Test games played

[Nelphine]

I think dwarves with the 2 starting settlers are a little on the strong side. They just front load waay too hard with the double minerals, when they start with settlers and so they can grab a few crystals very early, and easily have triple (or much higher on rich) the early power generation of any other race. That just spikes their casting skill too high (and lets them keep the mana to support it). And even late game, the combination of miners guild + racial means that any dwarf city with crystals actually has higher power generation than a max population dark elf city, although obviously things like volcanoes and corruption can hurt that. But when they get double or triple the casting skill of the other AI, the human can easily control the whole myrran plane before even volcanoes are common, and since AI can't cross planes easily, that means you can protect every single dwarf city from ever being targetted by volcanoes.

I think they need to be reduced to +50% bonus from minerals as a racial - or possibly a bonus based on turn that starts around +20% and goes up 1% per turn, up to a maximum of 100%. (Sure, on poor, +100% is balanced; but I don't think you'll ever see a human choose dwarves on poor. If the AI chooses dwarf on poor, they'll get hammered for it, but I think that's less of a problem - and with bad starting, the difference between +50% and +100% on poor is literally 0, the AI gets hammered in either case.)

And if the human chose dry rich (and was on arcanus), and there was an AI dwarf on Myrror, they would go absolutely bezerk, and destroy the human (hammerhands for strategic strength to break towers, and dwarves to pump power production early and hard until they got dark elf cities for late game, and no one on Myrror to fight.)

As an example, it's 1406, and I've cleared EVERY node and lair on Myrror; primarily due to already having over 150 combat casting skill. (Channeler, Conjuror, Myrran, Spellweaver, 2 life, 2 sorcery, 2 death - I'm not using the Archmage/Astrologer/Cult Leader combo here.) I already control 4 arcanus nodes as well, and I've broken 3 towers. I've defeated both Myrran AI, and my overall graph is high enough that if the minimum turn limit wasn't in, I would be offered a surrender by the 2 arcanus AI. (I think I have about 10 times their combined power production, 4 times their combined army strength and 6 times their combined spell power.) Due to how ridiculously early it is, I've picked up 5 more books + a retort from treasure.

My 3 starting cities have a combined power generation of 165, and they only have 3 crystals between them. (On Dry Rich, you could easily have 5+ crystals, in addition to mithril/orihilacron/adamantium, plus various gold). (Imagine if I had omniscient Chaos; those 3 cities could be 200+)

[zitro1987]

Sept 1409 with my 8 death/3sorcery/omniscient gnoll game with fairly small land.

Now 2nd place in historian graph and closing in on 1st place (hopefully). 129 power, 56 skill, 161 building research, 11 towns (probably the highest of us)

I'm doing pretty well, as shown above. Despite being back to being at war with 2 wizards, I do well and conquered a few small elf towns with my gnoll wolves, halberds, and now jackals along with werewolves and random low-tier undead. My lone focus-magic shadow demons scanning for myrran towns to conquer (a troll one so far).

The double divine order in play is not as horrible as I imagined, with some spells I did not expect having discounts (black prayer, black sleep). Casting shadow demons with resist/focus costs about the same now as it would before divine order. Lycanthropy is very cheap - I can get about 1 per turn and may return to this in a short term because ...

Very intelligent AI going on.The pure sorcery wizard, who appears to have learned sending nagas is pointless, is now sending tougher water elementals. However, the wizard surprised my sorcery node with a tough 9-naga stack getting its bonuses - probably the nagas he still had before switching to elementals. My gnoll units are not very good for these (some of them having focus magic), so I'd have to resort to a pack of werewolves.
*On a similar note, an AI I used to be in war with did conquer a small town of mine very near a nature node with a stack of sprites. I lost horribly (and gnoll is bad against flying).

[Nelphine]

A further note: I think the new research system is working very well.

Even with my crazy dwarf start and dominating the world, it's now 1409 and I've only just got my first rare spell as a possibility to research in my spellbook. So I do have to actively choose between research and skill and mana now, which is huge. I chose skill, and that means my research is only around the same level as the ai.

[Seravy]

Played one Lizardmen game. All Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master. Expert difficulty.
Used Gargoyles to expand and for early conquest, managed to hold half of Arcanus through that.

Still lost the game - I overextended and by the time I realized I need larger forces and gargoyles no longer cut it, it was too late.

