas.
However all considered, it doesn't matter much IMO. Its not like we have patent lawyers for dominions guides and/or ideas. Posting guides is an altruistic act, the way I see it, not a reason for bickering about author rights.
I think politeness and fair conduct mandate that credit be given when possible or obvious but to expect that every one who posts a guide from now on sifts through old posts and try to find whether one of his ideas was mentioned before is way exaggerated.

Snarky comments from the peanut gallery aside (I'm not referring to you, Wraithlord), I think Baalz did a very good job of creating a guide. I said he did in my original post. His guides have always been excellent, concise, and well-written, and he deserves credit for that. I use his guides myself at times, and they have the power to generate new excitement about old worn-out Nations that I've played a dozen times and set aside. I appreciate all of that, and it adds to my sense of enjoyment of the game. My beef was that he presented those ideas as entirely new and unique ones that he'd dreamt up on his own. That's just patently not true, for a very large portion of what this particular guide entails. Anyone who thinks it's entirely original material is either in a strong state of denial, or hasn't been paying attention.

And there have been guides in the past where-atleast as far as I'm aware of-he *did* come up with the majority or all of the ideas on his own, quite brilliantly.

Just not in this case.

I can't honestly believe that Baalz thinks these ideas, in this particular guide, are new ideas, either, which is why it surprised me that he wrote the guide in the way that he did, and why I called him on it. If I thought he really had come up with them, independently, I probably would have just quietly wrote a few personal messages to the poor guy, correcting his mistake.

And this isn't about "sifting through old posts", and attributing or not attributing credit. It's about the attitude expressed in the guide, the reaction to it, and the reaction to any criticism of it.

If you're going to have the "sheer balls" to claim that you've reinvented the wheel, and somebody calls you on it, correctly, then have the "sheer balls" to own up to it. Otherwise, where did your "sheer balls" go?

For that matter, I for one had the "sheer balls" to make the same suggestions first, and then I had the "sheer balls" to call Baalz on it, when I guessed, reasonably, that it would piss a lot of people off.

Sure we don't have patent lawyers, and there aren't any royalties involved, and I really, truly, don't care if somebody borrows my ideas, uses them, changes them, whatever, but I believe there's a matter of integrity involved over maintaining honesty about who did what, and what happened when. I expect that this mess has probably harmed my own reputation more than it has Baalz-and I had a feeling it would when I first posted, I didn't go into this blindly-but I've made a point, which is on record, of atleast trying to give people credit for ideas that I've made use of, whenever I was aware of it. I, and everyone else that puts their free time and mental energies into this game, deserve atleast a bare minimum of respect for the inspiration that we individually and collectively generate. Baalz deserves it, Sombre deserves it, the guy who wrote about skinshifters in the manual deserves it, new people who make their very first contributive post here deserve it, on their very first day, and I deserve it too. It doesn't cost anything, except a little time and an understanding of the concept of humilty.

[alansmithee]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Snarky comments from the peanut gallery aside (I'm not referring to you, Wraithlord), I think Baalz did a very good job of creating a guide. I said he did in my original post. His guides have always been excellent, concise, and well-written, and he deserves credit for that. I use his guides myself at times, and they have the power to generate new excitement about old worn-out Nations that I've played a dozen times and set aside. I appreciate all of that, and it adds to my sense of enjoyment of the game. My beef was that he presented those ideas as entirely new and unique ones that he'd dreamt up on his own. That's just patently not true, for a very large portion of what this particular guide entails. Anyone who thinks it's entirely original material is either in a strong state of denial, or hasn't been paying attention.

And there have been guides in the past where-atleast as far as I'm aware of-he *did* come up with the majority or all of the ideas on his own, quite brilliantly.

Just not in this case.

I can't honestly believe that Baalz thinks these ideas, in this particular guide, are new ideas, either, which is why it surprised me that he wrote the guide in the way that he did, and why I called him on it. If I thought he really had come up with them, independently, I probably would have just quietly wrote a few personal messages to the poor guy, correcting his mistake.

And this isn't about "sifting through old posts", and attributing or not attributing credit. It's about the attitude expressed in the guide, the reaction to it, and the reaction to any criticism of it.

If you're going to have the "sheer balls" to claim that you've reinvented the wheel, and somebody calls you on it, correctly, then have the "sheer balls" to own up to it. Otherwise, where did your "sheer balls" go?

For that matter, I for one had the "sheer balls" to make the same suggestions first, and then I had the "sheer balls" to call Baalz on it, when I guessed, reasonably, that it would piss a lot of people off.

Sure we don't have patent lawyers, and there aren't any royalties involved, and I really, truly, don't care if somebody borrows my ideas, uses them, changes them, whatever, but I believe there's a matter of integrity involved over maintaining honesty about who did what, and what happened when. I expect that this mess has probably harmed my own reputation more than it has Baalz-and I had a feeling it would when I first posted, I didn't go into this blindly-but I've made a point, which is on record, of atleast trying to give people credit for ideas that I've made use of, whenever I was aware of it. I, and everyone else that puts their free time and mental energies into this game, deserve atleast a bare minimum of respect for the inspiration that we individually and collectively generate. Baalz deserves it, Sombre deserves it, the guy who wrote about skinshifters in the manual deserves it, new people who make their very first contributive post here deserve it, on their very first day, and I deserve it too. It doesn't cost anything, except a little time and an understanding of the concept of humilty.

As I am assuming I'm considered part of the "snarky peanut gallery", please show where in your original post in the thread you had any of the same ideas outside of "use skrattis". I really see this as some odd personal attack, and a largely baseless one at that.

And where was the concept of humility with you essentially saying "notice me, these are my ideas!"? If you have good ideas, put together your own guide. As many people in the thread have stated, there are many new ideas in his guide (or at least things people didn't know before, since you obviously think this is all common knowledge). What you posted previously had almost nothing to do with this guide. Yet you want to somehow claim credit for the ideas, and make thinly veiled insults against the person who wrote the guide.

And the main reason I'm even bothering to post this is because I think attitudes like yours in this thread and another poster in the guide for Marignon only serve to discourage people from putting in the time and effort to make good guides (or any guides whatsoever). And me, as a relatively new player, loves to have the selection of different ideas and strategies for playing nations that come from the guides. I'm sure many other people also appreciate the effort. I doubt if anyone would want to try to navigate searching approx. 3 years of posts every time they want to write a guide to make sure someone who made some tangentially related comment about the nation doesn't throw a fit and start complaining. And that (at least to me) seems to be what you're doing here.

Sincerely,

-The Peanut Gallery

[HoneyBadger]

Originally Posted by alansmithee

As I am assuming I'm considered part of the "snarky peanut gallery", please show where in your original post in the thread you had any of the same ideas outside of "use skrattis". I really see this as some odd personal attack, and a largely baseless one at that.

1: Correct

2: I made several clear examples, aside from presenting the original posts, in their entirety.

3: The reason is that you don't bother to even half-read the posts that you spend so very much time and energy criticising.

Atleast I bothered to read Baalz's post before replying to it.