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

[Baalz]

It’s really a shame that the Niefel giants are so good, if they were just a tad less awe inspiring Niefelheim would be more feared than it is. Come again? Yep, that’s exactly what I meant, the Niefel giants as they are tend to hinder Niefelheim. Anybody who’s had to fend off a triple blessed Niefel rush is probably thinking I’ve lost it, but stop a minute and consider how often Niefelheim is a scary late game power. Those Niefel giants start being a whole lot less scary as research ramps up, and the mandatory dual (and often triple) blessing that you have to take for this nation really hits the opportunity costs not to mention the immense costs of each of those jolly blue giants. Bad scales, crappy PD, focusing on capital only troops, struggling outside of your dominion and lackluster research all conspire to make the giant usually fall hard before the race is over. I mean really, what the heck do you *do* with Niefelheim once construction is done being researched?

Let me introduce you to the other Niefelheim, the one geared to win the game rather than scare the crap out of everyone for only the first couple years. Niefelheim has some amazing tools in its chest which are usually completely overlooked in the all consuming quest to field the most optimized Niefels. First, consider that regardless of your bless Niefel giants are not what you want to use for indie expansion.

Blasphemy, I know. Now I admit, Niefel giants make great indie stompers, but my goodness don’t you realize you’re <scandalized whisper> paying retail!?!?</scandalized whisper>. You’ve got another all star player on your roster who would be a defining characteristic for this nation if only those big blue spotlight hoggers weren’t around. I’m speaking of course of the Jotun Skinshifters.

Now, on first glance it’s maybe not apparent how incredibly awesome this guy is, but consider the following. He’s got 35 hitponts, then he changes into A GIANT FRICKING WEREWOLF. This second form has 48 more points, raising the total to bring this guy down to 83 points (compared to a Neifel’s 66…but of course you’re fielding two skinshifters per Neifel so it’s more like 166 to 66). Further consider that they regenerate quite nicely in both forms without requiring a bless, and that 11 body protection (human sized troops have trouble hitting giants in the head I think) starts looking pretty nice when you realize how many times they have to be hit round after round by spear wielding humans (the overwhelming bulk of indie troops) further compounded by that length 5 Jotun spear and 12 attack skill (which quickly builds up with stars) doing a good job of repelling. Of course they’re nowhere near as tough as the Neifels in a cold-3 fight, but how much of your initial expansion does that describe? I’m not exaggerating when I say just 3 of these guys can reliably conquer weaker indies, and 6 of them will take any but the toughest. They don’t need a blessing so can be herded by cheap indie commanders and require barely any resources so there’s no reason at all you can’t rapidly be fielding 3 expansion parties per turn from your capital. Try that with Niefels! Now, I would like to point out that they have no shields and can struggle against heavy archer concentrations, but just use one or two Jotun Militia set slightly ahead of them set to hold and attack as arrow catchers – your werewolves will run forward and do the killing while your otherwise useless militia does an outstanding job of completely ignoring any arrows.

Now, you don’t have to think too hard to come up with some very, very nasty ways to use these werewolves as your research progresses using Gygja buffers. Protection/Wooden warriors brings these guys up to a 15 protection in human form – which given their regeneration essentially means they can’t be stopped by normal troops in any reasonable numbers. You’re using them in smaller numbers, so body ethereal & luck likewise tip the scale in their regeneration’s favor, bringing them well up into the “absurdly hard to stop” range using fairly modest research. They’ve even got a 14 MR, so are relatively resistant to typical big unit counters. Now note, you can do all that with Gygja buffers, but it’s usually not too hard to line up some indie n1 and s1 mages to do all that buffing which is a good bit more economical – that is until you start getting into will of the fates/mass protection/mass regeneration (yes, it stacks nicely) range….but then I’m guessing you’re not gonna balk at splurging on a Gygja or two there. These guys hit like a ton of bricks from turn one and only get better as research progresses, and you’re basically only constrained by gold to recruit them so as your nation grows you can rapidly recruit a fearsome force in one turn if an unexpected threat materializes. They’re capital only, but costing 5 resources and not being holy even with sloth-3 you can pretty much have as many as your heart desires.

So, now freed from having to cater to those big blue prima donnas lets see how this versatile nation unfolds. Another great strength to Niefelheim is that the cold from their dominion pushes out past their dominion. This lends itself fabulously to having a strong dominion push, even if your neighbors manage to push back to a dominion stalemate they’re gonna be bleeding gold from the temperature drop all along their border. If (in the much more likely case with you actively pushing your strong dominion) you manage to push your dominion into their territory it doesn’t take much to cover half their nation in a wintery blanket with devastating impact to their economy. Note, using skinshifters instead of Niefels also means that while fighting in your dominion is nice, it’s not crippling to bring the fight outside of it so pop those temples he’s trying to put up outside his castles!

Now, since we’re intending to actively push our dominion to the unbelievers anyway, let’s consider the impact of the scales. Ideally, we want a dominion that is great for us and terrible for anybody else. Cold-3 is obviously mandatory. Luck-3 I think fits wonderfully here, as the way the game mechanics work a hostile dominion with luck functions as misfortune (my good luck is my opponent’s bad luck). So pushing our lucky dominion is pushing misfortune-3 to them! Death -3 I think also fits perfectly in that it doesn’t really hurt us too much but death-3/cold-3 scales make plenty of armies get reeeeeal hungry, and makes old mages real irritating. Sloth-3 probably won’t hurt your neighbors too much, but it’s basically free points and it’s not gonna help them any. Finally, we’ll want fairly standard magic-1 and order-3 scales so we’re very happy to have our dominion all over our own territory (they won’t benefit our neighbors). So, we’re pushing cold deep into enemy territory, and death-3/misfortune-3/sloth-3 following on its heels accompanied by all those really nifty random events those scales unlock. Meanwhile we’re sitting pretty in an order-3/luck-3/magic-1 dominion not really noticing the death/sloth scales. Huff and puff and blow that icy wind straight to the bone. BTW gold income events from luck will hopefully supercharge your initial skinshifter expansion – you’re only constrained by gold.

So, without having to bend over backwards to afford a ridiculous blessing lets see what doors our pretender can open. Niefelheim has some pretty decent magic diversity, landing level 3s in Death, Nature, Blood & Water, with a few level 2 astral Gygjas and a Niefel Jarl or two with level one air. The glaring deficiency there is earth, which also of course fits nicely with our sacred troops (which we will eventually be using). Still, instead of going for the very expensive E9 bless, lets say the primary point is magic diversity and go with a much more modest E4 which will give your Niefels plenty of staying power in cold-3, we’re planning on having gygja’s buff regeneration when it matters anyway. This covers the most urgent thing your pretender needs to do, but to really get diversified into earth you’re gonna want to start out awake so you can site search in the turns before you really need your pretender to be doing other things. This fits well with an early dominion push, an awake pretender pushes your dominion early in a way that’s hard to match.

Looking at using a high dominion score and an awake pretender, I originally really wanted to use the bog mummy – few things are as nice as a high hitpoint immortal SC on turn one. Thing is, I can’t think of a nation that needs extra SC chasises less than Niefelheim and there are other things your pretender can contribute which add much more.

Taking an awake master lich with a dominion score of 9 and magic paths of E4 D5 S4 buys us a lot of things. First, as mentioned you start right out the gate pushing your dominion and site searching. Having a W random Skratti and a 3N gygja accompany you on site searching and you’ve got a very impressive spread of E/D/S/W/B/N. Next, your immortality and astral magic folds right in with your intent to push your dominion far and wide – you’ll be teleporting in to lay the smack down wherever needed with no fear of death. Speaking of which, the smack you can lay down is impressive – imagine something like soul drain, undead hoard (yep, those are Jotun skeletons), marble warriors, weapons of sharpness, darkness. Or invulnerability, earthquake X4. Or power of the spheres, soul vortex, bone grinding X3. Or use him to drop in and buff those skinshifters for important fights – you thought they were tough with barkskin? Or…well, just use your imagination, there’s loads of fun stuff to do in battle and he’s like the energizer bunny – he…just…keeps…going.

Now, this pretender is going to give us several very nice things outside of combat as well. Obviously earth magic gives us dwarven hammers which is a massive benefit to cranking out large swarms of SCs. Combining with the astral gives us a very important access to crystal coins – low and behold with a coin and cap each of those very common astral-1 gygja’s is up to that critical S-3 level suddenly becoming a very capable air drop thugs and able to spam vengeance of the dead. The less common S2 random Gygjas are now gatewaying troops around (there goes the last objection to tying yourself to cap only skinshifters) and laying down will of the fates which is kinda nice for highly regenerating troops. Crystal coins are huge for Niefelheim, you’ll be spending several turns forging them with your pretender. Crystal shields also work great for the widely diverse Gygjas, not only allowing the lowly S1 gygja to lay down will of the fates, but also making it easy (along with a thistle mace and moonvine bracelet) to lay down all those really big nature buffs.

Another thing you’ll be doing with your pretender which is not typical pretender work is summoning ghosts. With a skull staff and cap plus ring of sorcery (which you’re gonna want anyway) your pretender gets up to an impressive D8 and can spit out ghosts very economically. Ghosts are generally not the most cost effective thing that you can spend D gems on, but they are a marriage made in heaven for skinshifters. If you position your troops right your size 2 ghosts will filter in among your size 4 skinshifters. The skinshifters, being larger will take more of the hits, while the ghost’s etherealness, high hitpoints and life drain will give them incredible stamina for the amount of attacks each is taking. What you’ve essentially just done is not only add another damage sink to make your skinshifters last longer, you’ve added a cold and fear aura to your skinshifters…! Throw in that wooden warriors you were gonna cast anyway and the ghosts are every bit as tough to bring down as the skinshifters. Half a dozen skin shifters plus a like number of ghosts and a buffing mage is *terribly* effective for the cost. You can of course summon ghosts with mages other than your pretender, but it’s tough to scoff at getting ghosts for about one gem apiece. Used like this ghosts make great counters to any SCs which don’t have morale-30, they’ll whack a few skinshifters then quickly get surrounded by ghosts and run off with a negative 20 something morale.

Now this brings me to the next prong of Niefelheim’s strength – fear. Ghosts adding a fear aura is good. Ghosts adding a fear aura while fighting troops starving in cold-3/death-3 hostile dominion territory is very good. Ghosts doing that while supported by both terror and panic is very, very good. Ghosts doing all that under blood rain…well, you practically don’t get to kill anybody. If you do this while cutting off their retreat though…. (did I mention ubiquitous teleporting Gygja thugs? But wait, there’s plenty more to come). Wailing winds stack this to ridiculous proportions if you’ve got an air random Jarl.

At this point you’re probably thinking Gygjas are the centerpiece of this Niefelheim strategy. Far from it, you’ll have to appreciate this especially in light of the immensely useful purposes I’ve suggested so far they’re the second best mage you’ve got, and the other isn’t blue. You thought those skin shifters were badasses, let’s look at the real big bad wolf.

Before I start waxing poetic about my love for the Skratti, let me set the stage so you can really appreciate the scale. 250 gold a pop is mid range for a mage, but they don’t need a temple and you’re not going to really be recruiting many troops so you should be aiming to crank out a hell of a lot of Skratti, they’re the bulk of what you’ll be recruiting. For everything I’m about to lay out, remember you’re gonna have a bunch of them.

I wanted to point out a potentially game breaking exploitable bug. It’s listed on Edi’s short list, but I think it’s not been apparent how game breaking it can be. Normally I’m all for playing the game as it is, but I can’t in good conscious suggest that anybody really exploits what I’m about to point out. Skratti in werewolf form have no upkeep. They go from 8 research to 6, but if you really ride this and switch all your skratti to werewolves while recruiting nothing else you quickly overcome this and the consequences are nauseating. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student the implications of doing this in conjunction with the next few paragraphs I lay out.

Alright, so in general what’s the bottleneck to Neifelheim’s power? 1) You can only recruit one Jarl per turn 2) You’ve got only so many gems to equip SCs. Let’s design this from the ground to get rid of those two factors and see where it takes us. Fairly obviously by this point I’m going with giant werewolves to get around #1. To get around #2 what I’m gonna do is to see how few gems I need to get a real workable SC out of a skratti.

First off I wanted to illustrate how awesome Skratti are at blood hunting. The ones with a blood random are B3, which means with no need to forge a sanguine rod they can optimally blood hunt in a province using just 2 of them (rather than the 3 blood -1 guys with rods which is typical). The fact that you can recruit them out of every castle and only need to recruit 2 per blood hunting province with no need for rods I think really puts Niefelheim up into the real blood powerhouse category. With a little effort you can rival Mictlan and Lanka for blood slave generation – rapidly having the optimal blood hunters in every province you want to blood hunt.

As you’re closing in on constr-4 (your first research target) you’ll start gearing up your blood hunting – no reason to wait for sanguine rods. Once you get to constr-4, why you’ve got a practically never ending supply of dirt cheap flesheater axes. Flesheater axes give you +3 berserk, which not only nicely helps your protection, but also raises your attack (with the axe) to an awesome 19, it raises your strength to 28, adding in the 14 damage from the axe and your 42 damage is cutting most humans in half even if they make a shield block. Dual wielding two of these, plus your natural bite (doing a “measly” 30 damage), then throw in a quicken self buff and you pretty much disintegrate two tiles of units per turn. You’ve got a protection of 12 and a regeneration of 6 so this is not a SC, you’re not going to be able to solo against real troops. Used in conjuction with troops though, where you’re not being singled out and swarmed you’ve got plenty of staying power and an immense amount of damage outlay. Not bad for not using any “real” gems. You should be able to crank out plenty of lucky pendants to, your pretender has been out site searching at astral 4 and has supplied hammers so they’re only 3S. Just imagine what 5 or 6 of these playing support would do in a big fight – trust me nothing is gonna last long enough that their lack of reinvig makes any difference at all. Use those big blue jocks as the big bull’s-eyes while the wolfmen take out the trash.

As awe inspiring as thinking about those guys is, realize this is just a stopgap if you get pinched before you can make it to constr-6. Once there, oh my are you sitting pretty. Empower a blood random skratti up to B4, who then starts cranking out blood thorns. Pass the first blood thorn to another blood random skratti, repeat until you’re spitting out as many blood thorns as your heart desires. Now, your standard werewolf is going to have a flesheater, a bloodthorn, a lucky pendant, and one of the following – rime haubrick, hydra skin, armor of souls, black steel plate, copper plate, fire plate. Other than the lucky pendant (which is nice, but optional) your only gem outlay is for the armor so you’re getting darn near perfect efficiency for whatever gems you’ve scraped up, or just going with the armor of souls if all you’ve got is your very solid blood income. The hydra skin works particularly well as it stacks with their regeneration, making it the best choice if you’ve got the N to burn.

Now, these are real SCs. Their berserk protection is around 20, they’ve got solid regeneration which their life drain stacks on as well as reinvigging them. They’re doing absurd amounts of damage and are immensely hard to stop, each can easily solo up to moderate strength armies and chew up SCs. Realize this – you’ve only researched to constr-6, alt-2 and can basically field one from every castle you own every turn.

The one real weakness is swarms of lifeless troops. Still, they’re not quite the silver bullet because the damage outlay of these beasts is so immense they can easily overwhelm moderate skellispam before it can build up steam. You’ll be fielding so many of them that you’ll be using several together for any significant resistance, good luck trying to withstand that fury. Note, if you are having trouble with fatigue, consider foregoing the quicken self and use boots of the messenger and a lycanthrop’s amulet for really sick regeneration and an auto berserk rather than waiting to be hit.

This guide is getting on the long side, but I’ve got so much more I want to say, the next few things I’ll try to say briefly, realize there’s several implications to each of them.

