Test games played

[Seravy]

Tomorrow I'm starting a new test game. Any ideas what to play?
I think I haven't used Sorcery or Sorcery/Life in a while. I did play Nature, Chaos and Death quite a lot recently. I haven't played much dual or triple realms games though.

For races, last game I used Orcs and they seemed about right. Not particularly powerful but decent - I had fairly good gold income most of the time due to the low maintenance costs. (Hordes and Magicians only cost 2!) Not sure if there is a need to play them again. They do what they meant to do well enough (having a high gold income with versatile unit and building choices) and they excel at not standing out in any way despite being unique - no other Arcanus race has a good gold economy paired with no building restrictions. So either Orcs again or one of the still untested races? (that would be... Gnolls, Barbarians, ...Nomads? I don't think I need to specifically test those, I played them like second most often last year. And that's all the remaining Arcanus races.

Orcs might be strong for a Life/Sorcery buffer/artificer/hero strategy.

[Seravy]

Here is my previous test game, the Nature Orcs : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FuyaVq0...e=youtu.be

[Seravy]

Started the new game, Life+Sorcery Artificer with Orcs.
While my starting position was decent, it's between two expansionist high men wizards. The whole point to playing orcs is to have good gold income - +30% rebels on conquered high men cities won't work with that meaning I'd need to raze all the cities and build orcs instead. Also I'm not very familiar with how good Nagas are in battle and just lost a stack of 5 on a neutral city. Nagas<Wolf Riders, lesson learned. We changed both so many times I had no idea what to expect...
Another mistake I did was hiring the first hero that showed up even though it wasn't very suitable to be the first one. It had no levels (I had Famous but no Heroism), and I didn't really have the units to support it in gaining experience. So it died along the nagas in that battle. And it was an expensive one, 500 gold, too.

I'll probably start over, I think I didn't do the early game well enough.

I'm unsure how to do it better though - I don't have enough Life books to do superbuffed normal units, and Nagas won't really clear any lairs for me, at best they find targets with their fast overland movement. And early orc units won't do it either, orcish bowmen are not horsebowmen or longbowmen...
Maybe the problem was having no Sorcery node nearby. An early node really makes a huge difference. Or maybe I should go for the "many spearmen with phantom warriors or confusion" attrition tactic, and only summon like 3 nagas for scouting and no more. Yeah, definitely that.

[Nelphine]

I've given up ever using stacks ofess than 9. Too easy to misjudge and lose. Also, focus magic nagas are what are truly dangerous in early game. (So much power in one stack.)

[Seravy]

Focus magic nagas huh... 153 mana per unit, 4 maintenance? There is no way I can afford using those before my first node and that map had none. Also first enemy had Death and nagas fail against that, even with focus magic. Poison Immunity counters them.

[Nelphine]

Yeah that's pretty much why I don't do early sorcery. You have to funnel everything into focus magic nagas or they die, which requires very specific retort choices, and against posion immune they might die anyway. Note that 9 Naga will still kill a lot of early game poison immune units, as long as they have numerical superiority. (Gargoyles are the big exception.)

[Nelphine]

My game continued: I have not updated to 5.24 yet. It's definitely been more than a year, and spell binding hasn't come back. Even if I switch to 5.24, I don't think that's going to fix it right? I'd have to use the tweaker.

I made a mistake - I didn't check enemy spells for one turn. So Jafar cast suppress magic, and I didn't spell blast it on the only turn I had an opportunity to do so (this after spell blasting it 6 times previously). So I banished him a second time, and cast disjunction. Disjunction finished casting on the turn he completed spell of return.

However my doomstack wasn't really ready for the second banishing. While I successfully got the city, my best hero was left on the middle of enemy territory, and 3 enemy doomstacks are going to attack it the same turn he's returning. My stack has too many injuries so all of the enemy doomstacks have enough strategic strength to attack.

I'm now trying to decide if I can move items around at all to save the hero, though I know I'll lose the rest of the stack. 

The hero is the Bard, but she's a Demi God which is why I don't want to lose her.

However, I'll be facing ~4 storm giants, ~12 water elementals, ~4 cockatrices, some sprites, pegasi, djinn, and maybe a wyvern. Most of the units have focus mastery, and some have landlinkimg, resist magic, resist elements, magic immunity.

