My extreme life game

[Nelphine]

Extreme, 4 opponents, max power, fair land, fair minerals, fair climate.

6 Life books, Myrran, Warlord, Tactician, Alchemy
Beastmen, Heavenly Light, Just Cause, Holy Armor, Endurance, Holy Weapon; guaranteed Divine Order, guaranteed Lionheart
I also pick up 1 Sorcery book from a lair.

My capital starts with Mithril. Not great. A nearby neutral Draconian city is very welcome (air ships!). I colonize a few more locations (including one more with Mithril), and Jafaar shows up, trying to colonize my continent.

Jafaar is Peaceful Perfectionist, 9 Sorcery, Channeler, Myrran, Dwarf.

I wipe out his outposts on my continent, he declares war, but nothing happens, and he asks for peace. I colonize 6 cities on my continent and 1 city on a nearby island.

Ariel uses Astral Gate to visit my continent.  Maniacal Militarist, 10 Life, 3 picks worth of retorts, High Men.  She declares war, I sit a halberdier on the spot the Astral Gate comes through, nothing happens.  Eventually she asks for peace; and later on Raven defeats her before I can really interact with her (around 1411).

The rest of my continent has 3 more cities colonized by Jafaar, and 2 cities colonized by Merlin, and another Neutral dwarf city, that I conquer.

Merlin, Peaceful Expansionist, 3 Nature, 7 Life, Myrran, Specialist, Dark Elf.  Merlin uses Astral Gate to get to Arcanus.

I pick up 2 more Dwarf Neutral cities on other islands (including one very nice one with Mithril and very high max pop, that I later use for building Hammerhands.)

I break and control all 6 towers, meeting Raven:
Ruthless Theurgist, 4 Nature, 4 Sorcery, 1 Life, Archmage (argh), Runemaster (argh Aether Binding), Conjuror, Lizardman.

I never go to war with Raven, Merlin, and Jafaar.

I end up with 12 cities. Jafaar has 11, Merlin 21, Raven 35.
I end up with 6 towers, and 18 nodes. Merlin has 3 nodes, Raven has 9 nodes.

All 3 remaining AI are in a 3 way alliance (Raven has Aura of Majesty, plus 2 peaceful AI)

In 1415, Merlin casts Life Force, forcing me to go to war (i'm already losing ground to both Raven and Merlin; Life Force will make that difference simply insurmountable.)
On the first turn of the war, I take out Merlin (capture) and Jafaar (raze) fortresses, and one other city of Jafaar. Merlin comes back on Arcanus; I immediately raze that city. I raze 3 of Jafaars cities, and capture another one. I capture a second fully developed Dark Elf city from Merlin; Merlin captures my weakest dwarf city and my weakest beastman city.  I lose several node garrisons, but don't actually lose the nodes.

Neat news: No one has spell blast, or dispelling wave (or if either Jafaar or Raven do, they never use them).  Only Merlin has used any very rares (Arch Angel, Life Force, Crusade, Call to Arms).

I did not get or find Unicorns, Angels, or Archangels (I do steal Unicorns and Archangels from Merlin).  I am entirely dependent on city troops. I also don't have inspirations (no 1 turn hammerhands *pout*), but I do get consecration (useless), prosperity, stream of life, and altar of battle. I try to use Crusade, Charm of Life, Enlightenment and Life Force, but Raven always uses disjunction on them. With Aether binding (that I can't get rid of) and 500 casting skill, he has no problem with this.

I have never received a hero offer; I found 2 heroes (the assassin and the witch), and I summoned the Swordsmen champion.  All 3 are sitting guarding my fortress.

My 2 main offensive stacks are: Airship + 8 Hammerhands, all 9 with Mithril, Resist Magic, Holy Weapon, Endurance, Holy Armor, Lionheart, Invulnerability; the 8 Hammerhands also have Focus Magic and Flight.

