Test games played

[Nelphine]

Why did you choose to start with water walking and sprites? (I personally would only pick one or the other; either do early sprites shenanigans, or do water walking war bears.)

And why start with earth lore instead of nature's eye?

I don't know how much I'll be able to do with this game, as i'm poor enough at playing nature that i consider conjuror mandatory for nature, and I don't use heroes so the artificer is wasted, but I'll look at it for at least a little bit.

[Seravy]

Earth Lore is essential to find treasure for Sprites. It's also generally one of the best early spells in the game because you can find out what's in each lair without having to move a spearmen there and sacrifice it. (And you even find other wizards and all their cities...)
Wait, I did pick Nature's Eye, then there is no problem.
I didn't pick war bears, resist elements, call centaurs, fairy dust and earth to mud. None of these are as important as being able to put Water Walking on your starting settlers if you need to.

[Nelphine]

No I meant why cast earth lore before nature's eye? Nature's eye will give you the scouting for your first two settlers, which is the most important early scout move, and you get huge research out of it.

Eh, I would skip sprites if you're taking water walking for settlers. Water walking war bears are more important against early ai, and that allows you to skip earth lore scouting, and therefore pick up call centaurs. More aggressive against ai, much worse for treasure hunting, but that's hit or miss anyway.

[Seravy]

War Bars? But I'm aiming for spiders, so war bears would be obsolete before I could summon a single one. Bears are for 1-7 books...

Nature's eye doesn't reveal lair contents, so even if I use it, I have to use Earth Lore on the same area anyway, probably immediately, unless it has zero lairs and nodes. Ultimately I need to cast both, no matter what. Doing the eye first can get a few extra RP for spiders which is nice but it wasn't overly urgent, and any node or other treasure is worth far more than an extra 4 RP/turn for like 5-10 turns total. Basically it's the 20 power/turn from a possible node vs the 4 RP from the eye, for those few turns I need to cast the other spell. It's also a race against time - sprites have free reign until turn ~40 and are likely to survive a bit after that, but eventually you won't be able to use them anymore either because the AI found the remaining targets and cleared them, or started killing your sprites. However sprites are slow at killing things and semi expensive to summon, while you need to cast a lot of stuff. To maximize the potential time you can use them for, starting with Earth Lore and then Sprites is the best. Even if you are aiming for early spiders. The difference of a single additional target taken by your Sprites means hundreds of mana/gold, or in some cases even over a thousand.
Also, Nature's Eye is centered, while with Earth Lore I can target whichever area I want. I saw the norther direction has very low chance of having land, so I targeted in a way that the spell's northern edge was 1 tile above the city. This gave me like 4 additional rows of revealed area to the south. (which also had lots of water but hey, you can't know in advance...)

Of course, going all-in on spiders and ignoring sprites and earth lore is a valid strategy but with Alchemy and no Conjurer, I think targeting treasure first pays off better.

[Seravy]

Things aren't going very well in my game.
Start was bad - island, no treasure.
I only have 3 Gnoll cities, and everything I conquered is High Men so I have lots of unrest. I picked Doom Mastery to ensure I can produce gnoll units that hit flying enemies, but without more Gnoll cities, and against two Sorcery wizards, there is no point even researching that.
Gargoyles came far too late - The 5 stack I sent did manage to conquer one city from the weaker enemy but failed to hold it and died.
I still only have 1 node, and gnolls get less power buildings so my magic power is very low.
The AI has more than twice my casting skill because they already have many Amplifying Towers and I have none.
Aside from Gargoyles, I don't really have a way to attack, as both enemies play lizardmen so only flying stacks can expect to make it through the sea alive. (I guess I could use Floating Island, but melee units wouldn't be very effective if combat does happen...)

