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

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.

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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"

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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:

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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... ;)

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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.

Re: Neifelhiem - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
 

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

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

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.

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

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 ;)

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

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

-Max

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

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

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

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

-Max

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

"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.

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

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.

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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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?

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

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...

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

@ 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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

@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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.)

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

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.

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

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 :)

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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*

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

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

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

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.

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

[quote=MaxWilson;664215]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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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!