My secondary offensive stacks are: Airship + 8 Beastmen Halberdiers, exact same spells as above. I also have one mobile defense stack that is exactly the same as this, which will turn into an offensive stack to clear my home continent as soon as there stops being massive stacks of silliness incoming.

I don't think I've seen a single Magician unit in the entire game, although I'm sure there a few hiding in some of Raven's High Men conquests somewhere.

[Nelphine]

After my fifth banishing of Merlin and Jafaar, Raven declared war on me. Annoyingly, I don't have hammerhands available to fortress strike him immediately. So, razing every city I can reach on Arcanus. I really need to fortress strike him so I can cast crusade and charm of life and not lose them instantly. Bleh. I've spent roughly 20000 mana on this war so far. I expect by 1416 the result if the war will be obvious, but I'm.not sure what the result will be. Jafaar will certainly be dead. There will be tons of razed cities. The question is, will Raven survive and get access to Myrror, and will Merlin go down and let me keep a dozen full dark elf cities, or will I be forced to raze everything.

[Nelphine]

All right, things are slightly slower than expected, because I wasted time trying to capture dark elf cities. Now that I'm on my razing campaign, things are smoother. Merlin is down to 8 cities, Jafaar is down to 4 cities, and Raven is down under 30 cities. I'm at 12 - I lost one dwarf city, but replaced it with a different one. My beastman city is back in my hands. I've banished Raven once; I've even made peace with Jafaar (apparently he DOES know Dispelling Wave, he just doesn't use it much. So I figure as much peace as I can get with him is good, as losing spells is just.. aggravating.) I've lost multiple of my original stacks; I've replaced the troops but not the spells. Raven loves earthquake, which doesn't really do much, but it often prevents me from building what I want to be building.

There's very little that actually is threatening my own empire. Raven has HUGE amounts of troops.. but no towers to get to me. Since I'm just razing cities, the best he can do is.. attack my strongest stacks. Which he doesn't do, because the strategic strength of my stacks is far higher than whatever he has. I did lose 2 towers to Merlin, but since I'm busy crushing his entire home continent, that just means.. he can move to Arcanus, where I have nothing for him to threaten anyway. I've lost all of my node garrisons, but I've only actually lost 2 nodes (One Myrran and One Arcanus, both to Merlin.)

In other words, it's going much slower than expected, and I should have followed my original plan and just razed everything, but, I am winning. Slowly.

[Nelphine]

October 1417.

Jafar has 1 outpost left (and he is casting spell of return to that outpost. AND he has Uranus' Blessing cast, just to make sure his hamlet produces powah!)
Merlin has 1 hamlet and 1 city that I somehow didn't find. (So in every previous post he should have had one more city.)
Raven has 21 cities.
I have 11 cities. Earthquakes happen every turn (2-4 of them), so my cities are starting to look like brand new outposts with max pop.
I'm running out of airships. Raven can't stop any of my stacks, but every time I take one of his core cities, he has enough piled around it that they can take down the stack on the following turn.

If I could kill Merlin and got all his silly nightmares of Myrror, I could go on a settling spree. Wouldn't help much right now, but in 5 years time, if I can't take Raven out now, it will be important.

At this point, if I have 100% army strength, then Merlin has 50%, Jafaar has 10%, and Raven has around 320%. My army has been slaughtered by this war, Raven has not.

I have a power production of 1098 (start of war, I had 1303). Merlin has around 600 (start of war had 1800), Jafar has 50 (start of war 450), Raven has 2200 (start of war 2700). Therefore, even though I've gone down, I've gone down less than Raven.

Spellcasting Skill: I have 255 (263 at start of war). Merlin has 240 (290 at start). Jafar has 200 (190 at start). Raven has a little over 500, about the same as at the start of the war. Given that Raven has lost a lot of amplifying towers (lost 14 cities, at least half with amp towers and uranus' blessing), that's almost entirely gained skill from power/aether binding. Yech.

