0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
| -> IMO having a bless other than nature is not really needed, as well as the berserking ability (are niefels with 14 morale + bless + sermon + very rare losses, really routing often ?).
So this kind of strategy would work well with an awake green dragon, order 3, production 1, cold 3, misfortune 2, nature 8, dom 6, and this kind of pretender allow you to take 10-20 provinces instead of staling the first turns (and spread more your dominion since the beginning, so the dom 6 is not as weak as on an imprisoned one). Of course, it's at a price : no fire magic and no akashic record but the first isn't really hard to find on indie mages (and you just need fire 1 for some rings) and the second is not especially needed for a strategy based on brute force. Also you can make big economies by using some Jotun Godes instead of Niefel Jarls (say for a 5 squads army 3 godes casting blessx2 and sermon and 2 well equiped jarls casting blessx2 then attacking). -> My Niefels are merrily frolicking the fields w/ F4E4S4N6, courtesy of the Monolith. Order-3 is a must, as is at least Growth-1. No drain. You are already behind in research. My thoughts on the blessing: - Most things that a Niefel (or even a Jotun) hit, die so why not make them hit a little better; I'll also be fielding fewer troops than my opponents -> F4 for +2 att. - Since I'm fielding fewer troops, my troops must make more hits to get rid of enemy troops; also my Jarls need to buff and NOT get hit while too much fatigued -> E4 for reinvigoration +2. - Magic Resistance: Goooood for Jarls -> S4 - To drive the affliction chance down and 10% regeneration -> N6 This means that sacred leaders other than Jarls under this bless are very effective and early expansion NOT using Jarls is (read: should be) very effective. After a few indies, many your leaders should be in HoF. Jarls, after Quicken Self and Blessing, are able to singlehandedly take on indies (watch out for heavy cavalry). Keep recruiting the sacred leaders and use them as mini-thugs. Hand out Amulets of Luck, if pearls can be spared. Start bloodhunting now - Skrattis. Your research will suffer for it but bloodsummons are easy way to fill the giants' ranks with size-2 chaff - Jotuns are size-4, that means a human-sized thing can occupy same grid with a Jotun. Recruit infantry from indies for this purpose also. Blood also gives you access to Boots of Youth for your Gygjas (and Sages), although a well-placed Thistle Mace should accomplish same thing. Prophetize your first scout and use her to spread your dominion, which also spreads cold scale. And your pretender can forge a plethora of VERY useful things. I haven't yet tried skratti's second form for thug chassis, so anyone want to chip in on that? Quicken self, Breath of Winter at least, maybe a Shroud of Battle Saint? They have been too precious for me as my bloodhunters. -> neat idea there, Felgar. I normally go around with smaller armies like some of the others here have mentioned, but I bet that is fun as heck wielding a large army of that many Niefels. The only thing that struck me when looking at your battle formation is that with your leaders being forward a bit, most AI armies will target those first and especially with their archers, it seems. Even if other troops move out in front during the battle, archers seem to continue to target the troops that were at the front at the start of the battle, even if they fall back later. This may help you avoid some lucky hits on your more expensive and more valuable commander units. Another thing that works well at times is to put your Jarls on the flanks with personal Quickness casted and let them try to flank and do some damage that way. Even if they push ahead later in the battle, the other giants still take the brunt of the armies attacks if they were positioned a little forward at the start. This is from a single-player perspective anyway. I have yet to play around with MP yet. The quickness will make them tire out faster, though, so now you have a new problem in trying to keep them invigorated. That is where the Earth blessing can help and some of the nice easier to create reinvigorate boots which seem to be easier to get than in Dom 2. -> To all, Thanks for your thoughts. Instead of answering 1 poster at a time I thought I¿d address everything I can in a single post. As to my scale picks, I agree they are probably less than optimum. I chose growth +3 because giants need to eat and the Niefels cost a fortune to build. Nothing increases income over time as well as growth +3 in my opinion. Its spring in the year 11 in my game and my starting province has a population of 63,000 (I have no idea if bad events have killed any pop there). I think I started with about 25,000-30,000, so I¿ve already doubled my population in about 10 years. Of course double pop means twice the gold and supplies as well, so this is far better than 21% gold for order +3 or 30% extra recourses for prod +3 since its gold cost that prevents me from building more Niefels, not recourses. Sure order or Prod gives you gold right away, but over time you¿ll make far more money with growth than either of those two. Growth is also giving me +6% gold, so order would only be +15% more gold without the growth. Also the extra 45% supplies (the manuals stated 60% is wrong) make life a lot easier until you can start making some broth pots. I don¿t like to take negative scales if possible, but I guess it¿s possible to come up with a good negative scale strategy tailored to the race. I¿m simply not familiar enough with the game to feel comfortable taking a negative scale. The fire and astral picks were basically forced upon me as I wanted 10 nature picks no