My extreme life game

[Seravy]

Next game, same setup (Extreme, 3L/3D/2N/3S/Omniscient/Klackon).
This time I used Magic Spirit for scouting instead of starting with Sprites right away assuming they'll have something to do. Proved to be the right decision, there was pretty much nothing to use sprites for in the early game.
Eventually I discovered a large neutral gnoll city but by the time I summoned 2 sprites and they made it that far, the city was taken.
So far things are going much better than the previous two times. I started a war with the death/life wizard and managed to slowly take over their cities, one at a time using stacks of war bears, and whatever else I could get my hands on at that location. I had positive relation with this wizard but attacked them anyway because it was the only reasonable direction to expand. I started on an island and while I did have another island nearby, I know better than expect to win a game with only 5 cities. This other wizard started on the medium sized continent to the north, while only water was to the west and I didn't go far enough to the east to find land there after discovering this continent. Land size is only Fair so a medium sized continent is too good to pass on, even if I have to fight for it.
The other two wizards are Life/Chaos with Warlord and Astrologer - surprisingly this one offered a pact and eventually an alliance because we both had Life books, a close to neutral alignment and 1 nature book was also shared. Not a fan of having a wizard of this threat level be an ally instead of eliminated but the game is no longer as easy as to allow fighting multiple wizards at once unless absolutely necessary.
Eventually this same wizard used Fire Storm on the capital of the one which I was fighting and banished them the same turn using a stack of...4 heroes, of all things (yes, I asked her to join my war, that's what allies are for). Fortunately it was razed so she doesn't have a city on my new continent and I now control all other cities there except for one, which belongs to the third arcanus wizard, who plays Life+Nature with Tactician and Sage Master, and is currently equally powerful in military as my ally. This wizard has the green flag.
Now it's 1408 and the green wizard broke a tower on this continent, and I got to put some of my bears on it, so I now see the Myrran wizard. They have 8 Sorcery, 1 Chaos, Astrologer and Conjurer and twice the overall historian graph strength I do, but peaceful.

In theory I'm supposed to clean up the last few purple cities and start noding, but...I'm not entire sure about that.
If that Sorcery wizard is left alone, then I'm pretty much all-in on getting unstoppable heroes - Sorcery can't deal with heroes very well as long as I'm protected from Illusion but it's most likely the only way I can fight them if I wait instead of trying to fight. Meanwhile the green wizard is still stronger than me and has units all around Arcanus, which are actively taking out lairs and nodes and even towers - and I don't have any treaty with them so they might attack any time if I'm unlucky. As my main armies are Stag Beetles and this wizard has Cockatrices, I don't want to fight them right now unless I have to - Life+Nature is not particularly dangerous in the late game, at least it...never used to be but idk about it now.

       

2 years later - I attacked two lairs using two stacks of 9 beetles. The one with 1 Doom Bat proved easy (but I lost a beetle to bad RNG, seriously, 2 damage from immolation against 9 armor beetles, lol), the one with 'few efreets' didn't go well, I lost all the beetles there and only killed 3 chimeras with them (there were 4 of those with the 3 efreets unfortunately). I did get the Thief hero in the treasure but no items.
Meanwhile the green wizard started attacking me - so far I was able to defend myself against their berserkers fairly easily with Black Sleep although I lost some buildings in my high men city. I quickly traded with them then went to war - my ally was already at war with them because they were the one who took out that last tiny settlement from the purple wizard, scoring the big diplomatic penalty for eliminating the wizard. I probably won't have too much problems with this war but it'll keep me busy so noding will be slower.

[Nelphine]

We really do play completely differently. I always consider nodes a much higher priority than war with a weak AI. I find it takes at least 6-8 nodes just to stay within shouting distance of the strongest AI.

[Seravy]

We really do play completely differently. I always consider nodes a much higher priority than war with a weak AI. I find it takes at least 6-8 nodes just to stay within shouting distance of the strongest AI.

That's strange. Cities provide significantly more resources than nodes (you get gold, hammers and power instead of only power) and have weaker garrisons. It makes sense to attack them first. (yes the wizard can cast spells but this early the amount of those makes up an insignificant part of their "force" to defeat. I rather do that than fight 3 Efreets or 6 Chimeras without a wizard.)
Cities are also easier to defend - they don't counter my spells and I can build walls if needed, plus I can have Heavenly Light, Wall of Fire, etc on them, and they can replace lost units after battle on their own.

Furthermore attacking cities takes away resources from other players (and twice as much as what it's worth due to their bonus), taking nodes doesn't do that. (yes there is a one time benefit of treasure but idk. The really good stuff is guarded by way too hard monsters, and klackons are somewhat average at this - beetles kill anything but there are losses.)

[Nelphine]

I guess I have three issues - 1) I find power to be by far the most important factor when going to war. It determines how many of my strongest units I can get (whether by summoning it buffing) and how powerful my combat spells will be. 2) cities use hammers for a very long time to build suppar units, or to get gold (which inevitably turns to either power or units), or to get power. An 11 or 12 tile node is better than most cities will be for a very long time (or if you buy them up, cheaper than the city by a large enough margin to make it better - ~3000 gold for an amp tower and a wizard tower is not efficient).

