Test games played

[Seravy]

Made some progress today with this game. Defeated the green wizard, so I'm now the strongest on Arcanus. I managed to keep both my Alliances, and made Wizard's Pact with the Myrran wizard thanks to tributing a lot of common spells. At the moment their army strength is so much higher I probably have no risk of war from that, but one of my allies is at war with them and might ask me to join.
Either way I need to do something about that Myrran wizard - they were summoning 2 Sky Drakes a turn in 1415. Haven't seen any other very rare so I assume it's from treasure. They have 8 Sorcery, 1 Life, Archmage, Conjurer, Charismatic. Adding that to Myrran they must have found at least 1 extra pick already. They are maniacal so I'm going to need lots of casting skill to get things through Spell Blast, and I'll also need to forget about mass-buffing - it's kinda obsolete at this point anyway.
It might be a good idea to use Doom Mastery now, but I'm somewhat worried about Great Unsummoning. I do have Chaos Surge but even with that Slingers will have a fairly high chance to die. If they are even going to be of any use that is, considering Sorcery has Guardian Wind, and Invisibility/Mass Invisibility. I remember having this type of fight in an older game and it was a loss - but I had no Chaos that time. The enemy plays Dark Elves btw so even more invisibile stuff expected.
Currently my main plan is to build some adamantium pegasai in the captured elf cities, and I'll trade away Chaos Surge as soon as the other wizard researches anything worth getting for it - this should double my chance of having one in play, and that wizard is the one at war with the Myrran so if they use Chaos units, even better. I'm currently researching Call the Void which I also intend to trade away. Either it'll act as a Spell Blast magnet, or if it goes through, devastate the Myrran AI more than I could alone.

Either way this will be a good test to see if pure Sorcery is too powerful or not, and at least, if Dark Elf Myrran AI is too powerful or not - I guess other races will work differently.

Overall the difficulty level felt appropriate - but only because I made alliances with 2 people. Without that, it would have been pretty much unbeatable. Even though I had a heavy focus on research, I'm not very far ahead, maybe by half of a tier. I'm researching my first very rare (treasure excluded) but I did get most of my rares already. I'm not sure if that's due to the race I'm playing, or the difficulty level itself.

Altar of Peace is a lot of fun and it isn't overpowered - I've been using it all game and only have this much advantage - as it brings in an extra element to the diplomacy. It might actually backfire, as some of my enemies also have it (including the Myrran wizard with their 1 life book...) so they also get RP from their relation with me.

[Nelphine]

To be fair, playing runemaster for very rare Global's, diplomacy is practically required. I wouldn't say that was an unusual reason that couldn't be relied on, I'd say that was good strategy on your part.

[Nelphine]

My game, I never quite got down to 0 power income (the lowest I got down to was a power income of ~140 - given that with all of my nodes it would be ~800, that was noticeable). I managed to sue for peace, and I've been ever so slowly dispelling the warp nodes. 'Only' 5 nodes are still warped. Its 1411 and I haven't defeated a single AI. However, everyone seems to have developed relatively slowly as a result, with power productions barely around the 1200 mark (as I've both had, and faced, power productions of 1500-2000 by 1412, this seems low for Lunatic).

The myrran AI, Rjak, (maniacal 8 death trolls, specialist, alchemist, myrran, tactician, guardian) has mostly been destroyed (I can only see 6 of his cities, all population 2 or less); but he's got half the nodes on Myrror so he actually still has more power production than I do. I haven't seen any other AIs on Myrror, but somehow he is at war with
Oberic, the weakest Arcanus AI (chaotic 6 nature/4 chaos/1 death nomads, cult leader, famous, sage master, 13 cities); I have an alliance with him, but he also has an alliance with
Raven, the strongest army strength/power production AI (maniacal 5 death 4 sorcery - dispelling wave and spell blast and aura of majesty - 2 nature, gnolls/high elves, guardian, channeler, 13 cities), who also has an alliance with
Ariel, strongest spell power AI (lawful 10 life with 1 sorcery book - aura of majesty of course - and 1 death book, nomads/lizardmen, guardian 15 cities).

Overall graph has myself, Raven, Ariel all within spitting distance of each other (my army strength, raven power production, ariel spell power); Oberic is distinctly weaker, while Rjak is at most half of the 3 leaders.

Its 1412, they've all got rares, and scattered very rares. I haven't researched a rare yet, but I've found 4 or 5 of them.

