game discussion!

[Nelphine]

My plan worked! I rested up for one turn, gave up two more cities to Tlalocs endless forces, watched as both Sss'ra and Raven triumphantly returned ...

And in return I smashed the archangels of the mighty merlin! I picked up about 7000 worth of loot that time, and a prosperity spell!! I MIGHT be able to survive if I can hold onto 2 cities now. The only thing I need to do is buff my remaining garrisons to Lightning Brigade level before I get overrun.. with a casting skill of ~165 (and I have to pour everything into mana now just to break even), I'm not sure I can do it. And i have to crush Merlin or he'll just come back which means Tlaloc is going to pick up another 6 or 8 cities in the meantime.

The struggle continues!

[GermanJoey]

5-8 beast men halberdiers with adamantium,   holy weapon,  holy armor, eldritch weapon, endurance, focus magic, and 3-5 have chaos channels, and 2-4 of those have lion heart. It's very hard to keep a consistent batch alive; I've probably produced, oh, 250+ adamantium halberdiers.

Don't Archangels have an exorcist touch attack? Or is is that just regular Angels? Chaos Channels might be shooting yourself in the foot even still though, as they're probably spamming bless in every fight... although I guess you probably need the flight and fire breath just to attack the fliers.

Have you tried Minotaurs at all? I'm also a big fan of Adamant HB but for your situation Minotaurs might be better. They don't get as much out of the Adamantium but they do start with +2 to hit, which would be pretty good since the AA are probably starting off every fight with Prayer. (which gives +1 to Def, among other things). They also get +1 move (close the gap faster) and would get slightly more out of lionheart, with each figure gaining 4hp instead of just 1hp. (they have about the same health total at u.elite though, 24 for H vs 26 for M, so I don't know if they'll be a lot more survivable)

My plan worked! I rested up for one turn, gave up two more cities to Tlalocs endless forces, watched as both Sss'ra and Raven triumphantly returned ...

And in return I smashed the archangels of the mighty merlin! I picked up about 7000 worth of loot that time, and a prosperity spell!!  I MIGHT be able to survive if I can hold onto 2 cities now. The only thing I need to do is buff my remaining garrisons to Lightning Brigade level before I get overrun.. with a casting skill of ~165 (and I have to pour everything into mana now just to break even), I'm not sure I can do it. And i have to crush Merlin or he'll just come back which means Tlaloc is going to pick up another 6 or 8 cities in the meantime. 

The struggle continues!

Ah! Congrats and good luck! It sounds like you should just raze a lot of these cities...

[Nelphine]

Oh I'm inquisitor, I'm razing away. I mean Tlaloc is coming and settling afterwards (just as he picked up my nodes) and.. giving the person with the strongest army more territory doesn't sound healthy. At least I took out the strongest spell caster. (God merlin had a lot of power production. If i had to guess I'd say he had around 290-320 casting skill when I attacked, and was raking in, oh, several thousand, probably in the 4000-5000 range, of power per turn.)

As for minotaurs, halberdiers have two titanic advantages. They don't need an armorers guild, and I can reliably build them in one turn in any city with foresters, mechanicians guild, and fighters guild. Which is really cheap to buy up to, even on a pop 3 or 4 city. Toss in war college and alchemists guild and boom. That is a LOT of halberdiers. Minor advantage: halberdiers are cheap. More gold to convert to mana.

Hadn't even thought about exorcist touch. Chaos channels might have been bad. But the flame breath with focus magic is so bloody strong on six figures.

The main point of halberdiers is to one hit kill anything they attack They get more hits than minotaurs even have attack rating.

Which is also why it's so important that they're cheap. As long as they hit once, maybe twice, they win. Even if they take lots of damage, even die, in return. And against most things even 4 figures is enough to one hit kill them, so it requires a lot to hurt them enough they can't kill their target.

[Nelphine]

Of course, they are vulnerable to a lot of things. Thus the vast quantities I go through and the number of cities I lose.

[GermanJoey]

I had a feeling the Armorers' Guild was the problem... oh well. Maybe Prosperity can help pay for one.

I just checked and Adamant Minotaurs have roughly equal hits as a regular Adamant Halber, but once you factor in HW, Lionheart, Prayer, etc, they get a lot more. So they'd be slightly weaker offensively, but maybe not die as much? Not sure if that's worth it or not. I was just thinking you'd have an easier time razing cities quickly w/ your Lightning Brigade (once a wizard was banished) if you didn't have to go back for reinforcements as often. But I don't know what's killing you in most battles, so who knows...

[Nelphine]

That's possible. The big problem is that, for instance, my original capital probably created halberdiers for.. more than 10 years straight without fail. 2 other cities also spent years building them. I really don't know when I could have paused to spend multiple turns building minotaurs even if I spent a turn buying the guild.

[GermanJoey]

Ideally you'd rush them in every turn as well, and theoretically you'd have to replace them less often (large shield, 26 total HP vs 18 for halberdiers at Veteran), but that'd take a lot more income I guess. Like, somewhere around 240g - 300g per turn if you don't have coal? Probably isn't affordable given your dire situation.

I dunno, Manticores are pretty good but not at the stage of the game you're at. Maybe Centaurs? Only other thing I can think of. They're pretty cheap and only require a Stables on top of what you need for Halbers. Centaurs hit almost as hard but at range (IIRC 10 ranged attack at Veteran w/ Adamant)... only 4 figures though. Three less armor per figure too, so maybe no good if you're getting chewed up from a distance (or flame strike). That said, they can kite pretty well and do have one additional health per figure. Do you have flame blade? HW + EW + FB would let them hit pretty hard while still being cheap enough to cast each turn. I was doing that in my current lizardman game on Javelineers and thought that it was pretty good. (until you fight someone with Dispelling Wave, heh)

Do you have Divine Order in play? That would probably help you a lot, especially if the enemy is spending most of his time summoning junk.

[Nelphine]

No flame blade. I had divine order from ...1410 ish until Tlaloc disjunction ed it. Even had a life event for a while, casting lion heart for 74 mana. Was nice.

Rune master helps a lot against dispels, although so does specialist. probably going to try both next time.

[Nelphine]

I have been defeated. I was able to start clearing Merlin's cities, but, the sheer number of city curses meant I couldn't sustain garrisons and an attacking force.

I shall have to restart and conquer these realms!

[Nelphine]

So I wanted to do an extreme game to prove my game play worked.. I got a home city with 2 gold, mithril, gems, and wild game.

Then, both Myrran opponents were peaceful.

Then the first Arcanus opponent I met.. was peaceful.

Hurrah! So my strategy totally works!.. in the most ridiculously slanted game I've seen yet. (The second Arcanus opponent is maniacal, but my army strength at this point is far beyond him. And my power production. And my spell power. And I'm up to like.. 16 cities or something, most of which are working on wizard and amplifying towers)