Test games played

[Seravy]

Yea, I don't consider using bless only as real buffing, it's more like a "this counters that" strategy like using fire storm or guardian wind against a stack of longbowmen.

[Nelphine]

Right but we've specifically included warlord, tactician and alchemists guilds as buffs before. You are using some of those.

[Seravy]

War is going well, although I won't be able to clear the plane in 1412, more like 14-15, and this game I was very fast by my standards. The AI is extremely good at the cockroach tactic now, they are too weak to really hurt me but they still refuse to go down and attacking their capital takes years of preparation (and in case of the one with Shadow Demons it's not an option)
   
   
Any idea what to do against this stack?
   
So far blessed resist elements horsebowmen stacks were effective against cities that had 1-2 Shadow Demons in them, but against this many I doubt that can work. If this stack starts to attack cities, I'll have no way to stop it, and if I ask for peace it'll probably steal all the nodes and lairs on the plane...

Currently researching Summon Champion but I have no items to equip so a champion wouldn't be a solution. They can't even attack flying units, would need the Amazon, Draconian or Barbarian to try that.

[Nelphine]

Ultra elite magic weapon holy weapon holy armor resist elements endurance horsebowmen would wreck it. I'm assuming you haven't bothered getting such a stack. I'm.not sure how many of those buffs you could skip, probably 1-2.

Resist elements endurance cockatrices would too.

1415 is definitely slow, but you're not using a stacked rush so it makes sense.

My current game, there was a weak tower with angels, so I decided to see how fast I can clear myrror (bezerkers wreck angels, although I got lucky in not only finding an early chaos book, but getting flame blade from it) while using strategic strength to maintain peace with all 3 arcanus wizards. 1407 and the myrran wizard has just finished casting his first spell of return, and now we're at peace till I hunt down his new capital.

[Seravy]

Yea I'm not putting expensive buffs on my units because Confusion still kills them (that is the wizard who has confusion) and it just costs too much to be worth doing. The unit you're describing costs like 250 mana for a single one. I'd need 2 years for a stack of those...
Cockatrices, good idea, I did that last game, although then I had Invulnerability. Except, I'm researching Summon Champion right now so it'll take a while, haven't actually researched them yet I don't think so...

[Nelphine]

Right, I mentioned the stack, because that's the kind of stack I would absolutely use - I'd spend the years from ~1401-1404 building 1 single stack of buffed units, and I'd use that as my primary stack until very rares showed up. (Yes it would have casaulties, but I'd replace them, and build up other stacks in between).

At least nomad units aren't useless against confusion. Rangers might be even better; could probably get away with a lot less buffs on rangers and still wipe out that stack.

[Seravy]

Normally I would probably get 9 High Men magicians and put bless on them to do the job but one person has Firestorm so I haven't produced any yet. I guess I can check if I have gold to buy a wizard's guild and try doing that, or maybe use my priests (already have 4 of them in the closest city but would definitely need 9 of those.)

[Seravy]

It's weird how frustrating the game can be even when I'm clearly winning. (or maybe not, the Myrran wizard might be strong, but still, on Arcanus I'm winning.)
Even with all enemies down to 1-3 cities it feels like fighting a real war. Stacks of 4-5, sometimes even 8-9 units pop up every second turn. Killing them isn't a problem, but it does require keeping a large portion of cities on troop production. Ignoring them isn't an option - if I do they merge and hit a city - and the cities are lightly defended. Full 9 units but of horsebowmen caliber or jackals - they aren't effective against a stack of attacking gargoyles, magicians, or whatever. These battles also cost a lot of mana.
So overall, this whack-a-mole gameplay lasted like 4-5 years and slowed my economy buildup a lot. Yet, I couldn't just sit back and make peace - I was too overextended for that and all the previous wars ensured bad relations too (Plus two wizards were chaotic) , but really the deciding factor was, if I do make peace and maintain it, those stacks will keep getting built up, they'll steal plenty of nodes and lairs (most of which I haven't touched, I literally had only two items found total) and might even damage my cities if a war does happen later (normally unlikely but these were chaotic...)
I tried defeating the one with the least problematic capital defenders but my attempt failed, 9 spiders with bless and resist elements lost to 7 magicians - in melee. I think I had this happen before but by this time I really wanted to make some progress and convinced myself "hey it's spiders vs magicians, it has to work". Well, not if all the magicians have endurance, holy armor, chaos channels, and the wizard even has prayer to cancel out my prayer's advantage. So after that I lost my patience and decided to just ignore them entirely (only attacking stacks that look actual major threats), as I saw Stone Giant available for research. So I pushed for that, summoned 8 of them and stormed the capital with 8 shadow demons. Which almost failed because the giants don't have enough ammo for that kind of battle, fortunately lightning killed some and summoning two centaurs forced the AI to engage in melee. To make this possible I also built an amplifying tower wherever I was able to, so I went from 120 to 200 skill in like a single year...but my gold income now is down to 39 and will likely go negative (half the towers not done yet). I have 25 turns until towers are opening, I'm just starting to clear nodes, and only like 15-20% of my cities are fully built, the rest are halfway or even below.
I know Stream of Life but had no chance to use it. I don't have Gaia's Blessing yet but even if I did, I would want more giants, we don't want to repeat the last game. So these 2 years are for summoning more giants, trying to knock out the last 2 wizards, and smashing every lair and node I can reach with giants. For what was a very strong start, I'm still struggling and am barely ahead in time than if I was playing late game and my economy is in much worse shape not to mention my research (only got like, 2 rares done). I'm not seeing that great advantage of playing rush here, but I guess I did play the bottom tier strategy on books...still difficulty is "only" expert.
Also, I'm doing this "well" only due to huge luck - I found a Cult Leader retort early. Without that I would have a lot worse economy, far below that of a late race start.

I wonder if Elven Lords are good enough? Recently I always build Pegasai because flying ranged is superior to melee 99% of the time, as is flying overland movement to forester. Elven Lords are great damage but they are really fragile for an expensive high end unit, in fact, less durable than the half cost Wolf Riders.

So treasure hunting, two more fortresses to stomp into the ground, and Myrran wizard soon, tomorrow.

[MrBiscuits]

I find the opposite with Elven Lords and Pegasai, the lords kill loads of enemy units whereas the pegasai struggle badly againt medium tier units in either melee or ranged attacks. And against high tier units they don't even damage them. 

I agree about finishing wizards off, even ones with 1 or 2 cities seem to produce a huge amount of units per turn.
The end game lasts a long time now, especially since the increase in destroying buildings when capturing a city. I rarely end up finishing a game even on small maps.

[Seravy]

I think there is one fundamental problem with this "myrran plane has less land, arcanus has more" thing. Basically, it means I need less time to raze every city on their plane while they need more time to raze mine. So if the game comes to a situation where both sides have an unstoppable doomstack, then the human wins. (albeit this current game did not come to that it seems, I lost about 1/3 my cities but can now hold the rest.)

Also unsure if it even makes a difference on the Myrran side as the cities that would be on that last 20% land wouldn't really grow to productive size before turn 200.

So what we do need to think about is, whether we like the 20% larger Arcanus plane or not. If yes, we should make that side the default for all planes, otherwise just undo the change and that's it.
However if we undo it we probably need to do the "3 wizards on Myrror" change as well which I really don't like, but 2 final boss wizards without their plane being larger than if there is only one is bad.