Caster of Magic 2 playthroughs

[zitro1987]

Wait, how did you defeat Horus' heroes? Did you get Lightning Bolt and then spam it on them?

I used lightning bolts on toughest heroes and chimera slowly damaged them

[zitro1987]

There are 2 opponents in the myrran plane: Merlin and Rjak. Out of the two, Rjak is by far the most powerful and serves as the 'final boss' having comparable strength to how I'm doing so far. I was able to conquer his capital city with a stack of enchanted adamantium pegasi, though his 'cloud of shadow' defensive spell (blocks ranged attacks) and beastmen magicians made me lose several units. There were decent heroes but nothing my units couldn't handle.

Rjak meanwhile started taking advantage of my conquered towers and sent some fairly powerful stacks around and attacked some troops and node defenders. His spells (black prayer, possession, syphon magic drain) and manticore-oriented armies were moderately dangerous and made me no longer use focus magic cockatrices against him (I wish I had resist magic for them). Many of his stacks and his cities (which I conquered a couple more, but need to circumvent his clouds of shadow spells better) included large-shield minotaurs and some surprise night stalkers, which are dangerous with black prayer even to my high-resistance pegasi (I won my previous death magic game with this combo, which rivals focus magic cockatrices in effectiveness). So I'm experimenting with a versatile stack (with an emphasis towards elven lords, eventually paladins)

His shadow demon stacks were not dependent on passing through the towers and thus were moved to more strategical vulnerable areas of mine. I lost a bunch of troops all over arcanus, but no cities yet.

Despite my difficulties and Rjak's resiliency, I seem to be gaining the upper hand so far. I can't let my guard down.

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Update: Rjak is using evil presence on my military cities (adamantium) and casted a new global enchantment (presumably a very rare) that gives wraithform to all his units and bypasses magic weapons. Time to shift strategy and chaos channel my best units. My economy cities are either pumping out magicians or getting to fantastic stables to get more pegasi and griffins with at least typical magic weapons (and chaos channels)

I conquered a couple more cities and have attacked some of his scarier stacks near the cities I conquered. My original couple of military stacks are getting ridiculous in power, with high resistance and pegasi that could exceed 10 attack and 10 armor. For the most part, they do a great job against death and his night stalkers.

Then all of a sudden I let my guard down and a city of mine will certainly be lost (a stack of 8 shadow demons and wraiths!!!!) This is just on 'advance' difficulty!

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Update: game becomes an additional 1-2 hours of attrition against Rjak and I focused on draining his mana in arcanus battles and defeating some scattered armies, now relying more on regular units without adamantium (mainly magicians, minotaurs, and griffins) because of him spamming evil presence in some key cities. Gaia's promise helped boost production of forest cities.

Researching earth elemental (pumping all power into research) helped a lot for city defense. However, I almost lost another city to a stack of 6 shadow demons and pikemen. I researched survival instinct (it finally showed up as an option! my strategy of doom mastery + survival instinct came way too late) by again pumping all power to research. My gold and mana reserves combined is less than 500 but it is worth it, resulting in extremely damaging, durable units with very high resistance. Rjak no longer can handle me and I will be able to attack his cities (wall of darkness be damned) with griffins and the best pegasi.

I didn't get the chance to enjoy the mopping up too much as I get a win button!

[zitro1987]

Who needs tree of knowledge when you can have elite crusaders + knights accompanied by giant spiders?

I tried what I thought would be a broken strategy that exceeds armorer guild rush (if one plays with tree mastery option). I handicapped myself by increasing the cost of crusaders and giant spiders by 10 each.

Try 8 nature, warlord, sage master with high men. Rush giant spiders (and transmute?). Use gold for settlers and to rush fighter's guild + war college. Mass produce crusaders, pikemen, and knights (especially crusaders who might become the notorious best mid-tier unit of Caster of Magic) and put a couple spiders on each stack. Around year 6-7 you should be in good shape to Snowball and Win!

[Anskiy]

So I was testing Nelphine's Barbarian strategy today, with a few modifications.

Wizard: 4 Life, 3 Chaos, Warlord, Spellweaver, Astrologer

Life spells: Heroism, Discipline, Bless
Chaos spells: Fire Bolt, Flame Blade

Score modifiers: Leave me Alone, No Trading, No Overlap, Tree Mastery

Turn 2 save: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/7.../TURN2.SAV

The early game was largely uneventful. I started on a decently sized island with some Sorcery nodes and a few lairs. I quickly made four spirits to scout the land, then summoned some cavarly to clear the easy lairs. Had a few missteps early on with a Ghoul + Zombie lair, but got it cleared eventually with three cavalry. Buffed cavalry were able to take out the rest of the lairs no problem, with the exception of the Gargoyles lair. I decided to send all remaining cavalry into garrison and used the lair rewards to buy my way upto Elite Berserkers. This took roughly 1-2 years, which felt a bit long, but Elite Berserkers with Discipline on them were a sight to behold. They crushed most lairs that came their way, and easily dispatched the guardians of the Sorcery nodes. Flame Blade worked wonders on them too. Soon I had cleared most relevant targets on my continent, and loaded them up to take on Merlin's continent. They dispatched a lair with Unicorns, slashed Great Lizards to ribbons, then pounced on Merlin.

