I'm done on all 3 maps.
I'm going to use a spoiler tag - please don't read the rest of the post if you still haven't played all 3 maps yourself. If you finish playing, please post your results in spoiler tags as well.
I'm going to use a spoiler tag - please don't read the rest of the post if you still haven't played all 3 maps yourself. If you finish playing, please post your results in spoiler tags as well.
Game 1 (Conjurer Specialist Spellweaver)
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The recordings of the game played by the court can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVsdLeVE...e=youtu.be
Started on a peninsula, closed off by a large neutral city. Longbowmen inside, so Sprites can't handle it.
Node next to the starting city with many bears and earth elementals.
On the other side of the neutral city, a 10 Death book wizard was found. Due to starting relation, war is ineviatable,
but Nature creatures have no chance of taking out a capital with all Ghouls and Guardian.
Turn 25 is past, but no war declaration comes for a long time.
-Objection! The defense claims the RNG was on the prosecution's side, and not summoning bears and spiders
immediately was a hazardous suicide tactic that could have caused the loss of the game.
-Denied! The jury is going to also play on the map, and will share their results. This should eliminate the effects of luck.
Earth Lore reveals some convenient Sorcery nodes. Some being, always one more after the previous was cleared.
I can keep going after them until 1405, with the total being 4 nodes - two others were claimed by enemy wizards due to being close to their capital.
Objection! The defense is claiming this map is absurd, and this many easy Sorcery nodes are completely abnormal.
-Denied! Three maps will be tested to avoid the luck factor. Unless all three of them are significantly above average, there is no room for the defense's claims.
In the end, I declare war on the Death wizard, and start to slowly take over their cities. This isn't easy - I lose a stack
of 9 War Bears on a seemingly defenseless city with only swordsmen, halberdiers and 2 ghouls - Guardian is a big deal.
Overall, the prosecution's claim seems to stand on this map - Sprites contributed massively and at this point the game looks winnable, albeit the Myrran wizard is not yet known.
Strengths on the graph are roughly the same, albeit I'm at 3rd position, I'm not that far behind.
-Objection! The defense claims the court could have achieved a similar result without involving sprites. Slingers or longbowmen should have been able to clear out Sorcery nodes fast and easily, and could have been bought if gold wasn't converted all to mana.
Furthermore, by summoning Giant Spiders right away, the neutral city could have been taken earlier and used to fuel the production of units.
...objection...accepted. The court will now play the same map, without resorting to the use of Sprites, and will attempt to clear the same Sorcery nodes using other units.
The court now presents the recording of the same game without using Sprites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2owsS8F...e=youtu.be
As the defense suggested, not using sprites, while slightly slower at first, produced better overall results after 5 full years.
2 more nodes were claimed, and the most threatening enemy wizard was held back and lost enough troops to be unable to get any nodes of their own -out of which, I was able to claim one myself instead. Casting skill was nearly identical, and the number of controlled cities were similar, but military strength was significantly higher.
While the neutral High Men city was not found in time, another Neutral city, that wasn't uncovered by the Sprites strategy was effortlessly conquered to replace it.
Not only that, but the most basic strategy was used to achieve that - producing longbowmen and summoning bears and spiders.
Not even slingers -which have more firepower- were necessary.
The court accepts this as evidence for sprites being an inferior strategy to a generic strategy on this particular map.
It's also interesting to see how much difference random chance makes - in one game the purple wizard didn't build any wizard's guilds while in the other they built 3 of them, raising their position on the history graph almost twice as high. This wizard didn't play any role in either of the two games, except for being the one who grabbed the high men neutral city in the second.
Game 2
------
The recordings of the game played by the court can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8buEE5...e=youtu.be
A node with nagas and phantom warriors found near the capital. Clearing it takes an unexpected 18 full turns!
The node has 7 tiles and yields a 500 mana item. Several other, low yielding targets like skeletons are cleared.
None of them yields gold, only low or medium amount of mana crystals, or low value (50-250) items, and some common spells.
One of them which should have been cleared without losses (6 hell hounds) costs 3 sprites due to absolutely horrible attack and defense rolls.
The tresure found here was barely able to cover the loss of the 3 units and considering the casting time, was an overall loss.
Meanwhile the node(s) draw magic spirits from all over the world, making contact with all 3 other wizards.
Eventually another node is discovered, and cleared, yielding somewhat better results - more tiles and a 1000 mana item. Despite casting Earth Lores at very far locations, no new targets are found - in 1403 the strategy fails to yield any more treasure. I send the sprites towards the capital of the wizard that is most likely to turn into an unstoppable threat - it's far but at least there is a keep with nagas next to it, which is the only remaining valid target. I start casting Resist elements on them to prepare for the battle.
