Test games played

[Nelphine]

For those who thought me lucky... raise volcano in 1403! Lets see if I have an empire left after a few turns...

Edit: In 1405, I had enough strength to demand peace from everyone (and immediatley after, a wizard pact). At that time I had 4 volcanoes and 8 corruptions cast on me. I survived!

[Seravy]

After all the work done, I finally started a new game, one last round of Warlord Life/Nature Gnolls.

Start is not bad, found a gold, further away a gem and a mithril, which I managed to share between two outposts, and a Nagas sorcery node which had a Sorcery book in it. I had to raze a pop 3 lizardmen dustpit to make the mithril usable.
I'm near the center of the map, on a half-continent, blocked by a lair that has only one (or two) giant spiders in it. Two other wizards already have a city on the other side of the lair. the third one has cities on an island in the opposite direction. I don't think I need more Gnoll cities, already have 5, so from this point onward, it's conquest. Except, enemy races are Gnoll, Klackon and High Men. I don't want any of those, High Men are +4 unrest, Gnolls I don't need more, and Klackon are...well, +1 unrest is acceptable and they can at least build some useful stuff and build a unit that hits flyers. Still, looks quite bad. There is an orc neutral close to my mithril, so as soon as I get those mithril wolf riders, I can at least have an orc city, but razing all to spread them is a pretty bad early game plan for economy. Hoping for Stream of Life to make razing a bit more viable but based on past experiences, if I raze early instead of conquer, I always lose.

Have contact with only one wizard so far, the High Men. They play Death/Nature with a single Sorcery book so...trading chance. Aggressive Expansionist and has Alchemy and Cult Leader. I'm not comfortable picking a fight with them due to Death books (I didn't pick Bless) and their cities are the ones I want the least, too. Any other late game race city would be nice but no one seems to play those races. I'll be stuck with a gnoll/klackon/high men empire again but this time likely without elves.


So far haven't produced a single military unit, as I want to invest into that in the mithril cities. Also haven't summoned except sprites, so my "early" war will be slower than usual. However I plan to conquer one or two more nodes with the sprites (few sprites and bears should be easy with resist elements, and 1-2 chaos spawn should be doable if I summon another 2-3 sprites) and once I have a reliable amount of mithril wolves, it's time for war. Hopefully no one attacks me before that...
   
Oh and I got the Sage hero. I need the 50 RP/turn really badly so I decided to hire her despite that hero not being all that useful for Life wizards. I might kick her out once I have a large enough RP income to not care, albeit 50 is significant even at the uncommon stage so that'll be much much later. It's not like I have high quality items for heroes yet anyway.

PS : If the game stays stable, I'll upload the update with the new Death curses before I go to sleep.

[Seravy]

   
Can't avoid war against purple, as she kept attacking me and she has troops all over my territory.
I have enough wolves now to hold, will start countereattacking soon. Not sure what to do with high men cities, +40% unrest is way too much but I don't seem to have Stream of Life in my research...and no one plays Life on the plane. So if I raze, it will mean I won't get productive cities for a while from that war.

The other two wizards are blue : Lawful Perfectionist Nature with 1 Death book - I'm aiming for a wizard's pact there. So far no luck, I've been told I don't have enough money twice. Worrisome but relation is high enough to avoid equal army war I believe so doesn't really matter. I'll just wait it out until she offers it to me. Also has Alchemy, Tactician, Conjurer so it would be very hard to fight, and they are he klackons.
And yellow : Nature/Chaos, Sage Master, Chaotic theurgist. I can't allow this one to get past midgame...they are the gnolls fortunately, so despite all the research priority, they won't be a too powerful wizard for a while.
The neutral orc city is now purple but I'm going to take it away soon.

Found another sorcery node for my sprites. Haven't tried the chaos one yet but I did conquer the nature and that second sorcery. So despite gnolls I have a nice power base of 85. (well, nice for early game at least)

I guess that's all for today.

[Seravy]

Ok, so based on this game, Wolf Riders do get obsolete fairly quickly. So building them in the mithril city doesn't work as a tactic as it's too slow. You need to build them in your first 3 cities or they are not that great. (They are still playable but nothing special)
I guess I need to upgrade to building halberdiers.
I don't really like this life/nature setup either. While buffed wolf riders would be better than nature summons you can't afford making them because summoning is cheaper and you are low on magic power, plus you absolutely need to use sprites to get some nodes for magic power. So you aren't using the buffed wolf riders tactic at all in the end. Furthermore without bless or resist magic, any units produced is just a sleep/possession target. So if an early war with a Death wizard is inevitable, having gnolls is bad. I guess picking bless is mandatory, even if it means giving up on heavenly light or holy armor. (obviously, endurance, heroism and healing are mandatory and we only have 4 picks in Life Commons.)
Finally, the issue with dependency on enemy races. This map with klackon being the best available race might just be unplayable.

[Seravy]

Ehh, enemy has greater stacks of Giant Spiders than me and Gnoll units can't hope to compete with those.
I was clearly too slow, wasting too much time on building near the mithril. Picking Heavenly Light was a mistake too, the 2 extra power it generates for the price of 60 makes the lack of magic even worse since 60 skill is just too much to spend on nonmilitary with this race.
Playing Gnolls is definitely hard mode, you can't afford even the smallest bad decision, and even then you're still vulnerable to bad luck (Nature/Death wizard near you with a race you don't want to conquer).
Maybe Wolf Riders could use some extra resistance? Then they could at least fight nagas and spiders evenly, and they wouldn't be auto-lose without a resistance buff. In fact a unit designed for very early use should not have this poor resistance when poison is also a game mechanic designed for early use. So they definitely should get +1, maybe +2 resist.
I'm just worried if we buff the wolves, halberdiers might become the useless unit instead. I also worry the human player might have problems stopping them if the AI uses wolves against them - albeit the AI is at a disadvantage there as they can't attack until turn 40 and these are best before then...