Biggest problem - I no longer control towers. I control 3 towers, which means Raven should start coming onto Myrror en masse soon. He actually got close to my Capital with a single stack (went out and killed it with my heroes, and my necromancer managed to raise all 8 of the enemy from the dead. Bizarre. Now I have a windwalking Lizardman Undead Javelineer!)

[Nelphine]

Raven has finished taking out most of my offensive stacks. I only have 1 left, plus a mobile defense stack. Raven has also gained control of 2 towers (that leaves 2 for him, 2 for me, and 2 that merlin had but merlin is really nothing now, so they're probably just empty.)
I've also lost a few more nodes.
My lone offensive stack is aiming at taking out Merlin's lost city, and using that to colonize Merlin's home continent. I'm going to need a lot more cities since I didn't quite break Raven during this war. Then it'll be keep things in check while I build 2 more offensive stacks. Once I've got those, go and start razing more of Ravens empire (defeat Jafaar and Merlin on the way.)
My biggest fear is I'll lose my mithril Dwarf city because its too far from my mobile defense; my second biggest is losing too many nodes. I don't really care if Raven gets more nodes - he already has ludicrous income and spell capacity, a few hundred more won't matter - but I still need to maintain constant buffs and combat costs, and due to earthquakes I'd say about 75% of my power is from nodes, maybe more.

Ravens only real counter to me is earthquake. If he keeps shattering my cities I'll never be able to rebuild, and he'll slowly swarm me. If I can sue for peace, I'll certainly win, but I'm afraid that might cost 10000+ gold..

[Nelphine]

Speaking of that, why IS Raven only tense with me? You'd think after razing 14 cities, banishing him once, and killing another score of stacks of units, plus being at war with and banishing his allies numerous times, he'd hate me...

And another note: javelineers are the worst things. I'd much rather fight Stone giants and great lizards and archangels and dragon turtles; javelineers are just as brutal in AI hands as in my own lizardman hands.

[Seravy]

During war, relation cannot be reduced further. Instead, it's the "peace interest" variable that gets the reduction.

[Nelphine]

May 1419:

I was forced to use my hero stack as a mobile defense group. This turned a possible horrible invasion (something like.. 15 stacks of 9 units, plus various small stacks) coming through my two towers, into a rout. My heroes were just invincible. (Not surprising since I had cleared every lair and node by 1414 and had my pick of great items.) Put a priest for healing and a few other random things (currently a windwalking undead stone giant that the necromancer raised from the dead) with them, and they just wreck things. But I'm not using them offensively, just to guard those two towers. I lost Alorra when he hit me with 4 stacks in the same turn though.

On the other side, I got my 2 stacks of airship destruction. (I did actually donate 15000 gold to Raven trying to buy peace, but that never panned out. Probably since I was still killing dozens of units per turn.) I also have 6 perfectly buffed hammerhands who have planar travel. They are pretty slow, but they're clearing things.

He's down to 13 cities, he's banished (again.. and again.. and again.. he returns in one turn, but he's been very unlucky and always coming back near one of my offensive stacks), and Jafaar and Merlin are FINALLY both defeated.

I have 12 cities + 4 outposts.

At this point, the game is over. He can't break my defenses, he can't colonize anywhere near as fast as airships can raze cities. I'll finish razing his entire empire sometime in early 1420.

My gold income is 1139. My mana income (95% or so is on mana, the rest on skill, just because I'm not running SUPER low on mana yet) is 523. (Which is almost half what it was at the start of the war.)

[Nelphine]

Omg he has great unsummoning! ROFL no wonder he's never using very rare spells against me. The only things he can unsummon are the creatures I kill with my necromancer. *dies laughing*

Well that was pure luck.

[Nelphine]

Whoops. I let him Great Unsummon my windwalking stone giant while he was over water. All my heroes drowned. But, since he only has 1 outpost left, I don't really care.