Test games played

[Seravy]

The Myrran wizard used Survival Instinct so it's now 100% sure they'll be life/nature. 4 more years until tower breaking time. Satori still has 12 cities, Tenshi only 2. I stopped the army that was about to attack one of them as it would cost too much mana crystals and right now I'm not producing any. I'll probably wait until I can send some magicians there instead, as the defenders are all halberdiers behind a wall of fire, or at least until the conjunction ends and I can start producing mana again.
Satori seems to be low on mana crystals, I assume she is also spending a lot on skill, and probably on combat as well. I need more giants to proceed so I can't take advantage of it. My wind walker stack is now stuck in a city surrounded by enemies as the two cities taken before that have fallen again, so I have to wait until either enough halberdiers get produced, or more likely, until I reach that position  with a new giant stack and liberate the two cities. Mithril klackon halberdiers are ready to move in, but I need to clear the path to push them inside.
   

The good news, Satori's army strength dropped to only about 20% more than mine, and considering the high value of cockatrices this shows she is not doing as well on armies as at the beginning of the war.

I sold a lot of unneeded fighter's guilds and some armorer's guilds in the conquered cities, as I really need every penny now for the conjunction.

Now the conjunction ended. Overall I went from ~110-120 skill to 150-160 so gained about 40 skill. Nice!
Among other new, Satori has learned Banish. Maybe I should abandon the Stone Giant strategy? Even if I get my own Survival Instinct, their survival rate will be only 80%, not that great...at least Crack's Call didn't instantly kill any. I also need 8 more turns to even research the Survival Instinct.
Sadly, Banish also counters my Earth Elementals, so I'm really unsure what to use. Normal troops I guess but those won't work on cockatrices.

Maybe heroes? I'd need 18 turns to research Create Artifact, then dozens more to create good enough gear to use the heroes in battle. Even then, Satori knows Psionic Blast and I don't have Healing so I'd need at least a stack of 3-4 heroes, each with at least a merging and regeneration item. That's too slow and expensive. She also got Uranus' Blessing. I don't think I have the luxury to wait for heroes, by then she might get a very rare summon. I guess I have to push and keep her mana as depleted as possible, and only engage using giants when she is too low to banish them.

One of the lone halberdiers I attacked to make her spend mana turned out to be an invisible doomstack. I tried to eliminate it using my two giants and lost both. The stack has way more than just invisible cockatrices, it also has invisible slingers, maybe a hero, and the only thing I killed was an invisible bear. Which shows the AI code that makes the AI target invisibility at the stack with the most invisible things works well, otherwise a bear would never be a target.

Problem is I have no idea how to stop such a stack. It has at least 5 ranged units, and I can't even see or target them. I don't really have anything durable enough to make them use up all the ammo, if 2 giants didn't do it, what would? It even has a hero so the threshold for the AI to not cast spells is lower, meaning they will use spells and kill my stuff even if I tried to make them spend mana before the battle.

Worst part? The halberdier is dead so I won't see where the stack is going. Maybe the best bet is to abandon the nearby city and hope it gets stuck there. So much for pushing forward there...

The only thing I can think of that would turn this around is Colossus, but with 500 RP and 400 power income, those are way out of reach, which is unsurprising for 1413. It might be the time to abandon cities and go blizzard and raze everything Yellow has. That will put me in a much worse position against the Myrran wizard, but the way this is going I might lose to yellow's invisible stacks otherwise. Problem? Cities might be defended with invisible things as well.

The stack attacked my nearby city as expected. Lucky for me the road allows the spider defending to reach the enemy, revealing the invisible units, so I can web two of them! The stack seems to be 2 water elementals and 2 cockatrices on the front row...and at least 3-4 more invisible units behind. The mithril halberdiers can't do a thing to hurt these, earth elementals are too slow, and ranged is obviously impossible so I don't think I have a way to defend. Oh, one of the halberdiers managed to ambush the slingers thanks to the road. Nice.
She ran out of mana so I summoned 3 Earth Elementals and waited for their ammo to run out. Without the Slinger, and with the halberdiers absorbing most of the damage, they lasted long enough to actually manage to survive and melee them. They didn't win the battle, but they did kill, I guess 2 cockatrices and the 2 water elementals, leaving another 2 cockatrices. I can't be sure as everything was invisible...
Considering the per unit cost of these invisible things, it might be best to just ignore these doomstacks, keep Satori low on mana, and hope the earth elementals will be able to deal enough damage that I get back cities at a faster rate than lose them.

