When Elves Ride Dragons

[Nelphine]

The trading is due to normal. Not enough cheating, so it doesn't have leftover for research.

Seravys goal is for 1420 to be late game (very rares are starting to be the normal.) So it can be difficult to get a feel for the game, especially if you're learning, or in a lower difficulty than you need.

[Tlavoc]

What's a good 'suggested' difficulty? I was on normal to try to get some experience with the mod since it changed... well, EVERYTHING, but I'm afraid of Lunatic since I have enough trouble keeping up with the AI generated army strength/size (probably due to too much focus on research) as it is. I assume having a negligible army strength would also make everyone want to destroy me, which probably explains why the only 'friendly' game I had was when I was pumping out hundreds of warships in hopes of fliers.

[Nelphine]

Honestly, do one game at a time. Each time increase difficulty by 1. So next do advanced, then expert; somewhere between advanced and master is where people who are good at the other mods seem to fall, unless they find a lunatic strategy that works for them. (My guess is even master is unlikely to be beatable consistently without a strategy that also works on lunatic.)

[Tlavoc]

Ah, I think I'm on expert at the moment. Defeated one wizard, the other has a huge army but can't do anything to me so I'm not too pressured (every town is full of dracoliches, 1-2 with focus magic for black prayer), but it's going to be a while before I will really want to go to war.

Thanks for the info!

[Seravy]

Nice idea, taking advantage of Armor Piercing and +2 To Hit both working on the granted Fire Breath.

Maintenance AI advantage is not subject to change, it's the only category I don't dare to touch. It has been the same amount since, what, 0.1 version of the mod?

As explained by others the goal is to avoid the situation where the AI fails to play the game at all because it cannot afford the maintenance on what it already summoned/produced. Unfortunately the AI can't stop producing them so on lower difficulty were they get minimal or no bonus in the other categories, the maintenance advantage is critical to avoid seeing wizards with zero units in their capitals due to failed maintenance costs.

A game is not a game if it loses on its own without the player making it happen.

(Normal difficulty specifically, uses zero bonus on most AI bonus categories and only... I think currently 20% on power and spellcasting - but maintenance is 40% cheaper.)

I usually spend all my early power on mana and summoning - not because they are that good (some are though) but because you need both military units and settlers. Settlers because you haven't seen the map yet and might not find something nearby to conquer in which case making an army just loses the game - and units because those settlers and outposts need to be protected. With only one city, you can't produce both (especially as for units you'll need some buildings such as an alchemist guild, barraccks, stables, forester's guild, fighter's guild etc depending on what you want to produce) - but summoning the units and producing the settler works.

This probably isn't ideal but I don't see a solution to it. (aside from letting everyone start with an army of 15 units and a larger city but then whoever picked the better common creature won the game right there - it is easy to reach the other and banish them using those armies.)

However, in some cases, rushing the research on a key uncommon spell (usually creature) is part of the strategy instead.

Research is generally slow to start, but then gets faster as more libraries and universities are built, which are required for other important buildings.

The AI follows the exact same strategy - they have to because not doing it is an automatic loss against someone who did start by summoning.
In the vanilla game it worked better because starting power was so low you couldn't summon a meaningful amount of creatures at all - so you also didn't need to defend against them. But with that much, you couldn't do much research either...

Suggested difficulty...depends on how good you are at the game.
I'd say Normal is for first time experience if you have played the 4X genre before - if not, then Easy.
Advanced is probably good for the next few or at most a dozen games, until you learn the races, spells and realms.
Expert is somewhat difficult - you either need a powerful strategy or know the game and play well to win.
For Master, you need both of the above, Lunatic you need both plus a lot of luck.

[Tlavoc]

Thanks, I really enjoyed my elven dragon riders! Enough so I may play around with it at a higher difficulty, just to see if I can make it work.

I'm not complaining about the maintenance, and fully understand why it's necessary, just pointing out I was surprised by it which lead to some bad decisions.

Research... I normally either dump all my mana into skill or research, but that was in the original. Your mod has the common creatures as actually USEFUL... which I'm not really used to. Imagine my surprise when I smugged right into the enemy town expecting an easy beatdown of ghouls with my flying magicians only to be nuked off the face of the planet!

Basically I just need to change how I do things. Also, holy crap the enemy AI had a hero DECKED OUT in great artifacts! 17 attack, 12 defense, 12 resistance, invisible, flight, true sight, haste, resist magic, armor piercing and some I can't remember.... took a small army to take the guy out! I'm impressed, original game the enemy heroes were a joke, so I'm excited they can become so strong.

[Nelphine]

Actually, I love that comment about heroes - as far as I know heroes are still jokes (in that the AI still can't actually make use of them - the AI has no idea how good a hero is, because it doesn't really understand tactical combat except during tactical combat), they just aren't complete pushovers. But nothing compared to what a human can do with an hero. So it's good to hero stories of AI heroes that really work out.

[Tlavoc]

This one was in a group of ranged units and INVISIBLE while right next to my town for several turns. Bastard was baiting me since I couldn't see the hero so I planned to take the small group in as undead only for 'Heeey... there's an invisible thing right the- CRAP!' and instantly lost the army I was building to gain some ground.

[Nelphine]

I'm going to completely hijack this thread to say:

I am now super obsessed with the idea of using demon lords as the primary way to win. I want to.. *gasp* start a game knowing Demon Lord. But there are two caveats to this. I must cast this spell as the first spell I cast (meaning, I can't use anything in combat or overland until I have summoned the Demon Lord) AND I'm only allowed to have one Demon Lord at a time. If it should die, I must resummon it before using any spells as above. I can also only use combat spells if either the Demon Lord is in the combat, OR the Demon Lord is in my fortress. (Heroes can freely cast spells regardless of any of the above restrictions, as well as magicians or other summons.)

Basically.. I'm going to play as Demon Lord Graz'zt.

Now I just need to learn how to tweak my spell list so I can start with Demon Lord.

Overpowered? Probably. I don't care. This is for pure joy.

[Tlavoc]

Hah, that sounds entertaining, though getting the first demon lord out there could be rough unless you can find some low level lairs to bust.

About demons, I'm in expert, just hit year 1411 and got Summon Demon. Haven't been able to use one in combat yet, but I think with Focus Magic I can have demons that summon demons. It looks like summon demon was made to be 41 mana to avoid just that since demons have a casting ability of 40.

Aaaand I got a trade offer: 'Hey, will you give me your Summon Demon spell for my Wraith Form? C'mon, it's nice! Weapon immunity!'

Currently researching the demon's big brother, haven't made a single normal unit other than settlers. You can hold a city pretty well with a crap-ton of ghouls and wall of darkness. I haven't put a single point of power into 'mana' since about turn 10, only skill and research, completely funding my magic with gold and right now I can't use the gold faster than I'm making it, even pushing out ghouls/shadow demons/demons constantly. The only time I haven't been summoning is when I've been casting an enchantment.

Also, Cultist+Dark Rituals... I haven't expanded since the start (as in the first couple of years) and I'm sitting on a power base of around 500 with 250 base research.