Test games played

[Nelphine]

Actually I bet if you took 9 hell hounds in tactical against swordsmen and priests you'd destroy the neutral city too. Neutral units are bad.

Specialist and spellweaver and mono realm and astrologer! Oh my aching heart that would be ajoy to watch. Given that's the basis for my own strategy, but he can just units.

As a note, a human with the same mana (not likely) and base casting skill (possible) would have got 33 hell hounds.

So, honestly, 50-60 isn't that bad given we already know about the defensive requirements the AI faces. 80 is lunatic, but.. It's lunatic.

I do think if the lunatic AI only had 65 or so that would be better.

However, the AI is also getting more mana, starting with more resources, getting more gold, and clearing all the early lairs to get more mana and gold.  With all of that, I think its much more likely that a human would only have 20-25 hell hounds. Which puts 65 back into crazy lunatic range again. And leaves 83 as bonkers.

[Arnuz]

On the taking the city: sure absolutely, but with some losses. Then it's not also held without issues as now. That's the problem of strategic.

On the summoning: yep. But given that the bonus is motivated by garrisons, this and other past examples show that it's "abused" by the AI - used for much more than that. I wonder for example how the node was taken. Taking sorcery nodes is the realm of draconians, but those are dwarves. So probably with these undying hell hounds again, and phantom beasts not killing a single hellie are quite a success story... Or maybe it lost some, and then even more than 83 were summoned If none died then it's a problem for any level of difficulty, not only lunatic, as the results of a strategic combat don't change with difficulty and once this AI has a stack of 9 hellies it's going to throw them at the node both at lunatic or at easier levels...

So again. Is the combination of cheating and some easy nodes in myrran going to have these extreme results often? I think so, but they're maybe not always so extreme, and sometimes difficult to spot - for example if two AIs go to war.

[Seravy]

Continuing...

Purple and Green allied, fortunately neither attacked yet. I've planted settlers on roughly half the world's landmass, with 3 spots left but I'm going to get those because I surround the enemy settlers with nagas or bowmen, not allowing them to reach those spots.

Purple - Byakuren is 4 Life+ 5 Death with specialist and charismatic. (main reason for the fast alliance)
Green - Patchouli has 6 Nature, 4 Death and 1 Chaos, no retorts (other reason for alliance - both neutral alignment and share 4 death books.)

I was able to research and cast AEther Binding so I expect my skill to grow, letting me start summoning some real monsters - Fire Giant is being researched currently. I still only have 44 mana income though which is disappointing.

Once my skill is high enough to fire bolt stronger things to death I can think about trying to crack some harder lairs, but honestly I would prefer to learn Lightning Bolt for that. I think I have enough territory to compete and with rares, these realms are unstoppable, so the game will be decided on whether a war breaks out and how well I can defend myself if it does while I research my way up to there.

For now all my forces are bowmen and nagas and I'm quite overextended but don't think the AI has serious threats yet.

   
   

I wish I had Aura of Majesty for easy treaties...
Patchouli is Lawful but Expansionist so an army size based war will be possible around ~1410. Not expecting a war declaration from Byakuren but random attacks can escalate to one and their forces are too high to try for a wizard's pact.

I have unimportant hero, Cirno the Barbarian. I gave her my cheap Vampiric sword as I still have more items to melt down...

[Nelphine]

On the taking the city: sure absolutely, but with some losses. Then it's not also held without issues as now. That's the problem of strategic.

And the problem here is that all strategic combat, against any targets, is always going to have to follow the same rules.

But the majority of strategic combat will always be AI vs AI, even if in the first few years that isn't the case.

In an AI vs AI war, there are two huge reasons to keep damage distribution the way it is:

One) the AI literally doesn't know how to overland heal its units. This makes their doomstacks far more vulnerable to attrition than a human doomstack. We can sit in a city with stream of life for 1 turn and heal - the AI not only won't keep its doomstack in the city, it won't know to cast stream of life anyway. Nor can it use healers following the doomstsck, or use natures cures.

Two) AI vs AI wars would leave both AI extremely weakened after a war. Therefore ai wars would artificially reduce the difficulty of the game by a large amount, which is why AI used to get a bonus on diplomacy with each other based on difficulty. However this resulted in high difficulty games typically just turning into 3 or 4 on 1s, which isn't great for replayability.

So now the AI will fight wars, but if there is a winner, it will be a decisive victory so that the game continues to be difficult for the player.

Note that both of these things do apply to AI vs neutrals as well, just to a lesser extent. But in the very early game, it can lead to the AI getting a further quantitative advantage due to not losing many troops while they expand, but the human does lose troops.


Basically: early game AI get the advantage. Late game, human gets the advantage.

[Seravy]

Yuyuko from Arcanus broke a tower. "Many Demons" huh, yes, I guess that's easy for the AI. (actually it's relatively easy even for a human although not as much as for the AI)
They are specialist, spellweaver and 9 death. Joy, everyone has Death books this game. Well, except the last person I don't know them yet. Hoping for Clow Reed...normally that would be the last AI wizard I want to see but I really need a trading partner...

