Dominions 3: The Awakening/Nations/Niefelheim

Niefelheim is the realm of great ice giants. They are enemies of the Vanir. The frost giants are huge and strong and they are surrounded by a great aura of coldness. They also have lesser Jotun giants in their service. The mages of Niefelheim wield powers over Water and Death magic. The Jotun sorcerers know Blood and Water magic and other sorceries.

Inspiration
Niefelheim is drawn from the Norse mythologies. While Midgard was the home of Man, and Muspelheim the realm of fire, Niefelheim is the land of ice and darkness, ruled by Hel.

National Features
Niefelheim gets a "free" 120 points by taking a Cold 3 scale. In fact, some units' (like Niefel Jarls) actually get stronger in cold provinces (+1 Prot/+1 AP per cold tick), so Cold 3 is actually an advantage that ALSO gives you points. Conversely, these units have more trouble in hot provinces.

Units

 * Unit: Gold x, Resources y
 * Description

Commanders

 * Unit: Gold x, Resources y
 * Description

National Summons

 * Unit: Gems z
 * Description

Pretender Design
You can get a dual-bless E9N9W4 imprisoned Cyclops with Dominion 4 and nearly balanced scales (I think I traded Order-3 for Misfortune-3 and took Sloth-3, with Cold-3 of course). What this gets you is giant berserking Niefel Jarls who rarely take damage (Defense 14, Prot 17-20) and, even if they do, just go berserk (Prot +2) and regenerate the damage back. Attack 12 isn't stellar against cavalry but as you keep fighting, your opponent's fatigue keeps rising at about 20 points per round because of your chill aura--and every 20 points of fatigue is like -2 to defense, -1 to attack. And the Niefel Jarl is tough enough to survive the pounding until the aura kicks in. This might work with only E9N4 for half the price if you need good scales or an awake pretender.

Another alternative is taking N8W8 imprisoned Son of Fenrer with dominion 4, Order 3, Productivity 1 (giants are expensive!). Make one Niefel Jarl your prophet, and recruit about 4-6 Niefel Giants. The key is in their high Hit points, this means they will regenerate at least 10 Hit points per turn, plus the water bless means their defense is in the high 20s (varies due to domain for prophet but normal Niefel Jarl -defense =24), so they hardly get hit anyway. This should be capable of handling most indies level 5. Research construction 2 as soon as possible and equip your Niefel Jarls with luck pedants (50% of attacks that cause damage are negated), and they will even be harder to kill. Construction 4 gets you ring of regeneration (10% regeneration) which gives you a total of 25% regeneration (18 hit points per turn). Want more? Forge a Hydra Skin (construction 6) and you get another +10% and regenerate a incredible 25 hit points per turn. But even better is if you are lucky enough to get a Gygja with S2 (about 7% chance),you can forge a Robe of shadows (construction 4) that gives etherealness and ignores 75% of non-magical attacks.

Some Niefel Jarls have a path in air (very rare ones have 2) as well, so you can script them to cast Bless (or divine bless), Air shield (add mirror image and even mist form for tough battles) and attack. Set Niefel Giants to guard commander. This works well in small to medium maps.

Tricks
One really interesting thing about Niefelheim is that most of the commanders are sacred. Even the scouts. One thing that might be interesting to try is to make a Scout prophet and a bunch of dual-blessed Niefel Scouts (50 gold each, non-capital-only) and go raiding behind enemy lines like Pangaea and Vanheim do. Note that a javelin from a Scout will kill most humans in one hit. Of course, you wouldn't want to do this until you'd reached a point where the capital-only limitation was hurting you more than the one-commander-per-fortress limitation.

Niefel giants seem to do well in small, tight groups. "Guard commander" on a squad of 3-4 works to keep them in contiguous blocks that stop them from getting surrounded and lets the cold auras stack.

Later on, try to forge Bone Armor (40 death gems, Construction-6) with a Death-3 Niefel Jarl, although you'll need to make a Skull Staff and a Skullface first to boost him to Death-5. Bone Armor gives you continuous Soul Vortex, which lets you leach life and fatigue off of adjacent enemy units (as much as 20 hp per turn and 80 fatigue, although if you're surrounded by enemy units and at 80 fatigue you're as good as dead since each one has about a 50% chance of crit-hitting you). Combine this with a cheap Pendant of Luck to effectively double your hit points. Bone Armor certainly doesn't make you invincible, but it suits the Niefel Jarl better than just about any other SC, and it does add a lot to his survivability of he manages to lose his guards. Meanwhile, pelt everybody with Falling Frost.