Test games played

[Nelphine]

Blargh. Giant spiders are no better than war bears now. Luckily I've researched Gorgons, but they're waay more expensive. It's going to take me ages to get a stack of them. That AI is down to 2 cities though. So, he's 'only' got a power production of ~500. And he's got corruption on over 20 minerals of mine, so even if I could spend on transmute, it wouldn't matter anyway. (March 1407.)

No one has broken a tower yet, but someone on Arcanus cast Survival Instinct; and no other globals from Arcanus, so probably not life or sorcery. This means, I can probably expect really nasty nature/chaos/death when the towers do eventually fall, so I'm reeaallly hoping I will have dealt with Rjak by then. And Rjak has a billion ships, so I'm having a heck of a time settling the rest of the plane.

[Nelphine]

Hugely looking forward to someone who can figure out how to play lunatic with a primary focus on either sorcery or chaos. Maybe chaos would work with 9 books myrran omniscient archmage? Would be interesting to see a realm that actually requires a lot of books to play early game effectively.

No real idea how to make sorcery work though.

[Seravy]

Well, a very very long time ago when it was still "Impossible", I did play 5 Chaos 5 Sorcery chaneller and won but I doubt that would still work.

It's up on Youtube but it was a really simple game :
1. Use horsebowmen to conquer your starting continent from the wizard who started there, then make peace, cast Aura of Majesty
2. Ally with everyone but the Myrran wizard who is all Death while everyone on Arcanus has at least some Life
3. Declare war with only you having actual access to the other plane, your allies will need to do the same, which then makes them cast Divine Order
4. The Death wizard has to pay 75-100% extra for direct damage spells, so they can only cast 1 Reaper Slash a combat. Take advantage of your fame 0 hero with Agility, some defense items and Resist Magic (think I had the Dwarf? Consitution was probably essential.) to conquer half of Myrror, use horsebowmen or bought adamant troops to defend it.
5. After conquering all of Myrror, cast Time Stop and use your 6 hero doomstack decked out with created artifacts to kill every other wizard in a single "turn". Said heroes should be Chaos Channeled, Soul Linked, and probably be mostly caster types, with 4x Doom Bolt weapons. Some Regeneration items doesn't hurt for the less durable ones but you have all of Myrror so you'll find some.

So yeah, you only need to have the entire world on your side against the Myrran wizard early and have an unstoppable hero. In Sorcery/Chaos. And of course, playing 50 versions ago helps ;P

Pure Chaos or pure Sorcery is probably stronger but has too low versatility, especially in the early game and doesn't have a chance for those amazing combat spell combos that kinda say "gg I won" (Mind Storm+Disintegrate, Magic Immunity+Magic Vortex, Air Elemental+Magic Vortex, Invisibility+Magic Vortex, Invisibility+Flame Strike, etc, so much abuse potential it's crazy. AI got better at countering invisibility though...)

[Seravy]

For Chaos, depends on your main strategy.

If combat spells, you probably can't survive without Chaneller. You'll need to kill an obscene amount of units in combat and that costs too much otherwise.
If creatures, you need Conjurer. Taking that can help your early Gargoyle expansion somewhat too and the AI probably will have a hard time to deal with Efreet and Hydra.
If normal units...Draconians+Doom Mastery guarantees +3 defense and draconian bowmen with flame blade could do some Sprites strategy for your early game. So in this case you need Myrran, maybe Tactician, not sure what else. Can't imagine any other normal unit strategy that benefits from being Chaos more than other realms.
If heroes...well, then you're crazy, but it does have a tiny chance of working : If you get a Soul Linker hero preferably with Agility, put Chaos Channels on it and give him/her an army that also has Chaos Channels, it can be an unstoppable doomstack - but you need to find amazing items and need to fight enemies who can't kill the hero with spells. And chances are you'll need more than one of these heroes otherwise you won't have enough presence on the map - one strong stack isn't enough.

For Sorcery all you need is an Alliance with everyone until you have Time Stop... Lizardmen (after we fix their problems) might be the answer. Sinking all transports or simply building enough outposts before making everyone into an ally can buy you the time needed to reach the endgame.
The only problem with all peace games is when two of your allies end up in a war and demand you to break one off but this is a very rare thing and even then you can take the stronger side to be safe if one exists.

[Nelphine]

Nah, on lunatic a lot of that doesn't work; the slowest AI race builds outposts faster than lizardmen, they build more troops than you can kill with combat spells even via channeler (unless you have obscene amounts of casting skill and mana, in which case channeler doesn't matter). They also have obscene amounts of combat spells themselves, so you basically can't use ranged troops. Gargoyle: you need 9 books to get this (as per my 8 book game where I didn't get an uncommon summon in the first 4 uncommons I opened up). You need myrran and omniscient to compete with power production, so thats 11 picks. I would personally rather have archmage than conjuror, but perhaps conjuror would work. I don't know.