matter what. There just weren¿t enough points left to get two other magic paths both to level 4, so I went with the magic path he already starts with some skill in (astral) and then chose fire since the giants have no fire mages. After reading everyone¿s posts here, perhaps earth would have been better, but my question is why? I haven¿t seen a single giant fall over from fatigue yet, so is earth really that essential? I tested this strategy with lower level nature picks with 10% or 15% regeneration, but lost far too many Niefel giants to make it a cost effective choice. If you¿re going to go with lower level nature picks then don¿t bother using Niefels as you¿ll lose too many to make it cost effective. You¿d be better off using Skin Shifters instead for your main force. Their ability to shape change into werewolves when killed is pretty awesome in itself. A large pack of 40 Skin Shifters would do almost as well as 15 or 20 giants without the huge gold cost associated with the Neifels. With 20% regeneration, your opponent has to do more than 14 damage to a unit every single turn if he hopes to eventually kill it. And with 50+ hit points, even then chances are the giant will kill you before you can whittle down his hit points enough to kill him. The only time I lose giants right now is when they are massively outnumbered. If enough units swarm around them their total damage adds up (8 little guys doing 2 damage each is 16 a turn), that¿s why I upped my army to 25 giants and 5 leaders, it guarantees I have a solid line across the entire field which prevents their opponents from swarming around to the sides and rear. The +2 berserk guarantees units will not retreat since they inevitably go berserk long before their hit points are low enough to threaten death. I¿ve never seen my giant troops fall over from fatigue, so I can¿t see Reinvigoration +2 being that big of a deal. By the time powerful magic rolls around, I can equip all my jarls with reinvigoration items so they won¿t fall out due to hostile spells. I also doubt +2 reinvigoration will help the troops much against powerful mages later in the game. I don¿t know the magic system all that well yet so I could well be wrong, but the difference between 14 hit points a turn and less than 10 is too good to pass up. I was losing about 1 or 2 giants per province at the lower levels, but 20% seems to be the sweet spot. I now only lose a giant if my bless fails and I¿ve seen these armies defeat huge enemy armies filled with powerful troops. The only time I ever lost with this strategy so far was to some kind of fear spell. I had initially bunched up my commanders in the center of a large squad, but the spell forced all my commanders to flee and my army fled after them (no one died, they just ran away). That¿s why I split my squads into small groups and spread them out. If one or two Jarl¿s flee due to a nasty spell, you still have a chance at winning. I should also stress I play with level 9 neutrals and the hardest possible research, so if you play with default settings large armies like this won¿t be needed. But with level 9 neutrals I¿ve seen over 30 knights plus heavy infantry and longbowmen both with squads of about 50 each, so a small force of giants at that level won¿t work for tougher provinces. Against militia or other low damage troops you can probably start an earlier expansion than I did, but be warned Barbarians are your nemesis if you don¿t have large numbers of giants. They do enough damage that they can wipe out 5-10 giants easily even if they are 100% all blessed. Those blasted great swords and mauls do lots of damage and can chew up giants better than most other neutral troop types if they can gang up on them. As to the Skrattis I too use them for bloodhunting and research. Their werewolf form allows them to command more troops and gives them regeneration abilities, but what good is the wolf form? Does anyone have a use for the wolf form? I thought perhaps wolves come to their aid in battle or something, but I¿ve never used them in wolf form yet so I don¿t know. That¿s a good trick with the scout. I prophetized the starting general so he could go around with my magic site search party and search for holy. But I like your scout idea better. He can head into neutral territory and get the cold scale up for the early attacks, so perhaps only 10 or 15 giants would be good for a starting army. I¿ll test it the next time I play a game as the Niefels. About the leaders in the front row. I tried putting them 1 pixel behind or in the center, but it scrambles the setup and I had trouble getting everyone blessed. The above formation is the only way I could get everyone densely packed enough that 95% of the time 100% of them get blessed with 5 casters casting. If there is even 1 more rank of giants (3 rows instead of just 2), it screws up the casts. This is also the reason why I set them up all the way in the backfield. The enemy archers that can reach that far generally miss and I haven¿t suffered any afflictions by archer fire yet. All my Jarl¿s afflictions came from melee combat, that is why I have now switched their orders to bless, bless, bless, cast spells. Early on they don¿t really have many spells to cast, but now that all my research is up to level 6 they are better off as spell casters now than melee guys. In future games I may just nix using Jarl¿s in melee period. I have 5 heroic Jarls with afflictions now, and they do nothing but research until I can heal them. Not a game breaker, but a nuisance for sure. -> If you're not going to use Neifel Jarls for melee, I probably wouldn't even buy them. Honestly I wouldn't even buy them to use as melee army commanders. With the right bless and a few items, they make