Test games played

[Tlavoc]

So, the pure chaos probably would have been better with anything but dragons. There were no dwarves, and I expanded dragons figuring It'd be fine, but when I cracked open a tower to look at arcanus, one guy had nuked the other into the ground. He had 1 town, with 1 population, all of the death curses and like 3 units. The other guy had everything else. Every fight was terrible, black prayer + terror made it impossible to use normal units. I banished him twice, but my military just couldn't stand up when they couldn't do anything after the second turn. Great drake was okay, but storm giants ripped them apart, and somehow he had tons of undead storm giants, as well as angels, and since I was full chaos the angels hurt pretty badly too. My nuking spells were great on overland, but in combat disintigrate was partially useful, but flamestrike was hardly worth using at all.

The easiest way to take his tower was to nuke it 4-5 times to get rid of death knights, then assault and ensure to have enough units to last 4 turns to disintigrate the shadow demons. Even then it was rough since with wall of darkness I couldn't shoot inside, giving him a minimum of 3 turns of casting. Overall I wasn't very impressed with the draconians other than their easy scouting at the very beginning.

[Nelphine]

To be honest, I'm somewhat jealous. You're getting to play long lasting games without dying super early, so you get to see a wide variety of spells from the enemy. Its exactly what I want from the AI in the game.

[Tlavoc]

Yeah, it's fun until things really breakdown into pure power vs pure power... and I have been building up the wrong kind of power

The thing is, I had to blitz the two Myrror guys to have that long game. I could keep the other guy from doing much to me by blocking choke points. I managed to keep his army down with meteor storm, but his power was higher than mine and I was a myrran race!

I honestly don't get how you can play on lunatic at all. I'm trying my first master game, got super lucky and just got 8 undead orcs, a chaos spawn, a naga, 7 hellhounds and a gargoyle at right around 1402 and the one guy I ran into STILL has more military power than me and a LOT more power in general.

[Nelphine]

Yeah, on lunatic I play 'get 4-10 barbarian cities, all pumping out bezerkers with inspirations on the city, and control all 30 nodes.' My army strength is higher than everyone due to the bezerkers, and nodes are better than cities (I use astrologer and spellweaver, so the nodes, without even counting the actual power from the node tiles, is over 1000 power production)

[Tlavoc]

I just ran a test run, took it just a little ways in... on master, berzerkers are insane. Heroism, Warlord, Flame Blade on two 'zerkers, and my military strength was over the other wizards. That and pathfinding was great. I almost feel like suggesting replacing spearmen with 'scouts', something with pathfinding so it's easier to discover the map. Almost every race is relegated to moving one tile at a time unless you luck out onto some desert. It felt overpowered with the draconians, but that was due to the bonus discovery range of flight, being able to move over water without buffs AND not being hindered by terrain.

I really wonder how my draconic elves did with military strength. First strike should give some and fire breath should add more similarly to thrown, but they're only 4 figures and without all the buffs the fire breath is low. Halfling slingers might be able to compete if ranged counts double (which I think someone said). Then again, if thrown is considered ranged and counts double then probably not, but if thrown counts double then fire breath probably does too, in which case the flaming elves get some multiplier for first strike AND fire breath.

[Arnuz]

Report: expert, tiny landmass, fair power/poor/dry, N/4L/5D myrran beastmen.

The nature book gave me resist elements, the best common or uncommon spell of nature. I basically could play unopposed against the two troll myrrans, a mono life troll who had to use triremes - the AI is better than before with ships but not yet close to the human for long term planning - and a dark elf I don't remember what. With resist magic the dark elf was easy to dispatch, I fortress striked it as soon as I could gather some ghouls, and then it was a calm and easy game without any attacks towards me. The mono life still managed to settle on a good amount of islands, but I just waited till it did to simply take the towns as soon as they became hamlets, and the AI would offer peace in 4-5 turns due to the military disparity. As soon as I could manage the fortress I then defeated it.

This let me take it calmly and when I cracked the towers the other two wizards had double my power - I still hadn't taken all the nodes, as I didn't get good uncommons and the nodes were super heavily guarded. The two being both lizardmen though there isn't a huge risk, and by pacing myself calmly I've started transforming the hordes of lizards roaming the high seas into undead, quickly raising in military strength. There doesn't seem to be much of a risk here, despite the cold waves, so I'll stop it.

Some considerations. At expert the mixed life/death final AI still has double my power after I've taken several nodes from arcanus and most of the myrran ones. I find that frankly excessive. It's not going to stop me at this point, but if it had been before, I would have probably succumbed without a good combination of books race and retorts. Once more, I believe that the conditions are too difficult for and expert setting. I would assess this level of difficulty at master.

The tiny landmass is a big factor in the victory, despite the completely underpowered race. It's strange though, while on myrran there are 12 tiny islands, on arcanus the tiny landmass has still resulted in a rather big continent, with a great sea all around, Pangea style, and a couple islands. I wonder whether it wouldn't be possible to normalise a little the starting conditions, by tweaking the landmass generator?I'd try to make the continents more similar in size, at any given number, if at all possible.

[Nelphine]

I don't really understand this report. You say you have a good race but a completely underpowered race. You say the AI has more power than you but its easy but its too hard.