Sorcery: Hum. I suppose you could go charismatic myrran 9 books (for starting aura of majesty). That actually could work. IF you don't have an enemy who will declare war on you regardless of relation (chaotic, militaristic, expansionist all come to mind as problems.) What would you take as the 12th pick then? Heck you wouldn't need myrran perhaps?

And I actually LIKE this train of thought. This is actually forcing you to go fully into a realm, which I think is amazing. I want to try this now. What would you suggest for the 12th pick for sorcery? (Or even 11th and 12th? If you're going for a really long term game, perhaps sagemaster + 10th book? Or sagemaster + specialist?) Do you really think conjuror is better than archmage for chaos?

[Seravy]

8 books and any 4 of
Sage Master, Charismatic, Specialist, Astrologer, Omniscient, Archmage?

I think it's 8 books for guaranteed early research picks.
Astrologer is especially good because you need to do something productive while being at peace with everyone and Sorcery excels at hunting treasure anyway (Invisibility can usually beat like 80% of the lairs on the map by itself and the combat spells are second only to Chaos in eliminating creatures - but come much earlier, as they are commons!)

Avoid Myrran - it puts 2 wizards on the other plane so double chance of missing the timing for making an alliance with them.

Alternately, 1 pick(s) in other realm(s) can improve your diplomacy options a lot by opening up the possibility of tributing a bunch of common spells in one go to someone who also has only a few books in that realm. In this case, best to pick something that has good commons - Nature, Death or Life, and not Chaos. If you pick 2 realms, make sure they are opposite in alignment to keep you in the middle of the alignment scale, maximizing your chances of good starting relations. (shared books improve starting relation just by existing, too, so even if you don't manage to offer spells, it can do something. Not much but diplomacy is random and not linear so even a +2 can be a big difference.)

With 8 books you need to find 4 very rares in treasure to make sure you don't miss any of the important ones, but with Invisibility and no wars that shouldn't be overly difficult.

[Nelphine]

No, 9 books for guaranteed early picks. I think. (1 guaranteed uncommon at 5, 1 rare at 6, 2 uncommon at 7, 2 rare at 8, 1 starting research uncommon at 9, 2 at 10, I think?)


On my nature game:
Rjak has a population 3 beastman city with adamantium (his fortress, after he came back from being banished. It was an outpost at that time.) A population 6 dwarf city. A population 1 beastman city. A beastman outpost. He has 4 nodes.

His army strength is twice mine. I'm nature, non stop summoning war bears/giant spiders/gorgons. (Ok mostly, war bears where he sends a pathetic attack, and gorgons whenever I have a breather. As I have 200+ overland summoning, this is a fair amount of summons.) And he has twice my army strength! I have half a dozen nodes (I have no time to get more :P) and ~20 cities (mostly population 1-4, except my capital, which doesn't have mithril or adamantium, and the capital of the first wizard, which is producing warships to stem the tides of ships Rjak is throwing at me!)

Argh! I'm clearly bad at this 'nature' thing.

I have ~900 power production (it would be far higher except for the corruptions on half the map), and despite him having virtually no cities, he still has ~700 power production.

Nature is apparently not good at this one hit kill business I like so much. And I have to be careful what I fight, or he can bring my summons back to add to his mighty army. *grumble grumble*

[Seravy]

2 rare at 8

No, there is no such thing as 2 rares. There wouldn't be a pick slot in the interface, the original game only had one.

[Nelphine]

Yup I totally screwed up my 8 book chaos game then. Ok, now I know. Even though I was part of the discussions, and read the forums, and obviously had my 2 uncommons in my starting research, I still didn't realize I had my 2 picked uncommons in my starting research.

If we can't change the interface to explain when the picked uncommons will be in your starting research, can we add a pop up message instead? I assume not, but definitely worthwhile to add it somewhere during wizard creation. Maybe in the description of the realms if you right click on the books?

[Nelphine]

Nature game finally killed Rjak. Took a full stack of land linked survival instinct blessed gorgons.

Now I'm finally clearing out the rest of myrror, getting the last 3 nodes, and settling the continent Rjak was on (maybe, 12 cities?)

I've also finally got outposts in the rest of myrror, and I've got 9 priests busy purifying all the corruption. I probably should have made more but it's hard to tell how many are actually useful, given its already 1411 and on lunatic, priests are completely useless combat wise by this point.

Going to break towers one at a time, with full stacks of gorgons staying to guard each as I open them. After guarding he first tower, I'll take 8 more gorgons and an airship and see what I can destroy in Arcanus, then I'll go full tilt on summoning tower guards. I don't think the towers will ever be threatened, so a full burn it to the ground philosophy will be adopted by the airship. Might need to get better summons though, I have no idea what's waiting for me.