SCs. Short of that I wouldn't use them. Regular Godes should be able to handle the leading and blessing job and are much cheaper. -> The shapeshifting Skrattis are a new addition to Dom3. They didn't change forms earlier. Any way, I think the Wolf form is stealthy, unlike the other forms. As others have said, they make good Super-Combatants (SCs). That is, if you give them magical items and script them to cast spells that enchance their battle prowess, the afflictions become much more rare, and if you stack the oddss high enough, they can eventually wipe out whole armies. As an example, forge them an Ice Sword, or Sword of Quickness, and perhaps better armor. Look out for the armor's encumberance value, though. Quickness it also very good; Personal Quickness is Alteration 3. Earth bless gives reinvigoration, which lowers fatique. Fatique hurts even before your giants fall unconscious. See page 76 of the manual. The example is nice. -> The Order scale is really nice early though. I didn't see it mentioned so if it was my bad, but if you make a Niefel Jarl a prophet he can use Divine Blessing to bless the entire battlefield instead of using many of them, that way you can use other mages to buff your troops or use the Jarls themselves to use other spells. I just quickly looked at Niefelheim EA and don't know how it would work out, but another possible pretender design is to use the Son of Fennerer for a W9 N7 or something. W9 give you quickness, which is great especially for these guys, and defence skill. Both of which will help you not get hit because you're killing faster and getting hit less, might be worth it not to stock up on nature so high. The Drain scale might not be too bad, you'll be behind in research even farther but you get increased MR on all troops in exchange and more points to use for other scales or magic for blessing. Anyway, just a few things to think about. -> you're losing Niefel Jarls because you don't have earth bless. After casting quickness and blessing you get around 30 fatigue which gives you -3 defense and as jarls attack it quickly gets worse. Even though they don't fall unconcious they're getting hit so often that you need high regeneration just to survive (and of course, it causes you moral difficulties). With Earth bless you manage your fatigue on somewhat acceptable level which means you maintain good defense and don't get hit often. So essentially, that's lack of earth bless that causes you to go in massive armies instead of being able to send your jarls alone. fatigue is a killer for SCs, particularly when quickened. The worst part is not the penalty to defense, but the fact that it allows for armour piercing hits (IIRC from Dom:PPP & Dom2). 30 fatigue means opponents hitting through your defense have a 30% chance of scoring an armour piercing hit...thus why the Earth bless is even more important for Niefels than the Nature one: better not suffering any damage from mundane troops than trusting your regen to make up for it. Besides, Niefels cannot trust any longer Breath of Winter to do the killing for them, so battles take longer, and that means still more fatigue 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%. -> 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. -> The beauty of Niefel Jarls is that with abundance of gold in Dom3 you can buy one SC per turn which already comes equipped (default shield is pretty good). They may not be good enough to stand real challenges, but they dispatch regular armies just fine as long as they don't get tired -> I think an Earth/Nature bless would be better than a Water/Nature bless. I also like to do drain 3 and s4 for the extra +3 to magic resist if possible. It hurts your research and combat spellcasting but you won't rely on spellcasting as much as other nations, and you can forge the death research item at construction 4 so as not to far too far behind. Give them enough nature to at least get berzerk and enough earth to get them reinvig 6 if possible. I've found that it is hard to get nature and earth gems so it is hard to rely on forging reinvig items for the commanders.I like to equip the Neifel Jarls with a wavebreaker and horror helm. Then you have them cast quicken self and maybe a mirror image if they have air, at the beginning of battle. That gives them 6 attacks. They can really mow through the enemies. Another problem for these guys can be supply issues. Since the nature gem supply may be low you probably won't want to spend your limited supply of gems making supply items. I use the Skodas?(old ladies) in my armies. They ususally start with +10 or +20 supply due to their nature magic. Putting some of them in your army can help. You can then use the onces that get astral picks to cast luck and body ethereal on some of your giants. Of course if you can find nature indies it's much more cost effective. Research order - I think I'd start researching Alteration? until Wolven Winter is researched and then move to construction4, then enchantment 2 for raise dead and then evocation until falling frost is reached. From there, maybe blood. It would be nice to be able to summon some fliers for help in storming castles. -> Here's my quick advice. I tend to do rather well with Niefelheim. The best bless is E9N9. * W9 (with all respect to HB) only stacks for Defense stat, not for AP or blows. This is less than totally sexy. * S9 is pointless - one hit (even a fire hit) seldom does much, and your Jarls are already MR 18 and can't benefit from that. * F9 is nice, but not as good as E9 or W9. * A9, likewise. * D9 is only good on massed sacreds, which you do not have. * B9 is silly, frankly - and the strength boost from any blood at all is essentially redundant on a niefel giant of any kind.