[Nelphine]

If you buff resistance, then mega buffed single wolf rider killing everything becomes a thing again. That's exactly why poison is an early unit. You're supposed to use high resistance against poison, and high stats against non poison. 

It would be kind of like saying bezerkers need a buff to resistance.

And yes, you've just described why rush races are useless if you go summons. As I previously stated you don't go for gnolls to get wolf riders and giant spiders. You go for an economy race, and just get more spiders.

If you're going gnolls, you must use a rush buff build that depends entirely on gnoll units. Otherwise it is never worth using gnolls. (Similarly for barbarians, lizardmen, klackons, and trolls.)

And that means yes, you must include a resist spell.

Also, for me, heavenly light, heroism, endurance, bless/just cause.

Healing isn't good enough to make the starting picks. And endurance only makes it for overland movement. Otherwise it's not worth a starting pick.

[Seravy]

And yes, you've just described why rush races are useless if you go summons. As I previously stated you don't go for gnolls to get wolf riders and giant spiders. You go for an economy race, and just get more spiders.

No the problem is buffs cost more than summoning. Gnolls have below average power. So to be able to afford buffing gnolls, I need to gain power. From nodes. Using sprites.
Buffs compete with summoning. You can't do both and summoning is more cost effective.
Normal units don't compete with summoning. You can have both wolf riders and summons. Problem is, since I went for raising my power through nodes on summoning, and building a mithril city on normal troops, my wolves were obsolete. So were my spiders as it turned out. I just picked a too slow strategy on both.
Of course Spiders wouldn't normally be an option, they become one because I get the Sage hero.

I guess I just played the whole thing wrong plus I had bad luck (everyone was playing an early realm and a bad race). Still if I don't spend on sprites first, I won't have magic power to pay the mana costs of battles and buffs, and if I do, I'm way too slow on buffing. Bad either way, but having to build a magic market would just slow down wolf production so it's not helping either.

I'll start a new game now. Maybe starting a new game at 1am yesterday wasn't the smartest thing to do...

[Nelphine]

Right, the corollary of my statement is, if you're playing nature, you're 99% of the time making a mistake if you choose gnolls (or barbarians, lizardmen, klackons, or trolls). Because nature gets power from summons as you described, so you're already doing summons, therefore you can't buff, because buffing IS too expensive compared to summoning (on purpose, and rightfully so), and so your gnoll units are already obsolete. Sure you CAN build wolf riders with your spiders... But if you didn't waste time on gnolls, and played an economy race, you'd just..  have more spiders in the first place, get land linking faster, end up with pathfinding anyway, and be stronger than with the wolf riders.

[Seravy]

Well, yeah but I still don't think an economy race contributes all that much for having more spiders. You'd need incomes of like 50+ power to be able to start raising skill and having 3 additional magic markets in your starting cities isn't enough for that. So at best, the economic race allows you to use all your skill if you are otherwise unlucky on treasure and can't afford doing do. So you aren't getting more spiders. On the other hand having the same amount of spiders PLUS wolf riders is better.

Started the new game. This time I went for wolves first, also didn't waste time on heavenly light. Still summoned some sprites but so far only needed 3. Buffing doesn't work - nearest wizard has Confusion. Heroism is too expensive to afford losing a unit, and Bless offers no protection against Confusion, and Wolf riders, even at Ultra Elite, have a 40% chance to get confused. That's too high for a unit that costs 4 turns to "summon", as heroism is that expensive. So I'm going to try for "lots of wolves without buffs" instead. It should be enough to crush this nearby wizard, they are high men so their units are not a threat. I don't even need to garrison, I will raze the cities. Kept the first one for engineers though.
I conquered a klackon neutral behind them, and roads show there are more neutrals nearby. Also a Death/Chaos wizard with Nomads appeared, and due to opposite realms, war will be inevitable. I'll be able to use buffs in that war, and I'm planning on spreading their nomads around. I have Nature so low max pop should not be a problem.
I lost my third Gnoll city to a wandering spirit (I left it empty and forgot about that), then reclaimed it. I was seriously considering to just raze the whole thing, I have no need to a third gnoll city, but in the end I kept it because I want to spam wolves - I expect significant losses since I'm going to fight two people at once. It likely was a bad decision - sawmill, smithy wrecked so the city will be like 20 turns behind the others. No wolves from there until they are mostly obsolete.
I have gold on my second city and it's 23 max pop so once I get the transmute I have a very good target to use it on. It's also far enough in the other direction so maybe the chaos wizard won't find it. The first wizard btw is 12 books, has Life, Death, Nature, and Sorcery, Life and Death being her primary two.

I've seen Tenshi cast Just Cause so Life/Chaos is expected, and due to this wizard I know already, who is Life/Death with a different portrait, the last one will likely be Life/Death too. So lots of Life, not much Nature or Sorcery, some Chaos and Death. Looks ideal for buffing and using heroes as soon as I get rid of this confusion wizard.

[Nelphine]

No, 3 magic Marts isn't enough. But since you're going economy race, you drop warlord, pick up myrrsn, take dark elves, don't build military units - now you've got 18 from magic Mart's, 18 from libraries that you couldn't build due to rushing wolves, 10+ from population, and probably a university. That IS 50+.

And you picked up conjuror, saving you a HUGE amount on your summons cost, effectively giving you 33% more skill and mana on top of that, PLUS decreased maintenance and research. So yes, you definitely end up with far more spiders much faster.