NATURE Realm

[Nelphine]

Also, I don't think heroes are fantastic creatures. And heroes should definitely be affected. And water elemental or fire giant or any other single figure low rarity summon should be affected too.

[Seravy]

Good point, I'll modify the condition to include weaker creature. It's a bit hard to draw the line because I do want multi-figure summons such as death knights or gorgons to be included...but not hydras.

[Nelphine]

I don't understand your purpose. You want to be able to fight creatures with silly high defense, most often heroes. But you can get those heroes early in the game (by very early uncommons). So, realistically, you need the rule to apply to more things, so that all AI can benefit from it, or you're effectively saying 'yup this realm sucks, so we'll just let them die'. That doesn't make sense. Life is ABOUT buffing. Before archangels, even before angels, they should still be able to do this. +especially since life is NOT one of the realms you consider strong late game.)

And what about high end spells? I thought it made sense that lightning bolt and ice bolt would do minimal damage.

[Nelphine]

And there are games when the best AI troops are city troops. Not the regular game, but what every second or third game? So if they don't happen to get good spells, they're just out of luck?

[Seravy]

And what about high end spells? I thought it made sense that lightning bolt and ice bolt would do minimal damage.

Spells? Those were never included. That's an entirely different procedure in the game. There aren't any very rare direct damage spells in the game anyway.

This is a mechanic that ensures "many very rare creatures>heroes" which stops being true if said heroes have high defense. That's what it is meant to do, nothing else.

[Nelphine]

And if you don't get a very rare summon? Life isn't about summoning. Even sorcery doesn't really have a focus on summoning. You like summons, that's great. Not everyone who plays likes summons.

[Seravy]

If the enemy has 3 units I cannot kill in their capital then I take over the rest of the world then cast Spell of Mastery. It's not like there are 30 shield +2 Def Behemoths everywhere on the map, right?
But honestly, an AI having a 30+ shield unit is ultra rare.

...or I can put more buffs on those berserkers. You said 16 swords and +4 to hit, right? that is roughly even attack power to the Behemoth's defense power, only slightly less. Now, in this battle, dealing a bit of damage won't cut it, but any further buff not only overcomes the Behemoth's shields but rapidly boost damage output.

You can :
Chaos Channel the Berserkers and add a Soul Linker hero for another +3 To hit
Cast High Prayer and Blazing march for another 5 swords
Cast Chaos Surge and Chaos Channels for another I think 3? swords
Add  Leadership hero for another 3 swords.

I probably missed some more options but any two of these should be enough.

...or you can mix in a few demigod heroes in that army and win that way.

With Sorcery? geez, I don't know, maybe I dispell their buffs, steal their globals, stop time, send in 9 stacks of 9 spearmen and mind storm+creature bind all the behemoths? Or just take advantage of all my stuff ignoring armor anyway.

[Nelphine]

You can't dispel supreme light or priestess buff. You could dispel endurance and lionheart i suppose. Then resistance 22 means no resistance things would work. They could relatively easily put true sight on (I know he knows it), so most sorcery armor resistance would be a constant fight between true sight and dispel (while the fortress lightning and stone giants keep chewing up your units, since you're spending all your time on dispel and trying to cast armor ignoring spells.)

[Seravy]

A Behemoth has 14 base Resistance. I dispel the buffs. I kill the Priestess (assuming it has Prayermaster). Then Mind Storm+Banish = 50% chance of success per shot.

If that doesn't work for some reason, I TimeStop my way to 150 Storm Giants or something. Or craft 6 sets of Haste Teleporting max damage max defense gear for my heroes. Behemoths aren't that strong, even with minimal damage, 6 heroes vs 3 of them works.
Or, I use 6 sets of Illusion ranged heroes to kill the Behemoth. I only need the True Sight to go down for one turn and it's dead, tho if I dispel them all from the overland map, I can even use invisible ranged units.
Or wait until the wizard learns to summon something else and replaces Behemoths with crappy low defense Wyrms or Colossus :D

But seriously, I should be using SoM. The rest of the world is already mine.

PS : Stone Giants? Those are affected by Great Unsummoning....Prayermaster is combat only.

[Nelphine]

I may have to change my stance on nature's wrath. I don't find it all that bad (only rare and very rare summons and globals are affected), but the enemy can finish casting it when you're already in the middle of a spell, ensuring you get hit with it.

And once you're hit with it, honestly it's not that bad; most cities can build back whatever in a turn or two. But there's ONE thing that makes it really really bad.


You lose food producing buildings. My food production dropped by 43 (from +15 to -28) from getting hit once. And it's a PAIN to go through the whole empire both to rebuild the buildings, and to find enough food in any efficient form.

(However, it very effectively keeps multiple AI wizards all preoccupied with it, even if they're allies. The nature one will constantly cast it, and everyone else will constantly disjunction, which, without sorcery, is the only way to get allies to do anything against each other. Don't get me wrong, they have TONS of casting skill, so they're summoning on average one very rare creature between each disjunction/recasting, so it's not terribly unbalanced by forcing all the AI casting skill to go into the fight.)