Looks like Satori's cities have no cockatrices in them, at least these first two I targeted. Slingers and Magicians have a higher garrison priority so cockatrices only stay behind if there weren't enough of those produced yet. That explains why there were so many attacking me, although I expected the cause to be her Archmage and Conjurer retorts. All her cities being Halflings also explains why she reached rares at the same time as me, even though I was slightly ahead of shedule and she isn't theurgist or particularly overextended. The city I conquered first produces 49 RP! (Up till now we've been fighting for what used to be Byakuren's Klackon cities....)

[Seravy]

Unfortunately, while I can take out cities with blizzard+wyverns, I have problems holding them, as there are plenty of stacks of more slingers, water elementals, etc around. 
I decided to go with plan B : I'll carry my two giants and wind walker to Tenshi's capital, pick up some other units and summon one more giant along the way, and take her out. That would both save on mana costs, and provide me with another big orc city, with some luck, it will have the capacity to build wyverns. I'm also building a second fantastic stables in another city, so I'll have three of them spamming wyverns to move into and try to hold halfling cities. I'm abandoning stone giants, instead I'll summon spiders - with their 5 moves they are effective at getting in range and revealing enemy invisible units, plus they can also cast web on them. They can also disable a ranged halfling unit if needed. Their combat power won't be particularly relevant at this point but they will be good at absorbing spells and ranged attacks, and once I did web a target, Earth Elementals can kill it.
Overall, this will be a war of attrition with heavy losses, but I hold twice as many cities, and can conserve my mp in battles better, as well as klackon cities being really good at mass producing useless units that can clear up smaller enemy stacks or even hit weaker enemy cities. At the very least I expect them to hold the current front line and maybe even advance a little, unless another large stack of invisible things show up. (At this point I don't think it will, there are way too many smaller stacks everywhere on the map to be able to build up a doomstack.)
I worry about Satori researching some nasty rare or very rare spell though, as this will be a long war. 3 and a half years left until Myrran invasion and I'm nowhere near in a position to start building up and prepare. At least with Tenshi out of the game, I'll be able to grab her 3 nodes which I also couldn't spare forces for, even though they are defended by hell hound tier crap.

Tenshi's capital has 4 magicians (worrisome, with Stream of Life, I don't think I can kill the using Blizzard), 2 Gargoyles, a Beastmaster, a Magician and a Warlock hero. My attacking stack will have 3 Stone Giants each with Land Link and Iron Skin, plus 6 halberdiers/hordes to soak up ranged damage and lightnings. In theory none of those defenders should be able to damage a 19 shield Stone Giant. I haven't used Survival Instinct yet, as it would delay my attack another 3 turns, and +1 defense isn't that much to be worth it. As I have some unused skill for the turn prior to the attack, I used that to put Resist Elements on the giants and the best filler units.
At this same turn Tenshi attacked the city I built up for Wyvern Production. I held but lost all the defenders, so now the city is empty. Satori has 4 water elementals in range, so much for that plan, and it's also a city next to one of Tenshi's nodes which I wanted to get. To make it even more annoying, Tenshi offers peace after that battle. Well, I'm going to attack anyway, but I do accept the Summon Hero spell nonetheless. These are the moments when I always wonder whether it's really a good idea that humans can break treaties without any consequences (aside from war) - but ultimately it makes no difference, as the human can offer the peace and then threaten the AI to get the spell or gold anyway under these conditions.