Illwinter folds perfectly into your strategy. So does dark skies, if you manage to luck into a mage and gems to cast it.

2 Gygja steadily casting curse of blood will very rapidly build up an immortal flock. What’s that? You already pushed your dominion all over the place? Hoard from hell is a great spell you should use liberally with your solid blood income. Use the devil leaders to fly vampires around. With wooden warriors & rush of strength these guys are fabulous flankers for the bigger fights.

Blood vengeance. Yeah, this is a bit more micro than you’re gonna want to do for all your raiders, but just thinking about using this with a bunch of Skratti in a big fight makes me drool. Use reinvigoration to get rid of the fatigue incurred.

Sabbath – you’ve got no excuse for not having mass protection/regeneragion/will of the fates for big fights once they’re researched. You can also do some *wicked* skellispam with Jotun skeletons, darkness, and reinvigoration. Don’t forget, darkness works great with demons to, mild mannered “summon imps” turns rather viscous when your opponent can’t see the little size one 14 defense buggers to hit and you’ve charged them with blood lust.


A few of your mages will be old, use boots of youth or rejuvenate to take even that little sting out of your death-3 scales.

There are worse uses for death gems than skull mentors using hammers when constr-4 is your first target.

In wolf form + black heart skratti make wicked assassins. Options include hellbind heart, leech, life for a life, frozen heart, falling frost, summon water elemental, or just shifting a second time into a giant werewolf and eating everybody.

Water breathing items + skratti = water expansion before all the indies are taken. Strong water mages and income means some teeth in real fights. Ice elementals make nice mindless answers to R’yleh and buffed krakens work great against Atlantis/Oceana. Check out my MA Atlantis guide for tips on underwater combat.

You should be pretty competitive at landing the blood unique summons. When you’re pulling in 100+ blood slaves per turn don’t balk at empowering. Your pretender can easily summon father illearth and crank out the infernal crusades (more fear aura) as well as a few blood stones.

You’re forging astral boosters for your Gygja anyway, it’s a shame not to gear up for some horror spam as well. Works very well with your fear strategy.

Dome of corruption isn’t too bad an idea when all your mages can eat horrors.

Gift of health is of course fabulous with giants, it’s double fabulous with the regeneration slant you’re focusing on.

There’s worse uses for the earth gems your pretender shakes up than summoning a troll king to add earth buffs to your werewolves (both skinshifter and skratii. Try tossing iron warriors on that skratti for some fun). Hidden in the snow is expensive, but can also land you some earth mages which will add a lot to your strength.

Don’t forget all the obvious stuff like grip of winter, falling frost, shadow blast, etc. Also foul vapors works well with your high hitpoint regenerating troops even without poison resistance.

Rain of toads spam is wicked awesome in the right circumstances. Cut off your opponents cap only troops, neuter his best income sites…heck, lock down all his castles if he’s only got a few. This is a single handed game winner spell under the right circumstances.

Skratti with a blood thorn and armor of souls gets +2 to a potential base 3. No point in not leading that fight with a couple bloodlettings before rampaging into melee.

[Endoperez]

This is wicked.

wicked (adj)
1. terrible, severe: intensely or extremely bad or unpleasant in degree or quality; "under wicked
fire from the enemy's guns"
2. impish, mischievous: naughtily or annoyingly playful; "worrysome with impish laughter"

[Redeyes]

Terrible & extremely bad in quality?
Why, has some rolled you over with this strategy already?
It hasn't been out for a day yet! :shock:

[Trumanator]

Jesus, do you sleep? This is what, your 3rd or 4th guide in less than a month? Keep it up!

Yomi next maybe, or EA Ulm... ;)

[rdonj]

Make sure to leave at least a few nations without guides though - we need some nations we can beat!

[Endoperez]

Terrible & extremely bad in quality?
Why, has some rolled you over with this strategy already?
It hasn't been out for a day yet! :shock:

I didn't mean that the guide is terrible in quality, or bad in any way. It's the idea of playing against Niefelheim that's like the one Baalz described that is terrible and unpleasant. Baalz's guides give me this two-way feeling: on one hand, it's really awesome that I learn to do this, but on the other hand, I have no idea how to counter it! :sick:

P.S.
Oh, Baalz might want to edit the title to read Niefelheim.

[hunt11]

At this rate every nation will have a guide by Baalz by the end of the month :), keep it up.

[AreaOfEffect]

In my opinion, Niefelheim has always been, potentially, one of the best late game powers who also happen to have one of the best early games as well. This view of Niefelheim is virtually identical to the one I envisioned. I can't count the number of times I cringed whenever someone said there was nothing to do after construction 8. I thought perhaps the bluish glow coming from the Niefel Giants made people blind and stupid. (No offense I hope.)

The only amendment I would make is to add 'Relief' (Enchantment 6) to your list of battlefield spells. It's not a spell that your wolves need all the time, but it is the answer to long drawn out fights with swarms of undead. Its also not out of your way as you'll have it long before you have mass regeneration.

Thanks for the guide and good luck to all those not playing Niefelheim, as you are going to need a lot of it now.

P.S.: I heart master lich with any combination of earth, death, astral, and/or nature. Another reason why I feel my mind has been read.

[Kadelake]

I've never understood why people buy Niefel giants when there are skinshifters. Thanks for telling everyone, Baalz. Now I'll have a hard time stopping a Niefelheim rush even with an awake Gorgon ;)

[MaxWilson]

Death -3 I think also fits perfectly in that it doesn’t really hurt us too much but death-3/cold-3 scales make plenty of armies get reeeeeal hungry, and makes old mages real irritating.

I didn't think oldage was affected by province scales, only by national scales.

-Max

[vfb]

I'm pretty sure it's province scales that determines whether old-age units get afflicted in late winter.

[MaxWilson]

The only amendment I would make is to add 'Relief' (Enchantment 6) to your list of battlefield spells. It's not a spell that your wolves need all the time, but it is the answer to long drawn out fights with swarms of undead. Its also not out of your way as you'll have it long before you have mass regeneration.

Is Relief better than the manual makes it sound? Reinvig 1 is pretty pointless.

-Max

[KissBlade]

"I wanted to point out a potentially game breaking exploitable bug. It’s listed on Edi’s short list, but I think it’s not been apparent how game breaking it can be. Normally I’m all for playing the game as it is, but I can’t in good conscious suggest that anybody really exploits what I’m about to point out. Skratti in werewolf form have no upkeep. They go from 8 research to 6, but if you really ride this and switch all your skratti to werewolves while recruiting nothing else you quickly overcome this and the consequences are nauseating. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student the implications of doing this in conjunction with the next few paragraphs I lay out."

I should echo that this should definitely not be included as part of any strategy. It's a flat out exploit that players shouldn't be encouraged to use.

[DonCorazon]

I spent a lot of time with Skratti in KingMaker playing Utgard and came to enjoy them. I used a traditional E/N bless and Shrouds (only 5S in a non-CB game). In conjunction with Vine Shields and Brands, these Werewolves ripped through everything they faced. In the arena deathmatch, one of them dropped a kitted out Bane Lord in one round. Good times...

The most effective way of stopping them early on is an Eye Shield (only Con 2, amazingly) on a high defense unit, like a Sidhe. Forces any surviving blind Skratti to retire to the lab, or start a new career as a Blood hunter.

Fatigue can also be a counter. My one disastrous and humbling engagement in KingMaker occurred when my opponent cast Rigor Mortis, combined with tons of chaffe and Fog Warriors, and Drain Life spam. That was one battle I will never forget so would work towards having those spells as a late game counter to massed Skratti.

This probably goes without saying when playing but I'd always cast Wolven Winter and drop the scales to Cold-3 before any engagement. I didn't waste time with any Skratti self-buffs other than Quicken Self either, preferring to eliminate my opponents ability to buff before the wolf-slaughter began.

[DonCorazon]

PS I didn't know about that bug but did wonder why my upkeep was not killing me. As the game wore on I got tired of the micro and stopped changing shape, leaving the Skratti in wolf form. Now I know why upkeep wasn't such a problem. Hope that gets fixed as I agree that is a major exploit, especially in a long game like KM...

[quantum_mechani]

I do agree with the guide jotun skinshifters are a very overlooked unit, but not that it makes sense to discard the bless with niefel.

In essence, I think you can have your cake and eat it too, a bless and make use of skinshifters as needed. A dominion 7 imprisoned cyclops with e9n4 actually gets you _better_ scales than the master liche baalz suggests (or dom 10 with the same scales).

Not only does this make you even scarier in the early game, it really pays dividends once you reach the mid game. No encumbrance regening niefel jarls are passable scs right out of the box... start adding items and they really get mean. You don't need to use these one dimensionally, but the bless to make them into these killing machines is not hard to afford, you can easily pursue other options as needed.

[Baalz]

Well, yes certainly there are other ways to play it, but I don't think the gain of crystal coins specifically can be overstated. It's the difference between having teleporting thugs or not, of which Niefel has none naturally, not to mention opening up the real nice astral stuff. That's a pretty huge difference, bigger IMO than a little extra protection and regen on your sacreds. Also, the teleporting immortal pretender himself is a huge asset that adds a lot to Niefel's flexibility. Not to mention the difference in having an awake site searching pretender makes in your gem flow - astral and earth specifically (not to mention pushing your initial dominion). That imprisoned cyclops is very likely not going to be contributing any dwarven hammers until after he goes out manually site searching a bit, comes back, forges one, then another a few turns later when he has the gems - what into year 4? Contrasted, the awake master lich likely has the first hammer out before const-4 is hit, and almost certainly has several out by const-6 when they're needed, he's probably cranking out crystal coins by then (with the astral and earth income he provided). All this before the cyclops ever shows his face...and then the cyclops doesn't really add much when he does (as opposed to a air drop heavy hitter)

Granted, yes it goes without saying that E/N Jarls are good, and I'll concede that you can have a legitimate difference of opinion, but I wouldn't call that having your cake and eating it to.

[MaxWilson]

Wow. I had not realized how amazing Blood Thorns on a high-strength unit can be--that's as good as Soul Vortex. In a quick test game, I had a Skratti whom I forgot to set to "attack," so he cast a couple of spells (including Quicken Self) and then got hit by an arrow and went berserk when he was around 53 fatigue. One disintegrated square of indies later he was down to 32 fatigue, and the next time I looked he was at zero. I have to admit I also had him blessed (via Shroud) with an E9N4 bless, but it's quite obvious that Blood Thorn is quite capable of draining enough to offset encumbrance and recover from buffs. The combination of high-strength, extra bite attack, quickness, and blood thorn for healing/reinvig is simply amazing.

I do agree with QM that E9N? bless still looks quite tasty (and lets you put cheap shrouds on skrattir to tide you through until blood thorns are available). Forging Crystal Coins doesn't seem like a big deal to me--save up 50 pearls and Empower your pretender to S1 and give him a skullcap. YMMV of course because there are consequencs to an S1 pretender (can't use him in combat).

Thanks, Baalz, for showing me where Blood is useful--forging magic items. From now on I will be about a hundred times more likely to wish for blood slaves... I may give Wraith Swords a spin, too.

-Max

P.S. You've also inspired me to write up a Skratti + Athame, etc. thug as a unit in order to drop it into battle replays as a test. Paralyze is still a great counter since Skratti MR is mediocre.

[chrispedersen]

It is just absolutely amazing the number of cool and interesting combinations there are.

I've been playing since the first release - and I still get excited about nations - most recently, LA-Ulm and EA-Arco.

[Tifone]

Let me say, I think it is your best guide so far :) But I prefer a man of your experience to make guides about our underdogs ;)

Keep those coming!

[KissBlade]

I'm going to have to go with qm on this one, you can easily squeeze an e9, n4, s4 dormant druid with order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, magic 1 while maintaining dom 7. You can splash on extra magic to your liking if you want death scales or even awaken it. As others have mentioned, niefel jarls suddenly becomes SC's out of the box which vets would use as the REAL strength of niefelheim (most vets tend to get skinshifters anyway till income allows some niefels to be fielded as cheap indie stomping forces since they're still more durable than shifters with e9/n4) rather than the niefel giants. The only real advantage to the awaken master lich is the possibility of earth gems which your e9 wizzie will put to better use anyway. Two gygja's with d2,s2,n2 spread among them will already cover the wide majority of the other sites with a skratti anyway. Even assuming very generously that you get a hammer before the first year (dormancy), you're basically weighing an extra hammer versus a bless to make jarls beastly as well as shrouds on your later skratti's. I just don't see it. Having your awake pretender out site searching means you're not even getting the research opportunity cost but rather banking on earlier earth gems? Also assuming you're using crystal coins to power your gygja's as thugs, they have /abysmal/ attack defence ratings much like the master lich chassis. Aside from being able to cast a few spells before encumberance eats them up (assuming farstrike doesn't), how does it beat just spamming some jotun jarls with blesses to raid some pd's?

[Tifone]

To me s4 seems a little low, not very safe for magic duels. While on a lich you can somewhat count on immortality in friendly dom (but you can still lose your equip), the druid doesn't have this advantage. Nothing game-destroying for course (after the first one the wise druid will probably stay more on stealthy anyway)...

@Kissblade - I'm not a vet but I think you are a little underestimating the Gygja for the role Baalz has in mind. If I understood correctly the kitted ones are intended only to be teleporting thugs to squish the province defense cutting the retreat of the enemy armies which will run away with the morale shattered by fear auras, blood rains etc, thus condemning them to a rather pointless death :) A 40HP 20str equipped Gygja seems to me perfectly capable of killing some PD ;) The Jotun Jarl can't teleport...

[Sombre]

The druid isn't designed to go out there partying though, so I'm not sure how much of an issue it is.

[vfb]

Druids and other human pretenders aren't made for fighting IMO. Stick them in your lab, or if they are out site searching, script them with returning.

There's other stuff besides Magic Duel that will get them killed in battle really fast.

The worst thing that can happen is your home castle gets taken and stormed, and your opponent brings some S mages to Magic Duel your god. If that's going on you're probably not in great shape anyway.

Edit: Doh! Ninja'd by Sombre.

[WraithLord]

OMG. Another excellent guide from the Baalz factory.
Man, you're making them faster than I have time to play with :D

[Baalz]

Tifone makes the first of my points, the gygjas are PD squishers - body ethereal, personal luck, personal regeneration, etc. kitted with boots of the messenger, some armor, frost brand, vine shield...something like that tweaked for what you expect to encounter. Not just for cutting off enemy retreats, but they basically can be used as if they're golems to stomp all over the lightly held back lands or counter raiders while your heavier hitters take the front line. This is an immense strategic advantage which is a large leg up from how Niefelheim is usually played. S2 gygjas are drastically rarer than S1, and they greatly benefit from the crystal coins as well (will of the fates, enslave mind, gateway, etc).

The next is that there's not *that* much difference between a Jarl with an E4 S4 bless and one with an E9 N4. An E4 will give you enough reinvig to fight 90% of the fights you could with the E9/E4. If you're talking without equipment you're talking about fighting in a cold environment with no enemy mages, and nothing too extremely tough. You're not suddenly having to shelve the Jarls because they have a weaker bless, I didn't really talk about them much because I figured they were already very well known but they're a very nice compliment to the cold immune skratti & ghosts and there's not many fights 2 reinvig won't carry you through. Yes, you're giving up a little of the strength concentration in the Jarls, my thesis is this is more than made up by your other gains.

