Test games played

[Seravy]

I would have expected stone giants to be invulnerable to cockatrices, shooting or not? The cockartices can't get past the armor.

Yes, they are. But the ice bolts, crack's calls, now air elementals, etc tear them apart, and if there are invisible water elementals mixed in, those hit hard, too.

I'm using 10 books because Nature has too many unique spells that are critical to have.
Entangle and Call Lightning are essential to hold cities in the late game (which I will need to be able to, while the heroes go around and destroy the enemy).
Petrify is like the only thing Nature has against Death wizards.
Gaia's Blessing if the enemy runs heavy chaos magic.
Transmute, 8+ books to be able to start with spiders.

Still, playing 5-6 books and more retorts would obviously be stronger, however, I shouldn't need to do that for Expert difficulty.

orc magicians to work better on defense?

First game, Fire Storm, this second game, invisibility. Normally they would work better but not now. I was mainly using mithril klackon halberdiers the second game though, as the conquered cities were almost all klackon and that was where I needed troops. I had my orcs build wyverns and buildings mainly, with a random mix of catapults and magicians to have some variety in my defenders.

I really wished I had the luxury of having like 2 spiders everywhere but I had to use all skill on stone giants... Sadly spiders don't do much if the attacking stack has 6-8 ranged invisible units, but they can stop weaker stacks easily. Past Air Elemental time though it didn't matter what I had - `8 elementals each battle can destroy any garrison easily, even if I do kill the original attacking army.

One could also wonder about orcs: Do orcs have anything on high men to make them worthwhile? Higher growth and less unrest I suppose?

Those plus the maintenance. High Men units, the good ones, cost a fortune.

[Seravy]

Time to continue.

Lair with 3 Great Drakes : A dwarf hero, the Ibuki Gourd (merging, lionheart, elemental armor and 4 attack, nice!), and a not-so-great plate mail. Not going to keep this hero for the long term, but armsmaster to boost the exp on my heroes will be nice until I need the last slot.

First hero with full set of equipment ready...
   
Wand has 4x Earth elementals in it.

I think I'm actually happy with what I have on my other "for keep" hero as well, even though two of those items were found. Having the Caster 20 armor on her is a little bit wasteful, maybe I'll move that to another hero when I have a better option. She kinda needs a higher defense armor anyway... still, True Sight on the phantasmal death ranged attack is pretty good if I end up fighting Satori which would be better to avoid.
   

Oh, I could Earthquake someone for making the item. Let's not reduce diplomacy when I'm trying to avoid wars.

I have a regeneration item on a hero I'm not planning to keep, so I might as well summon a champion now, I can keep them safe, unlike that last one...

Both AIs finally reached Disjunction (it's somewhere around the place between the last rare and first very rare in their research queue) and started dispelling and recasting Survival Instincts. Nice to see this is working fine now... also nice to be the one who is the lowest priority target...

Seravy wants summon zombie for cloak of fear. Sure, why not.

Maybe I shouldn't hesitate and hit Satori with the Earthquakes? At this point I don't think she can reach me with troops even if the war restarts...
   

So, a champion summoned, I got the Necromancer. Super Soul Liker... you're definitely going into the colossus stack along with the supply commander. That leaves only 4 slots for "normal" heroes... also this is one of those heroes who haven't yet gotten their replaced combat sprites, too bad. I'll need to get at least all the champions done, it's more fun to use them that way... I'm still having a bit of doubts about Illyasviel being a fitting character for a "Necromancer" hero, also unsure if I want her normal, or Prism version... Someone like Kotori from Rewrite would be much more suitable, too bad I didn't like her. Not a fan of necromancy to be honest so it's a bit hard to fill this spot if I want a character I like...

Whoops, the Earthquake broke Satori's Amplifying tower.