I'm actually worried about hitting the unit cap. Ariel has about 200 griffins/angels flying all over Arcanus, Raven has several hundred wolfriders/jackal riders/nagas/water elementals packed onto his home continent, and Oberic has dozens of stacks of nomad pikemen (???).
I'm not overly worried about Ariel - i don't think she can actually attack me (griffins even with angels aren't that strong), and she has no curses to attack me, so no matter how strong she gets, she can't beat me without SoM.
Rjak is dying (I finally got airships! soooooooo good)
Raven doesn't know it, but he's about to die (I have 5 stacks of buffed - bless/holy armor/holy weapon/flame blade - bezerkers ready to start burning his empire to the ground again). I don't think he can get his hordes to anything vulnerable before he loses it all due to maintenance/being defeated.
Oberic.. I have no idea. He could have super nasty city curses, he has summons strong enough that he can probably attack me, but he's weak overall; but nature/chaos have combat spells capable of hurting bezerkers, so attacking him will be painful.


I've collected 3 chaos books (yay flame blade/chaos channels) and 2 nature books (yay.. water walking and natures eye?) from treasure hunting. But still 6 or 7 towers to crack, plus at least half a dozen more nodes, and a few more scattered strong lairs. I could easily see getting 1 or 2 more books. I've got 13 cities on arcanus (that's a total of 54 cities on arcanus - huge is BIG), and 9 cities on myrror, and I'm sending a stream of settlers to the wasteland that is myrror after my burn-it-to-the-ground war on Rjak, to try to catch up in spell power.

[Seravy]

Attempting to continue my game but honestly I have no idea what to do.
The Myrran AI has Spell Binding, so I can forget about using globals (even if I get one for research).
They already have tons of Sky Drakes and I can't make items with Flight or Shadow, so I can't rely on heroes.
Slingers are an obvious bad idea with all the invisibility and guardian wind but I guess maybe with True Sight they might actually be the one thing that works. Unless they have Mass Invisibility, then it probably does not. Magicians are definitely impossible due to Sky Drakes.
I was considering Chaos Surge with Chimeras, but the AI stole Doom Mastery from my ally so that's also out  it'd buff their units more than mine on the long term.

I'm starting to think Spell Binding bypassing Runemaster might be a bad thing instead of a feature. (Albeit I'd think otherwise if I was the one playing against a Runemaster...wait, with Sorcery I can just Spell Blast the thing, so not really.)

I think I'll place my bet on slingers supported with the Chosen one. Ironically that means I have pretty much no use for overland casting skill (as I won't be buffing them against Sorcery that's sure.) so I guess I can keep making artifacts and champions even if they won't help - until we start the war. Past that, there is Spell Blast and it's from a Maniacal so removing Detect Magic would not be all that helpful.

[Nelphine]

You've got doom mastery, do you have chaos channels? I assume they don't have the dispelling wave/aether binding combo? Although with runemaster maybe that won't matter. If it does, minimum strength disjunction on aether binding.

Do you have any 3 base hit point halberdiers? Megabuff, chosen, win. Sky drakes can't beat megabuffed units. Heck you don't even need true megabuffs - just life Commons plus flame blade plus flight from doom mastery. Scatter some true sight. Hope you got altar of battle. Get 7 cities going, you'll get plenty of troops. (Obviously if you had bezerkers or draconian that would be best). Even halfling swordsmen with those 4-6 buffs will beat sky drakes albeit slowly.

You might need to rebuff between battles, but USE runemaster. That dispel protection in late game means you actually can use buffs against sorcery. And due to how we made aether binding recasting work, it's not just possible, it's likely most of your buffs wont get dispelled.

It somewhat depends on your casting skill, but I'm assuming at least 400 if your opponent can summon multiple drakes per round. That means you can buff entire stacks in one round. Divine order, you'd be golden.

[Nelphine]

Re: spell binding. I'm still against it being auto success for so cheap. But I'd rather see specialist and aether binding and runemaster all reduced in effectiveness, and then increase the cost of spell binding only a little bit (2000-2500 range). However, that's a conversation that's been discussed, and we mostly only could agree that we didn't like the whole situation.

[Seravy]

I assume they don't have the dispelling wave/aether binding combo?

They do.
Even if it was only DW, with Maniacal, they'd spam it like no tomorrow (ro we changed that? I guess we did?) not to mention combat use, plus they will have like dozens of chances to cast it during Time Stops.

I have lizardmen halberdiers but they don't fly. So they can't attack a thing. Slingers can kill anything anyway, damage output isn't an issue. Defending myself will be, already lost one of my lizardmen cities.

For now, using sligers works fine. If Guardian Wind or Invisibility shows up, I have True Sight or can dispel it - with runemaster dispelling works well if needed. Still, I can't really advance because Warlocks. I need to nuke those cities first, which is difficult through Spell Blasts. I'm planning to use Nightblades from the first city i got, but getting those to the target will be anything but trivial. Once there, Flame Strike can clear away Warlocks.

My casting skill is 200. You do realize I have two allies so half of Arcanus is not mine? Only 15 cities...


Also meanwhile Suppress Magic got out. Buffing is a no-go against Sorcery.

