Test games played

[Nelphine]

As another comment, I think great unsummoning is completely irrelevant to using doom mastery. Doom mastery comes early enough, that if it's going to help, it will make a big difference in conquering the threatening fortresses. Unless the AI is so far ahead, that you've already lost anyway.

[Seravy]

PS : I can upload the recorded videos if you want to see but I think it won't contain too much new information, I told you pretty much everything that contributed the outcome.
Also, while I might have had a chance to win, the mere fact that I was playing against a 3 way alliance, had a +4 unrest race as the only accessible enemy, started on an island with no resources, found no nodes and no lair treasure, all in one game, warrants a "too hard" label by itself, compared to how I normally perform with average or better starts on this difficulty. Oh let's not forget two lizardmen opponents, both playing blue/green, which is a nightmare to fight even under normal conditions.

[Seravy]

As another comment, I think great unsummoning is completely irrelevant to using doom mastery. Doom mastery comes early enough, that if it's going to help, it will make a big difference in conquering the threatening fortresses. Unless the AI is so far ahead, that you've already lost anyway.

Agreed, assuming the Sorcery AI is the one you are going to fight next or at least not last. If it's your ally or the person on the other plane, it will be relevant (unless you are way ahead and win before the game reaches very rares)

[Nelphine]

Also, while I might have had a chance to win, the mere fact that I was playing against a 3 way alliance, had a +4 unrest race as the only accessible enemy, started on an island with no resources, found no nodes and no lair treasure, all in one game, warrants a "too hard" label by itself, compared to how I normally perform with average or better starts on this difficulty. Oh let's not forget two lizardmen opponents, both playing blue/green, which is a nightmare to fight even under normal conditions.

But again that's all starting conditions. None of that is difficulty level.or more accurately, none of that is directly difficulty level. So that only matters if you want to base difficulty level on out of the ordinary starting conditions.

And various nature or death wizards may have been fine, as could lizadmen. So I'm not even sure the starting conditions were that crazy.

[Seravy]

But again that's all starting conditions. None of that is difficulty level.or more accurately, none of that is directly difficulty level. So that only matters if you want to base difficulty level on out of the ordinary starting conditions.

Data collecting does not work that way. I can't selectively throw away bad starts while keeping good ones, otherwise I'll get biased data. And yes, how often you get bad starts does affect the perceived difficulty.

Lizardmen probably had low relevance aside from being intimidating, although it's one of the few races that sends durable ranged units in attacking stacks which Chaos isn't that great against. Oh and the only race that produces units with Fire Immunity...

Overall I'd say this was probably in the bottom 10% of quality for starting conditions. Maybe even bottom 5%. Even the zombies lair had a Night Stalker in it, thank god I haven't tried to attack it early.

[Nelphine]

You definitely don't throw it away. But you don't use it as an argument for modifying the difficulty - just as you don't use a start with 4 easy nodes as a reason to make the game harder. It's definitely data, but not necessarily relevant data to the topic of difficulty.

Either way, I think we're both saying the same thing, and simply describing it differently.

[Seravy]

Started a new game.

Unfortunately, I played one critical thing wrong. I thought it takes 2 phantom warriors to kill a naga. It doesn't, one is enough (in a node aura). If I started by attacking the node, I could have been like 2-3 years faster than I am. It matters a lot, as the node had gold in it and was fairly nice for income as well.
The map itself is fairly good too.

Do I start over (on the same map, turn 1) or keep playing as is?
It matter a lot - Gnolls struggle getting their game going due to no magic market, and the parallel need of spending on sawmills, settlers and military - It was painful to watch turns pass by casting nothing and doing nothing but waiting for money to buy a sawmill or settler, while there were several easy lairs and nodes nearby but I couldn't afford raising skill to 28. (Hell Hounds are not strong enough to attack nagas in a node as far as I remember so I rather spend that mana on alchemy in this particular case)

If I knew this, I'd have about 4 nodes by now and 4 productive cities - as is I have my first node and my cities just finished their sawmill, well, some of them.

I haven't yet found any other players, and I can pretend I need to scout and go towards the same directions. 


Yeah I think I'll start over. I especially picked the Phantom Warriors to attack sorcery nodes and then I didn't do it, that's just stupid. Also I kinda want to see the difference between how fast one can build up by converting mana to gold, compared to hunting nodes using that mana...

When was the last time I played Sorcery books? Must have been ages ago... or maybe playing CoM after midnight is just a bad idea in general lol

eh, our premise for Expert difficulty was to play without significant mistakes. Definitely restarting...

[Bahgtru]

Without knowing the detail, I'd say first get the node and then eventually convert the resulting mana... Getting treasure is definitely the top priority in higher difficulties.

Anyhow, I find gnolls too hard, like barbarian wannabes. Maybe I play them wrong. In any case, barring the case of a particularly good early spot I'd never create a gnoll settler, and I wouldn't settle down until I find at least some mithril - including waiting for a trireme if I'm on an island.

[Nelphine]

Current game. Going for a 5 way alliance, just to see if I can do it. Not actually playing sorcery, instead I have a million lawful/peaceful life wizards. Between all 5 wizards we have 35 life books, 0 death books, and 1 chaos book.

And let me tell you, 5 divine orders is amusing (lionheart for barely over 50 mp). I have hordes of halfling slingers that one shot great drakes (one stack has ranged attack 16, +7 to hit; then I'm in the process of building 10 stacks with ranged attack 14, +7 to hit). If.. there were any. But there aren't.

[Seravy]

Still in the process of finishing my gnoll game.
Something interesting happened. My ally attacked a tower (many hydra) using a stack of 4 gargoyles and a stag beetle. This is possible - they are ruthless so they might be at Jihad with the myrran wizard. The battle seems to have ended with a double KO - monsters disappeared from tower but the treasure was still there. All chaos books so this is again not completely unlikely (although I'm impressed they have enough spell attack power to kill many hydra by that. Maybe we overdid chaos spell power a little? They have 10 books and a skill of probably around 300? Maybe even less, only 14 cities and it's 1416.)
For some reason they never attacked that tower again, I assume that was the time they made a peace treaty with the Myrran wizard, so the empty tower with treasure was just left there for me to get 10 turns later when I noticed. With no monsters, the tile has a military of 0 so it probably failed to register as a target for military purposes, and when they are at peace with Myrror then they don't register it as a tower because we made them "prefer human plane" which is Arcanus? Nah no peace treaty yet and it's not attacked. Maybe the tower's owner is broken? It should be -1 for not cleared towers, and the wizard's ID otherwise. If it's neither -1 nor a  nonnegative number which should be impossible, it's possible to skip registering the tower on the target list.

Oh, they are not going to the other plane even if there are normally open towers and the war is still on. So the target plane choice is still not perfect..

oh, that should be a bx not an ax in the war "treaty" check...
yeah, now they are going through properly...