Anyway, time to sleep, so far I conquered most of Yellow's cities including their capital and also banished red just in time to prevent Armageddon. I expect to win the game in another hour of playing but it's too late to do that today.
Second Dwarf game. Same Life+Nature strategy but now with guaranteed change terrain and stream of life.
Enemies :
Flandre, Myrran, Chaos/Death/1 Nature. Maniacal, started using Raise Volcano around 1406, no corruption (only 4 chaos books). Draconians.
Vanilla H, Myrran, all Nature, having a wizard pact, relation up to calm. I'm ahead in research so she is a good trading partner. Playing beastmen.
Silver, Life/Sorcery, 1 Chaos, Maniacal, just showed up with a planar travel settler. Last wizard still unknown, no globals to hint at them.
Rich/Dry, abusing the dwarf bonus on ores to the fullest. Surprisingly, it is only enough to keep up with AI, not to get ahead of them (albeit I did in research because good spells kept showing up, my power production was only slightly ahead). As much as I thought rich/dwarf is overpowered, the truth is, not at all. The AI also gets the ores from Rich and while their race is not doubling it, the difficulty modifier still raises it enough to (almost) keep up with dwarves. Nonetheless, this can turn out to be a playable tactic for Lunatic as it allows the player to at least keep up with the AI.
Went to war against Flandre over the volcanoes (tho she did declare it a turn before I attacked anyway). Conquered a city easily, hit capital next. I expected to win but there is a hero with chaos channel flight and wraith form. I lost two armies on that, as it can't be webbed and my halberdiers can't attack it. I tried bringing draconain halberdiers from the conquered city along but all of them were possessed. Third try I'm using 2 blessed draconians and 3 cockatrices, that should be enough to wipe out the hero...but unfortunately, it means the artifacts on it will be lost and they are good ones : a chain mail of regeneration. Still, I can't afford losing more time, the volcanoes already removed an adamantium, a mithril, 2 gold a gem a deer a nightshade and idk what else. If lucky, I can kill the hero using the draconians instead of the petrification.
I expect Vanilla to become an ally soon, then I can visit arcanus and conquer it without interference from anyone else. I don't think any of Flandre's other cities will be a threat to my halberdiers, cannons, and soon, hammerhands (albeit, now without admant...)
Something good : I now feel motivated to upgrade to hammerhands, as they have 1 higher resistance than halberdiers, and I lost several of those to possession. Might be even worth raising the resistance bonus to 2? idk, probably overkill...
Also, my research is quite ahead, I have Inspiration and now getting Angel, finished almost every uncommon. In 1407. I'm starting to think being able to push research to 100% at any time is unbalanced, not that anything can be done with that.
Oh and I might have underestimated the melee capabilities of Draconians. Even though their halberdiers were only mithril and mine were adamant, the two was roughly equal in actual combat which is unexpected, the dwarves should be much better (due to extra health). That armor might actually matter afterall.
The hero happened to be Charmed to cockatrices had no chance to petrify it, fortunately, they steered it toward the halberdiers so I won anyway. So now I have a chain mail of regeneration, which I'm going to equip on my Beastmaster hero and summon 7 lizards and an angel to use as the main conquering army. Dwarven units will be transported to fill cities as garrison, or used as secondary armies if needed.
I think I'm strong enough to conquer everyone instead of trying to go for nodes and build up so I'm aiming for a short game. I can also use Transmute to replace the lost adamant and even have some extras on top, and population grew high enough to not need to rely on gold ores for economy.
Land size matters - this game was on Large so I had much better shots at city spots, and the draconian player wasn't able to steal them all. I was also able to accelerate outpost and pop growth using Steam of Life on the second wave of cities - unfortunately the spell didn't show up for a very long time so the first cities couldn't benefit from it.
1410, I conquered all of Flandre's territory, so now I own about 70% of Myrror. I haven't been to Arcanus yet, but I have an alliance with both other wizards I know, so once I do get through, I'll fight the last one, whoever it is.
I'm up to 4 dwarves cities with adamant and good population thanks to transmute and stream of life. I'll soon be able to produce hammerhands in all 4, and with inspirations I expect to produce one unit a turn in each or close to that.
I found 1 death book, aside from that no important treasure so far but I only recently started hunting for treasure. I'm halfway done with researching rares, and will slow down on research for now. I see 3 very rares, Fairy Ring which is kinda useless, being far ahead, Call to Arms which is great, and Regeneration which I don't expect to need but is always good to see anyway. I'll also get both Iron Skin and Invulnerability which is scary to have on whatever creature I get, for now, Gorgons. (backed up by a Soul Linker. As soon as I fill up a stack I can probably go rampage through the Arcanus map and wipe it out entirely with just that)
Vanilla seems to have found 2 books in treasure while I was busy conquering. She now has 1 Life and 1 Sorcery on top of the 9 Nature.