Time to strike! One blizzard, and 3 more Resist elements to use up casting skill and then the battle starts.
The Beastmaster has a Piros Mail equipped, nice, I definitely needed a True Sight item, and this also has Lionheart on it. Everything has Chaos Channels on it, turning the otherwise irrelevant Beastmaster a threat. Units are generally +2 To Def and Hit at least, often more. The hero itself is +3/+3 and has 14 armor. Not going to mess around, max strength dispel and 3 rocks in her face. The spells resist, rocks do like 1 damage each. One more time... well, I got rid of Immolation and Holy Weapon, yay... Can't afford to dispel more, otherwise I can't web all the flying crap she has. Trying to kill the other things first, not having much luck. Stone Giants with Iron Skin are garbage. They manage to kill the magicians, one weak hero and that's it, then they die. Okay, the defenders were buffed, but so were my giants, plus the defenders were uncommon tier...the heroes had no equipment (only that one armor and it was a +4 not a +8), and the defending wizard has only common spells. With only two cities and never having had more than 5 in the entire game, their casting skill should have been low so even fortress lighting shouldn't have done significant damage to the 23 armor (including resist elements) giants.

...well, I already reloaded twice this game, might as well go all the way. Two dispels failing on heroism and endurance both? Oh, Tenshi has runemaster...yeah that would explain it. Okay, let's pretend I'm paying attention and don't try dispelling. (I'm not, I pay more attention to typing this text than playing the game lol)

Zero equipment but these two mage heroes have 18 attack with +2 hit anyway. Here, eat this Ice Bolt and wash it down with 3 huge boulders. Now keep it down... I said keep it down! So yeah the 7 defense hero  with only 13 hit points tanked the 3 rocks and the ice bolt, then got healed. Yay? 20 attack with +2 to hit three times, and a strength 35 spell. Even with +3 To Def, 7 shields are what, 14 without a bonus? Should have taken like 24 damage...oh, the giants have some range penalty. Still should have been way more than 13 damage...
Round two of the same, now it finally died. So did one of the Giants.
Other hero, 10 shields. 2 rocks, 1 ice bolt, total damage = 5. Huh, this doesn't seem like we are winning. Out of rocks, but we have webs. Come on, smash that hero into the ground. I said smash...great, you did 7 damage with two attacks, and you call yourself a giant? Even a mosquito stings harder!
...out of giants again. I don't think this would be a win even if I wait for Survival Instinct. Need like 5 Giants to have a chance...

A few interesting points : This is a Chaos/Life wizard. Stuck on early game spells and minimal casting skill. (Ok they have prayer, and immolation, and fire storm, no other uncommons as far as I can tell.) Without Guardian. No equipment on heroes. No Warlord, no summon better than an uncommon. And 3 giants with iron skin, land linking and resist elements stands no chance. (and don't forget the 6 lightning rod units, they were there too!)

Okay, I guess I need more giants. So more struggle with no progress, for like another whole year? I should at least conquer Tenshi's other city and nodes using these giants... this spirit is in the way...great, lost all buffs on a giant.

Oh yeah, I'll lose that fantastic stable city, might as well sell the building then...and the skill used for Blizzard is also wasted if I'm not attacking. Great. Wait, I have a peace treaty if I don't attack...well, for one turn that is. I'm taking that second city.
Another set of buffs gone but I have that city. I guess I won't bother buffing anymore, not worth it against Runemaster and the giants die to those regardless of defense. I'mm need to swarm them with a big pile of giants to stand a chance, like, 9 of them?

[Nelphine]

I'm going to go ahead and vote again: giants and colossus should have long range. :P

Also, yes, always summon a stack of 9 before buffing. Unless you can get at least +2 to defend, and 18+ armor (before resist elements), there's almost never a buff that's worth using instead of a summon, until you have a stack of 9 of whatever your best unit is. (Some of the sorcery spells are exceptions, as per the other comment about sorcery having the most binary spells, but that's it.)

[Seravy]

Satori now has Air Elementals. I don't have anything that can deal with that.
Either way I'm tired of Tenshi taking away my attention, so I'm going to keep summoning the giants until I have 9 and take her capital out. Meanwhile even those 3-4 giants work fine to take out all her remaining stacks and nodes, and clean the continent.
As for Satori, I don't think I can make any real progress until I get Colossus, and I specifically need that one, the other two don't see invisibility and can't attack them at range. Problem is, by then Satori will likely have their own very rare creatures.
Huh, I can research earthquake, maybe that might help? Nah, she has more than too much skill even without Amplifying Towers and stopping her production of slingers...how would that help? They aren't the threat.

I lost the hero that has been in my capital all game to a Crack's Call. Reminder, I'm playing an Artificer game and was supposed to be making items to counter that but never had the chance. Hero was contributing like 10 casting skill and 24 power a turn and was charmed so no petrification.