As I pointed out earlier, I think the opportunity cost of going with an imprisoned cyclops is larger than QM presented it. Likewise the opportunity cost of the sleeping druid needs to be considered next to its benefits. You lose 2 points of dominion - not huge but that's a noticeable drop if you plan on making a dominion push one of your primary strategies, and likewise the early dominion spread from being awake goes a long way towards putting your neighbors on the defensive in the dominion pushing war. You're sleeping which is obviously better than being imprisoned, but also obviously not as fast as being awake for all the things you want your pretender to do. The thing to me is, there comes a point where you can't afford to have your pretender out site searching much, you want him forging stuff, summoning stuff, and laying buffs your nationals can't. I find, very roughly, that starting awake about doubles the time my pretender can just research or site search vs being asleep. The impact this makes (specifically in this case to your astral and earth income) is significant. There is no other reasonable way to get an earth income. For astral income you can either count on being pretty lucky and landing a double astral random gygja early (and still settle for a meager S2 site search), or plan on cranking out a lot of gygjas and thus *not* cranking out a bunch of skratti's initially (opportunity cost). Not cranking out the skrattis means you're going to be light on the B3 ones, and your blood economy is going to be slower to get off the floor. Regardless your astral and earth income is going to be much lighter than if a E4/S4/D5 is site searching from turn 2. Finally, the lich is an immortal air drop army killer who doesn't need any equipment, while the druid will likely never see combat even to lay down buffs.

All this to get tougher Jarls, who are immensely tough anyway. I think it's a REAL mistake to have the mindset that the jarls are the REAL strength of Niefelheim and everything else is just a stopgap until you use nothing but jarls. Everything is always a balancing act of opportunity costs. Focusing on the jarls gains you a benefit, but focusing on the gygjas and skratti as I outline here gains you several different ones. What's the benefit of having teleporting gygja thugs and 5 castles all pumping out SCs inside of year 2 with your cold dominion pushed further and a master lich ready to drop every turn in a kamikaze attack? Is it better than 4 extra armor on your jarls and a touch of regen? I think so, but of course nobody is arguing that the "classical" way to play Niefelheim has no teeth, and I'm certainly never going to claim that there's only one good way to play a nation.

[AreaOfEffect]

@ Maxwell - What you need to understand about relief is that it doesn't give reinvigoration, but reinvigorates, which is a big difference. Relief reinvigorates each unit using a separate open-ended die roll. You can expect at least 1 point of fatigue to be recovered, but I average it much higher. Because its open-ended I've seen recovery as high as 17 points of fatigue.

@ Kissblade - Your thesis is based on the idea that a jarl without a E9-N4/6 bless is nothing. That isn't remotely close to the truth as that bless provides only a meager boost. A boost that is completely reproducible with magical items or battlefield spells. Jarls start out scary and their bless just makes them slightly scarier. The bless is just an add-on to an amazing unit. Take it away and they are still jarls. Also, you highly underestimate what 3 years of additional earth income amounts to. It isn't one or two extra hammers, but an income to actually do something with your pretender. As for being able to cast anything worth while, a pair of earth boots and the blood stone you picked up after empowering your god in blood lets you cast every earth spell in the game! Even with just the boots you lack the ability to cast Earth Blood Deep Well and that is all. A real earth pretender has skill in other paths so that he can do things like summon Golems, rain down meteors in combat, forge swords that deal non-resistible AoE damage with each swing, and make astral boosters for all his fellow astral mages. In my estimation, the real earth pretender is the master lich described, not some stupid one-eyed monster who got caught!

[thejeff]

Oh! I've never really bothered with relief because it claimed to be only 1 fatigue. If it gets a die roll, then that changes everything.

[MaxWilson]

All this to get tougher Jarls, who are immensely tough anyway.

Alternately, all this to get Skratti who can use cheap shrouds instead of Hydra Skin Armor (which you yourself suggest as the "best" armor for Skrattis), or who are about as lethal as the Blood Thorn variant using only the axes (still zero-enc even after quickness). It helps the Jarls too but that's not the only benefit.

-Max

[Baalz]

All this to get tougher Jarls, who are immensely tough anyway.

Alternately, all this to get Skratti who can use cheap shrouds instead of Hydra Skin Armor (which you yourself suggest as the "best" armor for Skrattis), or who are about as lethal as the Blood Thorn variant using only the axes (still zero-enc even after quickness). It helps the Jarls too but that's not the only benefit.

-Max

The blessing really is just for the Jarl...ok, it benefits the Niefel giant units as well but that's not a significant factor. You have a darn hard time justifying it with shrouds of the battle saint while simultaneously axing your astral income. All your astral income is going into starshine caps, crystal coins, lucky pendants, amulets of MR, teleports, battlefield spells.... or empowering your pretender as you suggest. The really important factor in my thesis is that practically any 3 gems you scrape up = armor = another SC. Trying to focus more on your pearls is introducing a serious bottleneck.

[Baalz]

@AreaOfEffect: Ah, I also never realized relief was worthwhile, I never once cast it after reading the description. That certainly makes it on the list then.

[KissBlade]

@ Kissblade - Your thesis is based on the idea that a jarl without a E9-N4/6 bless is nothing. That isn't remotely close to the truth as that bless provides only a meager boost. A boost that is completely reproducible with magical items or battlefield spells. Jarls start out scary and their bless just makes them slightly scarier. The bless is just an add-on to an amazing unit. Take it away and they are still jarls. Also, you highly underestimate what 3 years of additional earth income amounts to. It isn't one or two extra hammers, but an income to actually do something with your pretender. As for being able to cast anything worth while, a pair of earth boots and the blood stone you picked up after empowering your god in blood lets you cast every earth spell in the game! Even with just the boots you lack the ability to cast Earth Blood Deep Well and that is all. A real earth pretender has skill in other paths so that he can do things like summon Golems, rain down meteors in combat, forge swords that deal non-resistible AoE damage with each swing, and make astral boosters for all his fellow astral mages. In my estimation, the real earth pretender is the master lich described, not some stupid one-eyed monster who got caught!

Where do you get the idea my thesis is based on this? A) 3 years = dormant? Last time I checked it was one year. B) E9 globals are significantly tougher to dispel than e4. C) The pretender I mentioned can do all of this ju st as easily. I didn't say anything about a cyclops.

The point is build still allows you to use the same exact strats. NO good niefel players I know neglects skrattis or gygjas even when blessed, that thought's ridiculous. And the ability to toss on shrouds on your skratti's is just an alternative and as I said, regular jotun jarls become great thugs with just the bless. As for the bless being recoverable by items. ANYTHING can be pumped up by items. I can power my indie commanders to be SC's if I get enough gems but that's not cost effective. prot+4, reinvig +4, regen and the extra MR is a lot of slots and gems. Casting "bless" in battle is free.

[Baalz]

Thanks, Baalz, for showing me where Blood is useful--forging magic items. From now on I will be about a hundred times more likely to wish for blood slaves...

Oh man, don't overlook the rest of the blood arsenal at your disposal, I wasn't exaggerating when I said that rain of toads can easily win you the game in a variety of circumstances. Bloodletting is perhaps the easiest battlefield damage spell to cast (doing AN damage to boot), and blood rain is *sick* against starving troops using no other combos....particularly if you have, say, quickened giant werewolves to make sure that any route is extremely bloody. If you're afraid of the micro just ignore any of the smaller blood spells and it's still extremely worthwhile to use.

[Renojustin]

Something very easy to consider here would be to drop your Magic level from 1 to -2. That's 120 points that are going to fall right into your lap for practically free. Any nation that can build skull mentors is losing very little for the trade, and Neifelheim also has nice, high-value researchers who aren't hurt by the research drain.

A nice bonus is that the drain dominion is yet another dominion penalty to force on your opponents, particularly when you're using Earth 9 bless for heavy reinvigoration regardless. (Which you can now do, among other things, with your 120 extra points.)

[Baalz]

Eh, I don't know, I suppose you could pick up drain but it wouldn't be my first choice. It'll drop your researchers from 8 to 6 research, a drop of over a third. You could make it work for sure with your strong early game using no research, but if you're planning on having your pretender out site searching rather than researching this can be a long way up to constr-4, and you're likely not going to have the D gems to do something like what I suggested in the Helheim guide (where several mages are out site searching). All in all I'd say you're better off stacking the mentors on top of already solid research - your research is going to win it for you in the end of the game rather than your blessing.

[Tifone]

Wow, I have to admit I was in the group of the "never bothered with Relief" too. :shock: Now those Clockwork Horrors really become worthy!! Thanks a bunch AreaOfEffect :)

[AreaOfEffect]

@ Kissblade - My apologies, I mistakenly put you in the imprisoned category. I suppose I was temporarily blinded by rage.

[WraithLord]

You say the Skratti werewolf form doesn't cost upkeep and that its a known bug. I have tested this in SP game and saw no indication to that in the upkeep number. I mean, I took a skratti and changed it to werewolf and the upkeep number stayed the same. Anyway I take your word for it and think this exploit should be specifically banned in MP games house rules.

[Baalz]

It doesn't show up until you cycle a turn. Check you upkeep. Change a skratti to werewolf form while recruiting nothing. End turn. Your upkeep next turn will be lower.

[rdonj]

I'm pretty sure the upkeep cost change doesn't show up until the next turn. Try having a bunch of skratti, change them all at once and don't build anything that turn.

Edit: Too slow! *dies*

[MaxWilson]

The blessing really is just for the Jarl...ok, it benefits the Niefel giant units as well but that's not a significant factor. You have a darn hard time justifying it with shrouds of the battle saint while simultaneously axing your astral income. All your astral income is going into starshine caps, crystal coins, lucky pendants, amulets of MR, teleports, battlefield spells.... or empowering your pretender as you suggest. The really important factor in my thesis is that practically any 3 gems you scrape up = armor = another SC. Trying to focus more on your pearls is introducing a serious bottleneck.

Nonsense. Shrouds are cheap--3 pearls or 6 of any other gem you have on hand. That's cheaper than most of the other armors you suggest.

-Max

[WraithLord]

It doesn't show up until you cycle a turn. Check you upkeep. Change a skratti to werewolf form while recruiting nothing. End turn. Your upkeep next turn will be lower.
Nasty bug. I hope they squish it in next patch. and while IW is at it they can hopefully fix the annoying change form bug - whereas if you give the order to change form in battle you end up as wolf and lose all your non misc. items.

[Baalz]

[QUOTE=Baalz;664165]
Nonsense. Shrouds are cheap--3 pearls or 6 of any other gem you have on hand. That's cheaper than most of the other armors you suggest.

-Max

rime haubrick, hydra skin, armor of souls, black steel plate, copper plate, fire plate.

Nope, it's not cheaper. The armor I list are all either 3 gems or in a path you reasonably expect to have a strong income in with not a lot else to spend gems on at that stage. Pearls have a huge competition for opportunity costs, therefore pearls are more valuable. You've got *lots* of stuff to spend pearls on, and are probably dumping all your D into skull mentors. This leaves everything else to go to exactly one thing: armor for your SCs. No other items are necessary, you're forging nothing but armor with your gems and can fall back to using just blood slaves if you can't even manage that. Seems clever to alchemize 6N into a battle shroud, until you realize you just basically got the same thing as the hydra skin only with the added cost of fielding the blessing. The only other thing it possibly makes sense to alchemize is water gems which probably does make sense if you have the blessing anyway, but is a weak argument to justify the whole blessing on.

[archaeolept]

eh, clearly the shroud is cheaper than the hydraskin or the rime hauberk ;)

which isn't to say it is quite as good, necessarily...

[KissBlade]

You can just make the rime hauberk or the skin anyway. Just because you have the bless doesn't mean you can't do those things. As I said, the bless really doesn't cost you anything to take even. Heck if you want awake so much, you can still tweak the scales a bit to take have an awake pretender. Just take death 3 and misfortune 1.

[AreaOfEffect]

Just insert this into any mod. Not only will it fix the gold exploit, but it will also fix the not-nearly-as-game-breaking leadership exploit.

#selectmonster 1652
#gcost 250
#poorleader
#end
#selectmonster 1653
#gcost 250
#poorleader
#end

[Tifone]

Nice. Maybe QM could consider putting it in the CBM :)

[MaxWilson]

slaves if you can't even manage that. Seems clever to alchemize 6N into a battle shroud, until you realize you just basically got the same thing as the hydra skin only with the added cost of fielding the blessing. The only other thing it possibly makes sense to alchemize is water gems which probably does make sense if you have the blessing anyway, but is a weak argument to justify the whole blessing on.

I like KissBlade's suggestion of dormant E9N4S4 better than my own initial thought of E9N4, given the weak MR on the Skrattir. Using a shroud in this case instead of the Hydraskin armor gets you no poison resistance and weaker regen, lower enc, better MR and relative immunity to skelly spam (vs. having to forge boots of the messenger), and saves you a nature gem (or lets you use up whatever random air/water/fire gems you happen to have picked up from cross-path sites or events). IIRC the Prot is equivalent in either case.

In any case I've already made my point: shrouds do not introduce a "serious bottleneck" in your armor production. The master lich might still be preferable on other levels.

-Max

[quantum_mechani]

Well, yes certainly there are other ways to play it, but I don't think the gain of crystal coins specifically can be overstated. It's the difference between having teleporting thugs or not, of which Niefel has none naturally, not to mention opening up the real nice astral stuff. That's a pretty huge difference, bigger IMO than a little extra protection and regen on your sacreds. Also, the teleporting immortal pretender himself is a huge asset that adds a lot to Niefel's flexibility. Not to mention the difference in having an awake site searching pretender makes in your gem flow - astral and earth specifically (not to mention pushing your initial dominion). That imprisoned cyclops is very likely not going to be contributing any dwarven hammers until after he goes out manually site searching a bit, comes back, forges one, then another a few turns later when he has the gems - what into year 4? Contrasted, the awake master lich likely has the first hammer out before const-4 is hit, and almost certainly has several out by const-6 when they're needed, he's probably cranking out crystal coins by then (with the astral and earth income he provided). All this before the cyclops ever shows his face...and then the cyclops doesn't really add much when he does (as opposed to a air drop heavy hitter)

Granted, yes it goes without saying that E/N Jarls are good, and I'll concede that you can have a legitimate difference of opinion, but I wouldn't call that having your cake and eating it to.

As far as boosters and gems, you are overlooking the key tactic of trading for these, potentially saving a huge number of points.

Even disregarding that, the imprisoned build is just assuming you want better scales or dominion. If you are willing to take the same scales, you can have a sleeping Cyclops with e9n4s3. Granted , hammers would come slightly later but you get an awful lot for that small delay. An e9 mage with all kinds of uses, almost totally unstoppable early game troops, an of course the bonus to niefel jarls. Yes, the bonus can be replicated with items, but that would take at least 10-15 gems a jarl... which translates into a theoretical +10 or 15 gems per turn by going the bless route (not to mention freeing up slots).

[KissBlade]

slaves if you can't even manage that. Seems clever to alchemize 6N into a battle shroud, until you realize you just basically got the same thing as the hydra skin only with the added cost of fielding the blessing. The only other thing it possibly makes sense to alchemize is water gems which probably does make sense if you have the blessing anyway, but is a weak argument to justify the whole blessing on.

I like vfb's suggestion of dormant E9N4S4 better than my own initial thought of E9N4, given the weak MR on the Skrattir. Using a shroud in this case instead of the Hydraskin armor gets you no poison resistance and weaker regen, lower enc, better MR and relative immunity to skelly spam (vs. having to forge boots of the messenger), and saves you a nature gem (or lets you use up whatever random air/water/fire gems you happen to have picked up from cross-path sites or events). IIRC the Prot is equivalent in either case.

In any case I've already made my point: shrouds do not introduce a "serious bottleneck" in your armor production. The master lich might still be preferable on other levels.

-Max

Isn't the s4n4e9 dormant my suggestion? =( Though the way I see it is, I wouldn't bother with the shroud on skrattis and just use the bless to power your regular jotun jarls while gearing your skrattis with the gems you get. This way you're not bottlenecked by anything. Have gem deficit? get jarls, have gold deficit? Get skrattis. Meanwhile you have high powered niefel jarls to do your heavy lifting too!

