Test games played

[Seravy]

Also my first attempt at playing a chaos hero strategy failed, didn't get any heroes and the adjacent wizard attacked early with nature gnolls while I was busy optimizing my economy to see how the new system works.

Quite well I'd say, it sidetracks the human player into not building military because all they have on their mind is picking the correct building or housing or optimizing gold use...
(or pay attention to the easy lairs and "hey I have 4 hell hounds that should be enough...oh wait the AI uses 15 bears not 2, uh, my bad.")

So at the very least I still see the game punishes weak strategies quite effectively.

(I'll try again on Advanced, there is no way I'm beating expert with chaos heroes... heck I could never win with even regular chaos halflings, probably should use elves instead. Or nomads?)

[Seravy]

Started with elves.
Nice to see I can actually compete with the AI in settler spam as I don't need to invest all my gold into sawmills. Early lairs are more fun, less useful. There was that 6 skeletons ruin for example - I had 4 hell hounds which could have beaten it. I stepped out of the city, concluded it costs 6 gold a turn to not have them in garrison, and it would take like 6-8 turns to make the trip. So I turned back and left it there until I had my first gargoyle.
400 for Pandora's Box feels quite expensive for early game even with Artificer - that plus inner fire plus two slots on stats costs around 600. The 20-25 turns wouldn't be all that bad, but if I think "hey this costs 6 gargoyles", well....ugh. On the other hand, the 2-3 common or 1 uncommon creature it an summon should be enough to kill entire enemy armies this early - sadly gargoyles do the same and with their 9 armor they can do it as many times as I want. So in the end the ability is roughly worth the 200 I'm paying for it but...the base price is 400, it's only this much for artificer. So considering that, it's overpriced. It summoning a 200 value creature each combat around heroism level (until the hero is much stronger at least) and you don't get to keep it so it's not much different from having that creature summoned once (well it's different in that it respawns but chaos uses gargoyles, those just don't die in the first place.), so I think we should consider dropping the cost to no more than 250-300. (btw using this also requires you to put abilities to keep the hero alive on the item. In fact, Inner Fire costs 250 and it's way more useful, so maybe even go down to 200...)
Albeit compared to, say, a fire giant or chimera, it doesn't look bad - gargoyles are just cheap and really durable. I can't remember the last time I used Fire Giants...

I noticed there is a bit of a conflicting interest in the way the new economy works. You want to get as high tax as possible to be able to buy marketplaces before housing, but that causes rebels as soon as you have 2-3 pop so you also need to garrison, which then needs food so it's not that trivial to keep the housing on. Fortunately, you need a bunch of spearmen anyway to explore the lairs (I found way more than 3 easy looking lairs so yes, you have to go in to know which are the true easy ones. Night Stalkers and Air Elementals are a thing, so are 1 sprites plus 8 war bears.).
Overall it's a fairly difficult puzzle to solve and it definitely makes things require a lot more planning, but on the other hand it is much more flexible and no longer binary. Have unrest? Build a spearmen in 1 turn, continue housing. Missing that one turn won't hurt that much. Way different from the old "have 200 gold for the sawmill or you (almost) lost the game."

So far the game seems stable and bug-free. I'll try to at least keep playing until the artifact is completed then upload.

[Nelphine]

I wouldn't change the price yet. You may be right but artificer does exist, and super early game isn't he only time you can use it.
Also, mono chaos isn't the only way to use it.
I really think it will be a huge help to life heroes taking on fortresses.

Plus, not all chaos players use gargoyles. Gargoyles are specifically cheap for a reason - they can ONLY work early game. This doesn't have that restriction.

So until you've done a lot more testing in situations meant to fully take advantage of the item, reducing the cost feels like it would be too early.

[Seravy]

I'm pretty sure this strategy isn't working.

First you need the pandora+inner fire item (to be immune to fire and cold bolt). That costs you about 600. Then you need another item that provides +3 resistance, or two if the pandora item didn't have it. (assuming your enemy has any death or sorcery books)
Aside from that costing more than an entire stack of gargoyles (or two stacks even), with artificer, you then also need to provide shaman for the hero stack and replace them when they die, because your hero needs healing.
By the time you have all of that, the whole thing will be obsolete - enemies get uncommon combat spells - crack's call, lightning bolt etc, which you have nothing against in Chaos.

...and all of that assumes you are using a single hero but you probably want more. And for all this pain you get...some common or uncommon creatures in combat. So not worth it.
Of course if you have luck and get all Charmed heroes or no one has Sorcery/Death, you only need the one item but that is up to luck. Even better if you get a Soul Linker or Agility hero.(or you could just find an awesome artifact but that also takes luck. I got an amazing sword from a random event but without the melee hero having resistance I can't use it...)

Still it's fun to have this item power in the game, it's just not something you base a strategy on, (mono) Chaos Artificer isn't really playable as is. You need to add other realms to have bless or resist magic, etc, but if you do, you don't really need the chaos part anymore (nature/life/sorcery powers are better).

[Seravy]

The Gnoll game is being uploaded, done in about 50 minutes : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoKlZnlI...e=youtu.be

[Bahgtru]

Something interesting happened. My ally attacked a tower (many hydra) using a stack of 4 gargoyles and a stag beetle. This is possible - they are ruthless so they might be at Jihad with the myrran wizard. The battle seems to have ended with a double KO - monsters disappeared from tower but the treasure was still there. All chaos books so this is again not completely unlikely (although I'm impressed they have enough spell attack power to kill many hydra by that. Maybe we overdid chaos spell power a little? They have 10 books and a skill of probably around 300? Maybe even less, only 14 cities and it's 1416.)

Why did the hydras not regenerate?

[Nelphine]

Yeah. In tactical, the attacker could win due to summoned creatures, but not actually have any units left and so maybe not get the treasure. In strategic, that can't happen. One side or the other always wins.

That sounds like a throwback bug where the monsters are only in the tower if you attack from the correct plane.

[Seravy]

Something interesting happened. My ally attacked a tower (many hydra) using a stack of 4 gargoyles and a stag beetle. This is possible - they are ruthless so they might be at Jihad with the myrran wizard. The battle seems to have ended with a double KO - monsters disappeared from tower but the treasure was still there. All chaos books so this is again not completely unlikely (although I'm impressed they have enough spell attack power to kill many hydra by that. Maybe we overdid chaos spell power a little? They have 10 books and a skill of probably around 300? Maybe even less, only 14 cities and it's 1416.)

Why did the hydras not regenerate?

That's a very good question. Double KOs should be the defender's victory so they should regenerate.
So that means the tower wasn't beaten by the AI properly, they just vanished to a bug then?
...maybe opening towers is buggy and clears the wrong tower on the "other side"?
...no I don't see a bug there.

In strategic, that can't happen. One side or the other always wins.

Not true, it's possible for both sides to die. But then the defender "wins" and regenerates. If it wasn't Hydras, the result would be possible, but it was Hydras...

[Bahgtru]

Doom damage doesn't work in strategic right? Looks like a bug.

[Seravy]

As my previous test game was affected by the AI housing bug, I'll start a new one. One more attempt at Chaos heroes. Unsure about the race, Elves worked well but they can't produce shaman to heal the hero. Halflings tend to work very poorly with Chaos. Nomads...could work I guess? Vulnerable to famine but a hero tactic can just raze any Death wizard if necessary. Or High Men? Both have Priests. I guess High Men priests are better, but they are really weak on gold which is needed to hire heroes and buy items...
Guess I'm doing elves again, hoping for a Nomad or High Men neutral city to produce priests...