He declared war but was not prepared for the literal hordes of Berserkers flooding his continent. Lizardmen were no match for buffed Barbarians, and ofcourse lowly Nagas pronounced no threat to them. Confusion did mess them up quite a bit however; their low resistance was the one glaring flaw that couldn't really be fixed by my wizard, atleast not right now. Even so, two cities fell in a flash. I then marched on to his third city, and caught sight of his capital. I attempted to take it since the defenders looked unimpressive, but forgot how tanky dragon turtles are, especially behind a wall. Ouch! Thankfully I had a save ready to reload and erased this blunder. Merlin was appropriately spooked by my berserkers and sued for peace.

With that done, I began hunting down more lairs in Merlin's continent. I found a pretty good hero, Reywind. A Cockatrice node also gave me some spiffy items. Eventually I was able to grant him Flight, Teleportation, and even some good defense! My berserkers were done cleaning Merlin's continent, so they headed to Kali's continent next, with Reywind flying ahead.



My berserkers took one Sorcery node with Phantom Beasts and Phantom Warriors, while Reywind whittled down the other, which had some Water Elementals. At this point I was inundated with Wizard's Pact offers. This was a clear sign that my army had grown strong, and other wizards were willing to acknowledge it. I accepted them when I could, only turning down Kali's offer since I held two nodes on her continent. They next headed for Sss'ra's continent. Reywind cleared another lair for unimpressive rewards. The berserkers first opened a Chaos node, which they had to leave behind thanks to Sss'ra's pact. Then they took out a vampire lair, gaining two Death books! While that was going on, three berserkers set off from Merlin's continent and captured a Gargoyles node on Horus' continent. Reywind attempted to whittle down a Unicorns lair, but simply didn't have the damage to finish the job. Perhaps I should've thrown more Fire Bolts with him.



Regardless, the empire is in a good spot now. I plan next to open the tower on my continent, and pay a good, long visit to Myrror. Hopefully I can handle whatever wizards lie up there.

[Anskiy]

I broke through the tower with little difficulty. I emerged into a small island with three Nature nodes and some Troll cities. These belonged to Tlaloc, who was immediately alarmed by my presence and declared war. That just simplified things for me: I wanted to capture as much of Myrror as I could. The Berserkers easily conquered all the nodes, then proceeded to claim Tlaloc's cities and then prepare for a naval excursion. I made four Magic Spirits from one of the cities to observe as much of Myrror as I could before my invasion.

I ran into Tauron next, who also declared war on first sight since he was offended by me warring with Tlaloc. Tauron was the only wizard who could pose any threat - however, he was not to be taken lightly. He had tons of Chaos books, and could easily become a threat if left unchecked. i enchanted my invading Berserkers with Chaos Channels to protect them from Shatter as well as hopefully give them Flight or the defense bonus. While Tauron was able to annoyingly stall by summoning catapults and bolt my Berserkers, they could easily overwhelm his garrisons, though with noticeable losses. However, I had neglected to properly garrison the cities I took from him, which rendered my progress void when he snatched them back. Annoyed by this, I immediately began dedicating Berserkers to defense too. Slowly but surely, I recaptured every city, and was able to add War Trolls and Hammerhands to my army too.

When all this was going on, my Invisible Teleporting Wraithformed hero was doing a great job harassing Oberic and taking away his cities. While he didn't have much attack, his spellcasting and ability to attrition were so impressive that it didn't really matter. Eventually Oberic got bored of this cat and mouse game and asked for a peace treaty. This was appreciated, as it freed up my hero to keep scouting and eventually join the war against Tauron.

I got my allies to turn on Tauron with some bribes, and coordinated their attacks with some sneaky hits by my hero. Tauron had learnt Flame Strike in the meantime, which didn't really change the outcome of the war, though it did mean my armies took more losses while assaulting his cities and couldn't afford to really delay engagements. Soon, my hero linked up with my armies on Tauron's continent, and city after city fell. Tauron attempted to send some stacks to counter attack, but my vigilance caught them and crushed them with appropriate force from my cities. Soon Tauron lost all offensive steam and became but a mere shadow of himself.

During my exploits on Myrror, I met Rjak. I didn't care much for him since he wasn't in my way. However he had Final Wave in his book, and casted it twice. That came as a rude shock, though thankfully my key armies had Chaos Channel on them so were unaffected by it. I would definitely need to sort him out later, perhaps with armies of hammerhands.

In any case, I'm satisfied with how the game has gone so far, and am ready to move on. Anyone curious can get the current save here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/7...9828/3.sav