Meanwhile I'm up to 6 giants and survival instinct. Just 3 more. Random stacks get firestormed every second turn btw while I'm wasting time on this.

Satori now has Magic Immunity as well.

Finally the 9 giants are ready, Survival Instinct is still up (yay for disjunction being low priority AI research), time to show the stomping power of 9 giants! They are unbuffed this time, not that defense buffs helped any last time.
...for giants it's quantity over quality, this time it was a victory, albeit at a cost of 3 dead giants. Still, worth it, no more fire storms, and I have an extra source of Wyverns. For all the rocks that smashed into that city, surprisingly nothing of importance was broken. Only the Colosseum (where they were fighting it out?), the miner's guild (guess the giants had to take the rocks from somewhere) and the sage's guild (you just had to build it right next to the Colosseum, geez!)

So this is where we are now :

   
   

Exactly 2 years remaining until towers break and the Myrran invasion starts.
Considering the person on the other side is Life/Nature, we MIGHT get a different outcome than the usual pattern of going to war with everyone. Satori is peaceful and has Aura of Majesty so she has a large advantage - all I have on my side is having shared Nature books and probably identical alignment (~10 good books).

Chances are I'll end up trying to ally with the myrran wizard to contain Satori. (Maybe I should break a tower and get a head start on that? If I can get the alliance first, and force them to declare war on satori, that could be a major help by weakening both. Breaking a tower can even give me new options by finding books or very rares! However if I break one, the Myrran wizard will likely break the others and grow stronger.)

Towers, huh, let's see the options. My starting continent has "few great drake" and "few sky drake". I think 9 giants can do either. The towers in Satori's area are hard for the AI so she probably won't be getting through even if I open the possibility. There are three unexplored ones around our borders, I need to investigate those.

Meanwhile I'll use the wind walker to carry back the 6 giants to my home continent, and summon 3 more to replace the losses. I'll also keep producing troops like their is no tomorrow to keep Satori under pressure. Now that Fire Storm is out of the picture, troops produced on what used to be Tenshi's continent will be able to actually attack Satori. I really don't like playing a reckless strategy like this, most of these cities don't even have half the economy buildings up yet, and they have to keep producing units that'll die soon afterwards.

[Seravy]

Time to show the towers who is the boss (since I can't show it to Satori it seems) - 3 Sky Drakes and a Storm Giant vs 9 of my Stone Giants - two giants dead, but it was a relatively easy victory. No book or spell treasure, instead I got a cloak with divine protection and teleportation (umm yay I can make merging items which are better against Nature wizards) and two cheap garbage items.

More importantly, contact with the Myrran wizard. 5 Nature, 5 Life, 1 Death, Sage Master, Artificer. That's 14 picks, I wonder which of those were found. Relation at neutral - probably in the higher end of it, but I was hoping for relaxed... personality ruthless (not ideal but at least it's not chaotic or maniacal), Objective perfectionist so no militarist war expected. Their army strength is about...3.5 times mine. Not ideal for making alliances. City right next to the tower, so I can forget about blocking it if I do make a treaty.

The tower on Tenshi's ex-continent has 2 Djinn and 3 Nagas. This one should be easy, I'll try hitting it with 3 giants. I'm planning to web one djinn and shower the other in rocks, assuming they remain visible, otherwise...idk. I guess then I'll have to summon elementals and wait until they run out of ammo and try to melee. Meanwhile my 7 remaining giants will get a 8th one from my capital and head for the few great drakes. I hope one of those towers will have something useful. The Myrran wizard seems to play draconians.
A chaos conjunction! That might help a little if I need to Ice Bolt things in the towers.

The teleportation cloak did have at least one good use - the +1 movement makes my windwalker faster. 3 Great Drakes and 3 Chaos Spawn die quickly, and I only lose 1 giant this time. Found 1300 gold (meh), a fame 5 hero, the huntress (even more meh, at least she is noble), and the axe of death. Oh joy.
I gave the Myrran wizard 4 spells (Land Linking being the only not completely worthless one) and 450 gold, but didn't get a wizard's pact. I guess I need to wait for them to offer it.

