game discussion!

[Nelphine]

Yeah super early Armageddon is awful. I've only seen it that early once, and I had no way of dealing with it.

[Nelphine]

Currently playing an extreme game. Started with 4 life/4 nature/warlord/inquisitor/tactician/orc. It's now 1425, and I still haven't got to the point I can say 'I've won!'. I've currently got 5 life/4 nature/4 sorcery/3 chaos, warlord inquisitor tactician archmage artificer famous.

My opponents are:
Rjak, Peaceful Militarist, Warlord Tactician Charismatic, 10 Death/2 Life.
Ariel, Lawful Theurgist, Tactician Myrran Astrologer, 10 Life/2 Sorcery.
Tauron, Chaotic Pragmatist, Specialist Guardian, 8 Chaos/2 Death/1 Nature.
Raven, Aggressive Perfectionist, Channeler, 6 Sorcery/5 Death/1 Chaos.

I've spellbound Holy Arms from Ariel and Evil Omens from Rjak. I've stolen Crusade and Life Force from banishing Ariel and Aether Binding from banishing Raven. I cast Enlightenment (3 times before I learned spell blast to stop disjunctions) and Charm of Life and Divine Order and Just Cause and Detect Magic. (Ariel has Divine Order cast as well). My opponents have so many globals there's a 'more' button on the global enchantment screen! A More button! who knew??

My main units are champion hordes with a dozen buffs on them (they're 17 attack, 16-19 defense monstrosities) being flown around by Jaer. I've lost literally dozens of these units, including attacking a node that had 6 great drakes and 3 hydras (my units were slightly damaged - I didn't expect 9 bloody very rare units), drowning, starving, deserting, and in combat. I lose a city about once every 5 turns.

I've currently got 16 cities. At any given point in time I have 1-5 cities with pestilence on them (I'm fairly sure my one city is bugged. It's had pestilence on it since around 1409, which has resisted 17 max strength disenchant area spells. All my other cities can be dispelled after 1-4 disenchant areas, but not the original one), and 2-3 cities with evil presence. Famines, warp node, raise volcano, corruption, fire storms, all happen regularly. I've given up trying to get more nodes - so Ariel has about 4 times the power production I do. But any time I try, Ariel shows up with 37 billion trolls and eats my garrison, unless I waste 9 Hordes on a node, which I can't do, because I keep losing my main attack forces, and I'm trying to defend my damn cities!

I've banished every single enemy wizard at least 3 times (Ariel has been banished about 7 times). I was banished at one point.

Ariel has both Life Force and Enlightenment cast; I'm practically sure she's researching Spell of Mastery. Given I have higher spell power than her (yes I have archmage but still), I'm fairly sure she has to be putting a lot into research, so I figure she could start casting spell of mastery in the next 2 years. Of course she has absolutely swarms of angels and archangels. So it might just be in mana production.

I really don't think I can lose, but I've been at war since about 1406, and I just cannot seem to catch a break. I make peace, I make wizard pacts, I've even made alliances a few times, someone else declares war on me, someone tries to cast more disjunctions than I can spell blast, I attack that wizard, I start new wars. The AI has done 4 way alliances, and 4 way wars, and everything in between. Death allied with life, sorcery allied with chaos, it doesn't matter; they help, they hinder, they drain power, they disjunction each other, then they go back at me again.

Awesome awesome game. This is why I play, for games like this. Every few turns I say 'ok, if I can just do x and y without z happening, I know i'll win', and then z happens. Or I'll say 'omg, if x happens ONE MORE TIME I'm going to quit. I can't do it.' And then I'll make peace with the wizard casting x, and last another 8 turns, and think everything is rosy again.

[Nelphine]

I think Windwalking heroes are the strongest thing in the game for a human player.

Without windwalking heroes, you have to be able to defeat your opponent faster than they can expand. With the sheer size of the map, this requires you to have a very large territory - which requires a very large army just to defend.