I think I found a node I can take out. 2 Chaos Spawn and 1 Gargoyles right next to one of my cities. Eventually this place will be producing adamant bowmen but for now, I'll use 2 fire giants to take out the gargoyles and fire bolts on the chaos spawn. I was able to actually kill one of those with the scout and 4 fire bolts.


Purple is hostile - lost a settler, fortunately the one heading to the worst location - pop 10 with 1 quork. However my cities have enough bowmen defending so no attacks on them yet, meaning no war. No attacks since then, so maybe she rerolled hostility already. I'll put a bowmen on the broken tower - as long as Yuyuko is not hostile, they won't attack it. I've sent a single naga through to explore, I might send more to follow it.
Red is already hostile, attacked my city closes to the tower. Fortunately the 4 bowmen held - the attacking army was very damaged from breaking the tower. They also have an alliance with purple already. Not good.

Got the node. 500 Mana, a Focus Magic spell and a Healer hero. Not really what I was hoping for, but hey, it's a node! And the hero even has AEther Master to make herself useful.

Unfortunately the other nodes seem to be too much for now - many gargoyles and many chimeras are the "easy" options, then there are three with Sky Drakes and one with many Giant Spiders. The AI cleared two chaos nodes in their territory.

Found the last wizard, and it's....Yukari. Of all people. And she isn't playing her usual books, she has 4 Nature 2 Sorcery 5 Death with Alchemy. So that makes it 4 death wizards and the best I can trade with are 1 chaos and 2 sorcery. Ewww. Allied with Yuyuko of course, those two are old friends...so it looks like it'll be 4v1 as soon as any war breaks out, I have doubts this will be winnable even with the powerful chaos and sorcery magic. On the bright side, Yukari is at least weak, same strength as me. And peaceful...maybe we can have a pact? Yes! And I can even trade for...confusion and summon hero, but have to give up blur and focus magic. Not the best deal but still worth it.

I might need to consider offering stuff to Patchouli to make sure I don't get into an Expansionist war.  My army size is only 60% of hers, and I have doubts adamantium bowmen can flip that in my favor (not to mention I also need to avoid having equal forces...). Bribing succeeds, I give her Summon Hero, Fire Bolt and Warp Wood and get a pact. Somewhat risky move as Warp Wood can be used against my bowmen defenses. If I could upgrade these pacts to alliances, I could bring it down to a 2v1 war instead of a 4v1 once it breaks out, but for now I have to make sure no one of the remaining two wizards can steal one of my cities on a random attack. I really hope Byakuren doesn't get Shadow Demons this game, a stack of those would be hard to stop until I get rares.

   

[Seravy]

Someone has Drain Power - bad news as my power income is still only 109. I suspect Yuyuko.
Yuyuko and Patchouli started a war. That's...not very good for me. They are on a different plane so it won't weaken them much if at all, but it means I can't ally with Patchouli safely right now otherwise I might get asked to declare war.
At least this might kill some of Yuyuko's units that get through the tower - right now it's still open. I'll need a bunch of Fire Giants there to even attempt to block it.
I'm building up the orihalcon city towards Saints, they should be more reliable defending forces than bowmen.
I started using my beastmen to build roads, which should boost my economy significantly. Lack of engineers is another thing that makes Draconian underperform, both in economy and logistics.
I think Byakuren stopped being hostile right now, at least that is some good news. So the only person who might try attacking is Yuyuko and they have like, one stack on the entire plane.
My casting skill is higher than my mana income. I need to start building parthenons and wizard's guilds all over the place ASAP, fortunately my cities are mostly done with the basic marketplace/granary/farmer's market so I want a miner's guild in them after which I can build up to whatever I please. More research would also be critical to get...

I see 4 rare spells already, but neither are what I really wanted : Air elemental (which is great), Mind Storm (which will be amazing), Banish which will help vs shadow demons and later wraiths, and Storm Giant which will be a nice upgrade to fire giants. However, what I really want to see is warp lightning/flame strike/doom bolt/magic immunity/invisibility.

I'm actually not seeing any lairs or nodes where fire or even storm giants would be effective. Wraiths and doom bats are too fast and night stalkers are invisible, sky drakes immune...oh a tower with "few chimera" that might be doable. Let's scout...well, a whole ton of fire giants. This would be ultra expensive to clear. A ruin with a single Demon and 8 Werewolves, now this looks doable. Unfortunately I already know bowmen are too weak to kill werewolves, I tried 5 vs 3 and it always ended with the wolves regenerating and the bowmen running out of ammo. I'll need giants for this.

Byakuren attacks one of my chaos nodes and I can't hold it.  Yuyuko seems to have Famine already, casts it on the beastmen city.