Nice, the wizard's pact offer already arrived! Still need to upgrade it to an alliance, also it means I'm leaving the towers open... I give him another spell (Earth to Mud) so relation goes up to Peaceful. This should be as high as it goes without the Alliance so all that's left is waiting...

Meanwhile it's time for my main stack to go towards the next tower, on the tip of what used to be Byakurens continent, containing 1-2 great drake and many chimera. I'm having worries about this one but in theory the giants should have enough armor to deal with chimeras outside a node. Oh wait there is a Nature node here, good, that means it's going to be easy.

I still can't hold cities against Satori when she attacks, and I also can't make progress using normal units anymore - the air elemental spam kills them all before they can do any good damage to anything, especially invisible units.
I'm having doubts whether even Colossus can deal with this, unless they are used in stacks of 4+.

Seravy took out the 2 Djinn towers before I could reach it, so the 3 giants I summoned there are now useless. I guess I can try the "Death Knight, few Demons" ruin next to it. Uh 2 Death Knights. Won, barely. 1 death book! Mana Leak might actually be a game changer against water elementals and invisible cockatrices, if I get it. Still won't help the Air Elemental problem but it's something. Seravy has 1 death book as well, so also chance for trade (and tributing!). Oh and if I get Wraith Form I could use heroes with only a regeneration item, no need for merging...tho the risk of dispel says I shouldn't try that. It's kinda too late for heroes anyway, I'd need to summon like 4 champions, and spend like 10k skill total to gear them up. That would take 50 turns...
I guess it's still more productive to start summoning champions than to summon giants that are useless against Satori...
Seravy wants to trade..oh yeah I never actually checked for trades, I only did tributing. Earthquake for Gorgons huh...no thx.
I shouldn't try to trade until I have the alliance because trading attempts reduce the temporal variables.
Drake and Chimera tower done, a phantasmal bow and a disenchant area spell. ehhh. Wait the bow has +3 to hit, that's actually not a bad item.
Okay let's see what else is left. Many unicorns, oh this is still here? I wanted to use sprites on it but never got the chance. Few storm giants in a sorcery node. Many Gorgons. Great Wyrm and few stone giants. More wyrm, more stone giants. Death Knights, Hydra. Many djinn, many hydra. Another few storm giants. I guess there are plenty of stuff left albeit most of them quite hard. Everyone was busy with the war...

[Seravy]

4 Hydras : 1015 gold, an orc archer hero (Seriously? I already have an archer...I'll go send this one to die somewhere), and a...regeneration accessory of all things. I guess one hero will only need merging in their set.
Wait just a moment, this hero has Supply commander. That's kinda amazing with Stone giants. If the hero survives the first turn which they probably won't. I wonder if I should try using it.

The death book has zombie, weakness, black sleep and reaper slash. I guess it could be worse.

Seravy used Blizzard on Satori's city twice in a row, then conquered it! Those two are now at war, so all I need to make sure is I maintain my wizard's pact, and hopefully eventually upgrade it to an alliance. Maybe I should consider researching Disjunction next and removing the Aura of Majesty to help the war going longer? Yeah, I definitely should. I don't want it to end with both of us getting the alliance after they made peace. I need Seravy to destroy Satori completely. With that sort of military bar it shouldn't take longer then a few years. Then I have all the time in the universe to build up an unstoppable hero stack to fight Seravy. (Albeit I'm pretty sure he'll have tons of very rares by then, so I'll need to be extra careful on how I'm using that stack...)

2 Death Knights and 5 Zombies give me a Gorgons Spell. Not planning to use it right now but that's one step closer to having very rares appear. In fact one already shows up, I could research Great Wyrm next if I wanted. (Maybe I should? they are pretty good at finding invisible enemies and with a single web, also killing them. The Air Elementals eat them alive though.)

I guess I want to keep the extra ammo hero, so the other archer will be left in a random city, generating gold until I need the slot for a better one. With one slot belonging to the windwalker, that means I have only 7 giants in the stack.