[MaxWilson]

Isn't the s4n4e9 dormant my suggestion?


Er, sorry. I'm going senile. Have edited my post to a correct attribution.

=( Though the way I see it is, I wouldn't bother with the shroud on skrattis and just use the bless to power your regular jotun jarls while gearing your skrattis with the gems you. This way you're not bottlenecked by anything. Have gem deficit? get jarls, have gold deficit? Get skrattis. Meanwhile you have high powered niefel jarls to do your heavy lifting too!

I could see it going that way, and copper plate/rime hauberk/etc. might be a better choice than shroud in many circumstances. I'm a big believer in preserving strategic flexibility.

(Repeat: I had not realized how amazing blood thorns on skrattis were until Baalz's post made me check them out. Blood thorns totally free you from worrying about encumbrance, even with Quickness, and skrattir w/ Quickness don't really need an AoE weapon. That means you can make unusual choices for your slots. I do like the thought of Winged Boots on these fearsome skrattir, or Cloud-Trapeezing Niefel Jarls.)

-Max

[HoneyBadger]

All credit for Baalz' organizing everything into a nice neat post (which he did very well, and which I commend) aside, most of what's suggested here is a retread of things that have already been suggested, often more than once. Not all of it, but a lot.

Just to give one example, here's a copy of a post I made in September 30 of last year, suggesting the skratti's usefulness, and other items (including synergy between Niefelheim and undead) Baalz has mentioned:

QUOTE*I was reading through the various strategy guides, and I thought I'd add a few late comments on here, considering the tactics that have been suggested already.

First of all, I always seem to forge lots of copper plate for my Jarls. It's an easy forge for Niefelheim, almost to the point of being a no-brainer. It's not the best armour in the world for them, but it's cheap, and better than what they have--they've got the air gems to spend, and it takes care of lightning threats. So that's another reason that shock attacks aren't always the best choice, unless you can deny them air gems.

It's a lot harder for Niefel to defend itself against fire, than it is lightning, *IF* you're not using Niefel recruits as your main force. The best thing you can do is spam Lightning AND Fire. Even then, expect Niefel Pretenders to come with fire magic.

Secondly, Fear Helmets seem like a good choice for them too-and are-but the death gems you spend now are the death gems you don't spend later on. I honestly think they're a superb item to give your Jarls, because they help a lot to keep your giants from becoming surrounded, and they sync with the Jarls' natural Death magic. One of the best items you can give them, for the money, especially since they have the death gems to spend, but they're expensive! and they're low-level items. So one thing you really want to develope is a death-gem income, because you *need* death gems now, and you need them even *more* in Late Game-where Niefelheim starts to fade.

Denying Neifelheim death-gems hurts them.

Niefelheim wants Luck 3. That's, in my opinion, the single most important scale for Niefelheim to max out. Everything else, even Magic, is secondary (you have natural access to the two best research-boosters, skulls and quills). You don't want to build those lovely Niefel recruits, when you can build a Jarl, so Order and Production aren't as important. Not when you can expect 3000 gold atleast once a year (either as a chunk, or in dribs and drabs). You just can't suffer barbarian raids. They'll cut through you like butter, unless you have a decent army in place to compliment your PD.

And that 3000 gold event comes with both a magic item, and lots of fire gems-which is great for a Nation that doesn't otherwise get a lot of fire gems.

Niefelheim PD is worth at best half, at worst a third as much as the PD of almost any other nation-even monkeys!-so you need 1: time to consolidate your forces, and 2: you need your temple and lab to stay in tact until you can purchase atleast 2 more heavily guarded temples and labs. Niefel doesn't care about resources, because while high resource troops are nice, it can always fall back on boulder-throwers and skinshifters, both of which make beautiful PD boosters. And every single PD needs boosters-and needs to be raised up to *atleast* 36, if you expect to hold a province. In SP games, I've been known to literally station a single, kitted out Niefel Jarl, in every single province I own, when using high levels of Misfortune, because barbarian raids are just so devastating. That's extreme, I admit, but it's very expensive for Niefel to hold on to territory. Niefelheim lives and dies on gold income-deny them gold and they're a paper tiger.

Niefelheim, for 200 gold a piece, has a very respectable H2, decent stats, priest. Niefelheim's going to want to build a *lot* of them. Dominion Death is a real risk for Niefelheim, because again, holding territory (and the temples thereon) is hard for them. And with two heavy blesses-Earth and Nature-you aren't guaranteed an awake Pretender with high Dominion. Masses of undead chaff can also be a threat, as mentioned. And while those 200 gold priests are great, they're still 200 gold a pop. Niefelheim is going to want cheaper priests if it can get them, if only for Dominion-maintenance. Deny them cheap priests, destroy their temples whenever possible, and attack their Dominion, even if it's good-force them to maintain it.

Starvation's nice, but I've never had a *real* problem with starving Niefels, because I've always managed to forge wineskins and cauldrons with my Gygjas-and it's really easy to stick one of each on their high movement, holy, stealthy, tough scouts, and ship them out wherever needed--and easier, once you can give the scouts winged boots. I *love* Niefel scouts, by the way. If you can ever figure out a way to make a bunch of them, like 25, they make beautiful raiders-raiders that can carry around cauldrons/wineskins, or maybe a skellspam amulet and a bottle of water (water elementals are tougher when they're frozen)-Equipped, they can support your outlying provinces all by themselves, and your Skratti can follow, supporting them with spells.

Deny them Nature gems, and you're not only denying them food items, you're denying them healing, and one of the best spells for Niefelheim-perhaps the best global-Gift of Health, which not only heals them, it gives them even more HP.

Niefelheim doesn't have good access to healing-the best it can manage, bar Globals, is Fairy Queen. Curse the crap out of their commanders, their units, their pets, the rats in their cellars, whatever they have, whenever you can. Horror-mark is ok too, but not as nice, because a Niefel Jarl can take out a lesser Horror very consistently, unless you catch them early (without a magic weapon), and are lucky. A well-equipped Niefel Jarl can even give a Doom Horror several afflictions, before it's taken out, so horror marks aren't the best tactic to use against them. So skip horror marking, unless you can *really* spam it, and always focus on Curse, Curse, and more Curse. Afflict them, and deny them healing, whenever you can. A severely afflicted giant is actually better than a dead giant-because it's still drawing a paycheck. Disease is nice enough, but *always* expect a regeneration bless. Once Niefel breaks into healing, it really becomes a powerhouse.

When considering Darkness as a counter to Niefel, don't be surprised with Niefel starts building it's own undead. Breaking into undead is a great tactic for Niefel-cheap skellspam amulets become invaluable, when each one produces an endless stream of human-sized darkness/cold immune chaff units. Fun to stick on non-death mage scouts, and the weakest Jotun commanders (which are still both Sacred). And while Niefel might not have many good paths to the water, they do have the Wyrm Pretender, and they have *plenty* of water magic to use when they get there, so undead can help there too. Banes are my favorite, because you not only get a tough, powerful undead unit, you get a tough, powerful undead unit with a vicious magic weapon, which solves problems like Etherial units, and any lingering horrormark problems, and deals out painful, lingering death.

So again, deny Niefelheim death gems, prepair for undead, and deny them a foothold in the water-because once they get there, they can start spamming sea serpents and krakens (tons of them-water gems aren't otherwise all that useful to Niefelheim, compared to most of the other gems, and they get lots), recruiting chaff, and all the rest. And they can *easily* forge both water and air breathing items, so they can put critters *in* the pool, and take them *out* of the pool, pretty much at will.

Three units are particularly ignored as Niefel powerhouses, and particularly nasty, because they're ignored, and because they mesh well with seldom taken Blesses that Niefel has access to:

The first is the aforementioned non-capital sacred Scout. Scouts are stealthy, no surprises there. But they're also sacred, with all the fun that entails. And while weak compared to most Jotun commanders, they're still Jotuns, which makes them ridiculously better than the average human. Another nice feature is that they've got javelins. Slap a shield on them, and an eye of precision, and those javelins are mean!
They're so mean infact that a Death bless isn't entirely out of the question, since with the damage they dish out, you're pretty much ensuring an Affliction with every single javelin. These guys are straight up your best option, if you want to take a Niefel Pretender (ironically, not a common choice), because they mesh the best with a Death+Water Bless. You still want Nature, though, and since these guys aren't casters, Berserk is a great option if you want to spend the points for it. You can go with Horror Helmets for these guys, or better yet, Horned Helmet, if you've got a high Water bless going, that you can take advantage of. And the spears, while actually not that bad, can be traded out for swords of swiftness. Scouts should carry around food items, and either a skellyspam amulet, or a bottle of water-waterbottle Scouts should be equipped with Rime Hauberks whenever possible, so you can freeze the water elementals they produce, immediately. And Skratti can follow scouts, and spam Quickness.

2-the Niefel Priests (I forget their name). Not as good as a Niefel Jarl, or even a Jotun Jarl, out of the box, they're still Sacred, have better stats than a scout, and they're still Holy 2. If I expected undead units, or lightning attacks, I'd be thinking "hey, what if I took a high Air bless?". They lack shields, but with an Air bless (and they're self-blessing), who needs a shield? And shock's no longer a big deal, when you're 75% resistant to it. And these guys are non-Capital, so build to your heart's content! You can decimate any undead you encounter with them, Dominion's no longer a problem, because you're not concentrating on Niefels anymore, and while they might not be "as good as a Niefel Jarl" in combat, they're still pretty damn good, right out of the box, with an air bless-and you're building 10 of them to every 4 Niefel Jarls. With those numbers, they're arguably better than Niefels, if you want to concentrate on non-Niefel units, like skin-shifters, since they can spam Sermon of Courage. These guys are great, if you want to go with a Titan Pretender. High Earth/Air Bless is beautiful for these guys. Expect to forge helmets for them, though. And since you don't need a shield, you can consider 2 frost brands-cheap and easy for Niefelheim. Rime Hauberk is another nice option. It's cheap, and it gives them the cold aura they lack, in combination with decent Prot. High Air bless also makes your Niefel recruits a lot more palatable, in that they're now going to shrug off cold *and* lightning, which more or less neuthers Caelum against them, and all those fancy missle-tactics that everyone has so painstakingly crafted to work against you, aren't working so well, anymore.

But the *BEST*, most wonderful, glorious, all-round good thing about high Air+Earth bless is that your Pretender can now summon the ultimate PD booster-Watchers.

Watch closely as a half dozen cheap Watchers turn Niefel PD from grungy to great in seconds!

The third, and best, unit is the Skratti. I loooooove Skratti. They're good researchers, they've got access to multiple paths, they're your key to a blood economy, they can shapeshift into not one but two extremely useful forms, including a stealthy wolf, and they're fast-not just Jotun fast either, they're one of the fastest units in the entire *game*. Have them cast Quickness and the Chill Aura spell (they can do that by themselves), and give them two Swords of Swiftness, a horned helmet, and an amulet of reinvigoration, in their were-jotun form, and they're basically quisinarts of death, with 4 sword attacks, a bite, and a gore attack, all at Jotun strength, times whatever Quickness gives them, plus the same cold aura that the Niefels are always bragging about. And they've still got armour, boots (*flying* quisinart of death, anyone?), and 1 misc slot to fill. At 250 gold a pop, properly equipped, they might actually be *better* for the money than a Jarl, considering that Jarls need Earth/Nature blesses to come into their own, and Skrattis aren't even sacred. On top of all that, they're a stealthy caster-be careful with that last, though, Skrattis in wolf form drop most of their equipment. Again-provided you can find a way to forge Shrouds-a good unit for taking advantage of Death+Water, with Nature bless optional, since they're even better as melee fighters than they are as mages. Air + Earth won't hurt them, either, since they'll otherwise be vulnerable to missles, shrouds only offer 8 Prot, and they need all the Reinvigoration they can get. IIRC they get natural Regeneration, too. If so, and if you *can* Shroud them, they don't even need a Nature bless. With their extreme versatility, and furious speed, Skrattis are, hands down, a better choice for Prophet than a Niefel Jarl.

Now, Death, Water, and Air are three paths that Niefelheim definitely doesn't need to break into, but they've got some interesting Pretenders that come with exactly those paths, so it's something to give some thought to.*ENDQUOTE

That's just one example. Here's another, written in October 16th of last year, that goes into more depth about skrattis, specifically in wolf form, and pairing them with undead and Gygjas:

QUOTE* I was going to add this to the "Low cost tactics", but it's pretty expensive, especially for Niefelheim. Fun to pull off, though, and it gives Niefel Hags better synchronicity with the Skratti:

Niefelheim's known for a lot of things, but most of those things are huge, straightforward, and obvious. One thing they aren't known for is Nature magic, except as a path to a decent bless.

Another thing they aren't known for-being huge, lumbering giants-is being particularly stealthy.

But Niefelheim does have 1 National summons-Pack of Wolves, which is Conj3/N2, costing 25 gems for 20 reasonably tough wolves. Not cheap, but fine damage-soakers, with Forest and Mountain survival, and stealth. They're also extremely fast on the ground, at Move 28, meaning archers aren't going to get much chance at them. Not as good as flying, but not subject to stormy weather, either.
To these can be added the following units, which Niefelheim has easy access to, and which don't require venturing further than 4 levels into any magic path:

Bind Fiend-1xfiend of darkness, 5 blood slaves. Fiends of darkness are Imps' bigger, older brothers-older brothers who like to shoot steroid-pcp cocktails into their eyeballs and then mug bengal tigers at the zoo. They fly right out of the box, which keeps the enemy's mages occupied-by-means-of-evisceration, and they've got x2 poison claw attacks, which makes things more interesting for mages who only thought they'd be dealing with the cold, and maybe lightning.

Black Servant-1xblack servant, 5 death gems. Always a good unit to have access to, and a commander. They'll eat up your death gems, though, which is a problem for Niefelheim. Still, it's a great opportunity to add a few thugs with bows to your stealthy forces-but once you've got access to storm bows, give them to your scouts. They're also good out of the box, with etherial + lifedrain, and 18(!) hit-points.

Summon Shades-3xshades, 5 death gems. Expensive for what you get, but etherial, with most of the advantages of a shade beast. Shade beasts are far better, though, so wait for them if you can afford to. They do have a slight niche use as arrow soakers, since they're slower than shade beasts, and their etherialness should keep them safe from most arrows for a long time. Not really worth it though, in most cases.

Summon Shade Beasts-15xshade beasts, 20 death gems. Requires Conj 4, but probably Niefel's best all-around option. Your etherial, cold resistant Shade Beasts are fast, and amphibious, which means they can follow your Niefel Giants anywhere, if you need to team them up, and you don't have to worry about killing them with a cold-aura booster, with skratti. These guys aren't as fast as your wolves, but next to Fiends of Darkness, they're your fastest choice.

Spirits of the Wood-5xhama dryads-the most expensive option, in terms of research and path availability, but the gem cost isn't exhorbitant, and they're etherial units with natural regeneration, recuperation, and poison resistance 100%. Definitely worth the price, as a niche unit, and far better than shades. Note: They're not terribly fast, either in combat, or on the move, and I'm pretty sure they'll eventually die, if you lead them away from where they're summoned, but with some stealthy allies, they make great seige-crashers to keep around your Capital, or other major strongpoints, to get the drop on poison-using foes. They lack cold resistance, though, so keep that in mind-combines well with undead/dire wolves, and their Steal Strength weapon will take the punch out of giant-killing SCs.

These all come with Stealth, meaning not only can your Skrattis (in wolf form) lead them, you can also bring along some Scouts-which, if you're using a Prophetized Skratti to lead them, gives you instant, all-access Bless, and buffs, like Quickness and Sermon of Courage.

