Test games played

[zitro1987]

It's not very common but it still does happen. If the enemy wizards have similar realms, peaceful/lawful personalities,  charismatic, or more of these at once, that can result in that. Also higher difficulties generally means it happens more.

Difficulty: Expert
My Wizard: pure chaos
Wizard 1 : 6 sorcery / 5 life, peaceful pragmatist  (did not cast aura of majesty, relatively friendly but recently declared war ... but not attacking me yet anyways)
Wizard 2: 7 chaos / 1 nature / 1 death, maniacal militarist ... not very friendly despite realm match, maybe because my military strength is not that good.
Wizard 3: 9 death / 1 sorcery , ruthless theurgist (this guy has been ruthlessly attacking me even at peace, tho mostly with pikemen which are easy to beat)

Note: chaos channels and pegasi is amazing - guaranteed +3 armor.

[Nelphine]

So the chaos and death are natural allies. It makes sense they're together.

The life sorcery is peaceful. He's inclined to accept treaties. Therefore, if say, he was stronger than the other ai in army strength, they would offer a pact, he would accept. Since he's stronger, the other side doesn't break the pact; since he's peaceful he doesn't break the pact.

Since they have a pact, their relation improves every turn. Eventually they ally. 

The reason for the initial pact may be for other reasons, but whatever the reason, the result is the same. And since the chaos death are allies, only one of them need to ally with the life sorcery and they'll bring each other into a 3 way alliance.

[Nelphine]

My lunatic chaos game continues. Jan 1411. I'm in third place, behind both Arcanus wizards (both Myrran wizards defeated).

I have 2400 power production (I'm in second, and not much ahead of third).
My army strength is third (I have 9 adamantium veteran/elite hammerhands on all 9 towers, as well as multiple stacks of 9 chimera floating around, as well as my main doomstack roaming around, plus garrisons).
My spellpower is first (I'm not sure if this is research - I'm sagemaster with a MILLION researched spells - or casting skill - I'm archmage with 314 casting skill).

I've realized something interesting about turning very rares into retorts/books; you can actually run into a cap doing this. If you get a particularly high treasure count in those categories, you can actually still hit the limit! (I'm so happy with this game).

I have 3 nature books, 4 sorcery books, 2 life books, 9 chaos books (not actually the cap yet - I believe I can get 1 more?), and I have Myrran, Sage Master, Conjuror, Archmage, Omniscient, Cult Leader. And I'm not done exploring Arcanus yet! So I could conceivably still get the last book? I managed to get transmute; Transmute + Raise Volcano with this many chaos omniscient books is amazing. I'm considering trying to see if I can get a dwarf city that has 500+ power production just from that one city. (I know the rollover for gold was fixed; does anyone know if power can go higher than 255? I'll find out!)

As a mention, I want to say it's disgusting that I'm not in the lead of power production. And because I've got so many bloody found books, I have yet to research my first rare spell, despite the fact I've researched a bajillion spells. Note that one of the arcanus AI already has very rare spells researched. (10 sorcery books + specialist)

I have one city with 156 power production so far - the display icons are starting to overlap, as it clearly wasn't expected to be able to get that many. (So some of the individual crystals are on the same spot as the 10 crystals, making it hard to read. I don't think there's anything that needs to be done, even if something could be done.)

[muxecoid]

Nelphine, can you please put a video of your playthroughs somewhere? Some of the numbers you post feel almost impossible to get without cheating...

[Nelphine]

A lot of these games I'm trying to do everything possible to maximize synergy, its why I'm reporting under test games. But things like Myrran Dwarves with high Chaos Books and Omniscient really maximize power from crystals.

However, I tend to play less than 2 turns at a time, as I have a daughter, so I don't do videos.

[Seravy]

Reached turn 200 on my game, so the first time I've seen the new tower mechanics in action.

It's quite amazing.

-Many towers break simultaneously, and multiple large stacks come through each, so the usual abuse tactics of keeping no garrisons likely means a quick defeat unless the Myrran decides not to attack.
-Myrran strength on the graphs was reasonable - quite a bit higher than mine but not unbeatable
-Myrran wizard already had a few very rares - possibly from the towers themselves, but I suspect most are from research as two of the three I saw are top priority spells on the research list.(the third should be from treasure though). The wizard was Sage Master, but I was also ahead of schedule with my research so it was the perfect timing, we had roughly equal research progress.

So yeah, 5 towers broke, dozens of red troops started to pour into the world, the leftover 3 cities of the other Arcanus wizards got taken over and Armageddon was cast - all in a timespan of about 6 turns. Epic.

Another interesting thing in this setup is that the player pretty much has one of two options :
-Wait for this invasion, which means the Myrran will likely score several very rare spells from treasure and appear as a threat immediately
-Or break through early, at the time Myrran advantage is the highest over Arcanus, and not get very rare spells for doing so.

Both result in an interesting game and while the latter is generally more beneficial to the player, it's also a lot harder to fight two planes at once that early, so doing it requires top tier strategy.

[Nelphine]

In my game, I've actually managed to get Spell Binding on my research list. So I'm researching it now, July 1412. As this is two years behind the lunatic AI getting their first very rare, I'm actually hopeful I'll get an interesting spell to choose, although I may end up just taking Survival Instinct so I can try to use Chaos Summons as my primary attack unit. (Since this is meant to be a chaos realm game.)

Seravy: Do you know if there is a 255 cap on city power generation? Or did that get fixed/was never a problem, when the gold got fixed? (My highest city is up to 222 power production, so I'll find out soon enough I guess.)

[Seravy]

We fixed it at the same time as gold I believe.

[muxecoid]

Here is an idea for a test game. What's the earliest you can get a champion hero? What about getting one reliably and without too much save/load abuse? You need famous, just cause and 4 colosseum cities. Or perhaps get some fame by razing. Getting colosseum is 430 production. I guess you want a race like humans or klackon for this.

[Nelphine]

How early are you getting it with that method? Any hero thing I always compare against 'get tons of power production, research summon champion, summon'.

I think this chaos game I had my 4 preferred champions summoned in 1406? Maybe 1407 or 1408, the turns slow down a lot during wars and I can't remember exactly details. So if we just went for any champion at all we could do it by 1404/1405 probably? Might find some specific combo to do it in 1403/1404.