An invisible stack attacks my capital. 2 cockatrices, 3 water elementals and a hero at least, probably more. I rely on keeping as much webbed as possible and use the lightning and slow earth elementals to kill them. I barely manage to survive  but the champion I summoned died on first turn. I guess the artifact I'm making will belong to something else, not the Black Knight then.
I destroy the many unicorns using a flying wyvern and many earth elementals. I get 1500 gold/mana which is not that useful at this time but would have been amazing in the early game. Too bad this ended up the one target I didn't have time to clear out...it was in Tenshi's territory so she would have stolen it if I made it weaker through sprite attacks anyway.

Seravy's units started to pour out of the towers, so I don't think many such surprise attacks will happen on my capital from now on, hopefully those stacks will intercept them. In fact I don't think I have a need for the war myself at the moment, might as well go for peace and let the two fight instead while I get treasure and try to research something useful. With Blizzard and strong strategic strength, Seravy is almost guaranteed to win the war and conquer a significant amount of Satori's territory...assuming I can open those two unexplored towers in her territory, otherwise it might be hard for him to get through the sea.
Peace...for 2075 gold? Might be worth it actually. I'd probably lose more in resources if she attacks another city or two. I don't really have an army that can attack her either, the stone giants are for the lairs. And this allows me to trade for Gaia's Blessing. I guess you can have, idk. Assuming I let Seravy conquer all of her territory and don't intervene (I don't have the means to do so anyway), as she is peaceful, giving her Earthquake could be safe. Problem is, if I do get the alliance, I'll need to rejoin the war so I can't. I guess Elemental Armor does the least harm. This trade reveals Fair Ring on the research list. Meh, too early for that, but hey, there are 8 slots so I have a 80% chance to find Colossus before having to pick another very rare. If I even care to at this point, maybe I should not. We'll see how much remains of Satori when the choice comes up.

Do note Expert is not the difficulty level where I expect to rely on another wizard to beat an opponent I can't otherwise handle.

Since there is some peace, maybe it's worth using Gaea's Blessing and Change Terrain now? I'm down to 19 cities, but I have a good chance to hold these for a while.

The peace treaty changes things a lot. My scouts could finally reach the two towers : one has 4 doom bats, the other has 5 storm giants. Not exactly my wish list, but 7 giants should have no problem with them, I just have to make sure only regenerating heroes join.

Oh, great an overextension warning. Guys, don't you see I'm the weakest person in the game right now?

I think a picture is worth a thousand words :
   

Purple towers are open, red will be opened now, and white are probably staying closed for another 10-15 turns before my doomstack clears everything on the way there. Or maybe I should ignore other targets and start with the towers? Probably should... uh many djinn, I pass on that.  Many hydra and few hydra however are easy.

[Seravy]

Doom Bat tower had a Mana Leak spell. Not a book or very rare but it is probably the best common I could have found. Also a crappy mace, +9 attack but only 1 defense and 5 skill meh. (it has Flaming)
I don't even have a melee hero.

I don't want nasty surprises, It's about time to cast a Detect Magic. I should have done it ages ago but it felt too much of a luxury.

5 Storm Giants, come on treasure! 2k gold, the Constuct Catapult spell (which I saved up on my research list so uncommon drops won't get wasted, yay... and two junk items. I guess this at least revealed Entangle on my research list. That's actually a pretty good thing to have, with that in play, all the invisible crap can't take steps backward before shooting. Except, well, it doesn't help with Air Elementals, but can't have everything in one. If everything goes as planned, I won't be fighting yellow again anyway, or only when they are too weak to matter.

Now, question is do I go south for the remaining towers, or north to clear my own continent. I guess towers, I want as many blue armies to get into yellow territory as possible, as ongoing attacks delay peace.

Okay, so Detect Magic reveals Satori already knows Spell Ward. Seravy's nature creatures won't be worth a thing, fortunately he is using his myrran units.

Hero for hire, the Witch! Ehhh, idk. Being able to cast Black Prayer in battle is amazing (-5 save petrify, up to -11 if I make a spell save set...) but she is weak in combat. And the same can be said for the heroes I already have. I already have Mana Leak so not interested in that. I guess I'll be rejecting, this hero is better if you have things like Disintegrate or Apocalypse or Holy Word. I know Summon Champion anyway...
2 Great wyrms and 5 cockatrices were defending 3 medium tier items. Nothing that great but it does include an invisibility plate mail with crappy stats.

