DEATH Realm

[Nelphine]

Right, but this is multiple cities. Actually, its doomstack finally reached me - shadow demons and griffins. That's really slow. Maybe, its got several (like 4+) doomstscks on the go? Even then, seems bad to have multiple cities with only a few units. (One death knight is good, but not that good.)

The sorcery/death wizard seems to be doing the same thing. I can see... 8 or 9 of its cities, none of which have more than 4 units, but I've killed 30-40 incoming shadow demon/water elementals with several heroes thrown in for flavor. (However, final wave could be killing the high men units left behind.)

This may be a problem of speed 2 doomstacks, combined with having to go after targets farther back in my empire as the front line cities are all very strongly defended.

[Seravy]

Shadow Demons and Water Elementals are definitely able to participate in doomstacks. Doomstack building isn't bound by the usual "leave X garrison units" rules either.
Under normal conditions the AI doesn't have that many summoned creatures in multiple cities though - it only has one "frontier city" where it keeps summoning more and fills it up, the rest of the cities rarely get more than 1-2 creatures.
It's easy to figure out what happened - After the game, load the save file from the turn when you started the war, RVL the map and see what happens and which units were the defenders in those cities. (make sure you store away the save files from the previous 40-50 turns in a safe location to be able to do that)

Wait, Sorcery? Is this with many Divine Orders on? They might be spamming Invisibility.

[Nelphine]

No, not a single divine order. As far as I can tell Sharee (5 Sorcery/6 Death) does not have invisibility. (Meaning, I've never seen her use it despite being at war for years.)

However, Sharee is high men, and getting hit by Rjaks Final Waves. Its supposedly possible all his city troops are getting wiped out. That's why I'm not sure in her case.

But Rjak (5 life/7 death) is just as bad for having no troops in his cities, and since he's the one casting Final Wave, that concerns me. But the one doomstack I've seen was full of shadow demons and griffins. But most of his cities are farther away from me - I can only see 3 that are practically empty. This also means his doomstacks are much harder to spot.

So, my train of thought goes: if Sharee has that many summoned units running around, that she has 4+ doonstacks, all of which have at least 1 shadow demon and are therefore slow, then
Rjak who has at least twice the power production and army strength of Sharee, and who also has tons of shadow demons that I've seen, might also have 4+ doomstacks that are simply out of sight, and moving at speed 2.

Filling that many doomstacks might be leading to the empty cities I'm seeing?

Other things that might be contributing: I have meteor storm, doomsday and Armageddon in play. Every one of Rjaks cities (that I've discovered) has Chaos Rift on it. However every one of his cities also has stream of life. So troops in his cities should never be dying. He's also got alchemy, and tens of thousands of mana/gold combined, so I doubt destroyed buildings should be slowing him so much that he can't keep garrisons in his cities.

[Seravy]

meteor storm, doomsday and Armageddon in play

Wait, is he still able to produce enough food to maintain any normal units?

One thing I checked, Griffins have a lower garrison priority than Ragners and Magicians so it's unlikely they are causing it (unless the cities have only fantastic stables without wizard's guild and armorer's guild).

You can upload the save file from, say, 30 turns ago and I can try to look at what happened.

[Nelphine]

As mentioned, Rjak has stream of life in every city, so I doubt he's having any food issues. Even Sharee who does not have stream of life, and is high men, has cities with workers (as opposed to farmers or rebels). So if Shared can do it without stream of life, I can't imagine Rjak having problems.

I haven't seen any city troops from him that aren't griffins, at least not recently.

I'll see what I can do about a save file when I get home.

[Seravy]

Maybe the max unit limit is already reached and the AI has to disband the weakest units to make room? I doubt that with Meteor in play weird.

[Nelphine]

Meteor storm, and repeated uses of final wave. I doubt that as well. I've persobally got.. 8 per Garrison (mostly..), 18 arcanus cities, 23 myrror cities. So I have 41 cities, 328 units, plus 2 doomstacks, 1 doomstack being formed (25 units), and node/tower small garrisons, that's another (11 myrror nodes, 4 towers, 6 arcanus units) ~35ish units.

So I have at most 400 units. My army strength is a little over twice all 4 AI combined. There are only 7 AI cities on myrror, and maybe 40 AI cities on arcanus. Given that at least a dozen of those cities have 4 or less units, I'd be surprised if the average AI garrison size is more than 7, probably closer to 6. So 300 more garrison units, plus another.. 300 roaming units between all 4 AI?


Nowhere close to unit limit.

Although as a note, I think meteor storm might be too weak. It can't even kill magic spirits going 10-15 squares to meld a node (or at least, everyone I've seen so far has made it.) Or settlers puttering around continents that are mostly corrupted volcanoes.

[Catwalk]

This thread is now updated with changes from the recent change log.

[Nelphine]

Can bloodlust be cast in combat? I can't remember.

[Nelphine]

Wraiths are melee 10, and I think casting cost of evil presence, warp node, famine, and pestilence may have changed?