Yep. Also, it's not necessarily suicide. You need to get rid of their triremes and navy anyway, so you might as well time it right. Right after the fortress strike that is.
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Test games played
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January 10th, 2018, 08:31
(This post was last modified: January 10th, 2018, 08:56 by teelaurila.)
Undead penalty to holy word should be -5 (-2 and extra -3). Behemoths have either 13 or 12 resistance. So yeah, won't kill them all, but you get 30% or so chance to kill each, which isn't too bad if there's several. If you only get 20% then it starts to not be worth it.
Also if he keeps re-animating every turn, it means he isn't casting anything else. But overall, raise and animate are quite broken when it comes to casters if they come back with full caster ability. You can get more caster mana than you spend for the raise, and you get it on the same turn. High prayer is +2 or +3 resistance, which should be huge. They should be able to do black prayer, of course. But bless is +5.
Yeah, the "return and instantly spam Possession" is pretty atrocious. Unfortunately I don't have Holy word, only Exorcise and that has -3 modifier, so they are probably immune to that. I think I had some serious bad luck with my spells as his composition is very strong against what I have. Travelling now but will try how High prayer + Blessed Pikemen-stacks work against him when I have the opportunity. It should be ok if I can start defending my cities.
January 10th, 2018, 10:58
(This post was last modified: January 10th, 2018, 10:59 by Nelphine.)
If you have elite or ultra elite units and bless, that's +7. -2 for black prayer is +5. -3 for possession (I think?) Is +2. So if the unit had 4 resistance to start, he still has 40% probability of possession. Add high prayer and that will drop to 10% possession only. Add a guardian spirit or high men priest and you'd be immune (until they kill the spirit/priest, but at least they'd have to waste time doing that, giving your pikemen longer to get into attack range.) An invisible prayermaster would also be awesome.
(January 10th, 2018, 10:58)Nelphine Wrote: If you have elite or ultra elite units and bless, that's +7. -2 for black prayer is +5. -3 for possession (I think?) Is +2. So if the unit had 4 resistance to start, he still has 40% probability of possession. Add high prayer and that will drop to 10% possession only. Add a guardian spirit or high men priest and you'd be immune (until they kill the spirit/priest, but at least they'd have to waste time doing that, giving your pikemen longer to get into attack range.) An invisible prayermaster would also be awesome. Yep, the High Prayer-combo is what I am aiming for. I thought my odds were better than just 60% of resisting before, so that makes more sense for the results that I was seeing. I am finally back home now, after an exhausting 20h+ journey, so in the next couple of days I will try to finish that game and post the results.
January 12th, 2018, 14:59
(This post was last modified: January 12th, 2018, 15:01 by Nelphine.)
Trying out 2 death/2 sorcery/2 life, channeler, spellweaver, myrran, cult leader; dark elf.
Goal is to see how much power I can get in order to simply use focus magic ghouls for everything (life is for heavenly light). In February 1405, without any nodes, I am up to about 80 overland casting skill, and I have higher power production than both myrran AI (who have at least 1, maybe 2 nodes between them.) I am playing on fair size with 7 cities fitting on my home continent; expert difficulty, and max power, and max minerals (to give the AI the biggest advantage I can). I hadn't expected the sheer amount of power production. And with channeler virtually nothing goes towards maintenance. I haven't yet declared war on any air yet, but with 7 focus magic ghouls, focus magic beastmaster, and a wraithform ship moving them, I don't anticipate any problems from the myyran AI. However, breaking towers will be hard, so I may need to use shadow demons to steal a hamlet on arcanus, then start a doomstsck there as well, or I won't get them early enough and lack of better summons will kill me. 
Currently playing one last Life High Men game before moving to Dark Elves. Will upload the video when done.
Decided to set the difficulty to advanced as what I'm playing pretty much fits our definition of Quote:Weak - Zero synergy and picks wasted on books or retorts that don't contribute at all plus a race that works horribly with those. (10 Life, 1 Nature, 1 Sorcery, High Men - hoping to get web, sprites, war bears, nagas, some combat tricks like confusion, aether sparks, etc, any combat spell that I can use to survive the first 80 turns. Going 2 N or 2 S would be better but I want to avoid too much influence from other realms on the test.) Sadly, Life and High Men do have absolutely horrible synergy as far as I can tell - technically a buffed Pikemen unit is an unstoppable god if built early enough but in reality getting there takes a while (you need to research some of the buffs, and build the Fighter's Guild, Alchemist Guild) and it's too costly (over 200 casting cost for the buffs per unit - this is a higher per unit cost than the most expensive uncommon creatures!) while being vulnerable to Dispel Magic as soon as any AI researches it. In theory a few buffed swordsmen or bowmen can clear easy nodes but committing 200+ casting power on such weak units is a waste unless you actually do find easy nodes - if you don't, it might just be better to keep a low profile and avoid conflict until you do have pikemen to buff. At 200 skill/turn, a fully buffed unit takes over 10 turn to produce anyway - not worth it if the price to pay is not having essential common spells (Life has more than 5 of those). Even if you are lucky and manage to get through that, if there are Sorcery wizards around, you might as well start a new game - Buffing doesn't work against them and Bless does not work against their spells - researching True Sight this early is unrealistic in the current system unless you picked it as your guaranteed spell. What's worse, buffing units - while having several times the "per unit" cost of common and even cheaper uncommon creatures, also has to complete with city buffing (Stream of Life, Heavenly Light and Astral Gate), something other realms don't need to worry about this early. Also, while Astral Gate and Planar Travel encourages early expansion, neither Life not High Men can support that strategy. Obviously it would work much better with some retorts (Specialist especially, Cult Leader also has great potential) but the goal of my test is to see the basic combination of the race and realm, without any "extras". Anyway...some thoughts based on the current game so far : 1. Maybe the Army Strength part of the historian graph has too much weight. It's a completely arbitrary mix of the various statistics but a high army strength enemy is not that impossible to beat for a skilled player, yet it results in graphs like this : (purple is Dwarves, red is barbarians.) (I'm not 100% sure though - empire population is part of the mix and both red and purple likely has lots of people/cities. Red at the highest part of the graph had like 60% of Arcanus to herself.) 2. Maybe the AI should not prioritize military production on mithril and adamantium cities on this level of difficulty? That might be a major contributing factor to the Myrran AI snowballing, getting all the lairs, breaking towers, and just overwhelming the player way too much? 3. I noticed we gave Illusion Immunity to Golems, don't think that was intended. The one and only weak point of Golems was always illusion damage (phantom warriors and beasts) to ignore their armor and magic immunity. They also aren't supposed to see invisible units - that's something only Paladins get among normal units.
