Test games played

[Seravy]

"why you feel a 9 pick strategy should work on expert;"
If you think Chaneller is so weak it's worth 0 picks, I suggest opening a "buff chaneller" thread.
If you think Myrran is worth 0 picks, open a "buff Myrran" thread, though I intend to improve node availability so maybe there is no need for that.

Go and pick a build that maximizes flight instead of ignoring it and considering it, at best, some kind of extra.

This is that build. The strongest advantage of Flight is to be able to throw powerful combat spells at enemies without getting hurt or chased down, and Chaos/Sorcery Chaneller is the most powerful wizard for that. (we already found out that access to other continents doesn't work because boats move faster...)
What am I supposed to use flight for if not this?
Attack at range? That is currently nerfed to oblivion and unplayable, besides, none of the draconian ranged units have enough durability to use for offense in the first place. (if the enemy gets the first turn, they can flame strike or use their ranged units to kill mine and I lose the army without doing anything.) Shaman and magician are 4x1 hp, bowmen are 4x2 hp. Air Ships are...decent I guess, but takes a while to build up for those...by then I can have rare spells and use my original tactic.

[Nelphine]

A strategy has 2 parts: early game, and later. Your strategy was fine for later (but does not care about race, see below) but you do not have enough skill at the start to make your early plan work. You need to have something at the start - either buffed units or summons. If going summons, then you aren't using draconians (whether you pick them or not).

Race only matters for the early game - late game, you can conquer other cities and have a variety of options, and use those that match what you end up with, and against.

So for a late game strategy, you never choose draconian - dark elf are better in every way. 

So to recap:
You chose channeler, but didn't choose a single spell that it could benefit from, nor do most combats in the first 5 years occur at x3 range, which is the only time its better to pick channeler over alchemy.

So for the first 5 years (or more if you have a slow start,as you did) you've wasted 2 picks.

For the same time period, you've also chosen myrran. But you didn't plan any way to use the race in that time period. Further, by not taking buffs or summons, you have no way to do lair hunting.

You also chose myrran, then chose a race that doesn't give you any advantage in your strategy until so late you should conquer other races and have more options anyway. So you threw away the race advantage. You also didn't pick anything that could hunt early lairs, without first getting a node.. But without lair hunting you can't get that node. So you threw away the treasure advantage. You didn't play dwarves, so you threw away the minerals advantage. You didn't pick beastmen so you threw away the settling-with-less-oppobents advantage.


So it has nothing to do with the retorts themselves. They might have problems, but you basically actively picked the worst thing you could to try to use them.

Deciding the retorts are bad, when you throw away every advantage they offer, is wrong.

[Nelphine]

As earlier mentioned - if not using common summons, then warlord is always the right choice, and forces you to avoid some races. 

I'm going to add to that: if you are using common summons, conjuror is always the right choice.

In my opinion, every wizard should have one of those two retorts if you are going to be as effective as possible.

Note this isn't always the case - its the right choice, but for very specific strategies, you could avoid both and have a better choice. And it isn't a required choice at expert or below - but I fully believe at master, it euld be very hard to convince me a strategy couldn't be improved with one of those 2. However, at lunatic, those rare strange strategies might crop up and be effective (so obviously would work on master as well).

[Seravy]

I fail to comprehend. Fire bolt works with Chaneller. Confusion, Shatter too. Draconian can reach those 3x range tiles very early. It's not my fault none of those cursed tiles had any lair or neutral I could attack.
And believe me, dumping 2 fire bolts per overland turn while flying safely above the enemy works, even if 2 fire bolts is all you can do. At least works on common creatures. But there were none of those anywhere...
(and I had a backup plan, dumping confusions. Works up to ~10 resistance. Uncommons should be doable! But I found no uncommons anywhere either...)

We nerfed the sprites tactic, and this IS the sprites tactic. Ofc it's not going to work I'm silly. I should have never nerfed the sprites tactic in the first place, now EVERY flying tactic sucks. Ofc they suck twice as much on Myrror due to node budgets, but...ehh...

I don't think I'm in the state to think rationally at this point, too angry. I'll fix the node budgets then take a break for a few hours and start a new game. But first I'll normalize the cost of draconians and make their settlers move 2. If they aren't good at spreading settlers, flying is not effective due to sprites balancing, and their units are inferior to other Myrran races (except dark elf), then they have no role whatsoever and need to be the Myrran lizardmen. No double hit points but flight instead, sounds fair enough.

[Domon]

i like that, how far would you consider reworking them towards that?

[Seravy]

Well, they already have flight so 2 move on settlers is all they need aside from normalized unit costs. The medium growth is already there (albeit outpost growth is poor while lizardmen is excellent, population growth is only...2 less. Wait, Draconians have -1 growth over the standard on population? They are not even average? OMG...)

[Nelphine]

To be fair that was your reaction to dark elf growth too.  Personally, I think if you go back to when you did the dark ekf growth change, all 5 myrran races grew too slowly.

So we've increased dark elf and dwarf since then. Now draconian. I would also incrwae both troll and beastmen growth rates.

[Nelphine]

At your spell plan, 2 firebolts doesnt remotely compare to the damage of 1 unit of sprites. And you can summon more sprites overland, while you can't effectively increase your combat casting ability easily. So no, flyer plus combat spells is NOT sprites. You can't add to it the same way.

Draconian bowmen, with 2 buffs. And 8 amko, do about 3 times the damage if 1 sprite unit. Even with 6 ammo, they'd do twice as much. They are sprites on steroids even with the Nerf.

[Seravy]

But if I don't summon I can research AEther Binding in about 40 turns. And then the skill skyrockets. With some mana and gold from treasure and income from population, I can afford maxing research and use that treasure to pay for the fire bolts until the first node.

Fire Bolts might not always be the most efficient option anyway. If I find a cokactrice or lizard lair, I can kill one at a time for 36 MP each by casting confusion once per battle. So 5 cockatrices = 10 spearmen and 5 confusion. Lizards are even better because the spearmen doesn't get used up in the process so only need one.
If I'm in a sorcery node aura, a Phantom Warriors deals massively better damage and can most likely finish nagas one at a time.
...wait a second. The math doesn't seem to add up...
Fire Bolt : 24 strength, cost 10, 2.4 strength per mana.
Phantom Warriors : 21 strength, cost 15 mana, 1.4 strength per mana. Illusion but has to be at range and target cannot be flying.

..Why do Phantom Warriors cost 15 mana each again? I do remember we nerfed them from 10 mana because that was overpowered, but back then a fire bolt was, like, strength 18?

...Shouldn't we lower the cost on PW? Like, 12 each?

Well, might as well, I'll build bowmen, hack flame blade in and see how they do against the wyrms that way. Can't do 2 buffs though, not playing Life...

[Nelphine]

2 Levels count as a buff. Alchemist guild counts as a buff. Adamantium counts as a buff. (That's 4 buffs you can get without any spells, which is why city troops have such huge variance on power).

And confusion is less than a 50% success rate. Its a lot slower than that.