Jafar likes to spam mindstorm, air elemental, mass invisibility, and any lower tier sorcery stuff. Also web.

And I've been stupid and my hero is on an ocean tile (windwalking cast on her).

So I'm trying to figure out how to survive. Unfortunately I have no true sight or true sight items. Nor do I have magic immunity.

I'm afraid I might be screwed. Although I might just be able to cast invisibility and then spam flame strikes? But that won't kill magic immune units nor probably djinn or storm giants. Or water elementals. So never mind.

I'm not sure. Mind storm is awful.

[Seravy]

Even if I switch to 5.24, I don't think that's going to fix it right? I'd have to use the tweaker.

Yes, you'd need to change Spell Binding from 4 to 2 in your spell list. You'd also need to open the unknown block after the spells, find a 12 there (the broken counter), and replace it with 1 (number of uses).

Meanwhile another game. I got good heroes this time but losing them. Using buffs failed - enemy learned Dispel Magic while I was still attacking their continent. However without buffs the heroes weren't anywhere near good enough to fact hordes of klackon halberdiers with even stag beetles showing up.
I remember having decent equipment this far in the game normally, yet now I have nothing and I don't even see how I could have gotten more. I cleared all the easy targets, with only two remaining nearby, a gargoyles lair (which I could have cleared with my draconian hero if I wasn't at war and busy attacking an enemy with my hero stack) and a nagas node with 1 air elemental (where I could have used heroes as well). I wonder if it's the treasure change to blame, or the general low quality of low budget predefined items - there are only a very few below 500 value so I keep finding the same things all the time and they...aren't that great, at least these two. But I suspect the main culprit is playing Orcs - with them you need some strong units like catapults or magicians for lairs, which come a lot later than the usual longbowmen, sprites, etc. Maybe I should ignore other wizards and only kill their troops if they enter my territory, while focusing on lairs? Not sure about that because lairs in my territory only would run out quickly...

I wonder if dropping endurance and picking heroism, and casting it on bowmen would improve my lair hunting ability. Probably not. It costs as much as a naga and isn't stronger.


The problem might be that I didn't get a hero for quite a while (guessing at least 20-30 turns after the time when they are allowed to appear) and I wasted my mana buffing them instead of creating them some low tier artifacts. If I had three +2 armor items equipped instead of the buffs, I could have had a chance.

I'll try one more time and I'll also take a look at the cheap predefined items. Fire Boltx3 is fun but it's not good enough to find it in every single game.

Edit : got my first hero in 1405 december. Yeah that definitely didn't help. Lesson learned, I should have premade some artifacts so I have them when the hero finally shows up.

[Seravy]

Third time seems to be working so far. Found no nodes or treasure early at all. However I had a stating gold ore and I found 2 neutrals. I also produced many settlers, as I realized the main reason I was left behind was that orcs are bad at conquering, but I didn't build settlers so ended up with like 4-5 cities total while everyone else had ~8. Even if orcs produce good gold, it only works if you do have cities.
Of course overextending is risky, but not doing it when playing a strategy that's bad at conquering things is worse. Producing settlers is still the safer way to gain territory compared to war.
Honestly what made the difference was the nomad neutral - my horsebowmen were used to defend my empire when the inevitable attacks started coming. If I had to rely on orc bowmen, idk, I guess they cost less per unit and have more ammo and figures so maybe they could have worked but only as long as the attacker isn't using ghouls and they certainly did, all three games I was at war with Flandre (death/chaos, albeit in the last game she plays 3 realms, sorcery added to it.)
So I guess I was so focused on the heroes I forgot how to play the basics the first two times. Build settlers and bowmen, it doesn't really work otherwise, not with life/sorcery, and probably this holds true even for non-orc races. And stay on defensive unless the enemy is on your continent.

[Nelphine]

Not sure what just happened; I have an invisible hero (with several other buffs) on one side of the map, no ai units near it, and no ai units have illusions immunity. I also have 4 other units. They have no buffs, but did have buffs at the start of the battle (all dispelled) and also have orihilacron. The AI cast dispel magic on one of those other 4 units, which obviously did nothing. (No other units died in that square.)

This has happened several times during this same battle (although some turns the AI casts something else).