Heh, I find nodes far easier than wizards, even with high end rarity creatures guarding the node. The presence of a wizard makes such a huge difference (especially now that mid game, 1408-1415, easily sees AI on extreme+ with 200+ casting skill).
Played a few more turns but decided to concede on this game - I don't have enough books to stand a chance. I have a decent sword and staff but without at least some armor and accessory, I can't even assemble a single hero to use (I managed to trade for Spell Lock though). The Nature wizard is already using rares and has Prayer which I don't. They also made a pact with the Myrran wizard and with Aura of Majesty on the Sorcery wizard's side it'll probably grow into an Alliance eventually.
It's sad because this would be an interesting game - I have an ally and it's a fairly strong one but has chaos books so can spice things up a lot in the late game. I always wanted to fight a sorcery Myrran AI as well, but I simply do not have a powerful enough wizard to do that in this game.
My final thoughts about the game :
-The treasure changes were clearly bad for the human player - nothing easy to fight anywhere throughout the entire game. Being the only source of income where the AI did not have an advantage over the player, this had an even greater effect than expected.
-4 realms with 3/3/3/2 books is too weak for Extreme (expected). You don't get a mid or late game - no very rare spells and way too many missing uncommons. Maybe if treasure wasn't broken I could have capitalized on that for more books and spells.
-Sage Master AI is frighteningly fast in research - haven't seen AI with many rares in 1412 on Extreme before. This is closer to the usual schedule for Impossible difficulty.
-Life seems to be a large threat now - they'll have early Prayer even if playing two realms and they'll accelerate their economy massively in the early game with Stream of Life as well, making them both hard to attack and strong if left alone.
-One more game for the "AI might need a production reduction" pile.
-Myrran AI might be unbeatable thanks to the more aggressive settler use - Sorcery wizards are generally bad at expanding due to no summons and despite that they were accelerating like crazy. I haven't made it far enough in a game to fight one on Extreme since that change.
-Doing those test games for sprites made me adapt the "start and abandon" mindset which I'm not happy about. I no longer finish games and stop playing whenever I see I'm not doing well enough, or just completed some sort of update that makes the current game obsolete. The AI is now good enough that I consider them unbeatable if I'm too far behind in economy whereas it used to be normal to attack wizards with 3-4 times my strength and win. In fact wizards with equal strength to mine are now a threat and I have to think twice about fighting them - which turns the "declare war if same strength" diplomacy feature from a nuisance and the AI's last resort attempt to not lose into an actual risk.
I'm not sure about the Myrran AI expanding well. I'm at 1411 in my current game at Extreme difficulty and just broke through to Myrror -- before that I was too busy beating on my Arcanus peers (and defeating one). The Arcanus guys are at 1 city each (not even a capital) with no nodes. I figured I'd reach Myrror and find some huge opponent but... he's at equal strength to my nearly-destroyed Arcanus guys. (See attachment, Myrror guy is red, he's 6 sorcery / 4 life / omniscient).
I've seen this happen several games playing on the latest updates. Just seems quite inconsistent, since the Myrrans are definitely powerful sometimes, and they have no issue growing when I actually play as a Myrran. IMO it would be better to always seed the planes with 2 AIs each, that seems to produce better results.
I suspect the reason for that is all wizards I see on the graphs usually play Life books and probably used Astral Gate to reach Myrror, so the Myrran AI didn't get to keep the entire plane to itself.
The other possible reason, if they played no Nature, Sorcery and Death for naval travel and weren't Draconians, they might have wasted too much time using ships...wait what? 1411? Of course they aren't strong you're winning too early. Even with the update the Myrran AI is "only" as good as filling up the entire plane with cities by turn 100 - but it takes time for those to grow and produce massive armies. 50 more turns are they will be massively powerful, unless the Arcanus wizards already settled half of Myrror.
What race are they playing? Some are just too slow. Another thing that can hinder AI a lot is finding a city in a "better" race which has a low population and takes too long to produce settlers.
