Well I did get Blazing March in the end by trading, but didn't use Mystic Surge against Wyrms.
There are three cases :
-lots of wyrms : apocalypse on turn 1 to reduce their numbers. You might lose this battle if you only had 2-3 hydras but the wyrm army will be halved for the next one. This only happened like once.
-only 1 wyrm : the wrym will hide in a corner and you can lightning bolt it until it dies
-2-3 wyrms : 3-4 Hydras with blazing march can kill them - Wyrms have low defense and even their massive attack isn't enough to kill more than 1/3 of a hydra. So they are roughly even.
Gorgons are the same except they don't teleport so you'll always be able to cut the amount down to a safe size with spells if needed and never lose battles.
That's what chaos is designed to do. Hydras don't kill anything, your combat spells do. Your hydras happen to have a massive number of hp. If you get the perfect spells for enabling combat spell (and bar nothing, hydras are the best combat extenders in the game) - combine that with the best combat spells? You should win. That's the realm.
A bigger problem is that really, at that level, the AI just doesn't play as well as the human. As life, i will never ever fear a hydra - my city units annhilate them. As chaos, once i have hydra and combat spells, I don't fear things - my combat spells annhilate them (note I never get here, I suck with chaos). As sorcery, once I get up high enough, I don't fear anything, they can't counter the massive control the realm gives. As death, once I get ghouls, the game is over, because I can create armies faster than they can kill them. As nature... I'm not good at nature. Perhaps nature is weak at that level, I don't know.
My tlaloc game, I've just found the myrran wizard.
He is *drum roll* 5 life/5 sorcery alchemy/myrran.
3 wizards exactly the same books retorts except 1 has myrran? That's just craziness. Conveniently, death shatters sorcery, and AI is not great with life.
Speaking of Hydra, I noticed how the AI barely summoned any in the game Hadriex currently plays. It definitely has a low priority because it's not very good for the AI...but now that Mystic Surge exists I think it should be at least somewhat higher.
Currently it's 40 for Efreet, 50 for Doom Bat and 32 for Hydra, so if the AI knows all three, they'll only summon 1 Hydra out of 4 creatures. (Meanwhile Great Drake is 150)
That, especially considering Hydra is better in larger groups, might be far too low.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the ideal distribution would be. Efreets and Doom Bats fly and are generally more painful for the human to deal with...but the regeneration and tankiness of Hydras is a big deal even for an AI. Even if the human could easily kill 3-4 Hydras, they might not be able to when showered with Flame Strikes, Disintegrates and Apocalypses and then regeneration will pretty much prevent them to ever kill the stack. Especially due to the random nature of the realm, a stack of Hydras is formidable - it only takes a lucky roll on Mystic Surge or Apocalypse to turn around the otherwise guaranteed loss of the Hydras.
I *think* I would win this 5.11c Lunatic Large game if played onward from august 1418. A miracle! Only a few things had to go right:
5 life alchemy/warlord/tactician/spellwaver/astrologer barbarian - 'random events' unchecked otherwise defaults
a) started on own arcanus island with 4 easy lairs and 4 beatable nodes at edge of map
b) early sorcery book and early floating islands (this might be critical, those islands seemingly prevented disasters constantly)
c) myrran dwarf wizard on opposite edge myrror map (dwarf speed of 2 is bad news for AI)
d) "used" the myrran to overrun my arcanus opponents - then i overran his arcanus cities while eventally getting all the towers closed
e) nice things like raise dead spell to recover berzerkers end of battles since i only had 3 producing cities, lizards to shoot boats, disrupt etc
f) endless toe-to-toe fighting all over the map, i tried only 1 early capital attack which as always for me resulted in a lost stack
To have all this align must be a 1 in 100 occurrence! Thanks Seravy, super fun.
5.12, august 07, standard ridiculous barbarian impossible strategy. I'm about half the overall strength of the myrran AI (who was the second AI I met.. on Arcanus.. they got astral gates super fast) and slightly less than half the most powerful arcanus AI. (That being said, I've managed to settle 14 barbarian cities.. in about 1410 when they're all online, the AI won't have a hope of ever attacking me, anywhere, until they get very rares or buffed rares.)
I'd say the lower army strength rating combined with general enhancements is working out correctly, although the super early astral gates from the Myrran AI mean that I've got 3 full island/continents to colonize on Myrror all on my own.
Got corruption cast on a river .. on a tower, and the corruption only displays on arcanus (and only removes the tile resources from my city on arcanus, not from my city on myrror). Moved two shamans onto the tile from arcanus, purified, did nothing. Purified again, did nothing. Clicked plane, purified, did nothing. Moved my shamans into a myrror tile, back onto the tower tile, no longer have the option to purify. Click plane, still no option to purify, although I can still see the corruption.
Tower, well, never tried to purify in one. Technically, the units in the tower are still in one plane or another, so the unit MUST stay on the correct side for all the turns it takes to purify the tower. However if you select the stack on the tile, and hit the plane button, it will shift. Even if the shaman are not the units you are trying to move. So avoid doing that (or try shifting the plane back with the shaman selected).
This is just a guess though, don't remember ever actually having this problem.
Yeah, I don't recall this problem before. But definitely not letting me purify it this time around. Gave up and sent the shamans to garrison. (Given that the city in question has 19 population out of a max 12, and has roads and lots of shore, purifying that tile will literally do nothing for me. 19 out of 12? Yeah, 7 volcanoes dumped on my fortress before I could banish the chaos wizard.)
