Neifel giants suck?

[Joonie73]

Do you think having such a low attack and defense skills (11 and 11) is justified on such a costly unit? In my experience, they miss so much against the better melee units and conversely gets hit too often (though it takes a lot of blows to take them down).

[NTJedi]

These Giants were actually peaceful at one time which is why the stats are low... they've spent centuries spending most of their time fishing and farming.
Actually I don't know if any of that is true I thought it would add some smile to the topic tho.

[Teraswaerto]

The main thing to do with them is bless them with nature 9 and they regenerate like crazy due to the high hitpoints (and have high protection too when berzerking). They seem pretty good to me, but what do I know...

[Treebeard]

Their att/def Ratings are cold dependent, so you have to take it in consideration.

Also, I don't see anyone playing with Niefelheim without nature 9, so once they go berserk their att goes to 14 (normal temperature province).

Still, I like to save the money and get the Niefelheim commanders. Much better units, IMHO.

You don't 'need' to get Nature 9, because the basic unit of Jotun is the Spearman; that makes up the bulk of your armies because it's cheap and very effective.

Try interspersing smaller units behind and around your Giants; the advantage of them is their strength. Even the normal units can kill most other normal units in one blow and have great hp.

[LordArioch]

Well if you don't have nature 9 or some other strong bless plan you're better of with another jotunheim theme than niefelheim.

[PvK]

Ordinary Jotun giants are plenty deadly, even without very high attack or defense. Not only do they have high resistance to damage, but they have very high strength and huge weapons, which squash other units with ease. I've lost many good units and decked out heroes to them. I haven't encountered Niefels yet but with blessings they sound like they could be very potent.

PvK

Unless you are using another strategy. A strong bless plan isn't *needed*. There is Blood Giants with Nifel that work very well. As well as a few others.

Nature 9 is what you would like to assume since it makes the already strong units stronger; but I don't like playing the assumptive theme/races, just because they fit very well means that people think of that as a standard or norm.

Try Neif with 9 Fire pretender; that's fun

[Keir Maxwell]

Niefel Giants suck? Nah!

Like most other bless units Niefel giants are not that effective unless you abuse the whole bless concept. An important point to take into account in Dom II is that the value of sacred units includes the possibilities created by powerful bless effects and so if you don't use them they are often not great value.

My Niefel Giant strategy is Earth Mother (Earth9, Naure9) or Son of Niefel (Nature or Earth9, Water9). I have not found nature9 alone particularily impressive. You need a very high dominion with this race as well or else the warmth well melt away your protection and you will die due to low defence - beware of lizards!

I have found that only the most rounded sacred units (such as Machakan Hunters or Palidins of Marignon) or powerful (Van, Tuatha) work well with just one school of bless effects. I tried C'tis Dancers with just water 9 (no death fear effect) and found the increased length of combats a major concern and trashed that attempt.

My difficulty with bless effects at this point is how few genuine options there are to the Earth Mother. I don't like using the same pretender engine over and over and I like to limit myself to thematically appropriate pretender choices. However I'm only just starting to test astral and blood bless effects so I should find some more alternatives.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 25, 2003, 23:22: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[LordArioch]

What I meant by strong bless plan was not necessarily 9 nature as such, but some race design with good bless effects. Like ulm IF theme, niefelheim isn't fully effective unless you have a good bless. The giants are still decent unblessed, but are pretty weak for their cost without any bless effects.