And later on, you can trick your stealthy units out with powerful mages and SCs like Wraith Lords, Harvester of Sorrows, Kokythiads, and Spectral Mages.

Again, it's not the cheapest way to go, or the easiest, but being able to field a few very mobile, stealthy, and quite powerful bands of bushwhackers can give Niefel's enemies a fatal surprise that they never saw coming.*ENDQUOTE
<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->
Even the style of writing isn't all *that* different.

And that's just examples from things I've written. Using skinshifters over Niefel Jarls is even mentioned in the manual! Forged items for Niefelheim have been discussed, argued about, mulled over, and pounded into the ground since approximately an hour after the release of the Dom3 demo.

Blood Hunting for Niefelheim is obvious, and a standard feature for them. It's not a new tactic, it's just something they're intended to have the capacity for. Pushing malignant dominions is another "old hat" idea. Bloodthorns on giants are nice, but I suspect people have been doing that since atleast Dom2, and that it's only fallen out of favor since the Lifedrain nerf.

I'm not trying to grab credit for Baalz' work-and this *is* a nice, concise guide-but it's a little insulting to other people who originally came up with these ideas and aren't recieving any credit for them, and it's insulting to Baalz for people to say that it's some of his best work, since he really *has* come up with some fantastic, innovative guides. I've learned a heck of a lot from his guides in the past, and he's put in a lot of hard work, for the benefit of everyone, and I respect and appreciate that. There's just not a lot that's original here. It's either old ideas gathered together, or Baalz' standard tactics applied generically to yet another Nation.

I don't mind anyone using my ideas, but I like to recieve credit for them, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It's not so terribly difficult to do a little research and see if your "great new idea" has ever been thought of before. Atleast, if you're not sure about the originality of something, then put in a mention that you haven't found anything similar before. Especially when it's for a Nation that's been in the spotlight for as long, and as intensely, as Niefelheim. It saves on hard feelings and helps us all get along.

I still think it's useful as a guide. The ideas are presented well, some *are* original, as far as I can tell, and I think it'll help a lot of people play Niefelheim in the future, but there should be the understanding that a lot of what's here has been around for a while now.

And I'm sorry to say it, because I really would like to have more great new ideas for playing what remains one of my very favorite Nations in the game.

[MaxWilson]

As far as I'm concerned, blood thorns on skratti ARE a new idea, and that's the most valuable thing I got out of the Baalz' guide (plus the usefulness of the berserking axes to mostly counter awe and fear--and dual-wielding athames and axes was also new to me). I'd heard skratti suggested before as thugs, but Quickness is usually a turnoff for me because of critical hits from fatigue, so I discounted that suggestion whenever I heard it, but Baalz changed my mind. Yes, many of the tactics Niefelheim can use are not unique to Niefelheim, and I'm dubious about the effectiveness of some enthusiastic suggestions, but skrattir really do have some unique synergies and I appreciate Baalz pointing them out.

I have no idea if I just disagreed with you or not, HoneyBadger.

One thing I'll mention here that I haven't mentioned recently: if you take a province with thugs and don't have time to besiege it, blood-hunting is a great way to shut it down for a few turns. Since you get d6 unrest for every slave found, and a skratti with B2 has a 60% chance of generating 5.5 slaves on average, about 7 skrattir blood-hunting should spike unrest to 100 and prevent recruitment on the round you move away.

On the other hand, I have to say that I've been a little disappointed with the skratti thugs in tests. Even the suggested SC builds (with armor and such) are great at dishing out damage, but less durable than I expect thugs to be, probably because of the -def from berserk. I expect a SC to be able to take out an army reliably, and in my tests my skratti approximations sometimes lose to armies even when there are 3 or more of them. They fare significantly better when there are some Jotun Hirdmen mixed in with them, though, so for now I'm thinking of the skratti as basically arty mages: you need chaff to absorb the hits while the skratti dish out the damage. And the axe is pretty nice against other SCs (causes chest wounds, apparently no MR resist).

Against the skrattir, Skelly spam (or Raise Dead spam) does work out pretty well too, because berserk skratti pick up 5 fatigue per round (7 if quickened) and have low enough def that zombies can actually hit them sometimes. And of course paralyze is great if they're still at the base MR 14. The advantage to all the blood items is that you're only spending gold, not "real" gems, and of course national mages also only cost gold (which is why I love nations w/ good recruitable-anywhere mages).

Anyway, I love the fact that I'm actually worrying about skratti as a problem. I wish every nation scared me as much as Niefelheim does currently--I've always worried about the giants and their cold auras but now they have a reliable SC-killer too, and I think it's great.

-Max

[HoneyBadger]

Well, the main thing that irked me was the statement about Baalz "introducing us to a whole other Niefelheim". It's just not very new, not very different, and not much that hasn't been said before.

Atleast not in anything other than very specific notions about forging specific items, etc. Anyone can make suggestions about using 1 forged item over another. It doesn't entail a whole new way of playing.

[fungalreason]

Oh wow, you had the idea that Skratti were useful too?

/cookie

I'm sure Baalz spends all his free time going through your old posts to create new guides. You're seriously claiming the writing style is the same? Baalz's guide is a concise example of how to use Niefleheim without focusing overly on the Giants that are commonly the key component for the way many people use that nation. Each section describes what advantages the choices he makes gives you, and how to tie everything together in an efficient manner. Which is pretty darn useful for a GUIDE.

Your post appears to be more or less a random collection of terrible rituals that Gygias happen to have the paths for. He's not even talking about using them in the same manner. In all honesty I have a hard time finding any similarities other than you both love Skratti. Who doesn't?

In short, I'm sorry you didn't gain any new ideas from his post, but I'm not suprised. It's clear to me that you barely even read it. As a relatively new player I have yet to come across a guide of his that has not given me insight into some aspect of the game.

[HoneyBadger]

fungalreason, I'll thank you not to make any more personal attacks.

I won't bother responding to the rest of your post, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but in the future, you might try making a reasonable argument, rather than just blindly sputtering.

I think I did a better job of defending Baalz than you did, sad to say.

[alansmithee]

fungalreason, I'll thank you not to make any more personal attacks.

I won't bother responding to the rest of your post, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but in the future, you might try making a reasonable argument, rather than just blindly sputtering.

I think I did a better job of defending Baalz than you did, sad to say.

Going back and reading both posts again, I really see very little similarity between what Baalz wrote and what you wrote, outside of using Skratti. The only undead he mentions are vampires and ghosts (actually, the only summons for that matter). And he doesn't say anything about using the priests or the scouts. Really, there's almost no similarity whatsoever. You mention boosting their province defense, which he doesn't really talk about at all.

You say you did a better job of defending him, but you were the only one attacking him. I don't understand why you took so much personal offense to what was, in my opinion, a very good guide. Most people see Niefelheim and think strong double bless, and use the giants. I even remember a post where someone mentioned it was a shame that they had skinshifters, because nobody ever uses them. And (which I think was the impetus for this guide) I recently read in another thread where someone mentioned if there was another way of playing Neifel, and another poster said ignoring a double-bless with giants isn't something that could be done and is playing against the nation's strengths.

So I really think your attack (which it was) was a bit out of line. If you do have a new way of playing them (like this guide presents) please create it. As it stands, you sound quite petty.

[KissBlade]

Well, the main thing that irked me was the statement about Baalz "introducing us to a whole other Niefelheim". It's just not very new, not very different, and not much that hasn't been said before.


I don't think Baalz honestly believes that there's been no one who's thought of using Skratti's and Skinshifters before. But there are people for whom these ideas are new, different and haven't been seen before. Just like all those different cookbooks out there, just because some of them share the same recipes doesn't automatically invalidate the others. Baalz wanted to make a Niefel guide.

And really how many different ways can you play niefel without mentioning "take e9,n4, kill people". Even though I don't agree with everything, I still have to give credit that I think some parts of the guide looks fun to play. (how many other guides actually proposes using flesheater axes and summoning ghosts?!)

That being said, I'd actually like to see a guide written by you Honeybadger since your posts here do look intriguing. I'm not too fond of Niefel so it's always nice to see some perspectives on how to play them.

[KissBlade]

BTW on a totally unrelated topic, this is something that I have to say always irked me when people commented. Honeybadger, both you and Baalz mentions that Niefel's power fades as late game progresses. See, that is true when people assume they're balanced like that, but they really aren't! As I pointed out, if anything, Niefel has better endgame than /most/ nations. They have durable mages (not vulnerable to artillery) with access to death and astral. AND they have recruitable SC chassis with skratti as thug chassis (and not even cap only WTF?!). That's why nations like Hinnom and Niefel bothers me. They have a great early game AND a great late game. BOO!!!

[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.

[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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

[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.

Well, it seems that anyone lacking 1k posts is someone from the "snarky peanut gallery". However, with the elitism that you are showing, it's really no wonder more people don't post. And as for your examples, I pointed out before that there was almost no similarity between what you posted and you think Baalz's guide is about because based on what you think he copied, you either didn't really read it or didn't understand what he wrote. I'll leave it up to you to say which is the case. And I did read your post, but just so you understand that I read your post, I've taken the time to go over it in more detail.

Just to give one example, here's a copy of a post I made in September 30 of last year, suggesting the skratti's usefulness, and other items (including synergy between Niefelheim and undead) Baalz has mentioned:

QUOTE*I was reading through the various strategy guides, and I thought I'd add a few late comments on here, considering the tactics that have been suggested already.

First of all, I always seem to forge lots of copper plate for my Jarls. It's an easy forge for Niefelheim, almost to the point of being a no-brainer. It's not the best armour in the world for them, but it's cheap, and better than what they have--they've got the air gems to spend, and it takes care of lightning threats. So that's another reason that shock attacks aren't always the best choice, unless you can deny them air gems.

You mention using copper plate on Jarls. In the original guide, he mentions copper plate on Skratti (along with 4 other types of armor). Now, I can only assume (since he's talking about a totally different unit) you are taking offense to him using copper plate in a guide without giving due credit. A brief search for "copper plate" shows many posts predating yours recommending copper plate. Are you stealing from them?

It's a lot harder for Niefel to defend itself against fire, than it is lightning, *IF* you're not using Niefel recruits as your main force. The best thing you can do is spam Lightning AND Fire. Even then, expect Niefel Pretenders to come with fire magic.

The guide recommends earth, death, and astral on the pretender. No fire. Another miss.

Secondly, Fear Helmets seem like a good choice for them too-and are-but the death gems you spend now are the death gems you don't spend later on. I honestly think they're a superb item to give your Jarls, because they help a lot to keep your giants from becoming surrounded, and they sync with the Jarls' natural Death magic. One of the best items you can give them, for the money, especially since they have the death gems to spend, but they're expensive! and they're low-level items. So one thing you really want to develope is a death-gem income, because you *need* death gems now, and you need them even *more* in Late Game-where Niefelheim starts to fade.

Denying Neifelheim death-gems hurts them.

Horror helmets never mentioned in the guide. Another miss. He does mention fear, but in combination with (rarely-used) ghosts and Skrattis, not equipped Jarls. Unless you want to take credit for the concept of using fear?

Niefelheim wants Luck 3. That's, in my opinion, the single most important scale for Niefelheim to max out. Everything else, even Magic, is secondary (you have natural access to the two best research-boosters, skulls and quills). You don't want to build those lovely Niefel recruits, when you can build a Jarl, so Order and Production aren't as important. Not when you can expect 3000 gold atleast once a year (either as a chunk, or in dribs and drabs). You just can't suffer barbarian raids. They'll cut through you like butter, unless you have a decent army in place to compliment your PD.

And that 3000 gold event comes with both a magic item, and lots of fire gems-which is great for a Nation that doesn't otherwise get a lot of fire gems.

He does recommend taking luck-3. Also magic-1 (which you don't mention the amount of magic). However, your justification seems to stem from getting a very rare event (120 points for a rare event seems slightly pushing it) and the avoidance of barbarian raids. He mentions luck as being used for pushing negative dominion. I'll give you half-credit for recommending those scales though.

Niefelheim PD is worth at best half, at worst a third as much as the PD of almost any other nation-even monkeys!-so you need 1: time to consolidate your forces, and 2: you need your temple and lab to stay in tact until you can purchase atleast 2 more heavily guarded temples and labs. Niefel doesn't care about resources, because while high resource troops are nice, it can always fall back on boulder-throwers and skinshifters, both of which make beautiful PD boosters. And every single PD needs boosters-and needs to be raised up to *atleast* 36, if you expect to hold a province. In SP games, I've been known to literally station a single, kitted out Niefel Jarl, in every single province I own, when using high levels of Misfortune, because barbarian raids are just so devastating. That's extreme, I admit, but it's very expensive for Niefel to hold on to territory. Niefelheim lives and dies on gold income-deny them gold and they're a paper tiger.

Here, you mention using misfortune and stationing Jarls in every province (two things that are against what the guide recommends). And you talk about PD. Outside of the intro, PD is not mentioned in the guide. Another miss (noticing a pattern)?

Niefelheim, for 200 gold a piece, has a very respectable H2, decent stats, priest. Niefelheim's going to want to build a *lot* of them. Dominion Death is a real risk for Niefelheim, because again, holding territory (and the temples thereon) is hard for them. And with two heavy blesses-Earth and Nature-you aren't guaranteed an awake Pretender with high Dominion. Masses of undead chaff can also be a threat, as mentioned. And while those 200 gold priests are great, they're still 200 gold a pop. Niefelheim is going to want cheaper priests if it can get them, if only for Dominion-maintenance. Deny them cheap priests, destroy their temples whenever possible, and attack their Dominion, even if it's good-force them to maintain it.

Priests never mentioned. Also mention of a heavy bless, which this guide is not advocating. Another miss.

Starvation's nice, but I've never had a *real* problem with starving Niefels, because I've always managed to forge wineskins and cauldrons with my Gygjas-and it's really easy to stick one of each on their high movement, holy, stealthy, tough scouts, and ship them out wherever needed--and easier, once you can give the scouts winged boots. I *love* Niefel scouts, by the way. If you can ever figure out a way to make a bunch of them, like 25, they make beautiful raiders-raiders that can carry around cauldrons/wineskins, or maybe a skellspam amulet and a bottle of water (water elementals are tougher when they're frozen)-Equipped, they can support your outlying provinces all by themselves, and your Skratti can follow, supporting them with spells.

Deny them Nature gems, and you're not only denying them food items, you're denying them healing, and one of the best spells for Niefelheim-perhaps the best global-Gift of Health, which not only heals them, it gives them even more HP.

Scouts not mentioned, supply items not mentioned, and Skratti suggested as spell support, as opposed to thugs/SC's. He does say that Gift of Health is good however, but it's clearly not a focus. Ring up another miss.

Niefelheim doesn't have good access to healing-the best it can manage, bar Globals, is Fairy Queen. Curse the crap out of their commanders, their units, their pets, the rats in their cellars, whatever they have, whenever you can. Horror-mark is ok too, but not as nice, because a Niefel Jarl can take out a lesser Horror very consistently, unless you catch them early (without a magic weapon), and are lucky. A well-equipped Niefel Jarl can even give a Doom Horror several afflictions, before it's taken out, so horror marks aren't the best tactic to use against them. So skip horror marking, unless you can *really* spam it, and always focus on Curse, Curse, and more Curse. Afflict them, and deny them healing, whenever you can. A severely afflicted giant is actually better than a dead giant-because it's still drawing a paycheck. Disease is nice enough, but *always* expect a regeneration bless. Once Niefel breaks into healing, it really becomes a powerhouse.

Outside of Gift of Health, healing not mentioned (and also you focus on Jarls, which the guide does not). Miss.