As it looks like playing slowly doesn't seem to work at this point and I need to claim territory to survive, I decide to switch to trying to be aggressive. I tribute some spells to the two friendly wizards (yay for enchant item and detect magic being in the game!) and upgrade my pact to an alliance with them. At this point even if I go for the war, I can at most be at war with...the two strong wizards. I don't think I have the capacity to actually attack someone right now though, I need my garrisons. Albeit maybe I could use them to take out the enemy stacks on my lands so I can get away with less garrison? idk, not a fan of that tactic...the worst part is I don't have the mana for combat spells. Maybe this war has to wait a little afterall...
More attacks from purple and this time I'm losing cities. Bowmen are crap. Ghouls, Possession, or any ranged unit or spell tears them apart.
This game is a loss... bowmen failed to protect me from attacks and cities were too slow in building up to provide any sort of relevant economy at all. My research is poor and my power income is a joke. The AI got famine before my outposts reached the stage of getting useful buildings.

I guess the main problem this game was not finding any early node nor gold from treasure (nor anything good like an uncommon or rare spell) and giving too much credit to bowmen. I should have used Saints for garrison tho I couldn't have filled my cities with those in a timely manner as they are more than twice as expensive per unit.

Draconians still feel underpowered as is. Not sure what to do with them. Also I was very unhappy with my bowmen being unable to hunt werewolves. If the Draconian "economy" comes from bowmen hunting from treasure, they should at least be good at that, right? I mean they are bad at production (mechanician) and gold (roads) and average at growth...

Looked at the map - purple had 8 cities vs my 14 and I lost to them. That's just wrong. And the sad part, attacking might have been the correct plan but draconian units are bad at that. The AI defends cities with magicians and bowmen and shadow demons and ghouls - flight doesn't help against that at all so I had no real offense plan to rely on. Saints could have done the trick, I definitely should have built for that ASAP instead of relying on the overrated bowmen. I suppose a big problem here was the lack of chimeras, gargoyles and water elemental in my spells.
Wait, I had Fire Storm for research...should have used that but then I'm not using my race to win at all..


What if Draconians had a different bonus to actually make them work as a late game race?
"Draconian buildings cost 20% less to build."? Albeit that might be better to give to High Men...

Will try again, maybe this time I get a better game - lots of medicore territory but no nodes, no gold and no trading partner probably doesn't count as a good or even average one.

...I think the diplomacy was the greatest problem this game - attacking purple would have been the correct move but they had early alliances so it wasn't an option. I guess I should have bribed green much earlier.

[Seravy]

Next game, same setup.

Starting city has adamantium. Nearby enemy (about 12 tiles to the south), has Chaos books and started with knowing corruption. They also started on adamantium, and orihalcon, and even gold.
I was able to trade for corruption so I could have done that but I really wanted to make Orihalcon Saints so I decided for an early assault. With my bowmen having adamantium and theirs not (until they build an alchemist guild at least), it should be in my favor.
I found two easy sorcery nodes this time - ironically having adamantium bowmen contributed nothing to conquering them - while I did use those to do it, I could have done it earlier if I sent my nagas there - afterall I had some 7+ of them vs the node which only had 2 and some phantoms. 
In the end neither nagas nor the bowmen were relevant to the battle - I rushed Fire Storm and it wiped out all the defending Sprites completely, no units surviving. I literally had to do no combat at all. I'll be able to add their 2 cities to my empire easily.
I also found a beastmen neutral with 6 or 7 priests and a dwarf with some 4-5 cannons. Adamantium or not, I'm not sending my bowmen near those. I'll use Saints or Water Elementals (which I found in a node) to battle those cities.
I expect a quick and easy victory this time. (and it's a reminder that Fire Storm is probably too strong for an uncommon, not that any of the Chaos rares would be suitable for one instead.)

[Seravy]

I found the other Myrran wizard soon after, and I was ahead so decided to attack. First I only stole a pop 1 hamlet, but next I attacked their capital. Used 2 Saints, 1 Naga, 2 Water Elementals and 4 adamantium bowmen. Even though I firestormed the defending 8 ghouls, reducing them to 1-2 figures each, they still took out 3 of the bowmen on turn 1. Fortunately the Saints and the Water Elementals were able to win the battle.

Bowmen are overrated, even with adamantium they are only good to die first in every battle or get confused or possessed... (stacking warlord, war college, and adamantium is a different story but hey, warlord granting an extra health is clearly the problem there. Double health on a bowmen is a huge deal as it allows them to win battles against ranged units that they otherwise can't...)

[Nelphine]

The main reason biwmen rock is because you only need to build. Nothing. You can go crazy very very fast. If you build things like psryenons or fighters guild, it will delay a full stack of bowmem. And if you do that to often, yes they suck. They are not a late game unit, barely even a mid game unit. But if you rush them, they win.

[Seravy]

Based on what I call midgame, they are clearly inadequate for it but that's probably ok.. Attacking early seemed counterproductive when I controller the larger territory but had no forced to defend it, and the enemy wizards were already allied. Not to mention their land was a good 20 tiles away from my starting position.
I guess they are useful for like the first 40-60 turns depending on difficulty - and that's exactly the time when you can't produce them in relevant quantities unless you give up on building settlers.
(though their damage without adamantium was so poor I have doubts even about that. )

Draconian bowmen without warlord for extra health are quite weak against wizards.