With a windalking hero, you just banish your enemies (even all 4 once you have enough movement items) constantly, even if you have to race across the world. You can do this faster than they can expand, and so, without having to expand (and therefore build an army matching in quantity what the opponents have, which is nigh impossible), you can eventually defeat your opponents. (As I did in March 1429 of the game described above.)

If you are sorcery and have 2 windwalking heroes (you could go for more but it's hard to get that many kill stacks) you can even defeat your opponents in a timely fashion.

[Nelphine]

Now trying an impossible game, where I do not attack for the entire game - even more, I'm not building or summoning any troops (although I am hiring heroes, but no mercenaries), although I'll make an exception once I get close to casting SoM, just so I have enough to protect my capital from Jihads. I lost a city to revolting raiders, but then the AI conquered everything around me. Going to try for an SoM win (where my opponent cast Enlightenment in 1409..) - wish me luck! Currently researching my last spell before SoM. Only playing with 2 AI, 3 way alliance.

Edit: March 1419, Sss'ra has started casting SoM. Given he has twice my spell power, plus he's impossible AI, and my spellpower is a little over 400, I expect this will take him.. 13 turns to cast.

I'm actually surprised it took this long. I'm going to have SoM researched in around.. June 1422. And Sss'ra is an archmage (I'm not), and he has 9-11 times the power production I do (and he's even life, so a lot of his summons will actually grant him power production instead of costing him), so his research, even at reasonable minimums to maintain his mana, should still be.. at least 4 or 5 times mine. Probably quite a bit higher. I have a feeling he didn't immediately cast the spell.

His army strength is approximately 50 times mine, and about 40% higher than Horus', so I don't think Horus can really hurt him. And I haven't explored, so I don't even know where most of his empire is (I know of 7 cities, my guess is he has about 40), let alone his capital. Ah well, let's see if my guess is right on his spellpower.

Edit! Horus has spell blast!!! Mwahahaha. Now I can let them fight it out forever (until Horus tries to cast SoM, but I don't think he will because his spell power is lower..)

[Juffos]

More thoughts:

Do Amplifiers increase the mana cost of improving skill? I've been scrapping any I capture from the enemy due to fear of this. If so, wouldn't they work better adding to the between-turns skill, which doesn't actually penalize you? It would also make sense that it takes time to coordinate the efforts of multiple towers, so that they can't be used for instant casting.

I've noticed that going for Magicians is usually the best option, not only due to the unit, but for the profitable infrastructure, compared to the standard military tree. Troll Magicians are the worst/best example of this, having all the strengths of Magicians, while being Troll negates any weaknesses they have.

While on Magicians, does Runemaster/AEther improve their Dispels too? They don't get cost reductions from Conjurer or Specialist.

Channeler + Conjurer = -75% summon upkeep. I found this extremely useful for a Nature Specialist. Add Sage Master and you have three retorts improving your summon research!

Spell Blast isn't really fun to play against.

[Seravy]

More thoughts:

Do Amplifiers increase the mana cost of improving skill?

No they don't. Anything that does not add SP to your skill pool has no influence on the cost.
The game uses a really simple formula : Casting Skill = Sqrt(Total SP accumulated)+any extra skill from other sources.

While on Magicians, does Runemaster/AEther improve their Dispels too?

No for Runemaster, yes for AEther Binding.

[GermanJoey]

Amplifiers do not increase the mana cost of improving skill, but add to the final skill tally. (like the Archmage retort) So you've really been shooting yourself in the foot by trashing them, as each one can be worth several thousand mana of skill by near the end of the game.

Magicians are really good, yeah. Troll Magicians are one of my favorites too, but they're also 50% more expensive than normal magicians and only have 2 movement points, as compared to 3 like every other one. Other races have advantages on their magicians too: Nomads +3 resist, High Men +2 figures, High Elves +1 to-hit, Dark Elves +2 atk and Doombolt, Halflings Lucky, Beastmen +1 hp. The big problems with Magicians are that they tend to suffer horrible losses when attacking (due to fragility) and that it's not easy to raise their to-hit. They also are countered very hard by invisibility and magic immunity, and can have a lot of problems dealing with very fast and/or high-defense units.

