[SPOILERS] Alignment unknown

[plako]

Are you sure lightning elementals can fly? Since your air elemental died over water.

That might have been the problem. They apparently can't fly.

[plako]

T131

I should have counted tiles a bit better. With Engineering HidingKneel's units can reach very far so he was able to use 2 Repetant Angels and Basium to hit my Archmage stack. Lesson here is to bring more stack protectors with mage stack.



But actually I don't mind losing the archmage at all. I've this guy waiting for upgrading.



I've mana nodes to instantly give him Air III and Earth III and it can take Body III for Graft Flesh and a bit later Meatmagic III. This will be better than the original

So I naturally used my summons to kill the thise 3 Basium units and moved them towards my home. After that only normal nation management left.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yum I bet your Archmage can make a mean roast.

[plako]

Turn played quite a while ago. It seems HidingKneel couldn't play on his normal window so I've time for something else. Last turn I upgraded the Body III Archmage and summoned Flesh Golem. I did look for some references and found this writing from Selrahc:

Oh, Flesh Golems have some use beyond that.
Without including anything that requires heavily advanced technology, like merging in Krakens from OO Druids, experienced horsemen from Ride of the Nine, Shadows for Invis or Beastmasters, there are a lot of tricks you can play to get a pretty pimp Flesh Golem.

Firstly, merge in a unit with a higher base strength without any promos that buff it. A ranger will do nicely here. Golem is S7. Secondly, merge in a unit that has a higher base strength but does have promotions which buff it. A ranger with poison blades. The golem gets a strength increase from the higher strength, then adds the promo. Golem is S9. Now start throwing in Strength increases from other sources. Metal promotions, Flaming Arrows, Mutations, Nightmares, Sheut Stone. Do it from the cheapest units you can produce that have access. Warriors for mutation spamming, archers for flaming arrows etc.
This should leave your Golem with a rather juicy base strength, somewhere around 14. But with only the promotions available to low xp units, and no way to gain more due to lacking a unit class. That's where the next step comes in.

If in the late game, you have been following a religion like Order or Kilmorph, and have an experienced hero like Valin or Bambur sitting around, you can be tempted not to change to not lose an experienced hero. A flesh golem gives you the chance to dump all those powerful promotions into an even more powerful chassis, and give you more freedom in picking your religion to boot. But what if you don't want to part with your hero? What if you're happy with your religion. That's okay. If you took the simple step of preparing some priests earlier. Take 3 for preference. They should be sitting with around 20xp. Capable of reaching level 5. Promote them up different lines, then merge them. Your golem should now be highly elite. But Selrahc, you're saying, who can afford to keep 3 experienced priests sitting around doing nothing? I've been fighting wars. That's how I got to the late game in the first place! In that case find one of your more elite units and merge him in. This is definitely an upgrade.

For the last ingredient, train yourself up a hawk and merge him in. Your little Frankenstein can now fly! He's all grown up and ready to leave the nest.
Add Marksman promotion as preferred.

So what's the cost, what's the result?
Cost:
2 rangers (Strength, Strength+Poison weapon, Mobility 1+2, Sentry 1+2)
1 axe (Enchanted Blade, Iron Weapons, City raider 1+2)
1 archer (Flaming arrows, City defence 1+2)
4-5+ warriors (Mutations, anything up to 2 promos for melee)
1 obsolete religious hero (or) 3 priests with xp to spare (or) 1 elite unit
1 Hawk
Assuming all units are fresh built, going with 3 priests that is 905 hammers.
Potentially if you're dumping old obsolete units then the actual cost is much less.

Result(priest version):
S14, Move 5
C4, Drill 4, Blitz, Flying, Medic 2, March, Empower 5, Enchanted Blade, Poison Blade, Iron Weapons, Strong, Flaming Arrows, Mobility 2, City Raider 2, City Defender 2, Shock, Formation, Cover, Scourge, Light, Heavy, Sentry 2, Commando, Command 3, Cannibalize, (Resist Fire, Immune to Disease, Resist Cold, Resist Lightning, depending on mutations. These ones probably aren't worth making too much of an effort for while Blitz, Cannibalize, Light and Strong are all fantastic).

Is it worth the investment? I don't know to be honest. But you can make one hell of a superunit.

If you do happen to have OO druids, then the base strength of the unit rises to 22, while also dumping the 300 hammers of unit investment in rangers.

Good stuff. I can get Golem to base 8 with elephants and I also have a Griffon to make him fly. What I lack from above description are 2 priests (I've only 1 good enough), some promos are not yet unlocked like Command, units promoted to some of the promos like city attacker/defender and Archery. Well I've 1 archery unit that came from founding CoE, but it was mutated to weak . I also have couple of highly promoted units from barb wars. I would really like to feed Saverous to it, but as he is not alive I guess that won't work.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

The image of a giant tentacled monstrosity, armoured in iron, with teeth and claws everywhere, firing poisoned darts and flames out of every orifice, flapping about with a pair of tiny wings, is hilarious and I will brook no disagreement.

[Ichabod]

The image of a giant tentacled monstrosity, armoured in iron, with teeth and claws everywhere, firing poisoned darts and flames out of every orifice, flapping about with a pair of tiny wings, is hilarious and I will brook no disagreement.

That's Cthulhu right there, isn't it?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Cthulhu is boring Monster Mash is hilarious.

[plako]

Few shots from ongoing turn. Taxation coming in 2 turns and after revolting to better civics I should have quite competitive economy.

Flesh Golem still needs at least Combat and Drill promos. I don't have any units that could give them max so I'm still thinking what to do with them. Main task is stack protection so I won't give him flying for now so that it can keep up with the hasted mages.


Hemah has the spellstaff! In case I convert my nodes to Earth it means 8 Strength 18 Elementals. By far the most powerful unit of the game .

Here is potential target. Depending on the situation I could potentially attack in 1-2 turns, but might choose not to also. I'm still wondering if it would be better to keep HidingKneel still in the game or give him this cribbling blow. Of course he might bring enough defenders and I might had to leave my mages too exposed. We'll see:

Dragon is still collecting experience. If I decide not to attack city, I'll probably move my Mages here and try to get rid of it:

[plako]

One more shot from current turn. Ophanim's are now causing headaches to Ilios. That gets my approval. I won't interfere

[plako]

Played the turn. Taxation finished. I decided not to try attack HidingKneel's cities. However there were few units that I could reach covering workers so I took that opportunity and killed Paladin and couple of other units. Some of the mages were left behind. Core of the units headed south. Best place to surprise HidingKneel is probably through Hyborem land and there is dragon to be killed there too.

HidingKneel did also capture barb city. Probably mostly for experience since there was no defenders so I razed it with Spectre.

AC is finally increasing. It is now 39. Maybe we finally see Horseman and some other Apocalypse events. Too late to cause much trouble though.

edit. Also Lighting elementals work. The earlier problem was caused by the fact they don't fly.