Advice for Abysia against Niefelheim

[llamabeast]

Just by chance, I've spent almost my entire Dominions-MP time lately fighting against Dr Praetorius' N9E9 Niefel giants - in one game as Sauromatia, and in another as Abysia.

I must say I hate the wretched things (no offence Dr Praetorius, you're playing very well with them). They really narrow the range of strategies you can use, because you simply can't beat them in a fair fight even if you outnumber them a hundred to one. They just keep regenerating (N9 bless), they don't get tired (E9), and simply won't die. I did eventually beat him in the Sauromatia game, but only using cheaty tactics of my own - lots of undead in the Dark, with Fog Warriors, and even then the battle was ridiculously close to a complete stalemate.

So, in the Abysia game, I have every advantage. I have lots of provinces, decent research (for turn 20-odd), heaps of money, lots of fire gems, quite a few mages and decent resources. Niefelheim is much smaller at the moment, although he is now expanding quickly.

So, given the fact that I can build almost any army I like pretty quickly, does anyone have any suggestions as to how to take on the giants? His army is about 40 giants and jarls. The tactic I just tried was a huge army of salamanders, 100-odd, with an array of mages casting Prison of Fire. It was fairly effective, his giants couldn't do damage that fast, and a lot of them nearly died from the heat - but then all the salamanders and mages got tired, and he wiped them out. Total giant casualties - two.

Any ideas, anyone? It must be possible to beat them somehow.

Thanks!

llamabeast

[Teraswaerto]

The fire spell Blindness should work nicely.

[llamabeast]

Well the trouble is their MR is so high that by the time a significant number of them were blind, I'd be dead. I think the probability of it working is maybe 14%? So blinding 40 giants would take a very long time.

[Teraswaerto]

Abysia can make penetration items, and Blindness needs only 1 fire to cast, but you would need lots of mages for it to work. Lots of mages casting Incinerate might work too, together with lots of heavy infantry with battleaxes. Lots lots.

If you are using blood magic it has spells that would be effective, though they are high research.

[PDF]

Did you try burning them to the ground, with packs of Anathemants and Anointeds casting Fire Clouds, Falling Fires, Fireballs and so on ?
That with a solid Abysian inf screen could be effective, the Abysians don"t take damage from stray fireballs. As you're playing EA the Burning ones are very tough and hit hard enough to kill giants I think - but they're sooo costly they need some bless strategy to be worth their cost IMHO.

[Sammual]

As a hard core Niefelheim player I can tell you what hurts the most. Being hit in the pocket book. Don't try to fight him head to head. Use small armies to take his provinces, don't bother to defend them too well. As soon as he splits up his army try to hit one of his smaller armies with 2 or 3 of yours. Heavy on the fire magic, have you expensive mages retreat after casting the fire spells and wear them down. And above all else make shure he doesn't have 'Gift of Health' active. If he does then you are screwed. Extra giant HP and removal of afflictions will make his armies almost unstoppable.

Sammual

[llamabeast]

Well the thing is with 40 giants, each of which regenerates 15hp every turn, it's very hard to damage them fast enough. I suspect that even twenty mages casting steadily would just spread their damage too thinly to kill them quickly. Also Burning Ones almost invariably die in one hit from the giants, so it's impossible to hold them off for any length of time. I've also never seen them kill a giant, although my bless is very weak (Fire 4).

As for the blindness - sadly I haven't got any construction research yet, so can't make any Eyes of the Void. And if he once throws up Antimagic I'm stuffed, although to be fair he has no research at all yet. Maybe I'll do a test game and give it a go.

The reason I'm a bit unsure about using MR spells is that in the Sauromatia game, I had 22 soul slays cast a turn for several turns, each using Eyes of the Void and Spell Focuses, and they killed maybe 4 or 5 giants. He did have Antimagic though.

Aargh! I hate giants!

One thing I think I did wrong with the salamanders was attack in a Cold-1 province, rather than a Heat-3 province. Would that make a lot of difference to the amount of damage the salamanders would do, and how quickly they get tired?

[Sammual]

Don't try to take them in one battle. They have the advantage in large battles. Use a few short battles to weaken them first. The giants will take battle afflictions and over time will take starvation afflictions as well. Hit and run fights don't let them use the chill, rejuve, or regen to any effect.

Sammual

[Shovah32]

As said raiding will help. Combine that with a large number of battle-axe abysian infantry and as many fire mages as possible(if you can research up to pillar of fire that could be a big help) to burn his giants to death. High strength battleaxes are great for damaging the giants a bit and massed fire spells(falling fires and pillar of fire preferably) can do a large amount of damage to them. Another option would be taking a fire9, high dom, high prod pretender and using burning ones who, while not being very resistant to giants attacks can do great damage with high attack, high strength, flaming morning stars.

[Teraswaerto]

I think Incinerate is the best fire damage spell against the giants, better even than Pillar of Fire, maybe. Armor negating instead of armor piercing like all other fire spells, high damage, precision 100.

Falling fires and other area of effect spells will do much less damage to a single giant, and they regerate so fast.

Soul Slay is S3, Blindness is F1, so penetration will be much better.