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Test games played

I broke the first two towers. On the same turn u broke the second tower (mid 1411) Sharee broke a third tower - she used gargoyles, paladins, magicians to do so. Seems like it must have been a fairly weak tower.

Sharee has half of me in every category, but is maniacal and declared war immediately. Also, there was no indication she broke the tower, presumably because her units didn't move on my plane. The following turn she attacked and conquered my city in the square adjacent to the tower. Not sure if anything can be done about this but when a turn is fairly long due to having 30 cities plus various offensive stacks, having to manually check the towers every turn to see if an enemy has come through is frustrating. And in this case I forgot.

Luckily, Sharee is at war with Freya, and so Freya moved a domstack to cover the broken tower. The next turn I reconquered my city, Freya moved off the tower, and I put a half stack of gorgons, with the rest of the stack war bears on the tower. (I've since replaced the war bears so there's a full 9 gorgons on the tower.)


Sharee doesn't really scare me - chaos/death as expected, but despite maniacal I've seen no corruption/volcano/death curses on my city. And she can't get onto myrror anymore. So I'm ignoring her.

Freya though.. the second tower I broke leads to her fortress, which has the necromancer and 8 buffed Gorgons. She's got more gorgons running around. With survival instinct she has twice my army strength (which considering I've got dozens of gorgons is not inconsiderable).

Freya also has 10 Nature books, Specialist, Conjuror. And halflings. This means she has a huge research advantage over me - she's at war with Sharee so she's probably not researching fast, but neither am I. She also has Tactician (and 1 chaos book, which doesn't matter since she's peaceful) so her summons are stronger than mine.

I have no idea how I'm going to beat her, except that my combat casting is higher than hers, and should continue to grow faster than hers (my power production is twice as high despite the lunatic bonuses - finally got those transmutes in, yellow crystals everywhere!) albeit not by much.

Since neither of us have Spell Blast, she'll win any SoM race. I'm probably going to have to do like a simultaneous quintuple stack attack on her fortress, and burn the rest of her empire to slow her down.


November 1413:
Freya has Seismic Mastery and Fairy Ring cast (I still need to summon a stack of Gorgons for the last tower!!); I'm researching Fairy Ring. Her fortress is full of Colossus and Great Wyrms; but I have Lionheart and Iron Skin and Magic Immunity and Flight and the Necromancer, so I MIGHT be able to beat her...

Her power production is up to 80-90% of mine, which is a very scary thought, since I have all of Myrror settled with dark elves, and she has halflings and high men; I control 3 of the Arcanus nodes, she has the other 14.

Interestingly, Sharee is still alive (no idea how) with 3 cities.. but she has Famine and Chaos Rift cast on more than a dozen of Freyas cities. Not that they do anything at all to a conjuror nature specialist, but it's still neat to see. Sharee's fortress gets smashed by earthquakes. A lot. Due to Seismic Mastery from Freya.



In the end I've ended up with 8 Nature/3 Sorcery/2 Life/2 Chaos, Omniscient, Myrran, Spellweaver. Pretty good haul. The chaos hasn't done me anything helpful whatsoever, I don't think I cast a single spell from it, but its worth it for omniscient. Picking up flight, focus magic, lionheart, endurance, magic immunity, heroism? These things are FANTASTIC. Wish I had invisibility though - I don't think the Necromancer can attack Colossus.

Fairy Ring is the first very rare I've started to research (so I've got 1 sorcery and 5 nature yet to go); I also picked up Regeneration from treasure (3rd last lair/node/tower in the game, was cleared after the very rare time limit, on lunatic!). I have no idea if I have any very rare summons, so I might be stuck using gorgons for everything. But with a million buffs (oh and I got spell lock!!), they should be able to beat Freyas very rares, even with her tactician.

1415: My doomstack is invincible. (Not surprising. Demi-god Necromancer with Windwalking and Speed 12; 8 Gorgons. All 9 of them have: Iron Skin, Regeneration, Land Linking; Flight, Magic Immunity, Guardian Wind, Spell Lock; Immolation; Lionheart, Endurance; the Necromancer also has Flame Blade, Focus Magic, and Holy Weapon; the Necromancer also has Invisibility from an Item. Toss out Prayer on round 1, and even colossus can barely scratch the Necromancer, let alone actually kill him; and the Gorgons are even worse, plus the gorgons one shot anything she has including land linked iron skinned colossus or great wyrms.) This is probably the most megabuffed stack I've ever used, and the ridiculous thing is that I actually USE everything. Lunatic AI are crazy; she summons 3 very rares on the turn she returns, which means 4 earthquakes due to her Seismic Mastery. This also means that my cities are getting filled with summons due to my own Fairy Ring, even though I'm not actually using any summons anymore, due to HER Fairy Ring. Sharee (with her ONE city) is still dropping firestorms and chaos rifts all over Freyas empire. I've got my own Seismic Mastery (as I've banished her 5 times, I know all her spells) which means her turns actually take a LONG time as I can see every single one of her units moving.