Oh, hi Chosen One. Nice to see you. The things that pop out of the tower right in front of my capital are really amusing to watch.

And here it is, the Alliance offer I was waiting for. Now I can enter Myrror whenever I wish. Dispelled the Aura of Majesty, too. Diplomacy looks like it'll be on my side from now on. Next stop, the Many Hydras tower...next to a Chaos node? Bleh. Still shouldn't be a problem for Stone Giants with 5 ammo each...

It's kinda sad I have to do all thing treasure hunting before I have my champions summoned. Would be nice EXP. I guess if the stack is ready and anything remains of Satori, I can use her troops to level up.

6 Hydras tower, loot : 1.5k gold/mana, Petrify spell, some crappy items.
4 Storm Giants yield a +5 defense wand. With petrifyx4. ehh. I can make something better...

I still don't have a plan for many Djinn, I guess that stays closed for a long while. Maybe a stack of regenerating colossus or the hero stack if I ever complete it. I'm unsure whether I should push skill or research, maybe skill? I can afford waiting another 30-50 turns for colossus, and they won't be useful if my skill is only 200 when I get them. Creating the hero doomstack should be priority which also needs skill. I guess two slots are decided, the wind walker and orc archer are staying (tho the +2 ammo has questionable value in a hero stack, it's huge for a colossus stack...so the hero stack would be 5 heroes then?) so I'll need 4 more heroes. 18 items total, one is already done, and I'll probably be able to fill at least 2 slots with found items, so about 15-20k worth of skill to produce the other items. That's...uh, 30-40 Colossus worth of skill? That would be horrible if I actually had Colossus, but I don't have it yet... and I can't possibly use them against Satori anyway, not that I expect to need to.

+1.4 skill/turn is not that bad, but not great either.

4 Chaos Spawns and 2 Fire Giants give me a Ghouls spell. Ehhh. Also an Axe of Death. Useless. Wait, we have peace so I can leave a unit here and meld this node.

Satori seems to have learned Dispelling Wave, haven't seen her use that before.

Node with 1 djinn and some nagas, a +6 defense staff. Ermm normally I'd be happy with that but I can make much better...
Node with 1 Wyrm, 3 Stone giants, 1.1k money, and two uninteresting orbs.

Oh wow, what happened? Satori dropped like 20% of her graph strength in a turn. Yeah the towers I just opened down in the south, the two cities next to them are conquered. Wait, that was the many djinn tower!!! What the hell has come through that... Guessing something like 9 water walking gorgons with all life buffs? 9 Adamant hammerhands? All according to the plan, I guess I can say that now...

Next stop, Nature node with 3 Stone Giants. Nice, a Seismic Mastery spell! Finally something of a value. I shouldn't use the Earthquake effect during peace, but a bonus to node production is great, especially as I'm hogging all the unclaimed nodes now.

Satori has recast the Aura of Majesty, but with so many open towers and attacks being exchanged several times each turn, the war won't be ending any time soon, so I'm ignoring it for now.

Seravy summoned a Great Wyrm. Hey, friend, care to trade that? Not that I need it or anything... wait, you do? For Seismic Mastery? So you'll be casting Earthquakes on Satori's cities? That sounds like a great deal. Okay, I should think about the time when I fight against him, maybe it isn't such a great deal? Wait, the plan for that war is using 3-4 doomstacks and get it done in a few turns. Yes, sure, go ahead, have free earthquakes. I don't think I'll be using Wyrms though... or who knows...Regenerating Wyrms are probably the only thing that can top Colossus in effectiveness...wait, draconians, nevermind. Okay, actually let's not do this, I don't want the strongest person to get free extra power from all their Myrran nodes. Who knows, maybe you'll be a nice ally and offer it for something like Earth Gate later...
Meanwhile I researched Earth Gate. So there is only one spell that isn't yet selectable left. Yes, it's the Colossus, what else. Oh well, I guess I can get this lizard out of the way to make it appear.

Hero! The warlock. So I get 20 gold and 9 power/level a turn from you? Ok, but can you fight? Erm, you can beat a hell hound you say? How about a unit of 4? No? Sorry, darling, rejected. Come on, where is a hero that has a combat ability? Like, at least, one?

