Frustrating experience

[Banzai]

I can't figure out how to post a new topic, so I'll add my frustration to this one.

I'm playing as life high men and am facing cockatrices with focus magic in year 7.
Need a ranged unit to hit flyers, so bowmen, priests, or magicians.
Resistances for those units mean that stoning touch decimates them, even with heroism and heavenly light.
They can get a round of attacks off on defense, but it's not enough to kill the cockatrice units, so there's not much of a round 2.
On the attack, they pretty much get wiped out on round 1.

Feels like a pretty hard counter given what is available in common/uncommon life and early/mid game high men.

Any thoughts?

[zitro1987]

I’ve always disliked the weirdness of focus magic cockatrices because they dont come with glaring weaknesses as counters. I wish focus magic didnt grant ranged attacks

They are fairly sturdy all around, usually benefits more from resist magic on top, and if kept as defender they will attack first. Also nature has natures cure to keep them moving. Besides resist magic stacks, I think 6-figure and 8-figure units are the closest to a counter but often these units have lower resistance

[Sapher]

Any thoughts?

Life can counter those with heroes.

[Banzai]

Any thoughts?

Life can counter those with heroes.

So the answer to how can life high men beat this combo is not to use life or high men?

Heroes can obviously be the strongest units in the game regardless of the wizard's spellbooks or race, if they have the right items.  But how does life/high men equip heroes with the right items this early in the game?

Usually those early items are from nodes and lairs, but life and high men both seem especially weak in the early game.

I've watched your vids Sapher, and you are great at taking out lairs by using fast units that avoid combat and casting spells that whittle down the defenders.  Or by using unattackable ranged units like sprites or draconians against land-bound non-ranged opponents.  Life's option for this style appears to be cavalry and star fires.  This doesn't seem anywhere near as good as phantom warriors or confusion or boars, or even sprites or draconians against non-flyers.

Enchanting items is possible, but is slow going with low casting ability and mana in early game.  Doesn't feel like a way that would work, but I haven't tried it specifically in CoMW yet, so maybe?

You can get the items from lairs and nodes by fighting instead of using combat spells, but that is a hard row to hoe for both life and high men.  Early cavalry that is buffed to the hilt could fight against some low tier units like phantom warriors, bears, hell hounds/fire elementals, skelly/zombies, with acceptable losses.  Anything higher, or flying, is a risk of losing all of that buff mana and more importantly the time it took to cast the buffs.  You generally aren't getting good items from those types of low level lairs/nodes either, typically just gold and/or mana, which is useful, but isn't equipping your hero.

Could also play at an easier difficulty and prolong the time until cockatrice/focus magic units start to appear, but that seems to be admitting that life high men don't have the tools to play at a higher level.  Maybe that's the case.

[Anskiy]

Cockatrices can thankfully be defeated by making one high resist hero with good spells/ranged attacks to throw. I have to admit I've never seen focus magicked cockatrices that early though.

I also agree with zitro that focus magic cockatrices are honestly probably too overpowered for the early-mid game, considering all you need for them is one uncommon and common spell, and it greatly raises the potency of cockatrices and goes against their original design. I feel like the combo would be okay if we significantly nerfed cockatrice HP.

[Banzai]

Cockatrices can thankfully be defeated by making one high resist hero with good spells/ranged attacks to throw. I have to admit I've never seen focus magicked cockatrices that early though.

I also agree with zitro that focus magic cockatrices are honestly probably too overpowered for the early-mid game, considering all you need for them is one uncommon and common spell, and it greatly raises the potency of cockatrices and goes against their original design. I feel like the combo would be okay if we significantly nerfed cockatrice HP.

It was a master level game, so the AI definitely had some bonuses to production.  Tlaloc was also pretty unopposed while freya declared war on me and attacked my cities during years 5-6.  I had priests and bowmen in my cities, with one cavalry and swordsman.  They had the cockatrices who stayed at the back rank and cast their combo, and wolf riders who ran for my ranged units.  Neither the heroism bowmen nor priests were able to do enough damage to the cockatrices to prevent the city from falling.  Then it was just repeated until game over.  Took a year or so to wipe everything.

[zuzzu]

I think the simple answer is to remove the combo focus magic + nagas/cockatrices. Focus magic should not work that way.

[Intaka]

So, I'm just going to throw this out there, but if you are facing Focus Magic Cockatrices in year 7, since you didn't give a whole lot of information about what tools you YOURSELF had, other than I gather you're not playing White magic:

Units: Anything with high resist so you get time to work. Buffed Magicians are great, but so would be buffed Paladins for example.