Jan 1416: The wizards surrendered to me.
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Running my lunatic chaos game with gargoyles. Playing large land size, and one myrrsn AI is on the same continent as me. The second is on a small island next to me. Defeated the second with first stack of gargoyles in 1401 or early 1402, but lost most of the gargoyles. The one on my continent took until 1406. Gargoyles may not die but they have a heck of a time killing things. Couldn't actually defeat him until I got my adamantium hanmerhands churning out. Now I've got the whole plane to clean up.

Nature had a harder time with adamantium opponents, but a much easier time with earlier units.

Going to see how early the towers break, although I'm not sure what to use to block them. I'm trying to focus on the realm, not the race, so I'm trying to avoid using hammer hands whenever possible. But chaos doesn't have overly high strategic value until very rares, so blocking towers will be much harder than I'm used to.
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One thing I noticed - in 1404 at the height of my war, the AI on my continent already had over 10000 mana stockpiled. Given that I think I never managed to get more than 250, I felt this was a little extreme.
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That's a lot. Do they have Alchemy by chance? If yes, that's probably coming from gold... Can't imagine they have high enough casting skill to want all that mana this early. Might be from treasure, too.

At least I hope there is no mana underflow bug remaining...
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No, I'm pretty sure it's from treasure. However, as I defeated them I don't remember offhand if they had alchemy or not; also, that AI had 4000-7000 gold at the same time, I don't remember more than that.

In 1408, I broke a tower. Immediately met both Arcanus wizards. Ariel, mono life, warlord, guardian, specialist - she has slightly lower than me in all 3 categories. She declared war immediately, but I don't expect that to do anything.

The other AI is Tlaloc - 5 death 4 nature 2 life, alchemy spellweaver.

He has 50% more army strength than I do. 40% more power production which puts him around 1100 power production; and he's on Arcanus. I already have 5 Myrran nodes as well as my cities with 9 chaos book omniscient, so he has an INSANE amount of power production even with lunatic bonuses. I don't think the problem is solo myrran AI at all. Its simply good start AI that run away; myrran AI, especially solo, have the best chance of this, but it can happen on Arcanus as well. This has resulted in him having 30% more spell power (I already have over 200 casting skill, and he's ahead of me.)

Note that Ariel, who is 'weaker' than I am, is still around 90% of me in all 3 categories. That means that the 2 Arcanus wizards between them have around 1700 power production.
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AI broke their first tower in Aug 1409, using werewolves and jackal riders. Broke their 2nd-4th towers before 1410. I had been too gung ho on lair/node clearing, and didn't have enough to stop him, so he waltzed in on my NUMEROUS outposts with nothing guarding them. I won't be able to stop him from just crushing me all over the plane. Next attempt! I still suck with Chaos.
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So I've given up on early gargoyles. They aren't reliably strong enough to fight Myrran opponents. Instead, I'm skipping straight to chimera as my first researched spell. Takes longer to get going, and I have a lot of problems with Lunatic AI getting around and attacking where I don't have enough chimera, but it seems to be working much better. So. i MIGHT be able to win a chaos lunatic game!
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Ive been playing Caster521c like crazy for 2 weeks and I am really impressed by the lack bugs, game has nor crashed once for me. I am however playing lunatic and I havent been able to once in 5 games to get a node with 2 picks, so I cant get Warlord which I want in the end game. And I seem to remember those nodes being much more heavily guarded. On the other hand, Demon Lord with doom bolt and Colossus with Illusion immunity was raster tricky.
SO I tried for the first today to choose warlord in the beginning. Now something strange happens, confusion spell doesnt work anymore. So I tried this new Caster523b but its the same thing.
My picks are:
Warlord
Archmage
Astrology
Myrran
3 life books
4 sorcery books
But Ive tried other combos and it seems i warlord is one of the picks confusion is grey and cant be selected in spellbook. Am I the only one? I have reinstalled clean many times...

Sincerely
Ymer72
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Did you check if you have enough casting skill to cast Confusion?
Different amount of books start you with a different amount of casting skill.
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Meanwhile, I started a new test game. I'm happy with Lizardmen after the recent changes, so this time my choice is this :
10 Nature, Conjurer, Specialist, Orcs, Expert.

Basically, take advantage of the quick growth of Orcs to have a good economy, and Nature summons to make up for Orcs not having very strong units. I probably should have picked Alchemy for more long term economy, but I think the lower summoning costs are essential for the early game in Nature and more than 2 retorts should not be necessary for Expert difficulty.

Enemies are two charismatic life/death wizards and a chaos/nature, all allied, plus the Myrran took the portrait of the pure Sorcery wizard and used Aura of Majesty so I'm expecting that. This seems to be an excellent setup to see if late game sorcery (and a strong myrran wizard) is beatable or not.

So far my Giant Spiders dominate so I can easily conquer any cities I want, but being Orcs, and the map having almost only Elf and High Men cities, I have to raze them. 30-40% extra unrest sounds bad for my plan, while I don't expect to need the good units from those races for now. (Albeit some paladins to boost my summoned armies would be nice anyway and I'll likely need the units against the Sorcery wizard so I will start keeping the bigger cities somewhere around midgame.)
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