Fortunately lizardmen are bad at research, and I have Aura of Majesty so I'm trying to hold them back a little with some Chaos Rifts, eventually get peace again, and research my way up to the strong Chaos spells before they reach the strong Sorcery ones. Not the best plan ever but I don't have any better. I'm a bit worried about dragon turtles though, haven't seen any yet but I expect them to show up soon and I have no way to counter them. I didn't get Lightning Bolt and they are immune to Fire... maybe if I get Warp lightning or Doom Bolt but I need much higher casting skill to rely on those...

[Seravy]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the Plague on my capital.
Also, looked up the unrest table, Gnoll-High Men are a +4, that's like, unplayable. I should have razed the cities and settled them with halflings...

Nevermind, I'm not masochistic enough to continue this game. 10 cities in 1410 is already behind what I should be having, a power base of 126 is like half what I would expect, 51 skill, I think I'm supposed to have about 80 in this year, and a gold income of 16 is...well, bad. I also don't have Chaneller or Specialist to use any of the reliable Chaos strategies.
   

Obviously this game will also be added to the "expert is too hard" pile. I suspect one of the things we could do to help the difficulty is to look at the AI's priorities on building Amplifying Towers.

Funny that none of the opponents seem to have an uncommon summon yet. With 4 books I guess they couldn't have picked Cockatrices, but the one with 5 books also doesn't have any.
Well, RVL will tell us more...
Oh, the other one already has Water Elementals, that explains why they aren't in a hurry to research the cockatrice.
And the 4 book one does have cockatrices, they are just busy garrisoning. Yeah, peaceful would do that...
Meanwhile on Myrror, mono Nature, has Gorgons already, with Dark Elves.

Not sure if I should try the same again, or something else. Was thinking of trying a Pandora's Box Chaos hero strategy but that doesn't work with Gnolls, no shaman. I guess I have to drop one Sorcery book for the 8th Chaos to ensure early Gargoyles...or maybe not? idk. The wolf riders did a more than adequate job at the early conquest - except for one thing, spending all gold on them left me with a bunch of cities that didn't have a sawmill for the first 3-5 years. That's not very good... I suppose I should have picked Phantom Warriors to use those to hit some early Sorcery nodes or idk, not that any was nearby... Also should have spent on the sawmills instead of the wolves, the marketplaces earn back the gold fairly quickly, albeit it does mean having the first attack ready another few turns later.

[Nelphine]

I dunno. Gnolls are arguably the weakest race by a fair margin. I wouldn't put that in the 'expert is too hard' pile, until you're convinced gnolls are not the issue.

Also.. doom mastery still is great against sorcery? Heck even just flame blade doom doom mastery jackals would crush a lot of stuff, like turtles.

[Seravy]

Well, there is this problem of potential Great Unsummoning (I don't expect to clear out two sorcery wizards completely in the next 8-10 years, not from this position), also I would need the stack to entirely fly and I only have a 1/3 chance to have that, otherwise I get ambushed on sea. (wait, maybe I don't, if I use Floating Islands, my straetgic strength is counted as combat capable even though the units can't move in the battle. So a big enough stack would not get attacked)

But really the main problems are these :
-No specialist or runemaster, so sending a buffed stack against two sorcery wizard = suicide. I would at least need flame blade and guardian wind on all. (don't remember but I'd expect those to be on the list that grants dispel priority)
-With pretty much zero income on gold and about as much on mana as I use up, I'd need to wait for the Armorer's Guild to build without buying it. My capital has a population of 3 (plague), my other two cities were built on a max 9 and 6 spot so while they are better, they aren't that great. None of them have a fighter's guild yet either. So this would take like 20 turns, then I'd need a war college, then I'd need to produce the units, so I'd have the stack ready in, what, 3 more years?
-I can't afford to raze but wouldn't have troops to defend cities I gain.
-I also can't accelerate the healing of that doomstack so I'd need to wait like 10 turns after taking each city.

So yeah, it's not like I have no options, I just don't have an empire to pay for those options, nor the time it takes to build them. I only have one halfling city, the rest are high men and the three pretty crappy gnoll cities...