Unfortunately, Runemaster/AEther Binding do improve dispel chances w/ magicians and heroes. I've tried to convince Seravy to make it otherwise, but his opinion is that stacking unit buffs is too powerful and therefore there needs to be a counter. (which I completely agree with; any other solution would require a big overhaul)

Reduced summon upkeep... isn't really a big deal, I think? Alchemy alone (or Mana Focusing, or the savings from Channeler, etc) will give you vastly more mana than that combo saves you on upkeep.

I also hate Spell Blast!! Arrgh, my current game is down to just the Myrran wizard left, Horus, who has been casting Suppress Magic repeatedly, and then Spell Blasts my max-power Disjunctions whenever he thinks of it too. It seems that he's only able to do it on the first turn of the cast though, so the net effect is that we basically alternate every few turns which one of is us able to cast overland. A very frustrating game!

edit: welp, looks like I left that tab open too long!

[Nelphine]

Since i never posted up much of a repprt on my halfling life experiment:

I didn't actually get around to finishing my halfling game, but halfling swordsmen dominated Ariel (10 life, unknown retorts) very early - easily my earliest ever AI defeat, since I rarely go rush strategies. This is on extreme.

I then went after raven, nature/sorcery, who spammed stasis all the time and significantly slowed me - but who couldn't fight my swordsmen with a high men magician mercenary and reywind the warrior mage to spearhead them. Banished multiple times without noticeable losses. (Also, 1 halfling swordsmen with heroism and 1 healing spellcan defeat 4 centaurs, an orc horde, 2 nomad pikemen, and some random other orc units. The centaurs were from call centaur - fairy dust or whatever its called would have killed my swordsmen, but the AI didn't seem to know that.)

My next opponent was Kali with death/sorcery. Probably, oh, twice my spell power and army strength, and about 3 times my power income. My empire was only 12 cities by the time raven was a non factor, while kali controlled about 3/4 of arcanus. However given what I had seen, this was simply her having a larger empire than me. I don't think she had any high rarity spells I couldn't handle, and with Lionheart I was confident I could get units capable of spiking her capital, and then just play a long game of cleanup.

However before I actually started to fight Kali for real (she sent a few stacks of ghouls and halberdiers, and threw some city curses) Horus broke through from myrror.

Horus was life sorcery. His army was 3 times (or more) what Kali had, or at least 6 tiimes mine. His power production was at least 3 times kali (approaching 10 times mine); his spell power was more than twice mine (at least 300 and it was only 1413.) He had archmage, aether binding, and enlightenment cast already.

His initial breakthrough onto my continent was with 15 mithril hammerhands, along with random golems, draconians halberdiers, and draconian magicians.

He was chaotic.

I quit the game at that point.


My halfling experiment went well - they certainly love buffs, and get going faster than halberdiers. Slingers also eventually took over (inspirations!!)

But horus is the ULTIMATE powerful AI. I had no way of scouting myrror (it would take all my resources to wrest control of one tower from him, and I'd probably lose it within a turn or two) but I think its safe to assume the increased myrror expansion is working EXTREMELY well.

[Seravy]

But horus is the ULTIMATE powerful AI. I had no way of scouting myrror (it would take all my resources to wrest control of one tower from him, and I'd probably lose it within a turn or two) but I think its safe to assume the increased myrror expansion is working EXTREMELY well.

Sorcery+Life AI is generally among the weakest in the early half of the game (poor summons) so this is definitely surprising. If they perform like that, I don't want to imagine what a Nature+Death wizard will do.

[Nelphine]

But for the myrran AI, with the new settling rules, 1413 IS late game - this is why I think higher difficulty bonuses may have to be toned down. They have no enemies to fight while they are weak so they just go crazy expanding - and myrran races have very high strategic combat so the lack of summons might actually increase how fast they can clear nodes. (Hammerhands specifically are about as strong as the weaker very rares, without buffs.)

Also note: I already had charm of life cast (so did Horus - I traded it to him in return for crusade).

I don't think any game with human cast very rates in play can be defined as anything but late game.