Test games played

[Seravy]

There is no room for Spellweaver in a Life+Chaos Runemaster strategy. You need as much books as possible to ensure getting a relevant amount of very rare globals.

According to our definition, this should be good enough for 100% wins on Expert - it's 10 books with 2 in retorts that have a strong synergy with the realm, plus a race that also works well with them (research boost is strong for Chaos, halfling units strong with Life).
I'd accept needing Spellweaver if this was Lunatic or Master...

[Nelphine]

Runemaster isn't an expert level retort, except MAYBE life/sorcery, and even then you need to have a race that isn't going to rely on life buffs.

Relying on a race that requires life buffing, without being able to cast enough buffs is not an expert level strategy. Perhaps you don't need spellweaver, but you need something (cult leader + adchmage maybe).

If you can't cast enough buffs, then don't rely on that for your strategy. 

Not being able to use the strategy you rely on, is not something an expert would do.

Alternatives could have included not going to war. Runemaster and chaos are later game abilities - so not using upwards of 7 of your picks in the early game AND starting an early war (more likely closer to 5 picks, as you probably used some Chaos spells in combat) is not expert.

Another option: warlord and a race with war colleges.

[Nelphine]

The only real solution I found against warp node is, if I know an enemy has it and is Maniacal/ruthless, I don't meld the nodes I conquer.
If you already did, that's unfortunate - the only thing you can do is to leave them without a garrison and dispel in hopes of someone else melding them. I wouldn't bother, better to just build power producing buildings in cities to counter the problem. Of course with your playstyle you might have so many nodes that it's a real problem.

Not only do I have 9 nodes, but I'm barbarian (7 fully developed barbarian cities, not that fully developed means much). I can't build power producing buildings. (Yes I have 7 other cities, but they aren't heavily developed yet. Most are still working on farmers market/foresters guild.)

Edit: it's 1409 now for reference.

Edit2: note that I'm not saying warp node is overpowered or a problematic spell. Just trying to figure out if there's any way I can deal with it without being able to instantly find the enemy fortresses.

[Seravy]

Runemaster isn't an expert level retort,

Every retort is supposed to be playable up to Master with the appropriate strategy. If it isn't, either the difficulty is set wrong or the retort is underpowered.

Perhaps you don't need spellweaver, but you need something

In the second game I had no issue with this : that "something" was having more than zero nodes.
Can't really help that, the first map was awful.
This strategy does rely on having at least a node or two, and has a very high chance of obtaining one (phantoms, nagas, chaos spawn, cockatrices, earth elementals, sprites, etc are all easy, but with enough buffs you can even do things like 1 great drake...) but the first map I didn't even see nodes except for one with "many great lizards".

Not going to war, yes, that is also an option but not when you start at that location. Of course I should have waited at least another year before doing it but I was impatient due to the bad starting location.

---

Meanwhile I played the second game. Average start this time - small continent alone, 2 doable nodes. I was doing fine for a while and expected an easy victory - but overestimated slingers and lost my entire army in a fortress attack. This should have been a major setback - at this difficulty, this sort of mistake should be acceptable once, but not really more than once per game. It wasn't - I lost all my new territory and found myself with only 4 cities in 1408. I haven't actually lost the game yet, but at this point slingers aren't that great anymore and I'm behind in research - plus I have an Alliance with a Sorcery/Chaos wizard, the only type I most likely can't beat in the late game. So I'm giving up.

I feel like I've been drastically underestimating how much better the AI plays now, as I was playing mostly Myrran games recently where I have the advantage of fewer enemies and a stronger, more versatile race. Maybe difficulty levels really are too high as is. We'll find out eventually, I'll keep playing.

[Seravy]

Edit2: note that I'm not saying warp node is overpowered or a problematic spell. Just trying to figure out if there's any way I can deal with it without being able to instantly find the enemy fortresses.

Probably not. Seems like we've found the weak point in your strategy. Barbarians are as bad against Warp Node as Nomads against Famine. 7 Barbarian cities is a lot, probably better to only build 3-4 and have other races for the rest?

