I decided to finish off my death dark elf game. The enemy offered to surrender but I've said no each time, just so I can play with focus magic death knights. (This game had 3 chaos books and 1 death book in the treasure; the one death book had death knights.)
Also, this game, Zombie Mastery actually mattered; but that's because I got it when the enemy were only halfway through uncommon research so they were using tons of low resistance units.
Also, Arcanus had 1 barbarian city, 1 high men city, and both Arcanus AI were orcs, and the high men city was conquered so late that there was no space to settle any more. So 99% of my opponent units are orcs, which are low enough resistance (and general stats) that zombies matter. I've never seen that few races on Arcanus, nor have I ever seen less than 10 high men/high elf/nomad cities.
3 Arcanus races left : Barbarians, Gnoll and Nomads. I played Nomads a lot and I don't think they need urgent attention so I'd like to pick either Gnolls or Barbarians next, any suggestion which first?
Not really. But I do suggest gnolls. Barbarians are very one dimensional, and the only thing testing can really do is decide if anything needs to be done about their strategic strength.
Definitely not mono life, no answer to flying or ranged enemies sounds bad.
Nature would be best but I just finished two mono-nature games.
Chaos might be good, pretty much all Chaos units can deal with flying enemies. However it will need to conquer late game races to stand a chance.
Death, not so much unless rushing Shadow Demons, I don't trust Ghouls to be enough on their own. But Death has generally poor synergy with Gnolls despite both being early. High attack power on Gnoll units makes it harder to generate undead, and Death Units are slow to move while Gnolls are fast. Werewolf rush makes the gnoll units pretty much unnecessary as they aren't stronger and also don't regenerate. Actually Gnolls are bad at magic power and Shadow Demons are expensive, so that's bad too.
Sorcery, idk, Flight is a bit too expensive to rely on that to defend against flying, and Gnolls don't get much magic power. Guardian Wind is good against ranged but only certain kinds, and rare spells are too slow for it.
So I think mono Nature, mono Chaos, or any realm + at least 2 Nature for web are the viable options for this race. Everything else probably falls into the category that can't even beat Advanced 100% of the time.
To do something different than usual, I think I rather pick multiple realms this time. So either 2 nature for web, or 5 Chaos for Gargoyles would need to be included (but would prefer 8 to rush them). 7 Death for wall of shadows+shadow demons might be interesting too but I don't expect the race to be able to afford such an expensive strategy unless playing on a high node power setting.
Yes that's why I suggested mono life you take gnolls for the city units, which makes life the obvious pairing, but if you do that it's a horrible trap that doesn't work.
I'd say heavy chaos given your descriptions. But a chaos/anything else split would also be good.
I find it amusing you don't like ghouls - as described elsewhere, I consider ghouls so strong that 2 death books plus conjuror is a full mono death game, and even wraiths don't properly replace them. However, you're absolutely right that ghouls won't allow you to test gnolls well, so I'd actually suggest specifically avoiding death altogether.
It's not that I don't like Ghouls, but I don't consider them enough to be an answer to all flying and ranged enemies. They are good to have in offensive stacks but I wouldn't want to rely on them as long term garrison.
How about 5 nature for transmute and web, 5 life for prayer, warlord. Adamantium jackals all the way.
Alternatively switch prayer for stream of life and warlord for alchemy + something for more late-game resource oriented. But needs to have a late game race to conquer for the resources.
As for 2 death + conjuror, I found I need channeler just to be able to maintain all the undead summons I'm making. Which is a really nice synergy with life drain / syphon + black prayer on top.
All right, I'll probably play these (will take a long time to do all but sounds interesting) :
7 Chaos, 3 Sorcery, Alchemy, Tactician? Maybe a 4th Sorcery book instead? (Gargoyles and Fire Storm for chaos)
and
5 Life, 5 Nature, Warlord (Prayer, Transmute)
and
3 Life, 7 Nature, Warlord (Heroism, Endurance?, Spiders, Transmute)
The first would aim at some early game conquest to get into a good position for a strong late game, the second is more about midgame (strong buffed halberdiers or jackals) and the last is spider+wolf stacks.
None of them have 8 books for guaranteed turn 1 research of spiders/gargoyles though which is less than ideal, but considering no magic markets, supporting the summoning early would be difficult anyway.
If anyone wants to try that previous game where I felt the difficulty to be far too high for Expert, here is the first turn save.
Meanwhile I'm doing okay with the Gnoll game so far, managed to reach 10 cities in 1403 through conquest. Now made peace after reducing the nearest wizard to a capital and an outpost. It was expensive, I don't even have Sawmills in pretty much any of them, so I will try to maintain peace as long as possible and take advantage of Sage Master to get better spells while making these cities actually productive.
I'm recording the game so I'll upload when done. The enemy I attacked was Nature/Death, while the other two on Arcanus are both Sorcery/Nature. A 3-way AI alliance looks inevitable, one of them even has Charismatic plus the Peaceful personality. The main risk I see is the one who is Aggressive, as a surprise attack can easily escalate into a war, and there might even be a risk of equal army war albeit I expect his military to grow much faster than mine on the long term so that's only possible now. Would be nice if I could get a wizard's pact but I'll need to research some spells to tribute to even try, relation is below neutral right now.
you take gnolls for the city units, which makes life the obvious pairing, but if you do that it's a horrible trap that doesn't work.