Also, even if I do manage to conquer, all I gain is a bunch of lizardmen cities. That means no research and I'm playing Sage Master... oh wait they do get the Sage's guild now. Which kinda makes it even worse, if I can't even bet on my opponents being behind in research, it's game over. How am I supposed to fight against Sorcery wizards with rare spells and triple my casting skill?

Considering what my opponents play, using High men magicians might be my best tactic (I already build them in two cities) right now, but by the time I'm ready to attack, they'd have invisibility or magic immunity.

...and then there will be a Myrran wizard, probably as powerful as both of these combined.

No, this game is unwinnable.

As for Gnolls, I had no particular problem with that. Wolf Riders were fairly good, except I shouldn't have prioritized them over Sawmills. I expected the conquered cities to make up for that delay but with High Men, they definitely did not.

[Nelphine]

Right, but again, that doesn't make expert too difficult. That means you tried to play gnolls, without taking into account their weaknesses (of which there are many).

You tried to go super rush - and they just aren't that fast compared to barbarians. But they don't have much more power income than barbarians to make up for the slower rush, preventing you from using magic to help.

You tried to conquer others, without considering increased unrest and the resulting lack of gold income.

You picked a spell to negate the weakness of gnolls (doom mastery) and then didn't actually use it, because you didn't think it would be strong enough. 

You picked a spell to counteract gnoll weakness (doom mastery) and then didn't use gnoll strength that would actually make it work (getting enough gnoll cities that the 1/3 chance would actually get you full flying stacks often enough to matter) - and even if you did, gnolls do not grow quickly, so that might have been a bad decision anyway.

You are playing a military race (gnolls) and then deciding that despite that, an economy race (high men) actually have BETTER units EVEN THOUGH those units are hard countered by sorcery.



Every single one of those points stems from playing gnolls. 
Yes, you COULD play gnolls and correct all of those things, but all of your decisions would have had far less impact if you were playing a different race. The RACE directed your decisions, but brutally punished you when you didn't make exactly the right decision.


So yes, maybe the game is unwinnable - but if you took exactly the same start, and did a completely different wizard, you probably could have won. Which means it is NOT the difficulty. It's either the race or the wizard build. As you're playing a relatively standard build by your own standards, that should mean it's the race. Which backs up the points I made Above.

[Seravy]

Right, but again, that doesn't make expert too difficult. That means you tried to play gnolls, without taking into account their weaknesses (of which there are many).

I'd say in this particular game I didn't get to play Gnolls.
My capital was hit by a Plague, and my other two cities were small because my starting island was that small and also crappy.
   

So no, these aren't really a Gnoll empire you can base a strategy on.

But wait, I also managed to find a Gnoll neutral. Look at this awesome location!
   

You tried to go super rush - and they just aren't that fast compared to barbarians.

They were faster - not only do they move 5 but a Stables costs way less than a Fighter's Guild.

You tried to conquer others, without considering increased unrest and the resulting lack of gold income.

This is clearly my mistake - I was recording so I didn't want to exit the game and read the unrest tables. I assumed Gnolls have about +1/+2 unrest with everyone...but High Men were the only exception. Won't happen again, I added all the unrest data to the race descriptions...

You picked a spell to negate the weakness of gnolls (doom mastery) and then didn't actually use it, because you didn't think it would be strong enough.

No, I didn't use it because it would have added an even greater weakness instead. But really I didn't use it because I already lost by then. You aren't supposed to fall behind against Sorcery wizards that much in the first place...

Honestly, I rather not want to judge a race based on a plagued capital and three pop 7-9 cities. idk, maybe Gnolls are bad, but any race would suffer if you start on an island, with zero gold or mana sources and then you also find none of those on the first large continent you conquer.

So I guess this is enough of a reason to try the exact same wizard (except with Phantom Warriors this time) - if it fails again, we can blame the race, otherwise it was just this map.