[Nelphine]

No, I've concluded that unless you actually are killing at least one AI by 1404/early 1405, on lunatic you need more than 3 barbarian cities, or you simply don't have enough bezerkers to keep up. With 7 cities (and buying bezerkers in every city evey turn) I am handily able to keep twice the army strength of the strongest AI, and I've got enough bezerkers stacks to maintain offense on two planes, while maintaining 3 or 4 mobile stacks for defense, including replacing casualties. My biggest problem is that I have no wraithform, no flight, no water walking, and no windwalking units, so the ai has extreme naval superiority, and I have to use ships to cross continents. This is seriously slowing down exploration and slowing my offensive stacks. (I have one stack with all 9 at speed 4, but I can barely keep it replaced, and cant remotely buff another full stack with endurance. Keeping bless/holy armor/holy weapon/flame blade on all pertinent stacks is too expensive, although it certainly makes it difficult for the ai to beat me. But power income loss means I'm going to lose that soon, and that will HURT.)

[Nelphine]

On runemaster: when it matters, it's worth 2 picks.

BUT it only matters if you are trying to dispel a specialist, or if you are facing either a sorcery wizard with aether binding or another runemaster.

That means in too many games, it's simply not going to matter. It's absolutely underpowered if you're not in one of those situations. 

It's situational. Situational means, you can't reduce its cost (when it works, it really works), but you can't rely on it.

Therefore, I don't believe you can use it at expert and above, unless you are using an otherwise lunatic strategy, but choose runemaster instead of better options. Then you could use it at expert (maybe master depending on the exact lunatic strategy).

In terms of your definitions for difficulty: runemaster never has synergy with a realm. It only has synergy with your opponents choices which you can't control.

[Seravy]

Except, Dispel Magic and Disjunction are arcane spells and Red/White relies on buffing without access to Spell Lock. Obviously, dispel resistance will do more against Sorcery, but...well, not really. If I have a stack full of buffs, Dispelling Wave will still hurt too much. If they have Spel Binding, my globals aren't safe. Runemaster matters against non-Sorcery wizards the most. And you can find non-Sorcery wizards everywhere.

...that is unless we balanced Disjunction too much and now you can have all the Chaos globals in play without having any dispel resistance bonus, even if the other wizards are stronger than you. Then I admit Runemaster is not overly useful - but being able to put 3-4 buffs on a slinger without a single Dispel Magic costing me 2-5 turns of spells should still be worth a lot.


Meanwhile started the third game and it's going to be a weird one. I made an Alliance with two maniacal wizards (take that, people who complain diplomacy is too hard) but they are my neighbors so I can't really expand much except getting a neutral or node here and there. The last wizard was at war with one of my allies, and I had to join, then dragged my other ally into it so now it's everyone against that one wizard. But that one wizard is the strongest on the plane, and I have no idea where her cities are. Also, Slinger production is kinda sluggish even though I gave up on using Heroism and now only use Armsmaster and Flame Blade. I managed to clear out most possible nodes and lairs and now have an acceptable amount of garrisons, but building troops to try to ship into the unknown is still further away.

I have Altar of Peace however, which in this very unusal scenario, should work well - but I have so few cities, it isn't really that powerful. With only 5 places to buff, even the +16 RP bonus isn't that great (which I expect to grow to +24 over time but that it'll take a while.), but it does add up especially paired with being Halfling and having one of my ally playing both of my realms. Unless that one enemy wizard pulls out something unstoppable, I have ensured staying in the game long enough to have a shot at those powerful late game spells which should be my main strategy.

The enemy wizard is mono-green, and honestly, Spiders are a pain for Halflings to deal with. Unless I can catch them in a 2 sliger per spider battle, I stand no chance. However, with both my allies being at war with the wizard, I don't think any more of those spider stacks will make it to me. It's ironic that the enemy is the lawful wizard and the maniacal are the allies.

On the "halfling race" topic, the race feels somewhat inferior in military, even with the ability to buff Slingers, but that's part of the design so I'm fine with it. Where they excel is, the free research opens up trade opportunities (and even the ability to give away spells as tribute), thus improving my diplomacy - which is very suitable for this race.

[Nelphine]

Dispel magic isn't a huge issue. Don't stack so many buffs on one unit - that is the best way to play, always. Stacking buffs is for neutral hunting (which don't have dispel magic) and strategic strength shenanigans so you don't get attacked in the first place (so dispel magic doesn't matter). Disjunction takes too long to get into the game - a 2 pick retort shouldn't be balanced around very rare tier. That should be icing.


So no, I don't believe that the existence of either dispel magic or disjunction makes runemaster important enough to make it reliably worth 2 picks. Every such situation you will be better off with specialist (even in a dual realm build), except for those I listed above.

[Nelphine]

On halflings: I agree. And later on the unrest table is very helpful as well. I think they're good overall