Test games played

[Tlavoc]

I've only ever gotten spiders/lizards/cockatrices. Enough to fill two whole towns now.

lmao, yeah the draconians are a bit mean, I kinda want to try my hand at turning them into -real- dragons... Sounds like you have a pretty entertaining game. Mine the two strongest guys teamed up and everyone else is just doing their damnedest to stay alive.

So, cracks call is killing me. I can go against a town I should be able to take, but green has no flying/incorporeal very rares so the behemoths get hit with cracks call every turn, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so slow. What makes it so terrible is it seems to keep them from regenerating. I guess I should have summoned great wyrms to get in and murder fast.

Also, 9 doom bolts to the face on the first turn... ouch.

Edit:
Well, it was fun until I got a streak of bad luck and my last-ditch hope, stack of 9 megabuffed behemoths got half killed by disenchants. Too many units on land and didn't want to fight just to lose units to cracks call, so I went over the water, attacked by ships and disenchant managed to get water walking every single time. I didn't have enough skill left that turn to put water walking back on all of them. Another situation had me with plenty of gold, I have alchemist so I was going to transfer everything over to mana next turn. I got mana drained and had no opportunity to use alchemy to save my summons or global enchantments.

In the end I only ever got uncommon summons from fairy ring.

[Nelphine]

If you're only getting uncommons that sounds like a problem. But I don't remember the specifics of the spell - maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah disenchant on water walking is a problem. However, seravy seems to think you should just use ships and get naval superiority. I'm not sure I agree (seems silly to have to use triremes to keep behemoths alive, assuming you don't have access to warships or galleys), but it does make AI naval strength more relevant, since they have to use it anyway because they don't know if they have intercontinental units.

That seems like brutal tactics against behemoths. They are the weakest nature very rare but still.

[Tlavoc]

Behemoths have high armor and innate regeneration, I was hoping to make use of call lightning and a group of units that didn't have to worry about healing. Honestly I don't know that it mattered that they were behemoths, colossus and great wyrm don't fly either.

On another note, draconians can only ever gain the defense from chaos channels. They don't seem to be able to get the fire breath as a boost to their own, while I'm -fairly- sure the dragon turtle from lizardmen can (though I may be remembering land link rather than chaos channels).

[Nelphine]

Re: chaos Chanbels. That's correct, it can't buff an existing breath attack.

[Seravy]

If you're only getting uncommons that sounds like a problem. But I don't remember the specifics of the spell - maybe I'm missing something.

Chance depends on casting skill. If he has low (read, 100-200) casting skill then that outcome is fairly normal. The chance of very rare is always there but unless you have higher skill, it will be tiny. I don't remember the exact numbers but they were in the Nature thread.

[Tlavoc]

That would do it, I was focused on research and by the time I had what I did my upkeep was so high I had nothing to really spend on skill. I think I was around 120 casting skill.

So, I was thinking, (terrifying, I know); I used to play card/board games a decent bit with family/friends - still do on occasion - and one thing that was ALWAYS an important strategy in a multiplayer game was holding back. If you pushed and built up to become the guy with the biggest stick, everyone attacked you because if they didn't you would destroy them one at a time - in the end it's impossible for more than one player to win after all. By comparison, if you were at even levels with each other you didn't want to attack, because attacking made you seem aggressive and left you vulnerable to everyone else while the victim turtled up (though there were players who would dogpile the weak guy to get him out of the way, most of the time people would attack the aggressor since he was more of a threat).

Of course, being the weakest player was bad too, though most people didn't care about you it was easy for them to risk a small amount just to knock you down another peg and ensure you couldn't come in from behind.

The above was most common with Magic: The Gathering due to attacking creatures being unable to defend, but I've seen similar in other games where you can build up resources.

Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to mess with diplomacy at all, because it's pretty awesome as it is, I was just thinking about what could be done about the times there's a super enemy (seems to happen to me a lot). Most of the diplomacy seems to be specifically between two wizards - other than 'I'm attacking you due to my alliance', but even that may be due to the allied wizard you're at war with - so I'm not sure it would be possible (or even wanted). The AI cheating would be less important if diplomacy caused them to self-regulate (three wizards against one because of huge military power).

...But that would probably break all sorts of things...

Anyway, just a thought; feel free to shoot at it like the paper target it is.

Edit:
To clarify; I think it would self regulate 'super strategies' if AI was more likely to go to war with someone ~25% stronger than average (Including the player), or look to ally with others first to take advantage of the 'allies go to war with your enemies'. Of course, if this is happening anyway then it's a moot point. It just seems the AI not wanting to attack someone stronger than them lets the strong person get stronger while the weaker ones fight each other and weaken everyone else.

[Nelphine]

Right I knew I forgot something about fairy ring. Yes, casting skill determines what you get. My bad!

[Tlavoc]

Went full chaos, draconians, got two wizards on myrror. With flying units being so good at scouting I found them early and rushed gargoyles. My luck being what it is; I had to try the fights multiple times (why is a full health gargoyle dying in melee against a full health ghoul!? - I know it's just bad luck, but still, ouch). Ended up defeating both so Myrror is mine! Also draconians feel like they grow soooo slowly, I've been pumping out settlers non stop from the start and I think my largest town has a population of 5 by 1408. Of course, every neutral town is trolls, which seem to HATE dragons.

My goal is to get meteor storm going and limit the wizards on Arcanus with it before they pop a tower while I grow my power base, with the end goal being: Nuke them from orbit.

Also, here's another example of my luck: save scumming raise volcano (I don't NEED to, but I want to try something) and in 21 tries I got no ore at all, #22 I got gold, still going trying to get adamantium (20% chance and it takes me 22 tries). I may just wait until I can cast raise volcano several times in a row.

[Nelphine]

As a note, myrran retort was changed to also include a minimum of 2 AI on the myrror plane.

[Tlavoc]

I did not know that, that explains why there have been two each time I tried it. I thought it was just bad luck.