A user in a Telegram group dedicated to VIM showed me a very good solution:

    :nnoremap <leader>. :normal .<cr>

this remaps <leader>. to allow a prefix with repeat count. In my case <leader> is mapped to the default value \
So I just type say 10\. and it repeats cgn 10 times.

It even works in Eclipse's Vrapper.

But if anyone has a better solution I'd like to hear.