He's Trolls, with a capital on a small island. But, it's by water and he's sorcery, so presumably he could get his settlers around. You're correct that a life sorcerer managed to spread some cities around, but OTOH the Myrran just looks underdeveloped, he had a continent 1 space away from his island but the development there looks pretty spotty. It's a bit confusing to me as when I play Extreme w/ Myrran, it seems like the map is filling up around 1404 - 1405. As I mentioned in another thread, I've lost a Myrran game as early as 1403 (to a death / chaos mage on a streak).
Re: life mages, using astral gate, actually I've got bad luck? with life, a large number of the games I play have 3-4 life wizards. In this one all 5 wizards (including me) are half life, although I took 2 out of the running before they could use astral gate. Probably just the RNG getting me, unless others are experiencing similar.
I've seen games with lots of life wizards, but none seemed to use astral gate - it can be very hit or miss as to whether it leads to a useful spot. I've also seen ones where the life wizard put a huge damper on the myrran wizard expansion.
I've just met the Myrran wizard in the new game I started and...
I'm blue and I'm doing exceptionally well - I probably control about half of Arcanus already due to starting on a fairly large continent. I'm actively at war with green and red. The Myran wizard is about 4 times stronger than me, and 3 times compared to the strongest Arcanus wizard.
And they don't know Stream of Life yet. They wanted to trade for it. All of that is without Stream of Life.
The Myrran has Tactician only and Life/Nature.
I've seen Dark elf units coming but haven't actually entered Myrror myself.
red has Death/Chaos with a little bit of life and nature, Archmage and Famous.
green has Warlord Alchemy Sage Master - probably the three strongest retorts left in the game now.
purple is all Sorcery with 1 life, Conjurer, Specialist, Archmage.
Meanwhile I think I have to abandon this game as well. I had a strong start and I have been at a non-stop war with the red player - and I am "winning" this war - successfully taken away 3 of their cities, and the ones I lost, I reclaimed. They have like 3 cities remaining at least on the visible part of the map...and they have been above me on the graphs despite that for the whole game. The continent I'm trying to invade is swarming with units and they even come and appear on mine.
I'm playing Klackons - I have a 50% production bonus. I had an amazing start - gold ore, coal, 91% production bonus from mountains. I produce Stag Beetles almost at 1/turn. And it's not enough to beat...one of the 4 wizards.
Yes, I have to fight the others as they are also attacking but I'm not trying to invade their lands so it didn't cost me too much troops until now...though recently the green wizard just started sending too many large stacks - I can't even stop those anymore.
My casting skill is insufficient to keep up with my basic needs (Resist Magic on all beetles and Heavenly Light on all cities) because I have no nodes and I'm busy on military production in cities. Yes, I started with sprites, on the updated map. I even found a convenient node - and it is being used against me. The enemy wizard was too close to the node and I had no chance to hold it - the 1x Sprites I left there is now serving on their side as undead - fell in the first battle against ghouls. That extra power was enough to let them maintain advantage even though I kept taking their cities away.
With this sort of amazing start I should have dominated all of Arcanus easily (Klackons with extra gold, coal, 91% production bonus capital, t least 3 adjacent spots for pop 25 cities, large continent etc) and I can't even...keep up with the AI. Extreme feels harder now than Impossible used to be 3 months ago.
PS : Klackons are amazing. Yes, my gold production is not that great, but I build units (and buildings) at a crazy rate, and with roads, my income got much better. The units are also amazing - plain halberdiers can crush bears, gnoll units, even wolf riders easily. With any other race I'd be much less powerful. I don't think there is a need to improve them.
Interesting. I definitely don't feel that much change in the difficulties - I'd also love to figure out how to play klackons without omniscient. I just run out of gold and rely on bonus gold from minerals.
That myrran wizard also isn't one of the combinations I'd expect to go crazy. So that's good to see too.
I'm coming up with some preliminary work for the spell priority suggestions. But I'm trying to do a more thorough job than originally intended which is why it's taking time.