- Construction. Your research sucks so you will *need* skull mentors at const 4. Also, you'll really want to kit out your niefel jarls. - the various searching spells (thats Thaum 2, Conj 3, Evoc 2, Blood 2.) One of the big strengths of this position is that you can find all sites but fire, earth and air remotely. Do not, however, wait until you have this to do site searching. You'll need the gem income. - Alteration. This gives you access to Wolven Winter and Soul Vortex. You should probably cast wolven winter in every province where you might have a battle. Soul Vortex greatly increases the survivability of your Jarl-thugs. - Enchantment. Here's the deal - have a gygja cast white mage (give her a skull staff if needed). Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, she can now *see in the dark*, which will enable her to hurl mighty and destructive magics even in darkness. Do this with a couple of skratti as well. Your enemies *will* try to use darkness against you in their desperation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against wight mages casting.. - Evocation. Your niefel giants are absolutely outstanding meat-shields, but even with soul vortex up the jarls just don't kill people that fast. You'll need mighty battle magics (and sooner than you think). Since you only need evocation in some battles, Shadow Blast is even better for you than it is for everyone else. Cast it a lot and love it. Falling Frost and Cleansing Water are also useful in a lot of situations. 8.19.2 Jotunheim
Overview
Jotunheim has good magic diversity, but no natural access to Air, Earth, or Fire. There are some old age issues, but access to nature and blood magic so this can be mitigated. The strength of this nation is in the power of its commanders rather than its national troops. Vaetti Hags make excellent cheap researchers and Jotun Jarls and Skrattis make very good thugs. In order to secure a strong early game, players need access to multiple forts and need to start their blood economy as soon as possible. National Features Units Vaetti Goblin - Good These units are very good for the price, and can share a square with your giants increasing the offensive power of your front line. In the long run they are just chaff, but they are also stealthy so when magic starts to rule the battlefield you can use them as raiders. Wolf Rider - Mediocre These units are a bit too expensive to be useful at 20 gold each. They are stealthy and make good flankers, but they are too fragile to spend lots of money on. Moose Riders - Bad When you look at the Moose Rider, its stats are impressive. High HP, two 16 damage melee attacks, 2 short bows, and stealthy. However, their stats do not reflect their usefulness. The melee attacks have a very high miss rate, and Moose Riders cost the equivalent of 4.5 independent archers. These units are just too costly to use as standard ranged troops or as raiders. It's a great idea, but it just doesn't turn out to be all that practical. Jotun Militia - Bad They are big and can take a good deal of punishment, but that's about it. Jotun Javelinist - Good Giants make good javelineers due to their high strength, and Javelinists have similar stats to other giants but are less expensive in terms of gold and resources. Jotun Hurler - Mediocre These units have a niche role in a siege, but they are not very good on the battlefield due to their awful defense value. Jotun Spearman - Mediocre They are big and can take a good deal of punishment, but they're not that powerful offensively. They have higher protection and lower defense than Huskarls. Jotun Axeman - Mediocre They are big and can take a good deal of punishment, but they're not that powerful offensively. They have higher protection and lower defense than Huskarls. Jotun Huskarl - Mediocre You get your choice of axe or spear. The axe does quite a bit more damage but the spear is longer. These guys are not bad, they will hold the line but they aren't that powerful offensively. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|