The sprites don't make it there, I have to turn them back after taking only two turns, as my territory is attacked. The sprites don't make it back in time, and the emergency summons at the capital can't stop the incoming enemy. The game is lost.
Defense : As the court has demonstrated, Sprites failed to yield an advantage and directly contributed towards losing the game. Both nodes could have been claimed by Slingers, and those would have been able to stop an enemy invasion. Sprites weren't able to stop enemy invaders, despite flying, they were killed by direct damage.
We have nothing more to say here.
Game 3
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Nothing of significant interest was found in the first 3 Earth lores.
There are neutral cities, but they are nomads, filled with ranged swordsmen, Sprites are ineffective against those.
I summon 2 bears to conquer the closer, small one.
I don't scout the other - given the size it should have 9 units inside out of which at least half ranged.
Sprites can't crush that and I don't have resources to use more than 5 yet.
I need boats to send out my settlers, because I don't have Water Walking and cannot afford to research it.
I clear out the only two possible targets - 1x fire elemental, and 3x fire elemental, 3x hell hound. Both yield marginal treasure and
easy to clear with almost any early game unit.
About to give up and declate this map a failure, but decide to do one final Earth Lore, targeting a completely uncharted area in the ocean.
Lucky, instead of vast amounts of water, there actually is a continent there with 2 sorcery nodes.
I use the sprites to clear both - since I still have only 15 mana income but pay 12 of that on maintenance, I actually find it hard to summon the 2 magic spirits until after I convert some of the received gold.
Overall treasure was very low on this map even including these nodes, and I can't afford to try going any further because the wizard really close to me declared war.
I start summoning bears to charge at their fortress. Meanwhile they put two heroes on my node so I will have to hunt down all magic spirits going that way - a painful thing to do because the wizard is chaos/death. I wish I had 4-5 bears there to crush the heroes, but the 5 sprites would not do it - both heroes are ranged.
At this point I abort the test because the amount of treasure gained was far too insignificant to prove the prosecution's claims.
The Defense wants to point out that both nodes could have been easily cleared using Horsebowmen from the neutral nomad city - they are cheaper than sprites and their movement is high enough to be able to exterminate nagas and phantoms without losses.
The court accepts the claim and doesn't request a demonstration - it would be a waste of time as Horsebowmen are clearly cheaper than Sprites and capable of eliminating those targets - the outcome of such a test is obvious.
A recording of the game can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAa2EoPh...e=youtu.be
I believe this case is simple, and a verdict can be reached right now, however we need to hear the jury and prosecution before proceeding.
------
The recordings of the game played by the court can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVsdLeVE...e=youtu.be
Started on a peninsula, closed off by a large neutral city. Longbowmen inside, so Sprites can't handle it.
Node next to the starting city with many bears and earth elementals.
On the other side of the neutral city, a 10 Death book wizard was found. Due to starting relation, war is ineviatable,
but Nature creatures have no chance of taking out a capital with all Ghouls and Guardian.
Turn 25 is past, but no war declaration comes for a long time.
-Objection! The defense claims the RNG was on the prosecution's side, and not summoning bears and spiders
immediately was a hazardous suicide tactic that could have caused the loss of the game.
-Denied! The jury is going to also play on the map, and will share their results. This should eliminate the effects of luck.
Earth Lore reveals some convenient Sorcery nodes. Some being, always one more after the previous was cleared.
I can keep going after them until 1405, with the total being 4 nodes - two others were claimed by enemy wizards due to being close to their capital.
Objection! The defense is claiming this map is absurd, and this many easy Sorcery nodes are completely abnormal.
-Denied! Three maps will be tested to avoid the luck factor. Unless all three of them are significantly above average, there is no room for the defense's claims.
In the end, I declare war on the Death wizard, and start to slowly take over their cities. This isn't easy - I lose a stack
of 9 War Bears on a seemingly defenseless city with only swordsmen, halberdiers and 2 ghouls - Guardian is a big deal.
Overall, the prosecution's claim seems to stand on this map - Sprites contributed massively and at this point the game looks winnable, albeit the Myrran wizard is not yet known.
Strengths on the graph are roughly the same, albeit I'm at 3rd position, I'm not that far behind.
-Objection! The defense claims the court could have achieved a similar result without involving sprites. Slingers or longbowmen should have been able to clear out Sorcery nodes fast and easily, and could have been bought if gold wasn't converted all to mana.
Furthermore, by summoning Giant Spiders right away, the neutral city could have been taken earlier and used to fuel the production of units.
...objection...accepted. The court will now play the same map, without resorting to the use of Sprites, and will attempt to clear the same Sorcery nodes using other units.