All right, last node in the world. 3 Sky Drakes... A teleporting, Divine Protection, Flight, Inner Fire shield with no stat bonus. That's a weird thing to have.  Totally disappointing, all these lairs and nodes and towers and I only found 1 pick. I guess this was a very low pick map, total of 3 picks plus one very rare found too late to turn into a book. Think that's the lowest possible? (2 VRs and 2x 1 pick?) Unless the two dead wizards had any but I doubt that.

Okay, I think the Ibuki Gourd will be kept on Illyasviel so I'll only need an accessory and a wand for her. These heroes so far aren't very durable, fortunately we'll be fighting a Nature/Life wizard. Merging should be good enough to stay alive.

[Seravy]

... I think I know where all the good treasure went...
   

Okay, that's pretty much the best weapon in the entire game. It's always worth keeping 8k unspent gold around.

...and Seravy is asking for a war declaration on Satori. I could probably get away with refusing once but why take risks. Satori is not even a threat anymore, might as well do it.

Okay, as soon as this item is done, I'm summoning champions, I need a melee one worthy of wielding that sword. The Paladin, Swordsmen, even the Knight... So 3 out of 7 chance? Not bad and I can summon up to 3 more if I kick the useless heroes out.

btw I'm out of lairs and we are at war so I might as well use my hero stack and the remaining stone giants to attack and conquer cities. She is much weaker so I should be able to hold them. 4 Regenerating heroes should be good enough, right? I better leave the giants outside though, those Nature Wards would be very unhealthy for them, they serve better as garrison.
Seravy is casting Herb Mastery. Full heal to all used armies should provide a massive momentum to his invasion force. The Necromancer is not yet ready but everyone else does have 14 resistance so they're good to go. I'm also bringing the two heroes I don't mind losing. Even then it's only 4 heroes and I should keep the giants outside...I need some more units or something...

[Nelphine]

Will herb mastery really matter? I would expect that super high casting skill will mean that Seravy units are almost never taking damage in strategic combat anyway. The whole 'if you win, you reallllllly win' problem if strategic combat.

[Seravy]

I think it will matter, even if you "really win", the units take damage which reduces their strategic rating so they'll have a harder time attacking again on the short term, and short term is what I'm betting on here.

[Nelphine]

No no, I mean you don't take any damage - or at most 1 or 2 damage split between the entire stack.

For instance, if seravy attacks with 9 Gorgons, their natural defense rating combined with the massive increase from his skill and his books, means that unless the enemy can actually do a huge amount of damage, then the gorgons literally take no damage.

I suppose it might matter for some of the weaker stacks, but doomstacks against cities with defenders like magicians should win without damage.

[Seravy]

Oh, that. Yes, I guess he does have realms that provide a high defensive spell bonus.

[Seravy]

Satori managed to attack one of my cities. This made me realize I can now see invisible units thanks to Summon Zombie.
Unfortunately it's not helping against Air Elementals. They're immune to petrify and reaper slash, and ice bolt isn't really fast enough to kill them before they murder my defenders. Even Black Sleep is only a 10% chance of success while Survival Instinct is up.
On the bright side I can now summon enough Earth Elementals to not lose the city, except it's left with no defenders...
Actually, that's not a real problem, I have Earth Gate and enough skill to instant cast it even twice. So the units I were storing in and around my capital will now strike back and both protect the city, reclaim my node which I lost next to it the same turn, and eventually even launch an attack on that other node, unless Seravy gets to do it first. I'll need to hurry, he does have stacks coming... well, he moved those gorgons onto it, too bad.

My heroes made it to the first Satori city. Not gonna suicide the giants into it so I'll fill the army with these random wolf riders I had available. All they need to do is act as distraction while the 4 heroes murder everything inside. No spellcasting though, this is somewhat risky... let's see 5 beetles, 2 magicians, 1 shaman, and 1 invisible or empty slot. Nice pop 25 city, too bad it's Klackon. Also, used to me mine... last check of heroes, 14 resistance, regeneration on all, good. Hey the armsmaster doesn't have Merging. There, swap orbs with Illya, she is still in the fortress.  Now we are ready. Girls, your defense stats are horrible. Eh, it won't be a test game if I get scared, let's go. Okay so it's an invisible Djinn. Well, that's the worst thing that could be there but we'll manage. With Magic Immunity too? Okay, we have an illusion bow and +5 to hit at strength 14. That should deal 11 damage...
Spells I guess we can use Arcane only. Oh, you have 29 hit points? Good,  go slay that Djinn. Okay this wasn't too hard. Okay, let's place 2 gates so I can jump directly into where her good cities are.