When considering Darkness as a counter to Niefel, don't be surprised with Niefel starts building it's own undead. Breaking into undead is a great tactic for Niefel-cheap skellspam amulets become invaluable, when each one produces an endless stream of human-sized darkness/cold immune chaff units. Fun to stick on non-death mage scouts, and the weakest Jotun commanders (which are still both Sacred). And while Niefel might not have many good paths to the water, they do have the Wyrm Pretender, and they have *plenty* of water magic to use when they get there, so undead can help there too. Banes are my favorite, because you not only get a tough, powerful undead unit, you get a tough, powerful undead unit with a vicious magic weapon, which solves problems like Etherial units, and any lingering horrormark problems, and deals out painful, lingering death.

UD spam or darkness aren't mentioned (outside of using the pretender) and the Wyrm pretender option not mentioned. Miss. He does mention underwater expansion, but using Skratti and water-breathing items.

So again, deny Niefelheim death gems, prepair for undead, and deny them a foothold in the water-because once they get there, they can start spamming sea serpents and krakens (tons of them-water gems aren't otherwise all that useful to Niefelheim, compared to most of the other gems, and they get lots), recruiting chaff, and all the rest. And they can *easily* forge both water and air breathing items, so they can put critters *in* the pool, and take them *out* of the pool, pretty much at will.

Underwater summons aren't mentioned, but I'll give you half-credit for him also mentioning water-breathing items (although you should now credit everyone who has mentioned water-breathing items too, in keeping with your humility policy).

Three units are particularly ignored as Niefel powerhouses, and particularly nasty, because they're ignored, and because they mesh well with seldom taken Blesses that Niefel has access to:

The first is the aforementioned non-capital sacred Scout. Scouts are stealthy, no surprises there. But they're also sacred, with all the fun that entails. And while weak compared to most Jotun commanders, they're still Jotuns, which makes them ridiculously better than the average human. Another nice feature is that they've got javelins. Slap a shield on them, and an eye of precision, and those javelins are mean!
They're so mean infact that a Death bless isn't entirely out of the question, since with the damage they dish out, you're pretty much ensuring an Affliction with every single javelin. These guys are straight up your best option, if you want to take a Niefel Pretender (ironically, not a common choice), because they mesh the best with a Death+Water Bless. You still want Nature, though, and since these guys aren't casters, Berserk is a great option if you want to spend the points for it. You can go with Horror Helmets for these guys, or better yet, Horned Helmet, if you've got a high Water bless going, that you can take advantage of. And the spears, while actually not that bad, can be traded out for swords of swiftness. Scouts should carry around food items, and either a skellyspam amulet, or a bottle of water-waterbottle Scouts should be equipped with Rime Hauberks whenever possible, so you can freeze the water elementals they produce, immediately. And Skratti can follow scouts, and spam Quickness.

2-the Niefel Priests (I forget their name). Not as good as a Niefel Jarl, or even a Jotun Jarl, out of the box, they're still Sacred, have better stats than a scout, and they're still Holy 2. If I expected undead units, or lightning attacks, I'd be thinking "hey, what if I took a high Air bless?". They lack shields, but with an Air bless (and they're self-blessing), who needs a shield? And shock's no longer a big deal, when you're 75% resistant to it. And these guys are non-Capital, so build to your heart's content! You can decimate any undead you encounter with them, Dominion's no longer a problem, because you're not concentrating on Niefels anymore, and while they might not be "as good as a Niefel Jarl" in combat, they're still pretty damn good, right out of the box, with an air bless-and you're building 10 of them to every 4 Niefel Jarls. With those numbers, they're arguably better than Niefels, if you want to concentrate on non-Niefel units, like skin-shifters, since they can spam Sermon of Courage. These guys are great, if you want to go with a Titan Pretender. High Earth/Air Bless is beautiful for these guys. Expect to forge helmets for them, though. And since you don't need a shield, you can consider 2 frost brands-cheap and easy for Niefelheim. Rime Hauberk is another nice option. It's cheap, and it gives them the cold aura they lack, in combination with decent Prot. High Air bless also makes your Niefel recruits a lot more palatable, in that they're now going to shrug off cold *and* lightning, which more or less neuthers Caelum against them, and all those fancy missle-tactics that everyone has so painstakingly crafted to work against you, aren't working so well, anymore.

But the *BEST*, most wonderful, glorious, all-round good thing about high Air+Earth bless is that your Pretender can now summon the ultimate PD booster-Watchers.

Watch closely as a half dozen cheap Watchers turn Niefel PD from grungy to great in seconds!

None of this is mentioned. Two big misses.

The third, and best, unit is the Skratti. I loooooove Skratti. They're good researchers, they've got access to multiple paths, they're your key to a blood economy, they can shapeshift into not one but two extremely useful forms, including a stealthy wolf, and they're fast-not just Jotun fast either, they're one of the fastest units in the entire *game*. Have them cast Quickness and the Chill Aura spell (they can do that by themselves), and give them two Swords of Swiftness, a horned helmet, and an amulet of reinvigoration, in their were-jotun form, and they're basically quisinarts of death, with 4 sword attacks, a bite, and a gore attack, all at Jotun strength, times whatever Quickness gives them, plus the same cold aura that the Niefels are always bragging about. And they've still got armour, boots (*flying* quisinart of death, anyone?), and 1 misc slot to fill. At 250 gold a pop, properly equipped, they might actually be *better* for the money than a Jarl, considering that Jarls need Earth/Nature blesses to come into their own, and Skrattis aren't even sacred. On top of all that, they're a stealthy caster-be careful with that last, though, Skrattis in wolf form drop most of their equipment. Again-provided you can find a way to forge Shrouds-a good unit for taking advantage of Death+Water, with Nature bless optional, since they're even better as melee fighters than they are as mages. Air + Earth won't hurt them, either, since they'll otherwise be vulnerable to missles, shrouds only offer 8 Prot, and they need all the Reinvigoration they can get. IIRC they get natural Regeneration, too. If so, and if you *can* Shroud them, they don't even need a Nature bless. With their extreme versatility, and furious speed, Skrattis are, hands down, a better choice for Prophet than a Niefel Jarl.

Maybe this is what you were talking about? It could be, but you recommend using Skrattis totally differently from this guide. And you're still focusing on a bless for the nation (and shrouds to back it up).


That's just one example. Here's another, written in October 16th of last year, that goes into more depth about skrattis, specifically in wolf form, and pairing them with undead and Gygjas:

QUOTE* I was going to add this to the "Low cost tactics", but it's pretty expensive, especially for Niefelheim. Fun to pull off, though, and it gives Niefel Hags better synchronicity with the Skratti:

Niefelheim's known for a lot of things, but most of those things are huge, straightforward, and obvious. One thing they aren't known for is Nature magic, except as a path to a decent bless.

Another thing they aren't known for-being huge, lumbering giants-is being particularly stealthy.

But Niefelheim does have 1 National summons-Pack of Wolves, which is Conj3/N2, costing 25 gems for 20 reasonably tough wolves. Not cheap, but fine damage-soakers, with Forest and Mountain survival, and stealth. They're also extremely fast on the ground, at Move 28, meaning archers aren't going to get much chance at them. Not as good as flying, but not subject to stormy weather, either.
To these can be added the following units, which Niefelheim has easy access to, and which don't require venturing further than 4 levels into any magic path:

Bind Fiend-1xfiend of darkness, 5 blood slaves. Fiends of darkness are Imps' bigger, older brothers-older brothers who like to shoot steroid-pcp cocktails into their eyeballs and then mug bengal tigers at the zoo. They fly right out of the box, which keeps the enemy's mages occupied-by-means-of-evisceration, and they've got x2 poison claw attacks, which makes things more interesting for mages who only thought they'd be dealing with the cold, and maybe lightning.

Black Servant-1xblack servant, 5 death gems. Always a good unit to have access to, and a commander. They'll eat up your death gems, though, which is a problem for Niefelheim. Still, it's a great opportunity to add a few thugs with bows to your stealthy forces-but once you've got access to storm bows, give them to your scouts. They're also good out of the box, with etherial + lifedrain, and 18(!) hit-points.

Summon Shades-3xshades, 5 death gems. Expensive for what you get, but etherial, with most of the advantages of a shade beast. Shade beasts are far better, though, so wait for them if you can afford to. They do have a slight niche use as arrow soakers, since they're slower than shade beasts, and their etherialness should keep them safe from most arrows for a long time. Not really worth it though, in most cases.

Summon Shade Beasts-15xshade beasts, 20 death gems. Requires Conj 4, but probably Niefel's best all-around option. Your etherial, cold resistant Shade Beasts are fast, and amphibious, which means they can follow your Niefel Giants anywhere, if you need to team them up, and you don't have to worry about killing them with a cold-aura booster, with skratti. These guys aren't as fast as your wolves, but next to Fiends of Darkness, they're your fastest choice.

Spirits of the Wood-5xhama dryads-the most expensive option, in terms of research and path availability, but the gem cost isn't exhorbitant, and they're etherial units with natural regeneration, recuperation, and poison resistance 100%. Definitely worth the price, as a niche unit, and far better than shades. Note: They're not terribly fast, either in combat, or on the move, and I'm pretty sure they'll eventually die, if you lead them away from where they're summoned, but with some stealthy allies, they make great seige-crashers to keep around your Capital, or other major strongpoints, to get the drop on poison-using foes. They lack cold resistance, though, so keep that in mind-combines well with undead/dire wolves, and their Steal Strength weapon will take the punch out of giant-killing SCs.

These all come with Stealth, meaning not only can your Skrattis (in wolf form) lead them, you can also bring along some Scouts-which, if you're using a Prophetized Skratti to lead them, gives you instant, all-access Bless, and buffs, like Quickness and Sermon of Courage.

And later on, you can trick your stealthy units out with powerful mages and SCs like Wraith Lords, Harvester of Sorrows, Kokythiads, and Spectral Mages.

Again, it's not the cheapest way to go, or the easiest, but being able to field a few very mobile, stealthy, and quite powerful bands of bushwhackers can give Niefel's enemies a fatal surprise that they never saw coming.*ENDQUOTE
<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->
Even the style of writing isn't all *that* different.

None of this is mentioned in the guide. NONE OF IT. The summon he does mention you ignore.

And that's just examples from things I've written. Using skinshifters over Niefel Jarls is even mentioned in the manual! Forged items for Niefelheim have been discussed, argued about, mulled over, and pounded into the ground since approximately an hour after the release of the Dom3 demo.

Blood Hunting for Niefelheim is obvious, and a standard feature for them. It's not a new tactic, it's just something they're intended to have the capacity for. Pushing malignant dominions is another "old hat" idea. Bloodthorns on giants are nice, but I suspect people have been doing that since atleast Dom2, and that it's only fallen out of favor since the Lifedrain nerf.

Well, there were posters who mentioned using blood thorns on giants as a new idea. And blood hunting is a standard feature for ANY blood nation. Making a guide WITHOUT mentioning it would be unreasonable. And dominion push isn't a new idea, but I could see that as being a weaker portion of the guide, since there's really no method given for actively pushing your dominion as a part of the overall strategy.

So you see, you really had no basis for your attack. And playing the martyr really doesn't help your "case", whatever that case is trying to be. I know you will probably dismiss this as more <1000 post snarkiness, but I hope you actually do look and see how no logical person could really take what you wrote as having anything but the barest similarity to the guide. And I do hope that your attitude isn't prevalent on the boards, or I would assume that there will be fewer and fewer people reaching the hallowed 1000 post mark necessary for you to notice.

[MaxWilson]

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.

Well, it seems that anyone lacking 1k posts is someone from the "snarky peanut gallery". However, with the elitism that you are showing, it's really no wonder more people don't post.

Hold on, now. HoneyBadger may be many things, but he's definitely no snob or elitist. The "peanut gallery" charge has nothing to do with post count, which everyone knows is meaningless.

Now back to your regularly-scheduled flaming...

-Max

[rdonj]

I would rather we move away from flaming and back to discussing the actual contents of the guide, personally.

[archaeolept]

alansmithee, please don't let honeybadger sour you on posting. your responses were accurate and well thought out.

quantity most certainly in this case does not equal quality.

I was always sympathetic to Honeybadger, because he has real enthusiasm. But he has clearly gone over the line here, both in his "critique" of Baalz's guide, and his snarky comments about peanut galleries and the like. sad.

Just peruse the forum, and it will fairly quickly become evident who knows their **** and who doesn't.

[KissBlade]

alansmithee, please don't let honeybadger sour you on posting. your responses were accurate and well thought out.

quantity most certainly in this case does not equal quality.

I was always sympathetic to Honeybadger, because he has real enthusiasm. But he has clearly gone over the line here, both in his "critique" of Baalz's guide, and his snarky comments about peanut galleries and the like. sad.

Just peruse the forum, and it will fairly quickly become evident who knows their **** and who doesn't.

What?! So I don't have to listen to you anymore because you have more posts than me! Time for anarchy!!!

[Endoperez]

I'm with HoneyBadger. :cool: His point was that Baalz's ideas aren't new.

Not that someone else had written a similar guide. Not that HoneyBadger himself had mentioned these things before. His point was that experienced players already knew Niefelheim has more tricks than just the blue giants, and indeed many experienced players commented something along the lines of "I knew most of this, but I liked this one idea you had" or "I never used axes with the skratti before, that's nice".

HoneyBadger's example isn't meant to be identical, but similar.
He recommends using non-Niefel commanders and goes into detail about using Skratti as thugs, and he recommends similar scales (Luck 3 most notably), and worries about dominion death (which Baalz solved differently). Focus on the similarities. Alansmithee's post above is good, even though it focuses on the differences.


I think what irritates HB most is the fact that Baalz never mentions that these aren't all new ideas, and wrote a shocking introduction that made the reader expect something revolutionary.

"Let me introduce you to the other Niefelheim, the one geared to win the game rather than scare the crap out of everyone for only the first couple years. "
"Blasphemy, I know. Now I admit, Niefel giants make great indie stompers, but my goodness don’t you realize you’re paying retail!?!?."

It isn't revolutionary for players who have used most of these tricks before. For players who haven't, it might seem like it's all Baalz's idea.

HoneyBadger didn't say that Baalz copied, mind you. His point was to know what Baalz came up with and what he didn't, so that you respect him for the stuff he did come up with and not the stuff all veterans already know. Baalz is the guy who kills huge armies with his teleporting Marverni mages, not a guy who uses Skratti thugs.

[KissBlade]

I agree with HB & Endo's sentiment that this guide really isn't giving most people anything new but there's not exactly a whole lot of depth to Niefel really. Bless your Jotun's, abuse skinshifters => win. If not win => use skratti's as thug chassis + death/astral/blood => win.

[vfb]

...I think what irritates HB most is the fact that Baalz never mentions that these aren't all new ideas, and wrote a shocking introduction that made the reader expect something revolutionary.

"Let me introduce you to the other Niefelheim, the one geared to win the game rather than scare the crap out of everyone for only the first couple years. "
"Blasphemy, I know. Now I admit, Niefel giants make great indie stompers, but my goodness don’t you realize you’re paying retail!?!?."
...

Oh no, it sounds like you're trying to revoke Baalz's poetic license! C'mon, it's flavorful and good for you too. :p His next guide could look like this:

"Part 1 of the treatise on Niefelheim in which it is described in some detail the various strategies that may be employed in which to obtain an enhanced level of capabilities in the later stages, creating a favorable environment for elimination of other potential prospects for the position of Pankreator, as opposed to a strong early game which though can possibly result in the rapid acquisition of neighboring territory does not provide the synergies necessary for an extended campaign..."

That's not gonna make me want to jump up and start a new game with Nief, that's going to put me to sleep.

[Sombre]

Alansmithee, that was good stuff. I'd rather this didn't all turn sour, but HB deserved that.