You're quitting despite waves of cold (maybe wave of despair but you're using death which is immune to it, so maybe not?)

I guess I'd just like a bit more information. Timelines, actual descriptions of what the AI fortresses had, to see how strong they were, guestimates of numbers - double power is meaningless without a timeline, number/type of nodes/cities. What was the other AI on arcanus in terms of realms? Did you defeat them? What would happen if the life/death AI got consecration or archangel in the next few turns? Could that make a difference?

Tldr: if you're going to use this to make judgement on difficulty, I'd definitely want MOAR DEETS.

[Arnuz]

Happy to please

Turn is 203.Yes, the AI got wave of despair which is pointless against me. The lizardmen can't do anything against the ghouls, so I'm simply going city by city. I've already killed a hero stack with some wraiths. I have an elven archer which seems rolled to make ghouls work even without focus magic (see below) and a windmage with helm of planar travel that gives inner fire and a ruby prism (elemental armor, lionheart, regeneration). Furthermore, I'm the only one with any ultra rares - all of them undead of course: 3 hydras, 2 behemoths, a colossus, the usual 2 djinns plus some lizards and chaos spawn. The AIs have wraiths but at this point they're not a factor. I'm running around with 1 djinn/the big beasts as one stack, plus 2 stacks of ghouls (1 djinn, 1 windmage), both of which have guiding beacon and supply commander. I'm not going to mop up the seas of all these lizards.

I had a strong albeit slow start thanks to the islands. Islands forced the other 2 myrrans to wait for boats. So I could fortress strike one; the other one was too much turtled in the fortress so I could only contain it for a long time, till I managed to get the 2 behemoths, which conquered the fortress on their own. Basically beastmen are UP, trolls are ok, AI still has some issues at tiny land mass - I'd suggest some tweaking of world generation but maybe some people like to play on tiny islands, I don't know.

So, given all of this, my judgement is that I've succeeded only thanks to the islands; I wouldn't have been able to without the possibility to fortress strike the first AI; the cheating is too much at turn 40 and irrelevant at turn > 100. AI with archangels? Not really, they would just garrison the fortress. I've found supreme light somewhere btw.


I'm Raven:


Look at the number of lizard/wraithform ghoul stacks:





The towers are of course blocked. Related to this, I almost forgot: it'd have been a LOT more problematic if the AIs had sent their shadow demons to harass me on Myrran.

The opponents left:

Always a pleasure to exchange spells with a ruthless till it agrees to make peace:



How are two ruthless AIs that have been at war allied is beyond me:



Frankly army strength after a certain level ceases to be meaningful, the stacks can only be of 9 units, and that's what matters:



I attach the last filesave in case of further need for info.

[Nelphine]

I know the AI has issues with tiny landmass due to continent selection. I know world generation isn't easily fixable (if at all).

My guess is those two things are going to mean any game on tiny is really not a great one for strong testing. Small to large is best.

That being said, one of the things is that army strength is very important for the graphs, but not really helpful for actually indicating how a game is going. Certain units change it too much (lizardmen, dwarves, beastmrn, bezerkers).

The power production is more telling. That's basically the only graph I care about for telling how difficult the game will be. Army strength is good for diplomacy, overall is good for ego boosting, spell power is largely useless (although you can estimate casting skill kinda..)

So for me, I look at this and see you as being ~twuce s strong as purple, and 10-20% ahead of yellow. That means you're already winning, and only one AI is any threat. (Also you answered your own question - how do ruthless become friends? Trading spells. One gets weak, they beg for peace, other sees massive strength difference, agrees, then they trade a ton of spells, and now they love each other.)

However, you're using a lunatic strategy on expert - ghouls for very rare undead. This completely shapes how you play. You say beastmen are underpowered.. But you aren't using them at all, because your race is meaningless for that strategy. Therefore, you haven't had to build up, you don't need to have large garrisons, you don't even need many doomstacks, because you simply don't need to.

Not saying you should, but if you aren't plsying the game to try to counter what the AI is doing, then I believe its very hard to judge that its too hard for its difficulty.

Basically: play it without ghouls. This would require much different gameplay on your part. And that could result in a completely different game, as you'd have to figure out other ways to fight the ai, which could veryvwell end up with you being much closer powerwise.

Edit: not without ghouls entirely. Just without using ghouls to get very rare undead quite early.

[Arnuz]

Heh, with 5D it ain't easy to go non ghouls. But yet that's what I did. Check the power graph: it accelerates around 1414-15 because it's only then that I could finally manage to grab those behemoths. I didn't have either focus magic or decent heroes until very late. I could start the avalanche effect only very late, and as a result the AI has settled and cracked all of arcanus - there's nothing to explore left, but 2-3 towers. What I'm saying is, this wasn't quite a lunatic strategy, to get that you also need a better spellbook selection - focus magic - and a better race - barbarians. I might have gone life megabuff style/strategic only and used the race much more but frankly I don't like that style, it's too slow for my taste, sorry...

Missing two elements I wouldn't even call it a master level strategy, but advanced at best to get assurance of victory. Still, the game cheating was too much. Without tiny landmass I would have suffered due to my extremely slow start.

Frankly ghouls are UP if you only use them for troops. And given that they convert very rares why shouldn't you use them for that?