I have skill to spare, who is the next Champion?
...what a bad timing, a hero shows up right now. Well, I didn't want a fame 0 hero anyway, I like this one a lot but... this just isn't the time for the Healer.
So we got the Priestess summoned instead. Quite a bit of an upgrade. We still don't have a good hero, lol. I don't care, Holy Word at -8 will be a worthy addition to any hero army.

Why is the Armsmaster low on health... oh yeah she was never given a regeneration item because I wasn't planning on keeping her. I guess the next battle is where we make that slot empty, I'm kinda needing it anyway, no more free slots. Wait, I need that hero to cut down any Air Elementals that might appear, the others won't do it. Okay, Nature's Cures to the rescue.
Phantasmal bows working on magicians is so convenient.

Seravy really likes his Great Lizards. Why not wyrms? It can't be that wyrms have that low priority?

o_O Satori conquered a city on Myrror. She is already down to 3 on arcanus, funny. I'm taking that, takes to all towers being open and earth gates, I can reach just in time.
   
   
I don't think we need to worry about Myrran wizards getting too weak with the current land quantity :
   
3 and a half years of war, that took longer than expected overall but I guess the capacity of towers is finite, the first 2 years went for getting enough troops through to cancel out Satori's "extra" troops, and then her cities started falling more rapidly. I bet that last city of hers is full of invisible Djinn, as well as her capital. Not gonna try attacking either.

Okay, time to create the Mystic Silver Crystal for our new priestess. There. Can't have a Sailor Moon without that. There really should be a cup among the predefined misc item graphics, then we could also have the Grail.

...with no more things to attack, the heroes return to the capital, and item creation and colossus summoning will be the only things that'll happen for several years... I wonder how many stacks to build up before starting a war. Can't go too far because Seravy will summon wyrms at an even faster rate, although if I get Fairy Ring in play, I can even take advantage of that.

[Seravy]

Hero slot 3 :
   
Weapon has 4X Petrify, and item set has -6 Spell Save total. Unfortunately, none of the items in treasure had above normal save bonus.

Oh...an item duplication bug, haven't seen one of those in a while. Illyasviel has a Mystic Silver Crystal in her weapon slot somehow... odd thing is, that slot isn't item ID 0. It's item 11. Good thing there are backup saves to track when this happened and how.

Okay, the item in that slot was "Staff of Defense" and prior to this happening, the staff had the cost field set to 0.
Items with a cost of 0 count as empty slots, so there was no bug here, aside from the item getting its cost deleted, probably by something erasing the wrong item.
Okay, one turn earlier the cost was still correct. Good, so this turn caused the bug.
Replaying the turn didn't reproduce the bug...

Looking through all equipment and item related changes in data between the turns, the only one I found was the "merchant" item slot had a new sword, meaning someone was offered a sword. Hey, it's the sword I refused. Ok, that's not helping. Still, the only possibility I can take of is, the merchant sold Seravy an item, which he couldn't equip, and had to destroy (all item slots full), but in the process, the wrong item ID got destroyed. That would mean the bug can only happen when an AI is full with items.

...it's the create artifact spell. When starting a new item, it causes the bug. I wonder if that recent update for spell costs broke something or what... yeah that's exactly it.

[teelaurila]

What is the plan against web and wyrms? Or actually, just wyrms since your heroes are not flying. You regenerate back if you win, but with these stats, a single wyrm seems to kill at least 2 of these heroes easily.