Niefelheim Strategy for the Early Era

[alexti]

That's strategy looks like a real overkill. I've tried Niefels with one of the human pretenders, imprisoned N6E4S3 or something like that. Dominion 5 or 6, Order+3,Cold+3,Sloth+1,Growth+1,Luck-2,Magic+1. Those Niefel Jarls is a real power from early on. With nature (regeneration is more to prevent afflictions than anything else) and earth (reinvigoration) blessing and with quicken oneself (alt-2) they can handle most of indies (and early AI army) alone. So I bought few Gigjas and Skrattis, went for Alt-2 while my starting army went to conquer indies from turn 2 (with scout who became prophet). In a 5-6 turns I had enough income to recruit Niefel Jarl per turn, Alt-2 was researched by that time, so they just went conquering everything around. Further research targets are Con-4 and Alt-6 - Niefel Jarls don't need any extras to deal with low-end armies, but when facing more advanced (and larger) armies they need soul vortex and few cheap items. Nothing AI can do against that. It will probably work as initial expansion plan in MP, might be a decent plan in blitz as well. If you attack your neighbour with 5 jarls (one per province) many nations will have problems defeating more than one jarl per turn so early in the game, which means they'll quickly lose their territory.