If I can survive, I will probably win - no Spell Wards and I'm not using summons or city curses anyway. But that's a very big "if".

Also, this war is difficult on my economy too. With only 400 MP/turn income it's hard to afford the necessary amount of combat spells. The myrran wizard has twice as many cities, plus they are all dark elves and draconians. So unless I have a swift victory (or bait them into attacking a single unit), battles will turn into an "yeah but I have 8 more air elementals so we both lose" outcome. 

I'm kinda hoping of some Call the Voids sliping through when Spell Binding or Time Stop is being cast - I even gave it for free to my ally (who is not doing very well against the Myrran, lost 3 cities already.)

[Seravy]

An hour later...

-Time Stop surprisingly isn't much of a threat. The enemy can only maintain it for like 3-4 turns, as they are spending too much mana on Arcanus battles (fighting me and my ally, in multiple battles a turn)
-I don't really see how to win. Cities usually have a mix of warlocks, sky drakes and storm giants defending them. The drakes see invisible, the giants and warlocks are immune to missile so both the invisbile flame strike and the slinger tactic are out. I can take out cities - but it takes forever to get one.
-Meanwhile the amount of troops coming through the towers is overwhelming - even by scattering units and flame striking, the enemy presence on the plane keeps getting stronger each turn. Sky Drakes haven't found their way through yet, but invisible heroes, storm giants, tons of normal troops etc did.
-Even if I were to finish all battles with fewer losses on my side, my production output doesn't even get close to the enemy. Mana actually isn't an issue, but unit production will soon be.
-I can't cast Disjunction - Maniacal with this high casting skill guarantees a spell blast and I don't have enough skill to instant cast it, nor can I expect to have that with 15 cities.
-I did find an additional Chaos book - if it has Great Drake I might have a tiny fighting chance - but with Spell Blast lock and a low casting skill I can't expect it to actually work. (edit : the book had armageddon. Not hepful)

   
   

Yellow is the ally who is fighting blue with me. Purple is an ally to everyone and stays out of everything, making them the second strongest despite once being the weakest. Also they raised 5 undead archangels through a stack of 9 wraiths!

I don't see a point trying to continue.

Conclusions

-We'll do what we talked about in the Chaos thread to make Doom Mastery better for Chaos/Life
-We need to rethink Spell Binding with the "must be able to bypass Runemaster" condition removed from our list, might or might not make a difference
-Myrran wizard seems too hard - this only the THIRD hardest level, and despite owning slightly over half my plane I'm nowhere near close to have a fighting chance due to sheer economy difference (and not due to AI bonus - due to the AI having literally 2-3 times my empire's population and number of cities)
-Having 9 towers seem to be working as intended and the game is stable - we can do an official release of that now.
-Halflings seem ok to play albeit they are quite difficulty to use - one of the least newbie friendly races.
-Difficulty level of Expert in general might be slightly too much - but this might be just the fault of this particular setup being weak until late game  something I didn't even get due to Sorcery being better at it.
-Peaceful play simply doesn't work if you don't expend into Myrror - you won't have enough cities to fight the Myrran wizard - albeit this might get fixed if we end up changing the Myrran wizard related mechanics instead.
-Stroke of Genius reducing RP costs by 10k no longer works as intended due to very rares costing more than 10k to research. We'll need to improve this.

Next game should be Arcanus again, but this time a different race that's not such a corner case as Halflings. Any suggestions?

[Nelphine]

200 casting skill seems absurdly low.

15 cities, 10 nodes, 15 amplifying towers, you should have 105 skill just from towers, 100 skill before you get a tower, and 50-200 skill developed after you get your towers. That's 250-400 skill, and the less wars you're in, the higher it should be. And that's assuming you're only around 1418 or so.

[Seravy]

10 nodes? I wish. I think I had 6 or 7. Nodes in the territory of allied wizards were taken out by them already. Also Slingers are good but not omnipotent - nodes with air elementals, efreets, fire giants, etc, I had no chance to beat before the AI. Myrran nodes were clearly out of my reach, I had no Myrran presence whatsoever until I started the war. Going there would have made me lose the wizard's pact with blue and thus lose the entire game (not that waiting helped much but starting that war without an army would have been retarted, also no Altar of Peace if I fight two wars at once...)

100 skill from towers, yes, I have that.
120 skill from SP costs 120^2 = 14400 SP, quite a significant amount.
My power income is only 600 something, and the effective income is 450, the rest goes on maintenance (15x Altar of Peace, some summons, buffs, etc). Out of that 450, I need 220 for overland casting, leaving 230. That 230 is needed for battles. If I could afford spending it on SP, it would bring be another 100 casting skill in...about 150 turns.

223 casting skill is completely normal if you haven't conquered an entire plane, play on "fair" settings, and it's only 1420 with no big spells on your side producing extra SP or power.