The court now presents the recording of the same game without using Sprites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2owsS8F...e=youtu.be
As the defense suggested, not using sprites, while slightly slower at first, produced better overall results after 5 full years.
2 more nodes were claimed, and the most threatening enemy wizard was held back and lost enough troops to be unable to get any nodes of their own -out of which, I was able to claim one myself instead. Casting skill was nearly identical, and the number of controlled cities were similar, but military strength was significantly higher.
While the neutral High Men city was not found in time, another Neutral city, that wasn't uncovered by the Sprites strategy was effortlessly conquered to replace it.
Not only that, but the most basic strategy was used to achieve that - producing longbowmen and summoning bears and spiders.
Not even slingers -which have more firepower- were necessary.
The court accepts this as evidence for sprites being an inferior strategy to a generic strategy on this particular map.
It's also interesting to see how much difference random chance makes - in one game the purple wizard didn't build any wizard's guilds while in the other they built 3 of them, raising their position on the history graph almost twice as high. This wizard didn't play any role in either of the two games, except for being the one who grabbed the high men neutral city in the second.
Game 2
------
The recordings of the game played by the court can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8buEE5...e=youtu.be
A node with nagas and phantom warriors found near the capital. Clearing it takes an unexpected 18 full turns!
The node has 7 tiles and yields a 500 mana item. Several other, low yielding targets like skeletons are cleared.
None of them yields gold, only low or medium amount of mana crystals, or low value (50-250) items, and some common spells.
One of them which should have been cleared without losses (6 hell hounds) costs 3 sprites due to absolutely horrible attack and defense rolls.
The tresure found here was barely able to cover the loss of the 3 units and considering the casting time, was an overall loss.
Meanwhile the node(s) draw magic spirits from all over the world, making contact with all 3 other wizards.
Eventually another node is discovered, and cleared, yielding somewhat better results - more tiles and a 1000 mana item. Despite casting Earth Lores at very far locations, no new targets are found - in 1403 the strategy fails to yield any more treasure. I send the sprites towards the capital of the wizard that is most likely to turn into an unstoppable threat - it's far but at least there is a keep with nagas next to it, which is the only remaining valid target. I start casting Resist elements on them to prepare for the battle.
The sprites don't make it there, I have to turn them back after taking only two turns, as my territory is attacked. The sprites don't make it back in time, and the emergency summons at the capital can't stop the incoming enemy. The game is lost.
Defense : As the court has demonstrated, Sprites failed to yield an advantage and directly contributed towards losing the game. Both nodes could have been claimed by Slingers, and those would have been able to stop an enemy invasion. Sprites weren't able to stop enemy invaders, despite flying, they were killed by direct damage.
We have nothing more to say here.
Game 3
-------
Nothing of significant interest was found in the first 3 Earth lores.
There are neutral cities, but they are nomads, filled with ranged swordsmen, Sprites are ineffective against those.
I summon 2 bears to conquer the closer, small one.
I don't scout the other - given the size it should have 9 units inside out of which at least half ranged.
Sprites can't crush that and I don't have resources to use more than 5 yet.
I need boats to send out my settlers, because I don't have Water Walking and cannot afford to research it.
I clear out the only two possible targets - 1x fire elemental, and 3x fire elemental, 3x hell hound. Both yield marginal treasure and
easy to clear with almost any early game unit.
About to give up and declate this map a failure, but decide to do one final Earth Lore, targeting a completely uncharted area in the ocean.
Lucky, instead of vast amounts of water, there actually is a continent there with 2 sorcery nodes.
I use the sprites to clear both - since I still have only 15 mana income but pay 12 of that on maintenance, I actually find it hard to summon the 2 magic spirits until after I convert some of the received gold.
Overall treasure was very low on this map even including these nodes, and I can't afford to try going any further because the wizard really close to me declared war.
I start summoning bears to charge at their fortress. Meanwhile they put two heroes on my node so I will have to hunt down all magic spirits going that way - a painful thing to do because the wizard is chaos/death. I wish I had 4-5 bears there to crush the heroes, but the 5 sprites would not do it - both heroes are ranged.
At this point I abort the test because the amount of treasure gained was far too insignificant to prove the prosecution's claims.
The Defense wants to point out that both nodes could have been easily cleared using Horsebowmen from the neutral nomad city - they are cheaper than sprites and their movement is high enough to be able to exterminate nagas and phantoms without losses.
The court accepts the claim and doesn't request a demonstration - it would be a waste of time as Horsebowmen are clearly cheaper than Sprites and capable of eliminating those targets - the outcome of such a test is obvious.
A recording of the game can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAa2EoPh...e=youtu.be
I believe this case is simple, and a verdict can be reached right now, however we need to hear the jury and prosecution before proceeding.