Node with 3 Storm Giants has a Haste wand inside. That's pretty useless without extra stats for offense.
5 Gorgons result in finding the Great Lizard spell that would have been completed next turn. Also a fairly decent axe and an awful bow.

The Arcanus plane is out of targets, but Seismic Mastery reveals the other plane at the perfect timing. There are 2 ruins, a lair, a Sorcery node, and uh..I forgot to open the second hydra tower. Also a nature node.
Meanwhile my SP production is up to 2.2 skill/turn. Nice.

Tower with hydras had a Darkness spell, a Heart Chara Egg (finally a decent item, far from great but above average), then killing 4 wraiths got me another shield with identical stats to the one I already had.
The nature node had 9 full lizards and I got two medicore items, albeit the Shadow sword can be useful if I get the Paladin hero or something like that. The 3 death Knights had nothing useful.

Satori is summoning Djinn now. Probably too late, I estimate she'll be out of the game in another 20 or so turns.
Either way, that's for tomorrow.

[Nelphine]

Gorgons have higher strategic strength than Djinn. Wouldn't even need a full stack, let alone a buffed stack, for the AI to take out that tower.

Given spell ward, what are you planning to use to take on Seravy? I would think things like the +6 defense staff will actually be super helpful at that stage (although, maybe not. Supernatural will chew through it.) Oh never mind, confused which wizard had which very rare.

[Nelphine]

My current game: I had 2 undead gargoyles, and ~60ish casting skill; my only direct damage spell is life drain, and mostly I know common deaths + flight.

I attacked 7 dark elf cavalry and a dark elf swordsmen (neutral).

I lost one gargoyle to range attacks, but was able to hunt down and kill all of the enemy using 3 summon zombie spells plus the remaining gargoyle, took until turn 19.

(I'm mentioning this, as an example of the AI attempting to use cavalry to run away at speed 5; but with 1 speed 3 unit, and 2 speed 1 units - the third zombie died - I was easily able to corner the last 4 and kill them. The other ones all thought they could fight me and went and imploded against zombies without me chasing them down)


On your game: djinn are only bad due to invisibility. Otherwise, they're fairly fragile. Nature happens to be particularly weak to invisibility. Not a lot you can do about it before colossus/gorgons (although gorgons should still crush them; I love 9 stacks of gorgons, and when I'm playing nature, that's my go to. I use gorgons for EVERYTHING. They never die, they kill everything. Ideal units for nature. But again, conjuror with specialist is practically mandatory.)

Edit: Huh, same game as above, fortress striked the ruthless Rjak (mono death, dwarf/troll cities, he had 10 cities), and it was 1406; and I defeated (as opposed to banishing) him on the first go. Did not expect that at all. (Super helpful, as he had a hero +7 ghoul stack floating about near my most populated and least defended continent, which I had expected to lose 2 or 3 cities to before I could stop it.)

[teelaurila]

Great to read about these games, thanks for taking the effort to write!

I am a bit surprised it turned out this hard at expert. For one it seems to show full nature really needs conjurer even at expert.

I would have expected stone giants to be invulnerable to cockatrices, shooting or not? The cockartices can't get past the armor. Invisible cockatrices can avoid the giants if they can avoid being webbed, but that's about it.

I would think full nature hero strategy has the main problem of being too late game oriented - that regeneration is needed. And your mono 10 books is for very rares.
So basically you don't need the very rares in the late game, since you expect to be artificing, and the build could go with more early-game oriented things. You only need 5(?) nature books for the regen and merging powers. (And merging is a must only if facing nature, though it is awesome for any melee). As it is, you seem to be playing a summoner without the retorts to support it? Something like 4 life 5 nature warlord artificer (transmute) could allow a mid-game where you don't have to go all-summon to fight. And you still get the same heroes at the end.

You seem to be using hordes a lot, but I would have expected orc magicians to work better on defense? A full garrison being something like 2 hordes and 7 magicians. Or even 2 spiders and 7 magicians. Was everything buffed with resist elements?

One could also wonder about orcs: Do orcs have anything on high men to make them worthwhile? Higher growth and less unrest I suppose? But the building bonus of high men quite cancels the growth advantage, and orcs do have very high unrest on the most coveted arcanus cities: elves and men.