Test games played

[teelaurila]

Yea, heavenly light and nature node aura makes sprites invulnerable to poison. And city walls + the same means no direct damage either.

The same also increases the damage the sprites do, after armor maybe doubles what it would be without (5 to 8 at +1 to-hit, versus 4 armor).

Also without heavenly light and mithril (or high exp) the bowmen should be hard pressed to penetrate nagas armor.

I wouldn't focus magic all the nagas, though, because then you lose first strike. Should be more cost-effective to have half or third of the nagas without FM. Then you can first strike on the units that have been withered down by ranged, after which they no longer deal relevantly damage back (if multi-figure as early units tend to be). Not that this would work that well against most Myrran races.

[Nelphine]

If you're going to FM the nagas may as well do them all. They have enough speed to get most of their attacks off in the first place; and FM attacks with poison are almost as good as their melee, but don't allow the enemy to attack at all unlike first strike.

And I hadn't even thought about offense.

If it usually takes 4 FM Naga to kill 4 sprites without losses, heavenly light and nature node mean it will take 6 FM Naga (50% more durable) to kill 2 sprites (75% more offense) without losses. Extraordinarily bad test.

Admittedly sprites are probably the last thing you should try to use FM naga on in the first place as the poison is mostly useless. So it's completely not cost effective.

[Seravy]

Well okay, not on sprites, not on myrran units. Also not on anything a death wizard has. Not on gargoyles, and not even on guardian spirits or unicorns. Oh and not on water elementals either.
Also forget spiders, they are far better (unless it's 4 nagas against 1 spider or something like that).
So you can't use it against mono Death, Nature and Chaos wizards, as those guarantee to have one of those things early. You can against Life but with Heavenly Light and other things boosting resistances, it's kinda weak unless they specifically picked a very low resistance race.
...I have to conclude this tactic is only safe and reliable against pure sorcery. Oh, wait, they also have focus magic nagas so that's a mirror match, no advantage.

So what wizard is this supposed to be so good against that it's overwhelmingly powerful?
(yes it kills normal units, any summon kills them. That's what they are for. But what summons is it good against? If not even sprites?)

I can't help thinking this is just not a strong strategy at all. What are the chances of finding a wizard whose only summon is Hell Hounds? Not much...

[Nelphine]

I see only hell hounds at least once every few games. And no, for the AI against the human, it's EXTREMELY viable. The human cannot hope to match the quantity of summons the ai has, so the human must rely on city troops. On arcanus, unless you play nomad or halfling/high Elf (and even halfling/high Elf needs heavenly light), you die.

Try it on arcanus, and specifically aim to take out all the cities of all 3 arcanus wizards EXCEPT the fortress. You should be able to do so easily, unless you get multiple nomads/life halflings/life high elves.

And note, even against sprites (and those arcanus races) you win, it's just not cost effective than. But who cares, 9 of them to kill 9 sprites (er I mean, kill the fortress because ai constantly have pure sprites in their fortress) still lets you win (when you aren't against a node/heavenly light city).

Cost efficiency only matters if you can't replace it easily, or you need that doomstack to hit something the following turn or two. Otherwise, as long as it still wins, it's fine.

[teelaurila]

FM nagas are just about right, I think this convo shows

[Seravy]

Lost the game - not sure if the nagas are to blame or not. My starting location wasn't that great so I had no choice but first the first wizard, and I couldn't avoid getting into a war with the second Myrran wizard due to poor luck on diplomacy (they finished their arcanus wars and declared war on me before offering an alliance - was a 50-50 shot). Pure sorcery is pretty much dead if it has to fight nonstop the whole game, at least on this level of difficulty.
10 book specialist without other retorts isn't really good enough for Master in the first place either.

[Seravy]

I believe I had enough Dark Elf games done to consider the race well balanced now.
So...which race to play next. Halflings maybe? Haven't used them in a while.

[Nelphine]

Intersting, I still find dark elves far superior to most other races. Gnolls. :P Actually comparing dark elves to beastmen would be good. My vote is beastmen, as I consider them the only myrran race not tested recently, and that would at least balance one plane.

[Nelphine]

9 towers: building an outpost on a shore tile, displays the ground as blue (in the picture that pops up when you start the outpost or right click on the outpost), instead of the expected green.

Game then crashed after hitting next immediately after looking at the outpost. Turn 10 or so.

[Seravy]

We also haven't tested trolls and have Dwarves on the "overpowered" list. So we are quite far from completing Myrror races, actually.

...more importantly, with "Myrran AI possibly overpowered" on our task list, we should be playing Arcanus now to have more information on that, especially with the tower and planar changes which lead towards making the Myrran AI stronger as no Life AI wizards are going to take away their space.