Need illusion immunity or psionic blast kills the golem too easily.
I disagree with some of your life conclusions, but, you are actively trying not to use retorts so I think you could be right overall. I think advanced should still be using mithril and adamantium . One of the bigger issues is that ai hugely benefit from strong minerals, far more than the human does. And at advanced the human often doesn't realize that. I'd agree with military being a smaller part of overall graph though. Summons are the main threat and they rarely are a large portion of the army graph.
Psionic Blast? That spell has so low attack power it takes 4 of them to kill a single golem. I wouldn't worry about that. And there are no other spells that deal illusion damage, all other sources are from combat damage. The only scenario where Psionic Blast is relevant is 2-3 Golems vs 9 magicians all casting PB, which is exactly where we don't want the Golem to win and is why we needed to nerf it to begin with. (bring 6-7 golems and you can still win it easily...but not with 1-3!)
On the other hand Illusion Immunity grants stuff the golem never had - seeing Invisible units, and being immune to combat illusion damage. (Oh and bypassing Blur and Invisibility damage reduction effects too!) If anything, I would worry about Confusion and Vertigo but Golems have enough resistance to not care about it. So the only thing Illusion Immunity helps replicate from Magic Immunity is pretty much immunity to Mind storm. Which is far too little to care (especially as a Mind Stormed Golem still has 10+ resistance. I guess losing the 5 armor hurts...except in Sorcery you have Phantom Beast to ignore it anyway so it's not much of a difference.) Yes, several dozens of mithril and adamantium units trying to go through the towers every turn is a pain to deal with so I admit those help the AI a lot. Now that the AI prioritizes military and spending gold in those cities almost as much as a human would, with their production and gold bonus, they get way more out of it. (the other such priority is the one that got Hadriex into trouble - prioritizing military in cities on enemy continents. If you let the AI build an outpost on your continent and don't make sure they stay friendly, you can easily find several full stacks of units coming out from that single city if given enough time. It was entirely his fault but it was still amazing to see how the AI managed to conquer like 3 of his cities using random cavalry and swordsmen swarming out of that small city...it actually lived long enough to reach warlocks while he was busy getting back his lost cities! I don't think there is anything wrong with this priority from a difficulty viewpoint but it does make it overly painful for the human as it leads to the AI either backstabbing you with those units on your home continent or worse, clears out all your lairs and nodes using them - and if you try to get rid of that city, it can often be harder than to invade their other cities in their home territory. And ofc attacking it will get you into a war you might not be able to afford. Not that a human would use their only city on an otherwise enemy continent in any other way so it's fair, but it does make the game a huge lot harder.) That said, the growth of the Myrran wizard this game isn't that bad as it looks like - I'm the one who is too far behind due to playing something that qualifies as a bottom tier strategy - and fighting three wizards with early races using High Men myself. (both yellow and red and barbarians, and purple is dwarves.) Based on our calculations for game progress, I should be done with rares and starting on very rares, and should already control all of Arcanus - I'm an entire tier behind that goal, only having about 60% of the plane and just starting to get my rares...fortunately dwarves aren't a master of research either and the Myrran plays 4+4 books so I don't need to be overly worried about being behind in research. Being behind schedule on conquest though hurts, and most of the cities left to conquer are barbarian, they won't help much on anything except gold...and with the Myrran wizard having Death books, I don't think I should aim for massive berserker armies, takes like 3-4 of them to kill a single adamantium hammerhand, not to mention with their resistance an entire army gets countered by pretty much any common death spell. And I clearly can't put Bless on berserkers produced in 10-15 cities so those cities will really be useless. Overall I'm unsure what to think - on one side this is an awful map where all my conquest is a hard earned nothing (barbarians...) on the other hand I'm extremely lucky because no one has Sorcery books, and no one has late game spells due to everyone having pure military races...it's 1419 and I have only seen like 2 rares total. |