Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

I am relatively new and haven't played many nations that benefit from extreme blesses (I've been too enamored of good scales and huge armies).

But now I've been looking at Niefelheim, and a pretender design strategy occurred to me. It's about 180 degrees different from what I usually do, so I find it intriguing. Can anyone tell me if it's (a) been done to death already, (b) completely stupid, or (c) possibly a good idea?

Here goes: Imprisoned 9W9F5S Oracle (I believe it requires 1 bad scale to make it work).

With this, you can't pump the dominion high and have luck/growth/productivity, but you get a powerful dual-bless and
late-game astral boost including ring-forging.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

That will give you a vastly destructive force of giants - for a few turns each battle.

Your first problem: You only get one giant per square and giants are very expensive, so your army is small and doesn't hit many opponents. Each turn, with two attacks, each giant will probably kill 2 opponents, but take 8 fatigue. Step forward 13 turns, and your giants collapse unconscious from exhaustion. So you can only kill (giants x 2 x 13) enemies before you slow down a lot. It's very easy, particularly against undead or spells like swarm, to meet that many enemies, and your cold aura isn't going to help you that much.

Here you meet your second problem. Giants have a ton of HP, but they will steadily take damage, and they'll take a lot more when exhausted. Thus your 70-HP giants are actually starting to look very vulnerable and very easily to kill after a few rounds of combat. If your opponent has spells like Stellar Cascades and ohters that cause fatigue damage, it's going to be even worse. Although without regeneration from a nature bless, they merely need to throw enough of any damage spell and your giants will die eventually.

If you are going to bless giants like that, the optimum is always going to be taking high Earth and Nature blesses. Earth prevents them tiring out, nature allows them to take vast amounts of punishment. E9N4+ is what you want to look at.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

In general I think of Niefelheim as one of the best defensive nations in the game. If you are playing it for your love of "huge armies" you will find it pretty rough. But their PD is great and they "turtle" well (mostly stay at home building up slowly). They can be a good choice on small maps with many players where they dont have to go far in order to do battle.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

Thanks. I hadn't considered fatigue so much. I guess the W9F9 bless, sexy as it is, is better for nations with larger numbers of sacred units. Two followups:

1) With nature mages casting spells/forging items that grant fatigue lifting/regeneration, does this strategy improve, at least for Niefel Jarls?
2) Would an E9Nx oracle make sense (i.e, is the other part of the strategy bad as well)?

Thanks for the advice. I am looking at this for a way to break away from my love of huge armies and do something completely different (small numbers of elite units). Of course, Niefelheim has 'huge' armies in a completely different sense...

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

Actually, Niefelheims PD is under mediocre at best in my opinion - jotun militia are pretty much useless, and while the jarl at PD20 is a very good thug even unequipped if blessed, it won't make much difference when he routs the moment the militia that amount of PD gives you dies.

Also their mages are expensive per research point in the magic-filled early era, so they'll either need some very lucky independent mage finds or simply HUGE amounts of gold. The good thing is that the skratti are awesome combat mages, singlehandedly they can even dispatch sc's solo when you hit high blood magic, and they can be turned into very efficient killing machines with proper equipment in werewolf form.

I agree with Agema, e9n4 or e9n6 bless is the optimal for the giants - possibly if you really want, add in some astral for late game astral power and some added magic resistance (the thing the giants really like is more MR when paralyze/soul slay starts to be the norm in the battlefield). Your Niefel Jarls and Niefel giants really benefit from the reinvig4 and prot4 from earth and the regen keeps them standing when the few odd hits get in or they spontaneously combust or whatever they like to take damage from.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

Niefel Jarls absolutely want the earth bless for +4 reinvig, it means you can possibly do away with needing +reinvig items (or alternatively use +reinvig items and cast Quicken Self). It also makes them much more active if you employ them as combat mages rather than thugs/SCs.

Regeneration is also brilliant. If you take damage, it makes you less likely to take an affliction. Further, if you use them as SCs they inevitably pick up a few cuts and bruises whilst single-handedly wading through the enemy. Just a small bit of regeneration stops lots of cuts and bruises adding up to death.

Finally, there's an item called Shroud of the Battle Saint. Put it on your Skratti with an E9N4-6 bless and change shape the Skratti into a Werewolf on the strategy map (don't use the battlefield command!) - you've now got another source of extremely lethal SCs. Yum.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

On the other hand, Niefelheim has super awesome skinshifters. You can try playing them without a bless and use skratti werewolves for sc duty.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

And what armor do you want to put on them? Well if you have 9E6N or 9E8N robe of the battle saint is the most efficient.

9E6N or 9E8N works great on their Jarls, it works great on their troops, it works great on the werewolves when they wear RBS.

The only thing you may want is a little astral for the MR. But it is of lesser importance than the earth and nature.

It is sad about the skinshifters, they should be moved to MA.

EDIT: Agema beat me to it, doh! Should not have skipped to the end of the thread!

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

Sure a strong bless is a well working strategy with niefel, I just don't think it is the only good one. The skinshifters are actually better for the cost even with a bless I think.

And the werewolves can be amazing sc without a bless. Flesh eater, blood thorn, luck pendant and some armour.

Re: Niefelheim Pretender Design Question
 

Yeah, E9Nx is a waste of time on Niefl. They don't *need* it - the Jarls are perfectly good SCs without it, and the giants are a waste of money. And all those pretender design points you were going to spend on a bless (because lets face it, E9Nx is expensive for Niefl) can be rolled over into scales or a pretender who actually does something useful.

Also, you'll want to use your pearls on something other than shrouds. The era of clamming like mad in the endgame is over (at least in virtually any MP game organized via these forums). You don't have arbitrarily many pearls, its time to start rejecting strategies that overuse valuable and quite limited resources. You're going to want caps and coins and AMAs and pendants. Your pearls are already overworked. Where are these shrouds coming from exactly?