I steamrolled the first enemy (Death/Sorcery), did fine against the second for a short while, then the tides turned as they researched Prayer and started to have mana for multiple combat spells like Pisonic Blasts. (Life/Sorcery)


At this point towers started breaking from the Myrran side (in 1408!) revealing a Myrran wizard 4 times anyone else's power in Military (albeit equal to everyone in other categories). They were Life/Chaos Warlord so that's not overly surprising.

In the end I lost because the third Arcanus wizard declared war and actually bothered to send armies, while my defenses were... not that bad but buffed Life units are really hard to stop with Chaos. If I had like 6-8 stacks of 9 Javelineers and Blazing March researched it would have been easy but I had neither of those.

I'll try again, as I was barely using Lizardmen this game except for exploring - never produced a Lizardmen settler as I started in the corner and blocked by another wizard nearby so I had to conquer instead.

I have to say Chaos really suffers when there are Life wizards in the game. Buffed units are almost invincible unless you dispel them or get rare spells, and Divine Order even makes your Lightning Bolts harder to use.

   

[Nelphine]

I agree about chaos vs life, albeit I'm usually on the other side. Only raise volcano is any threat and I play poor so it's no threat.

[Nelphine]

I'm trying an advanced game. I think I'll lose.

Gnolls, 1 chaos, 1 sorcery, Channeller, spellweaver, guardian, runemaster, sagemaster, specialist

Yup, couldn't do anything. Starting with FOUR casting skill is just.. um. Special. Especially with gnolls. I actually conquered 4 cities, and 3 lairs. Then someone declared war on me, sneezed, and killed me. BUT, I did have both immolation AND aura of majesty researched by the time I died! (Was only going to take 2 YEARS to cast aura of majesty... and that's with the specialist casting discount..)

[occasionalplayer]

I think dwarves with the 2 starting settlers are a little on the strong side.  They just front load waay too hard with the double minerals, when they start with settlers and so they can grab a few crystals very early, and easily have triple (or much higher on rich) the early power generation of any other race. That just spikes their casting skill too high (and lets them keep the mana to support it). And even late game, the combination of miners guild + racial means that any dwarf city with crystals actually has higher power generation than a max population dark elf city, although obviously things like volcanoes and corruption can hurt that.  But when they get double or triple the casting skill of the other AI, the human can easily control the whole myrran plane before even volcanoes are common, and since AI can't cross planes easily, that means you can protect every single dwarf city from ever being targetted by volcanoes.

I think they need to be reduced to +50% bonus from minerals as a racial - or possibly a bonus based on turn that starts around +20% and goes up 1% per turn, up to a maximum of 100%.  (Sure, on poor, +100% is balanced; but I don't think you'll ever see a human choose dwarves on poor.  If the AI chooses dwarf on poor, they'll get hammered for it, but I think that's less of a problem - and with bad starting, the difference between +50% and +100% on poor is literally 0, the AI gets hammered in either case.)

And if the human chose dry rich (and was on arcanus), and there was an AI dwarf on Myrror, they would go absolutely bezerk, and destroy the human (hammerhands for strategic strength to break towers, and dwarves to pump power production early and hard until they got dark elf cities for late game, and no one on Myrror to fight.)

As an example, it's 1406, and I've cleared EVERY node and lair on Myrror; primarily due to already having over 150 combat casting skill. (Channeler, Conjuror, Myrran, Spellweaver, 2 life, 2 sorcery, 2 death - I'm not using the Archmage/Astrologer/Cult Leader combo here.) I already control 4 arcanus nodes as well, and I've broken 3 towers. I've defeated both Myrran AI, and my overall graph is high enough that if the minimum turn limit wasn't in, I would be offered a surrender by the 2 arcanus AI. (I think I have about 10 times their combined power production, 4 times their combined army strength and 6 times their combined spell power.) Due to how ridiculously early it is, I've picked up 5 more books + a retort from treasure.

My 3 starting cities have a combined power generation of 165, and they only have 3 crystals between them. (On Dry Rich, you could easily have 5+ crystals, in addition to mithril/orihilacron/adamantium, plus various gold). (Imagine if I had omniscient Chaos; those 3 cities could be 200+)

[quote pid='667147' dateline='1521603039']
[i]I have a similar feeling; however, the problems I have been facing with dwarves is their slow speed. 
If you pick rich-dry-huge, then you might get an incredible amount of crystals. However, you will likely not be able to eben transform your outposts into hamlets (pop3-desert etc - that is what I usually find around crystals). Even if you do omniscient-nature, change terrain comes too late. 
if you pick rich-wet, then there are not so many crystals. Of course, Gold-diamonds are also very nice, so you can speed-build your cities - but your troops are still slow. Hammerhands alone won't do the trick since they do not fly - cannons only move 1, 2 with roads. How do you run your conquests?

