Ashdod is worthless now

[Corinthian]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Some chasses have clearly optimal blesses. If you're going to use Niefl Giants, the optimal bless is obviously E9N4. Now, you may go with less than that because of cost, but that doesn't make it not the optimal bless for that chassis. And to pretend that chasses don't have optimal blesses with which they perform the best on the field is ridiculous.

Actually Squirrel, I have done some test and I found out that if you are taking a bless only for the Niefel giants, you are much better of with a Son of Fenrir with W4N6 and dom9.

Why? I compared him to the Master druid with a E9N4 bless and the wolf got *4* more scales and *3* points of extra dominion. The giants wont be quite as strong with this bless but you'll have much more of them and you are much more likely to fight your battles in cold dominion.

Actually strong dominion is a must with Niefelheim in general because every province without cold 3 gets income penalties. And its good for the popsicle giants in particular because of the Coldpower and Cold protection that they got.

Now the drawback is that you cant put Fire and Earth on him for diversity. Thats bad because those paths are a pain to bootstrap into unless you get lucky with indies or use Aschaic records.

This bless is also worse for your thugs (but we took it strictly for the troops). You have to put messenger boots on your skrattis if you want to thug with them. So thats 5 gems extra for every thug.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

Actually Squirrel, I have done some test and I found out that if you are taking a bless only for the Niefel giants, you are much better of with a Son of Fenrir with W4N6 and dom9.

That's my point. You can, if you want, be creative. Sure, there are "better" blesses than others. It's hard to argue that E9 or W9 are better than A9, for example. But even if some blesses are "optimal", they should not be "the only one that is possible". There's a difference between Jaguars benefiting more from F9 than S9, and not being able to use any other bless but F9.

Encumbrance 7 in a unit with 75g44r per attack (and no damaging aura), pretty much *force* them to earth blesses. With Encumbrance 5 it'll be the best possible bless anyway, but it would not force people to take it no matter of what. Someone could try to be creative as you did with your W4N6 bless. With encumbrance 7, that's simply not an option.


Now that I think, what other units have encumbrance 7, besides Annakites and centaur Cataphracts?

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by triqui

Now that I think, what other units have encumbrance 7, besides Annakites and centaur Cataphracts?

Blindfighters? (Was 10, now 8 in CBM)

There's piles of heavily armored units with >5 encumbrance in the base game.

And the problem with enc 5 anakim is they're broken overpowered in year 1 with E10N4+. So that's not even an option. It doesn't matter if it would let other blesses work, E10N4+ is too good so it can't be allowed to happen.

[Starbelly Geek]

Originally Posted by triqui

Now that I think, what other units have encumbrance 7, besides Annakites and centaur Cataphracts?

Nightmares (blessable Onyx Amazon unit) has 12 encumbrance. They're really great if you can guarantee that they won't have to fight for more than two rounds (or one if you hit them with a W9 bless). Too bad, because that massed interlocking fear aura could be so awesome.
An E10 bless makes them useful for up to four or five rounds of actual melee!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

Actually Squirrel, I have done some test and I found out that if you are taking a bless only for the Niefel giants, you are much better of with a Son of Fenrir with W4N6 and dom9.

Why? I compared him to the Master druid with a E9N4 bless and the wolf got *4* more scales and *3* points of extra dominion. The giants wont be quite as strong with this bless but you'll have much more of them and you are much more likely to fight your battles in cold dominion.

Contradiction much? (Note emphasis added)

It may be stronger for the nation (though I highly doubt it), but its not stronger for Niefl Giants. As you admit yourself. There's a difference between a bless that's optimal for a sacred and a pretender build that's optimal for the nation.

More generally, why would you even take a Son of Fenrir, its a bad chassis that does nothing for you? A green dragon would get you the N bless and be able to expand (not that Nieflheim needs it - well, they probably do as you apparently don't plan on using Niefl Jarls).

I think you'd find that E9 doubles the expected lifetime (or more) of Niefl Giants, and you don't double your income by avoiding it, plus it makes your Niefl Jarls into SCs from turn 1. The viable alternatives to E9N4 from a nation (not Niefl Giant) perspective are E4N4-based rainbows, which use skinshifters or just Jarls to expand, and the rainbow to diversify and site search.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

More generally, why would you even take a Son of Fenrir, its a bad chassis that does nothing for you? A green dragon would get you the N bless and be able to expand (not that Nieflheim needs it - well, they probably do as you apparently don't plan on using Niefl Jarls).

Why you can't use Niefl Jarls to expand with a W4N6 bless? It's not like Niefl Jarls *needs* a mandatory E9 to be able to kill a few indies...

Sure it helps against stronger indies, but it's not like you are not going to be able to expand. Specially with an Awake SC

[Slobby]

It's quite possible that I'm out to left field here, but I don't really see what all this e10n* talk is about.

Squirrel is bang on with the scales build.

Scales is the way to go those commanders cost an arm and a leg! I haven't tried expanding with the non sacred smaller giants but, they look pretty good stat wise. IF I were to go for a blessing I'd rather go F4E4N4 or something like that, to maximize killing and minimize standing around waiting for the DRN to screw over your E10N* giants which you banked everything on.

*shrug* E9N* has been around for awhile now most people know what to do to stop it in it's tracks (swarm them giants and/or fat/paralyze/soulslay/skelli/blindness/tangle/etc spam). You're putting your eggs in one basket. Small rush map sure. Larger map, those giants are going to gas as magic comes into play and then what do you do? Even if you played an aggressive early game thats only going to get you ganked in the end. So yeah, imo don't bother with the e9, go scales and minor rainbow bless, and fire is necessary to maximize every attack being a hit and thereby a kill.

Anyways my 2 cents carry on.