Also, since I'm classicly a myrran player, I'm extremely biased towards ultra nodes - a node with almost 20 tiles is just amazing, so I bring that background and playstyle with me.

My final issue is that I play with an idea in mind for what will win, or be winnable. Take the extreme life game this thread started with. I had, what, 1/6 of the cities my enemy had, and sent to war with all 3? I never include AI cities when I'm deciding what I need to win - I can't be sure of when I'll get them, what they'll have, what they'll add to my ability to win battles, or whether I'll be able to defend them. They are basically a wild card. Taking nodes doesn't piss off any AI, nor does it directly start wars. And even if you lose node garrisons (again, look at this extreme life thread, as well as my thoughts on how 1 sprite holds nodes, even when it dies), it can take the enemy a very long time to claim the actual node.


I'm not saying my way is 'right' or better, its just very different from yours, and I find that interesting.

[Seravy]

1411 now. I cleared out the efreet lair, and got a -4 spell save staff. This is a good item but not the kind we were looking for - it offers no protection for heroes and we didn't pick enough books to have high end spells to use it with.
Overall, this staff and the 800 gold and Unicorns spell wasn't worth the cost of 20 beetles.
I also cleared out the Sorcery node with 2 Sky Drakes - this cost me only 10 beetles and gave me a +6 Defense, Elemental Armor, Guardian Wind staff. This might work better albeit I was hoping for using melee heroes. I also found a Skeletons spell (lol) and some small amount of gold. Overall this wasn't a bad deal but still worse than taking out 2 enemy cities using those beetles.
Meanwhile the green wizard finished casting Holy Arms and seems to have Inspirations as well. They most likely found both in treasure and are definitely doing better at clearing lairs out than me - berserkers and nature creatures are effective for that on the AI's side, definitely better than Stag Beetles on mine.

There are still many targets remaining but they're all high end stuff :
Chaos node with "many chimera" - these hurt my beetles more than the efreets so I rather not...
Tower with Demon Lord. Don't know the secondary monster yet. I guess if I maintain peace with the Sorcery wizard on Myrror, opening it is safe (it's 3 tiles from my capital).
Chaos node with Great Drake, unknown secondary monster.
Lair with Gorgons+unknown
Ruins with Demon Lord+unknown
Chaos node with many Chaos Spawn - I rather use my nomad magicians for this one
Nature node with 2x Colossus
Nature node with many great lizard - 9 beetles probably won't kill these and they regenerate
That's all in my territory, but of course there are more in distant lands, and I haven't explored Myrror yet.

All this slowed down my progress - I'm the weakest wizard on the graphs again. The gap between me and the Myrran wizard grew from 2x to about 3x.
   

(PS : Knowing what Sorcery wizards can do, I'm pretty sure this game will be a loss, even if I get strong or unstoppable heroes. Heroes don't do anything against Time Stop.)

[Seravy]

Another 7 turns later I realize things are worse than I thought.
The green wizard already has Incarnation, Lionheart, Angel etc, so it isn't just treasure that got them Inspirations, they actually are halfway done with their rares. No surprise, they are Theurgists with Sage Master. Leaving them a breathing room of 3+ years was a huge mistake. I might be able to recover from this but unlikely.
Meanwhile I explored the continent with the tower on Myrror and saw zero lairs/nodes remaining. I don't expect to get a single one on this plane. Meanwhile I'm still researching uncommons and with only 3 books per realm I don't expect much rares anyway.

I'm sorry to say but "get all treasure before midgame" seems to be a myth. The AI is far too strong and the new lairs are far too unforgiving for that to be doable. I was able to take out thee stronger lairs total so far and I'm in no position to continue doing that.
I don't think I need to test this further - it takes a miracle to have unstoppable equipment on heroes for midgame.

[Nelphine]

*shrug* I'm OK with that. Just keep an eye out for it over your next 30 games. You and I both know basing results on less than 10 games won't give an accurate picture. Obviously my theory was based on less games than that (which is why I accept your findings), but so was your counter test. (Same with sprites are underpowered).

P.s. nature summons are generally very bad for strategic combat lair clearing, except gorgons. On the other hand bezerkers are unbelievably good at it (ignoring the ranged/melee bias), they're probably top 5-10 best unit in the game.

[Seravy]

P.s. nature summons are generally very bad for strategic combat lair clearing, except gorgons. On the other hand bezerkers are unbelievably good at it (ignoring the ranged/melee bias), they're probably top 5-10 best unit in the game.

Cockatrices are decent...in fact strong, with 246 rating making them the highest among uncommon creatures.

[Nelphine]

I admit to not caring about cockatrices much. They could certainly be fairly strong. Not that uncommons are particularly great in any event.

[Seravy]

I will pay attention to overpowered heroes in my future games but I don't expect to see it happening. If you have the power to crush high end nodes in the midgame, you can also crush the AI and have no need for the nodes, treasure or heroes in the first place.

I still remember that Impossible game about a year ago where a hero crushed almost the entire Myrran AI by itself with only ~20 shields (and I didn't even have Healing that game) but it was only possible because the AI sucked back then plus there were 4 Divine Orders in play so the AI could only cast a single direct damage spell per combat.