'lept speaks the truth as usual.

Endo: I have to wonder if you even read what HB posted. He might try to weasel out of it, but he's pretty clearly saying that Baalz is plagiarising other peoples ideas and that he had already come up with them and written a guide about them and OH BY THE WAY LOOK AT MY GUIDE LOOK AT MY GUIDE.

[Endoperez]

I agree with HB & Endo's sentiment that this guide really isn't giving most people anything new

I didn't say that. It's not giving new stuff to veterans. I'm not a veteran, just a regular, and learned a lot reading this guide.


Oh no, it sounds like you're trying to revoke Baalz's poetic license! C'mon, it's flavorful and good for you too. :p His next guide could look like this:

I've enjoyed Baalz's over-the-top writing before and hope to enjoy it in the future. However, flavorful can come off wrong. My comment on this guide (first reply in the first page) is an example of that. I meant to say that Niefelheim played according to this guide would be wicked to play against and wicked fun to play as, but it didn't come out that way.

Endo: I have to wonder if you even read what HB posted. He might try to weasel out of it, but he's pretty clearly saying that Baalz is plagiarising other peoples ideas and that he had already come up with them

HB said he had come up with SOME OF the ideas Baalz used.

If he'd just linked to his post instead of quoting the whole of it, the tone of his post wouldn't have seemed nearly bad as it did. Here are some chosen quotes from the other parts of that message:

"...most of what's suggested here is a retread of things that have already been suggested, often more than once. Not all of it, but a lot. Just to give one example, here's a copy of a post I made in September 30 of last year..."

"I'm not trying to grab credit for Baalz' work-and this *is* a nice, concise guide-but it's a little insulting to other people who originally came up with these ideas and aren't recieving any credit for them, and it's insulting to Baalz for people to say that it's some of his best work, since he really *has* come up with some fantastic, innovative guides. ... There's just not a lot that's original here. It's either old ideas gathered together, or Baalz' standard tactics applied generically to yet another Nation."

Here's the part where HB suggests that Baalz borrowed ideas, with a clause for the chance that Baalz came up with it independently.

"I don't mind anyone using my ideas, but I like to recieve credit for them, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It's not so terribly difficult to do a little research and see if your "great new idea" has ever been thought of before."

Even a single sentence about experienced players already being familiar with some of the stuff mentioned in the guide would have been enough to keep HoneyBadger from posting. It wouldn't have taken that much to keep what HB posted sounding less hostile. It probably got worse in further posts, but fire tends to spread and there's little to do about that.

[Baalz]

It'd be a shame if this thread got locked due to a completely inane flame war. FWIW I feel this is a completely pointless thing and nobody should feel the need to defend me nor continue this discussion in any way. Feel free to continue the discussion about giants if you have any questions or comments. If anyone just can't contain themselves, please move it to a new thread.

[Sombre]

Deleted at Baalz request.

[llamabeast]

What a crazy thread.

Thanks for the guide Baalz. I'm looking forward to having a go with Nief sometime, and it'd be fun to do it differently than just E9N9 giants.

[Executor]

WTF was all that about?

No matter, I like your very unorthodox guide, but isn't it more applicable to MA Jotunheim? As I recall it's basicly the same nation but without the big nasty giants, although I'm not sure if they have those shape shifters.

[thejeff]

They don't have the Skinshifters. Which is a shame. They'd make a great asset to Jotunheim, while they're kind of overshadowed in Neifelheim.

The Skratti stuff certainly applies. The rest not so much. The Skinshifters give you easy expansion, which Jotunheim lacks.

[Aezeal]

come on endo, we all know that hardly any idea in any guide is really new, they game is old enough by now so everything has been done before. Having said that the advices in this thread are different that the usual first repons pplz get when asking advice for Niefel and it wouldn't be my first thought either. So the introduction was pretty accurate (with a lil over acting in it.)

As much as I like HB I do think he could have better just posted his guide seperately in another thread without any comments to Baalz, or just added his idea's in here (which he did) without any clear critism on Baalz.

I think it's clear there are many ways to play most dom 3 nations. For Niefel I personally think going bless might still be the best way really, but Baalz' idea's (yet I know they aren't all, maybe none, his original idea's) and Honey's idea's are valid options too. All strategies can be used, so let's all just get on with it.

I expect a new thread with a new Niefel strat to be posted soon to prove my point :D

[JimMorrison]

LOUD NOISES!

<3

There were too many guides written in a short period, so I have been digesting them all slowly, I think this is pretty awesome stuff, and I think it is pretty innovative, in that you see comments and suggestions and tactics all the time, but no one has ever melded all of that into a cohesive strategy that starts with "don't take a major bless with Niefelheim".

<3

[JimMorrison]

Oh! I should contribute something useful, too. I think it's a fun idea to wait on Illwinter until all 5 globals are already up. Then you cast with 500+ slaves, and it's sort of like playing Russian Roulette on Christmas, everyone's going to get a bit pissed off, but one person more than the rest!

[JimMorrison]

Also, I don't know why people keep trying to erode the correlation between post count, and post content. I mean, obviously people who say more things, have more things to say. And people who have more things to say, obviously have more good things to say, than people who don't say anything - as they obviously have nothing worthwhile to say at all!

There's an old adage that goes something like - "It's better to say everything that you can, than be silent and be thought a fool."

In closing I would just like to say, that I do believe that werewolves and human beings can coexist.

:re:

[Tifone]

This of course doesn't apply to me that, with what, 1200 posts now? Didn't ever say anything useful :D (sorry!)

Is the Illwinter global any good btw?

[JimMorrison]

I think I read a post or two of yours that I liked. ;) If that adage is correct, you certainly talk too much to be thought a fool, anyways! :happy:

Illwinter is basically the cold version of Second Sun, but with random giant (and wolf?) attacks on random lands. It's a GREAT way to piss people off, but it hits their income hard, and in the late game can shut down mage recruitment if their economy is strained already (plus cause a little desertion!), not to mention making -the entire world- hospitable for immediate annexation. ;)

[thejeff]

Wolf attacks are more common.

The Neifel giant attacks are very frustrating to the caster, since you can't help but think how devastating they'd be if they could just bless themselves. (Especially with the usual E9N? bless, but even with a minor N bless.)
I've only used it in SP and the AI usually has enough PD/troops in its backfield to win. It might actually be more effective in MP, since most people don't invest in high PD which can be wiped out by thug/mage raiders anyway.

The income drop is a bigger effect. Cold & unrest, IIRC.

[vfb]

What happens if the giants win? The province goes empty-indy?

[JimMorrison]

What happens if the giants win? The province goes empty-indy?

Yep-yep.

[MaxWilson]

I thought the giants came without a commander and autorouted? Was that bug fixed, or did I misunderstand about its existence?

Even if the giants did bless themselves they'd just get ", +2 morale" like an indy priest. Shame.

-Max

[thejeff]

One of the Giants is a commander. I'm not sure if that's a bug fix or not, but it definitely works now.

You're probably right about the bless. I kept thinking thinking they were mine and should get my bless. I was Jotunheim, so it was mostly: "What I could do with just a few of those!"

Since they never actually won against the hordes wandering the AIs backfield, I was never sure whether the province would be empty, mine or have the Giants in it. I can't remember if they were listed as "Special Monsters"

[JimMorrison]

"Independents attacking XXXX"

[Traks]

Now we need a version of spell called "Frogginess" which turns all lands into swamps and generates random bog beast attacks.

[chrispedersen]

Giant Skeletons, under cmb 1.3 & 1.4 are only 13 hp.
you average about 1 in 4, the rest being the usual 4 hp skels.

I think I'd rather have a profit spreading dominion.

[vfb]

Are you sure you don't mean a prophet sharing dominion? Or perhaps you'd rather make a profit preaching?

Unless you are EA/LA Mictlan your prophet spreads dominion no matter what he is doing.

[archaeolept]

he might be lost in time or space, or dead :)

[chrispedersen]

Are you sure you don't mean a prophet sharing dominion? Or perhaps you'd rather make a profit preaching?

Unless you are EA/LA Mictlan your prophet spreads dominion no matter what he is doing.

ooo......

[AreaOfEffect]

A prophet that moves around spreads that dominion faster. For example, if your prophet is on a province with no candles, the province automatically gains one of your candles regardless of the temple-check outcome. See for yourself.

In regards to giant skeletons, a 225% improvement to HP seems like a worthy consideration just on its own.

[vfb]

I created a dom 1 god, sent the prophet to a zero-candle province, and the next turn it still had zero candles. The next turn too.

I think you're using a higher-dominion prophet and you're just seeing the results of the automatic prophet temple check. Or maybe your god is in the province too? The god automatically creates one white candle per month in the province he is in.

[OmikronWarrior]

If the manual is not wrong, prophets generate temple checks, as does the capital province and (not surprisingly) temples. Temple checks are based on current max dominion, so a dominion of 1 means a prophet only has a 10% chance of generating a candle.

The Pretender unit itself, does generate an automatic candle every turn, plus two temple checks.

[vfb]

According to a developer post I cannot find, temple checks from the god and prophet are based on current max dominion, which equals (starting max dominion) + (the number of temples you have / 5).

Temples checks from temples and blood sacrificing are based on starting max dominion (your god's initial dominion score), not current max dominion. This has also been confirmed through testing.

I'm not sure about other temple checks, like Victory Points, Juggernauts and the Ark, but I suspect they are also based on starting max dominion. Victory Points are only half a temple check.

[AreaOfEffect]

I suppose I got prophet confused with pretender in this context. It Happens.

[MaxWilson]

According to a developer post I cannot find, temple checks from the god and prophet are based on current max dominion, which equals (starting max dominion) + (the number of temples you have / 5).

Temples checks from temples and blood sacrificing are based on starting max dominion (your god's initial dominion score), not current max dominion. This has also been confirmed through testing.

Yes. It's also in the bug shortlist. Of course, it's always possible that JK fixed it at some point without remembering to put it on the progress page or the bug shortlist (sometimes that happens), but AFAIK it's still a bug.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

A prophet that moves around spreads that dominion faster. For example, if your prophet is on a province with no candles, the province automatically gains one of your candles regardless of the temple-check outcome. See for yourself.

In regards to giant skeletons, a 225% improvement to HP seems like a worthy consideration just on its own.


Yes, but you only get 0-3 or so of the giant skeletons each turn.

[Trumanator]

When expanding, are there any special tricks to keep the commander from getting killed? with so few troops, sometimes some of the indy cavalry or whatnot gets by, and once the commander's down...

[Illuminated One]

That's a great question, not only for Niefelheim.

I would very much like to use some of the long lasting battle field enchantments.
But if I don't use troops, only summons or SCs half of the enemy army ignores them and attacks my mages. If I bring in troops it's somewhat pointless because of friendly fire.

[chrispedersen]

well, I will sometimes give my commanders bloodslaves. Takes hits for arrows and can provide an emergency screening force.

bring the slaves on a scout, distribute them when you face cav.

~ ~ ~ ~

secondly, if you attack a province with a scout, you can see the cav setup, and alter your setup accordingly.
~ ~ ~ ~

Lastly, build a small screen of indy troops in addition to your giants. Don't send them in to combat.. just guard commander.

[Baalz]

Set your troops all the way to the back and script them to hold then attack. This will give the enemy a chance to get nice and strung out as their cavalry races ahead so you can deal with their forces piecemeal. It also makes their archers fire from their maximum range (and minimum precision)

Set your commander behind the troops (obviously), but offset both troops and commander to one side. The enemy indie troops will always start dead center, so this gives them a harder time flanking you. E = enemy, T = your troops, C = your commander


...........EEE
...........EEE
...........EEE



.....TT
.....TT

C


'course it's not perfect, but those two tricks will help a good deal.

[Torin]

Baalz, thank you very much. Now AlpineJoe used this against me.
:doh:
I couldnt use my thug oracles (Agartha) against those thug werewolves because of the chest wound of those dreaded axes, but they showed late enough so my magic-3 earth readers researched petrify and suddenly werewolves were like puppies. Ok ive been lucky to find astral mages and gear my petrifier oracles (earth4) with eye of the void and earthboots. But if i had astral on my pretender i wouldnt need any luck.

I think early giants would have been scarier (i hurried to const to gear my pretender risen oracle and umbrals to stop hypotetical giants) but all in all before I could reach petrify i couldnt stop them apart from my pretender geared with const 4 items.

[AndonSage]

I'm playing Dom 3 with the latest patch, so I don't know if something changed between when Baalz posted his guide and the latest patch, but using his Pretender suggestion, I'm coming up with -25 points.

Awake Master Lich: E4 S4 D5
Dominion 9, Order 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Death 3, Luck 3, Magic 1

Anyone know where the discrepancy happened?

Taking Dominion down to 8 leaves me with 17 points.

Is it worth taking Dominion down to 7 and picking up F2 for site searching? I seem to remember (it's been over a year since I've played Dom 3) several fire sites have multiple types of gems.

[Calahan]

@ Andonsage - Are you using CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod) or not? Most of Baalz's recent guides have been based on it, as it is used in most MP games now.

[AndonSage]

@ Andonsage - Are you using CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod) or not? Most of Baalz's recent guides have been based on it, as it is used in most MP games now.

No, I haven't heard of it. I'll look for it and check it out. While I pretty much just play single-player, I suppose I should use it just in case I want to play multi-player.

[Calahan]

@ AndonSage - If you don't want the complete CBM package, I'm pretty certain you can just download and install seperate parts of the mod (I know this was an option with earlier versions of CBM, but haven't checked the most recent one). In this case you would just need the 'CBM Pretenders' part of the mod in order to have the build Baalz suggested, while keeping the rest of the game vanilla which you are most used to from SP games.

[Alpine Joe]

Baalz, thank you very much. Now AlpineJoe used this against me.
:doh:
I couldnt use my thug oracles (Agartha) against those thug werewolves because of the chest wound of those dreaded axes, but they showed late enough so my magic-3 earth readers researched petrify and suddenly werewolves were like puppies. Ok ive been lucky to find astral mages and gear my petrifier oracles (earth4) with eye of the void and earthboots. But if i had astral on my pretender i wouldnt need any luck.

I think early giants would have been scarier (i hurried to const to gear my pretender risen oracle and umbrals to stop hypotetical giants) but all in all before I could reach petrify i couldnt stop them apart from my pretender geared with const 4 items.


Ha just saw this. Yeah I tried out Baalz werewolf gear and it worked pretty well initially. That first battle i must have killed 3-4k gold worth of troops and your pretender with 4 skratti. Alas I had no astral income (like 0) that game at all so couldn't afford the amulets of antimagic i needed. It was actually blindness that did me in more than petrify, as werewolves equipped with athames have no AOE attack. Then you turned the tide and atlantis did me in :(

[AndonSage]

@ AndonSage - If you don't want the complete CBM package, I'm pretty certain you can just download and install seperate parts of the mod (I know this was an option with earlier versions of CBM, but haven't checked the most recent one). In this case you would just need the 'CBM Pretenders' part of the mod in order to have the build Baalz suggested, while keeping the rest of the game vanilla which you are most used to from SP games.

Yeah, I downloaded the CB mod to look at the readme, and noticed the Master Lich was reduced from 100 to 75 points, which is where the difference is. The current CB 1.5 mod does have a full version and a split version. I would be more hesitant to use the split version, since I figure the entire mod was developed to work together.

Is there any reason not to install the entire CB mod even if I only play single-player? It's been so long since I've played, that I don't remember a lot anyway, hehe :)

Also, how do I install the mod? I've never installed one before. Just unzip to overwrite the current files?

[AndonSage]

It was actually blindness that did me in more than petrify, as werewolves equipped with athames have no AOE attack.