I have been thinking about possible dwarf setups (strongest). I think nature-omniscient (maybe 1 chaos) - possibly alchemy or sage master would do the job - since then, you can boost your expansion with nature summons. However, these are quite vulnerable due to their low resistance.
The power-driven alternative would be chaos, as you described. [/i]
[/quote]

[Nelphine]

It doesn't matter what you use for conquest when you have 100s more combat casting skill (and the mana to support it). You can use swordsmen or halberdiers, and just cast whatever combat spells you have 20 times.

Or you can summon stacks of units (in 1409 I was up to literally 5+ units summoned per turn) whenever/wherever you need them.

Or you can buff your units to no end - flight on hanmerhands or cannons make them insanely strong.

The easiest thing though is airship plus 8 cannons. Each dwarf city produces one adamantium cannon per turn, 8 cities means you build a stack per turn, so you take airship, fly to target, conquer, leave surviving cannons behind, use airship to pick up next stack and repeat. I was up to about 6 or 8 airships constantly going back and forth.

But the casting skill is what breaks it. The enemy can't DO anything if you can summon 20 combat summons each combat. Or cast a dozen flamestrikes, or raise dead 9 times, or whatever else your realm does.

[Seravy]

Halfway done with my next Lizardmen game, current thoughts :

-Didn't really feel the naval dominance theme going. My Gargoyles and my invisible water walking heroes sank the majority of enemy ships, lizardmen units barely did anything. While Javelineers are effective at fighting ships, they die just the same to damage spells (Fairy Dust, Fireball, Black Sleep, Confusion etc) and aren't cheaper to produce (galley is also an FG unit for 100), but cost more to maintain and move slower on sea plus their vision range is less, so you'd need quite a lot of investment to be able to actually protect a larger continent with them. A few stacks of Galley should probably do this job better.
-Never produced a swordsmen - I had better early summons, but this is often the case for any race.
-Spearmen are amazing explorers so if there is one thing the race excels at, it is scouting the map before any other race and sending settlers to the best spots. They move 2 tiles as long as the first tile is a river, swamp, tundra, shore or ocean on top of the usual grassland and desert. Which is like 90% of the map, only Hills, Forests and Mountains can slow them down.
-Javelineers did ok but weren't particularly outstanding - for a higher per unit cost than longbowmen, they died to enemy spells just the same and did about the same or even worse damage. Yes, in theory durability would be the selling point but it doesn't make a difference against resistance or "all figures" spells - A Fairy Dust still means like 4-5 of the 6 figures dead.
-Gold... was okay I guess, not that great but not particularly awful.
-Production is horrible, the lack of Miner's guild is definitely felt.
-Food feels problematic - you need a lot of units when playing this race (to block seas, garrison cities, and attack) and without an Animist Guild that isn't trivial. Lack of Oracle and Parthenon means you often have some rebels, even with the racial bonus - if not then you probably are feeding a full garrison so food is bad either way, and farmers take away even more of the already poor production.
-Turtles I never produced - had Gargoyles way earlier for the high armor and resist role so I have no use for them.
-Lack of research is painful if you are playing a late realm like Chaos. Even with Sage Master I was merely equal to other Arcanus wizards, and still behind the Myrran one. Despite starting on the largest continent and expanding through the entire game.

Overall the race feels slightly disappointing but playable. Javelineers aren't that strong but they are probably one of the most versatile units in the game - easy to produce, not overly expensive, melee, ranged, durable, naval all in one.

And I completely forgot the race can build halberdiers, because well, why would I want to? Ok, lots of health is nice but not being able to shoot pretty much means even more losses to enemy spells than javelineers as battles drag out longer. I suppose they'd be the thing to use if the enemies had...what, exactly? The AI doesn't use large amounts of Skeletons or overland Guardian Wind, I firestorm the magicians, and that's about all the missile Immunity you can find in the first half of the game. Night Stalkers kill the halberdiers with the gaze so they don't really count either. I guess in late game against Storm Giants, Nightblades, or idk.

[Nelphine]

Javelineers dominate with buffs *cough life/chaos cough*
Halberdiers are strong enough for strategic shenanigans. 
Miners guild is a huge loss to them. But the speed 2 settlers and the fighters guild units are so strong it's probably ok.