Found the last wizard :
Not much to say, I'm so much more powerful than anyone, mainly due to sheer economic advantage from the race and the spells that I was able make Silver break her alliance with Yuyuko.
Also, I had plenty of chance to use hammerhands and I see no need to buff them - albeit I had adamant and prayer they were plenty powerful. Not necessarily in durability (although they tend to survive some nasty battles fairly well, they do get killed in others - the djinn and the storm giants were expensive to fight), but damage output - 2-3 hits and a great drake is dead. What makes the most powerful is the fast production rate (although I do have inspirations), being able to build 4 (or 2-3 without insp) a turn is a huge deal, I can clear a new node every 2nd turn if I really want to - but at this point I'm going to focus on attacking and eliminating wizards to win ASAP.
Game finished. I don't think dwarves need any further buffs, this strategy feels strong enough to even stand a chance on Lunatic I think, not that I tried. While hammerhands might die a lot in battle, they are (now) cheap enough to produce to not care, and strong enough to kill pretty much anything. Both life and nature magic works excellent with them, other realms are probably less optimal but each has something to offer - Sorcery can reach their rare spells and high casting skill quickly using the power and gold obtained from ores, and can make flying warships. Chaos also benefits from the easy early research and skill, and flame blade on basic dwarf units is amazing. Death can capitalize on it through using the extra resources to have an obscenely strong early game through summoning wolves, shadow demons, or creating huge amounts of undead on top of the powerful dwarf early units. Both Chaos and Death can use golems to initiate battles and wreck entire enemy armies with spells without having to worry about keeping that attacking unit alive.
Eventually I will want to try another game using different realms, but for next, I'll try Draconians.
I've tested undead dwarves substituting barbarians, on lunatic. They own. Not built a single hammerhand and only enough golems to get into some nasty ranged magic nodes. It wasn't even rich minerals, just dry land.
If anything is left to do with myrran races after giving early casters to draconians and dark elves it's the beastmen buff.
Started a Draconian game. 5 Sorcery 4 Chaos Chaneller, all settings Fair, difficulty Expert.
Scouted half the world in 1401 November, using the 2 starting units and 2 additional spearmen. The amount of units needed for efficient scouting is so few, a cost increase or even removal of spearmen would have no effect - using 3 swordsmen instead wouldn't make much difference.
I found no targets for bowmen so I haven't yet produced any. The change to Dwarf neutrals had a large impact, as I found 4 neutral dwarf cities but all of them had cannons, so bowmen cannot conquer these, at least not without heavy investment into an Alchemist Guild, Barracks, War Collage and a large amount of Bowmen which is unrealistic for now.
The first AI I found is peaceful, and I'm playing late game realms, so I'll do settler spam, the race is good at that.
Even if I find targets for bowmen, I probably won't bother producing any for a while, as they aren't effective enough without at least some barracks or alchemist guilds and would slow down settlers. The plan is to produce them in the first settlement I build which has adamant, and that's probably another 20 turns down the line.
I started without an overland spell to cast, then traded for Nagas but feel no reason to cast any. My draconians do the scouting well enough and the Nagas won't be able to conquer anything unless I get a very large stack which I would have a hard time maintaining. Instead I'm trying to raise my casting skill. Cannons are immune to poison and have decent armor so Nagas wouldn't do well against them.
I actually decide to push for Raise Volcano to have an overland spell to cast and build up my power base. This game is very different.
I find the other wizard. Patchouli, Death/Nature and the bad new is, ruthless.
Playing beastmen so my bowmen should be doing well against them except...I can't afford it. Without the "plentiful mountains" start in that video, getting both settlers and bowmen is not a realistic goal, production isn't enough to do that. Without the alchemy+warlord combo, bowmen also need additional buildings to deal good damage.
Oh wait, I know Flame Blade. I guess I can afford building 2-3 bowmen and buff them with that.
I decide to send the bowmen to the only Nagas tower I found in the world - 20 tiles away next to the peaceful wizard's capital. At this level of difficulty I might be able to get it first although the chances are not very good.
The world seems to consist of one big continent in the middle and some islands around it with the 3 wizards each having one island. Whoever manages to hold the middle continent wins, and I have a head start on that thanks to scouting and flying units.
