Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[Endoperez]

Manual, page 76 lists fatique effects, and gives an example with 30 fatigue. Defence would be lowered by 3 (-1 /10 fatique), attack would be lowered by 1 (-1 /20 fatique) and if 2d6oe roll -2 (fatique/15) is lower than 2, a critical hit would be scored. 2d6oe means a simulated roll of 2 six-sided dice, with 6s added to the sum and rolled again. I won't bother to calculate how often the critical hits happen, but it's far less than 30%.

@Foodstamp: What Nerfix said. Besides, you want to start taking provinces with your Jarls ASAP, instead of waiting until you pull some research in construction (and you will most likely have a drain dominion).

@Endo: Heh, I have to get used to all the arcane knowledge we more or less guessed in past games being somewhere in the manual now, thanks for pointing that out.

[Foodstamp]

I never have problems taking provinces from the get go without earth bless. I figured the reinvigoration was for later on when you are fighting "put together armies" instead of independents.

[Sandman]

I've had a spin with Neifelheim, and I'd have to say that using nothing but Neifel giants wouldn't occur to me. I'd certainly build some to act as the core of the army, but mixed in with plenty of normal Jotuns as well. Say, 25 Jotun spearmen for every 5 Neifels. Much less chance of getting swarmed, so there's no need for an excessive nature bless.

[Daynarr]

You can start expanding fast with imprisoned N10 W9 Son of Fenrir (that Big wolf pretender) and still decent scales. Basically you can start expanding as soon as you buy 3-4 Niefel giants and starting troops on indie strength 9 with almost no losses. There is absolutely no need to wait who knows how many turns to get money and buy all at once. Other giant's are useful as well but cheaper so use them in combination with Niefel forces as support. This also works in MP.
DON'T make a prophet out of Niefel Jarl. You won't be buying him in first few turns and he’s already H2 so you only get additional 1 holy with him. You want to make a prophet of a unit that would usually sit back in battle and do nothing like scouts or army commanders. Don't make prophets of units that have 'so much to do so little time' syndrome in battle. Niefel Jarls are both SC's and casters so you definitely don't want to waste time with them on casting prophet spells someone else can do.

[Foodstamp]

Daynarr said:
You can start expanding fast with imprisoned N10 W9 Son of Fenrir (that Big wolf pretender) and still decent scales. Basically you can start expanding as soon as you buy 3-4 Niefel giants and starting troops on indie strength 9 with almost no losses. There is absolutely no need to wait who knows how many turns to get money and buy all at once. Other giant's are useful as well but cheaper so use them in combination with Niefel forces as support. This also works in MP.
DON'T make a prophet out of Niefel Jarl. You won't be buying him in first few turns and he’s already H2 so you only get additional 1 holy with him. You want to make a prophet of a unit that would usually sit back in battle and do nothing like scouts or army commanders. Don't make prophets of units that have 'so much to do so little time' syndrome in battle. Niefel Jarls are both SC's and casters so you definitely don't want to waste time with them on casting prophet spells someone else can do.

This is the exact setup I used last time I played niefelheim. Fenrir is an excellent pretender because he is also stealthy. In his own domain, he can reach upwards to 700 hit points btw. For a prophet, I usually use the starting commander, standard sacred commander with cold resist.

In my single player games, this has been the best setup so far, the lack of earth bless was no big deal once I got construction up, first priority for me in that game.

[Frostmourne27]

Ummm... if the 20% nature bless is that important, why not an imprisoned cyclops. Taking no scales other than cold 3, and without a higher dominion strength, you can do a 9/9 nature earth bless. If you took some negative scales you could actually HAVE a dominion, and maybe push one of the nines up to ten. Also, if you feel that +4 protection is unneeded, you could drop the earth down to eight and save some points there. For nothing but the magic, the cyclops is 19 points more expensive than the son of fenrir, and probably has a better bless.

[alexti]

If you take E9, you probably don't need more than N4 - that would save a lot of points.