I've read several Niefelheim guides, and one of them has the following for countering darkness:

Have a Gygja cast Twiceborn. Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, now she can see in the dark. Do this with a couple of Skratti as well. Your enemies will try to use darkness against you in their desparation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against white mages casting.

Anyway, just something I thought might help.

[Fate]

To install a mod, look at the appropriate section in the FAQ (link (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=33869)).

The CBM Mod changes numerous things, ranging from costs/abilities of recruitables to level/cost/power of spells, the effects of scales, and the costs/abilities of pretenders. It also includes the Worthy Heroes mod (a mod the adds new and better heroes to nations that don't have any/enough).

While they all do work together to diversify strategies, the option to install the parts seperately is for the convenience of those who like some, but not all, of the mod. For example, if you like the pretender and spell changes but you don't like the changes to recruits (which can be odd at times), the capability is there without too much work or modding knowledge.

[AndonSage]

To install a mod, look at the appropriate section in the FAQ (link (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=33869)).

Thank you :) I was looking for instructions on installing mods in the Mod forum. Silly me :)

Thanks for the explanation on CB Mod. I'll just install the whole thing and see how I like it.

[Illuminated One]

I've read several Niefelheim guides, and one of them has the following for countering darkness:

Blindness is different to Darkness.
Blindness = cheap fire spell that targets one unit and can be resisted
Darkness = expensive spell that targets everyone and can't be resistet, but undead can see in the dark.

[AndonSage]

Blindness is different to Darkness.

Whoops, you're right. Not sure why I confused the two.

[AndonSage]

Baalz,

I've been reading and re-reading your guide to make sure I understand it, but I still have a few questions.

Protection/Wooden warriors brings these guys up to a 15 protection in human form
The manual says Barkskin (and those two spells are just mass Barkskin) raises Protection to 10, or adds 1 Protection if the unit is already at 10 or higher. Since the Jotun Skinshifter's Protection is 9, how are you getting it to 15?

The ones with a blood random are B3, which means with no need to forge a sanguine rod they can optimally blood hunt in a province using just 2 of them (rather than the 3 blood -1 guys with rods which is typical).
Do you mean 2 Blood - 1 other random guys? Otherwise I don't understand that.

I was wondering what you suggest for a prophet for this strategy? I would normally make a prophet out of a Niefel Jarl.

I'm also wondering why you suggest to research Construction 4 first. It seems to me that you need to take territories, so you can site search them, and the buffs you recommend for the Gygjas begin at Alteration 3 (Protection and Body Ethereal). Luck is Alteration 4. So why not go for Alt 4 first, since if you go with Constr 4 first, you probably won't have many sites searched by that time anyway? You need a gem income to take advantage of item construction, yes?

[thejeff]

"3 blood -1 guys" means 3 guys with blood 1.

As for Construction 4, his plan starts with the pretender site-searching so you'll have some income. And the main items for the Skratti at first are Blood (Flesh Eaters), not gem-based.


Edit: Barkskin gives you a natural protection of 10. With their armor of 7, that should give them 15 total.

10+7-(10*7/40)=15.25

[Baalz]

Thanks Jeff, right on all counts.

As to your prophet, it's not really important to the overall strategy so make it whoever seems like the most fun, you could do worse than a jarl.

As to the research order, obviously it's a bit flexible but my thinking was: bloodhunt with no sanguine rods so you've got a few blood slaves ready by the time you hit constr-4. In the two turns it takes to forge a few items and move your skratti to wherever the fighting is you can pick up quicken self which is really all your skratti need at this point. In a very general sense if I need constr and alt for a build, I like to go with construction first because I can hit the research for alteration after I've passed out items and my guys are on the way, while they need to hang by the labs to have magic items passed out if you do that in the reverse order.

[AndonSage]

"3 blood -1 guys" means 3 guys with blood 1.

Ah! That makes sense now, thanks :)

As for Construction 4, -snip-

As to the research order, obviously it's a bit flexible but my thinking was: -snip-

Yeah, I guess I just wanted the Gygjas I was using as commanders to be able to do something at the start, but I guess it doesn't matter. The skinshifters are doing all the work.

Edit: Barkskin gives you a natural protection of 10. With their armor of 7, that should give them 15 total.

10+7-(10*7/40)=15.25

Ah hah! Now I understand :)

I've started a game with the Faerun 466 Adventure Map, and independents at 7. I can take the regular indies with 10 skinshifters, but the provinces with a crown icon chew them up and spit 'em back out. I figure I'll need a few souped-up Skratti along with them for those provinces.

A funny thing happened in that game... my first two Gygjas were D1N1B4! What are the chances of that?!? Pretty small, I know, hehe. So I had the two of them doing the blood hunting instead of Skrattis, at the start :) BTW, for blood hunting I just find a large pop province and set the tax rate to 0% to control the unrest. Is that the normal way to do things for blood hunting?

One of the problems I see with using S1 or N1 indie commanders is the cold. You should probably mention they'll need a CR ring or something similar. Since you also usually need a Lab to recruit them, at 500 gold, that's another two Gygjas worth of gold, so at this point I've been sticking with Gygjas.

So, what do you do when you don't find any Astral Pearls income? Just use alchemy?

Thanks for all the help guys!

[Fantomen]

You´re on the right track, but there´s no benefit to hunting from population after the first 5000. So basically the more the population exeeds 5000 the more money you lose. Use provinces with 5000-7000 pop.

[Starshine_Monarch]

Also, with Baalz's suggested build, your population will be going down pretty quickly anyway, so try and go for the ones in the 7000 range so you can keep hunting optimally for longer.

I have been wondering, though this may be a question for the Mictlan/Blood Magic guide, how big is the difference when blood hunting in 5k+ population vs provinces that are only a dozen or so people short of 5k?

[atul]

I'm not sure but it might've been linear relationship.

So, 5% failure chance for every 250 pop below 5000.

[Baalz]

population/5000 *100 is the percentage chance of one check that is done. Another is for unrest/200 *100, and another is for the level of your blood magic *40 /100.

[AndonSage]

Thanks for the info guys. One of my problems is losing population with the Death-3 scale. Is there a spell that can help increase population in provinces? I thought maybe Gift of Health, but the description for that spell doesn't mention increasing population growth.

[Dragar]

nope, nothing. Growth and lucky events are it

[Wrana]

You could Wish for population. But wishing for slaves is more simple...

[MaxWilson]

The best way to deal with your Death-3 dominion is to expand aggressively to keep your gold flow up, and also switch from troops to summons (no upkeep) since gem income doesn't decay with Death[1].

-Max

[1] I personally never take Death scales, for thematic and fun reasons, but I'm told it's quite popular in MP because the benefits are front-loaded toward the early game.

[Agema]

If your empire stalls in expansion, Death dominion can be a serious problem. I do however like its reliability, and you know what you have to work with. In contrast, misfortune has caused me problems every game I've played which could potentially have proved lethal.

[AndonSage]

Thanks for the info guys :) I guess I might try altering Baalz's configuration for the next game, and see how it goes. Offset getting rid of Death-3 by losing Magic-1 and going with Order-1 instead of Order-3. Or perhaps cutting back Death Magic 5 to 4. Hmmm... well, that's for next game :)

More questions...

Since the manual doesn't list the exact percentages, I'm wondering if the Unrest reduced by Fata Morgana will offset the Unrest produced by Illwinter in my provinces? Also, does the Cold produced by Illwinter affect non-cold resistant units during battle? I don't see any penalties currently for non-cold resistant units fighting in a Cold-x province.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I find growth scale and luck scales both tend to make people have strong opinions on them. Those opinions just vary. :)

[Jrandom]

I am trying this Strat with Vanilla Dom3. I'm having an issue with the SCs turning into wolves at the end of combat and losing all their gear accept the 2 misc slots. Does CBM fix that issue or is this a new bug?

[Edi]

It's not a bug, it's working exactly as it's supposed to. You're not supposed to give them anything but misc equipment.

[Fantomen]

That only happens when you change shape IN the battle.
If you change into a werewolf before the battle it stays a werewolf after.

[Edi]

That only happens when you change shape IN the battle.
If you change into a werewolf before the battle it stays a werewolf after.
IIRC the Skratti has three forms: Skratti, Jotun werewolf and Jotun Wolf. If the Jotun werewolf form gets whacked, it changes to the Jotun Wolf and consequently drops all but misc. gear. If the jotun Wolf gets killed, it dies. If it survives, it should revert to the Skratti form.

The reason for this is that sometimes involuntary shapechange in battle triggers another shapechange command after battle and in the case of the skratti, because there are three forms, it does not work as things do with units that only have two forms.

[SsSam]

My test game shows Fantomen is correct, which is not the same as saying Edi is wrong.

If you change into the werewolf form in the strategic map and enter combat, your skratti will remain in that form during and after the battle.

If you change into werewolf form as a scripted (or I assume unscripted) part of your orders during the battle then at the end of the battle you will become a wolf.

I don't know what happens if you are killed. That's a bit tougher to test and Edi may well be correct as well.

What happens is folks want to enter combat in mage form to have access to that extra level of water or whatever. Then they script the change to werewolf form and get a rude shock when they start their next turn and the wolf has decided it wasn't that interested in all that shiny gear.

Big Jotun Oops.

My understanding is that this is a feature, not a bug.

[Edi]

Admittedly, I have not tested that, but went from memory of how I've seen shapechange work previously. Basically battlefied shapechange causes the unit to want to revert back to the form it had when it entered battle. Wit things like Jaguar Warriors or Black Sorcerers, the shapechange is always involuntary and the return to the original shape is through the #firstshape mechanic.

For units with full shapechange, the shapechange command is triggered. In most cases, such as the dragons, it simply switches the form back and forth. With the Jotun Skratti, it cycles into the next form and drops the gear. In that case it would need to cycle twice or skip over one form with some kind of offset factor, which does not exist in Dominions 3.

Therefore it's a feature, not a bug.

[SsSam]

Looks like a skratti in any form that is killed in combat does not revert to another form, but dies.

[Jrandom]

I also had the issue happen while being in human form, then turning into a werewolf from taking damage. When the next turn started, I would notice the Skratti was in dog form and the human basic leader with him ended up finding 1 of the Skratti's lost axes.

[JonBrave]

Outside of battle, a shape-changer to the fewer-items shape retains the items in the other slots, to reappear in the more-items shape, right?

What I don't get is: where are those items actually kept? I think someone might have said there may be hidden "retainers" who hold the items...

[Soyweiser]

Jon, those items disappear. Unless there is a lab, then they might get placed into the storage.

There is no hidden retainer.

You can get your own hidden retainer by using scouts.

Regarding skrattir this is what I remember:
Changing before battle. No changes of shape during battle.
Changing during battle, the shape moves one shape after battle wolf -> giant, werewolf -> wolf, etc.

I think, not sure, that a giant skrattir that is killed transforms into a werewolf, and becomes a wolf after battle. Not 100% sure on this one. but this should be easy to test.

[JonBrave]

Jon, those items disappear. Unless there is a lab, then they might get placed into the storage.

There is no hidden retainer.


Blimey! You seem to be quite correct, I don't know where I got that assumption from. Perhaps I only ever changed shapes in labs. I now only equip with shared-slot items anyway, for simplicity.

[AreaOfEffect]

There are several forms of shapechanging and each type follows slightly different rules.

The Black Sorcerers of Machaka
--
These shapeshifters have no control over their ability to change form. Not either as a battle command or as a command on the map view. These units only change when their hit points fall to zero. There new form will always have more hit points and they will retain the damage they have taken from their old form, but no more damage then they had in hit points before. These rules also apply to units like the Skinshifters of Vanhiem and the Jaguar Warriors of Mictlan, yet they are followers and not leaders, so you wouldn't be able to control their shapeshifting anyhow. At the end of combat, all of these units will revert to their previous form.

The Dai Oni and Oni Generals of Yomi
--
These units act roughly the same as the Black Sorcerers above accept that their new form is actually weaker in hit points. In this case the damage from their previous form is wiped away. This difference makes the mechanics behind their transformation completely different. However, in practice the results are much the same except in cases where the unit has regeneration. The unit will revert to its old form after combat if it lives.

The Dragon Pretender Chassis
--
These units have two forms from which they cycle through, like the others above, but unlike the others, you can control which form they start in before combat. You can also issue commands in combat to change form as well. Here it becomes important as to which form your in before combat. Dragons in human form act like Black Sorcerers. They will revert to a tougher form if brought to zero hit points and keep some damage. If they shapechange because of a command, they will revert back to their pre-combat form after the battle. If a dragon shapechanges because of damage, they will remain in dragon form after the battle. The damage transformation takes precedence. If the dragon is in dragon form at the start of combat, it will not transform but simply die.

The Skatti of Niefelheim
--
This is one of those rare cases where the unit has three forms: a middle health form (Sorcerer), a high health form (Werewolf), and a low health form (Wolf). This unit is using the same mechanics as the dragon pretender, but with a twist. The result is that things get weird when you shapechange in battle because the mechanics were designed originally for units with two forms. If you use the shapechange command in combat, the unit will shapechange again after combat. If you use the shapechange commad multiple time in combat, it will shapechange after combat for the same number of times as it did while in combat. This means that if you shapechange once, it will shapechange once again. Since the progression is not binary, you will end up in wolf form if you started the battle in sorcerer form and changed once. You will end up in sorcerer form if you started the battle in wolf form and changed twice. Change form three times in combat to end up where you started after combat. Tests show that you turn into a werewolf if you are taken to zero hit points in either sorcerer or wolf form. You will not transform if you start in werewolf form and instead you will simply be dead. At the end of combat, if you shapeshifted from damage, you should remain in werewolf form.

This is NOT a comprehensive list of shapeshifting. Though I hope you appreciate the information. Let me know if you want a rant about the particularities of Machaka's Black Hunters or Sauromatia's Androphag.

[SsSam]

I think, not sure, that a giant skrattir that is killed transforms into a werewolf, and becomes a wolf after battle. Not 100% sure on this one. but this should be easy to test.

Tested in post 147. A Skratti killed in battle does not transform, but dies.

[AreaOfEffect]

I think, not sure, that a giant skrattir that is killed transforms into a werewolf, and becomes a wolf after battle. Not 100% sure on this one. but this should be easy to test.

Tested in post 147. A Skratti killed in battle does not transform, but dies.

Test again. The hit point difference between the Sorcerer form and the Werewolf form is only 10 hit points. The unit might of gotten hit, transformed, hit again, and died too quickly for you to notice the shapeshifting. The unit will transform, I've tested it and seen it done over and over again.

[SsSam]

I think, not sure, that a giant skrattir that is killed transforms into a werewolf, and becomes a wolf after battle. Not 100% sure on this one. but this should be easy to test.

Tested in post 147. A Skratti killed in battle does not transform, but dies.

Test again. The hit point difference between the Sorcerer form and the Werewolf form is only 10 hit points. The unit might of gotten hit, transformed, hit again, and died too quickly for you to notice the shapeshifting. The unit will transform, I've tested it and seen it done over and over again.

Areaofeffect is quite right.

[Soyweiser]

Yeah, I recalled I had some mage skrattir shapechange after a particular bad battle. (Which I won of course. ;D) but that was years ago.

[Corinthian]

Something to remember (or so I seem to remember:confused:), is that things with second shape will not change in to that shape if they have more than 100 fatigue. This means that a skratti witch have tired itself out by casting spells will not become a werewolf. This is also why stellar cascade is a popular way of killing Chayots. If an unit does not have 100+ fatigue and have a second shape then it is impossible to kill it with just one attack. Even if hit with something like soulslay which cause 999 points of damage it will still have at least 1 hp left in its second shape. More if its a Skratti because they regenerate.

Unfortunately I think the Skrattis first shape is the wolf form and its last shape is the werewolf form so this is harder to abuse than you'd think.