Counters to Niefelheim

[Zylithan]

P.S. This community rocks. I've played other 4X type games, and I'm very impressed with the friendliness and helpfulness of the dominions community. I look forward to joining you useful folks.

[Micah]

Flaming arrows and indy archers will crushinate the sacred giant troops. With communion available or just a simple F2 + phoenix power + extra gem in casting it shouldn't even take much mage power. Just get some chaff to soak up the giants attacks halfway down the battlefield and watch the pain.

[thejeff]

I'm not sure Flaming Arrows is that effective against Neifel Giants, but it's worth trying if you've got the mages.

Since you've got Air mages to spare, use Wind Guide to make every arrow count. (And minimize friendly fire.)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I hadn't noticed the mystics had a chance at fire, along with the mage engineers.

I don't particularly recommend this for arco, I'd ruther spend gems on air elementals before I'd forge eyes of aiming on a nation with powerful air magic, but its good for some others, and you can use Wind Guide as effectively, I believe. Moreso, perhaps, because you're not wounding your mages to put it into use, and taking any attack or defense penalties.

Units with 8 to 10 precision capable of casting magma bolts will benefit greatly from an additional five precision. Most earth magic has a short range, however, and you might not be willing to move your mages so close to the front lines.

You won't get pinpoint accuracy, but bolts will be much more tightly grouped, and you'll be fearing friendly fire less.

[thejeff]

I still think the best counter to Neifel Giants is to one-shot them. Even with a good mr, at least the ones you get die. (Or get enslaved, even better.)

With their regen you're going to have to hit them at least 2-3 times in quick succession to kill with magma bolts, or lighting, or fire arrows.
Maybe falling fires or better yet, magma eruption. Decent area, good damage and leaves a heat aura behind.

[Folket]

I would say that Charm, Thaumaturgi 7 is your best bet.

A N3 oreiad have 18% chance to charm a Niefel giant. With eye of the void (5 astral pearls) it is increased to 30%.

For the cost of fielding 30 niefel giants and a niefel jarl you should be able to field 10 oreiads with eyes of the void.

Just put the mages close to the enemy with chaff with hold and attack orders in front, so that they are within your 20 range.

With three giants deserting every turn you should be able to win the battle.

Your average Oreiad should be able to cast charm 5 times before passing out. Those with nature random should be able to cast it 9 times.

You can also forge rune smashers and spell focus with your mystics. With spell focus, rune smasher and eye of the void your Oreiads will charm 54% of the time.

I think your second best shot is living clouds and lightning.
With storm and storm power your Oreaiads with air random should be able to cast living clouds twice. On average it will take the niefel giant 13 attacks to kill an air elemental. Slightly less if the elemtal is attack several time a round. So if you manage to summon 30 air elemental, the giants will be stuck for a while. The air elementals will do AN damage and will not be hurt by lightning spells you cast. Air elementals will also work well as chaff if you are casting charm.

You can give a crystal matrix to an Oreiad with air random. Use her with 8 mystics casting communion slave. After storm power each casting of living clouds will give you 7 air elementals. Theoretically you should be able to cast living clouds 8 times before your communion is to tired. But the AI will probably burn to many gems for that to happen. On the other hand if the AI burn more gems then needed you will get 8 elementals.

[Juzza]

To get neifel giants have a fire bless, takes them down so easy, if your not planning on fighting them before game though, flame arrows a re good too, um the incinerate spells.

Oo maybe a thug commander with something like a Gate Cleaver, half there health down in one hit from him, even if he hits the shield

[OmikronWarrior]

I've been messing around with the Sons of Winter a lot lately, single player only but I'm scheduled to be in an MP game with them sometime soon. Anyways, others have already suggested ways to handle them in battle, so I won't elaborate there. Except, they are incredibly tough with a good bless and you're going to have to pull out all the stops to beat them. One thing to keep in mind is their stats (Strength, Attack and Defense Skill, and AP) are all adjusted by the temperature scale. So, lure them into a hot territory (or make the territory their in hot) to get a much better shot at beating them. The difference between a 3-cold and 3-hot territory is -6. That isn't cheap change.

On the broader strategic level, Neifelheim's key weakness is its incredibly poor PD. Yeah, I know the manual says they have great PD, but its dead wrong. Developers must have changed something. Use stealth or flying troops to RAID, RAID and RAID some more. I see you're getting a new hard drive, considering a RAID configuration? Whats with all the bugs in the bathroom, somebody needs to spray some RAID. Pop in some of your own PD (assumming it isn't worthless), raise taxes, and make his economy cry.

You see, those sacred ice giants cost 150 gold apiece. To assemble 30+ in a single battle represents an enormous amount of resources. So, he's likely not producing much of anything else. Convince him he has to be in two, or three, or four places at once and he'll start spliting that giant army up into peices (of course, putting 30 of those guys together in one place is criminally inefficient anyways, but thats another story), to sizes you can actually have a shot at beating. Didn't say it'd be easy, but it would be doable.

[Baalz]

The thing is, fire is AP (or regular damage) while lightning is AN. With an earth bless in a cold dominion the giants have over 20 protection so even with their fire weakness you've got quite the uphill battle...plus AOE is less effective because theres only one per square. Lightning, OTOH, benefits by there being only one per tile (damage is concentrated) as well as the air mage prescison bonus. Throwing down ~20 orb ligtnings per turn and you won't have much trouble lighting up each giant several times in short order. Besides, you're generally gonna have to hit each one several times to make a soul slay stick as well...

[Micah]

Given that Niefel's sacreds should have a 19 MR after Antimagic goes off I really can't get behind an MR-spell based counter to them.

It might work in this case since the Niefel player is new, but it's not a good general strategy.