Common Green:
Resist Magic (description: Enchanted unit gains +4 defense against magical ranged attacks, breath attacks or spells, and 4 resistance against Nature realm effects. Like Stoning, for example.)
Web (will take one out of the fight per turn for a long bit)

Uncommon Green:
Ice Bolt (cold based DD spells will remove the affected units ability to attack for the next turn.)
Giant Spiders (again that web but multicast with many units)

Rare Green:
Elemental Armor (basically immunity to stoning)

Very Rare Green:
Call Lightning
Any of 3 Very Rare Green summons will eat them alive and have enough resist to not give a crap about their attack or stoning

Going to skip Life magic but let's just agree a lot of solutions there too.

Common Blue:
Psionic Blast / Aether Sparks / Confusion (50% chance per cast to turn one)
Phantom Warriors have stoning immunity once you're past their ammo

Uncommon Blue:
Dispelling Wave on the overland map will scour the entire group of them
Phantom Beasts same stoning immunity and a lot of hp to soak hits

Rare Blue:
Invisibility is a hard counter. Can't be targeted for ranged attacks. Easy win.

Very Rare Blue:
Too many spells to list. Most of them. Solo Great Drakes could eat endless stacks of cockatrices with Focus Magic.

Common Black:
Lots of options here, but the easiest is Wraithform. Non corporeal units can't be stoned.

Uncommon Black:
Wall of Darkness (on city defense this should allow complete stack annihilation when combined with other spells)
Shadow Demons, another hard counter. Can't be stoned. Flies, Regenerates. Better magical attack to boot.
Night Stalkers are invisible and enable any "outlast" strategy (see below)

Rare Black:
Wraiths. Hard counter. Gate of Hades spell + Black Prayer + any invisible unit = outlast strategy.

Very Rare Black:
Death Knights. Really any of the summons would do it mana efficiently.

Common Red:
Fire Elementals are immune to stoning. An inefficient counter, but could work for a city defense with other things as well.

Uncommon Red:
Fate Mastery would be VERY helpful. Double resist rolls.
Gargoyles. Hard counter. Better unit + immune to stoning + better physical combat stats when ammo runs out. Plenty of time to throw in some pew pew magic.

Rare Red:
Flame Strike is an easy answer. Should really thin the herd.

Very Rare Red:
Apocalypse, Great Drake.

I think there are probably a few factors which affect the impression of "there's nothing I can do", for myself at least. For starters, the AI is a MUCH better opponent in CoM4W. It has holes, and is not a human, but it does a lot right. You might be able to steamroll nomral MoM on Master on game 1 because let's face it... it was utterly inept, but not so in CoM4W. Secondly, if you get into a war with an opponent, do your damage and let them have their peace. Better if someone else finishes them anyway. Banish and leave crippled is ideal. Third, scout for dangerous doom stacks so you have time to counter. Ships are great for this because no upkeep. Lastly, the game isn't built to not have player attrition anymore. You are going to lose units. It is basically a production war. An efficiency war. How much will it cost you to kill a stack of units that cost the AI "X" much?

It's doubtful that anyone actually read this far, but I'll end with saying that I don't mean to imply "get gud". I am terrible at this game compared to Slingers or Seravy. I mean really really bad. The game still does have it's loopholes and bugs and issues. Some of which can be fixed yourself once you learn about the magic of the UNITS.ini, wizards.ini, etc files. However, the game doesn't need to be modded to be won on most difficulties with a strong player and a strong strategy. If you stack the deck too far against yourself... sometimes you lose, and that's ok. I just didn't want you to think that there was nothing a non-white High Men player could do against pew pew Cockatrices. There's so many options. Most of which will involve attrition.

[Intaka]

I think it might be tempting to say, "well that one solution you presented wasn't ideal!" but hopefully you understand what I am trying to communicate is that there are options for most problems in the game for most color combinations which don't require heroes. Once you throw heroes in the mix... anything can be countered assuming you can gather up invisibility, or wraithform, or (sometimes) just flying.

Best of luck on your next Master game and let us know what combos you actually DID use to counter those flying pew pew stoners!

[Intaka]

LOL. Maybe I should've just replied Elemental Armor, Invisibility, Wraithform, Nuke their cities to the ground. I dunno. I thought they'd like the more thoughtful answer. I would've.