Test games played

[Nelphine]

In 1413, that AI with the sprites in his fortress, finally replaced them with gorgons.

Since I doubt any of the AI have plane shift yet, I don't really want to go to war yet, but with everything cleared, I decided to take my doomstack (without adding any more buffs; so, Jaer and Torin have Endurance; 6 of the slingers have holy armor; 5 of the slingers have holy weapon; and 2 of the slingers have flame blade; edit: and for items, Torin has Sword: +3 defense, haste +5 casting, resist magic, Plate: +7 defense +1 resist invulnerability inner fire, Helm: +4 attack, +1 move, regeneration; Jaer has Wand: +2 move, inner fire, true sight; Amulet: +3 attack, +5 defense, +2 move, +20 casting; Belt: +3 attack +3 defense +2 move +3 resist) and attack Raven's capital to find out what kind of things he would do, mostly for boredom, as I don't expect to actually declare war for years. My plan is not to save after this attack because he has no hope against me so declaring war now will just slow down his research immensely thus negating the purpose of testing plane shift.

He had
1 magician (with flight, endurance, holy armor, heroism, innate missile immunity);
dervish (logistics +2, super helpful for the gorgons, elemental armor, resist elements, spell lock, endurance, holy armor, flight, resist magic, heroism, bless; and a mace +5 attack +1 defense +1 resistance stoning);
sage (elemental armor, resist elements, spell lock, endurance, holy armor, flight, resist magic, heroism, bless; and a wand +3 to hit +1 defend +10 casting armor piercing);
beastmaster (soul link +2, again super helpful for the gorgons, elemental armor, resist elements, spell lock, endurance, holy armor, flight, resist magic, heroism, bless; plate +7 defense true sight, belt +4 attack +1 resist, bow +2 attack +2 defense exorcist)
5 gorgons (2 with land link endurance spell lock flight resist magic bless; 1 with land link bless; 2 with land link endurance spell lock flight resist magic bless resist elements true sight) - also he has survival instinct cast.

On round 1, he cast guardian wind on the dervish and 3 gorgons (which I think is amazing by the way, I didn't expect the guardian wind priority).

However, other than that, I used web to bring people down who were flying, Torin to kill guardian wind gorgons, and slingers to shoot anything that didn't have guardian wind, and even slingers to melee anything while Torin was occupied with the gorgons.

I only 'lost' 1 slinger (an unhurt gorgon caught it, and it was already below half health from random stuff like lightning), but raise dead brought it back.

The only spells I used were prayer, web, 1 raise dead, and a few healings after all the gorgons were under control and I didn't need web anymore.


Things of note: I do like the perfectionist tone here - this many buffs is crazy for the AI, even if they don't happen to matter against my doomstack. Torin is ridiculous; he's an absolute god in melee (with whatever random found items I've given him, I should list those) and literally, I don't think he even took damage, or if he did it was so low that in combat regen was enough to heal it, and he makes the slingers ridiculously powerful even without buffs.

However, this is the first time I've seen guardian wind used properly, so I actually relied on Torin, which I hate doing; I already know heroes are ridiculously overpowered. That being said, when an unhurt gorgon attacked an unhurt slinger, it didn't one shot the slinger, and the slinger took out a gorgon figure. So I probably didn't need to use Torin in melee at all, it just would have required a lot more co-ordination and healing spells for the slingers to take the gorgons out in melee. But with 3 gorgons? hmm.. nah, if I'd bothered to have holy armor and holy weapon and flame blade on all the slingers, they would have killed 3 gorgons even if Torin wasn't present at all. With Torin present but not actually meleeing (which is what I actually use him for normally), the slingers with those buffs would have completely destroyed the 3 gorgons in melee.

I should really add the Necromancer and chaos channels to all my slingers; then I could have just stupidly powerful 'unbuffed' (meaning, no spells to dispel) slingers, with Torin and the Necromancer both boosting them. +7 to hit (so +10 total, so auto hit every time), and +3 to defend, on top of crazy stats? Yes please. Necromancer would need to be awfully high level though, so I doubt that will happen this game.

[Seravy]

Do I remember that right a 10 Death book, Specialist, Archmage wizard with a decent race (in my case Nomads) should be a 100% win on Expert?
I'm still struggling and might not even win this one...and I got lucky to roll a Myrran wizard that's weak against my realm...and one that's Runemaster and dispels the other wizard for me, too...

With how things have been lately, this probably is the time for an AI advantage reduction now. What I'm against this game feels perfect for...Master. But I didn't pick Master.

[Nelphine]

I'm not sure.

How can adamantium slingers (possibly requiring heroism, possibly not) be good enough for expert, but your whole build isn't?

If that's the case, I feel like there are other issues.  

I would say, most likely, that I would win 100% of the time with that build on expert, and I'm not a fan of death, nor nomads.  That seems to imply there are playstyle issues at stake, and that certain TYPES of play win, while other types don't.  Which implies that spell/racial balance isn't actually nearly as good as we think it is.

[Nelphine]

But the last post is pretentious. I haven't actually done it. Quite possibly I'm wrong. I'll give it a try at the end of my hafling game.

But it does mean that spell/racial balance may still be quite off.

[Seravy]

Well, you can watch the videos (will upload more once I finish the game, win or lose) to see if I played something wrong or not.
Short version : I started on an island next to a large continent which had 2 wizards, so I fought those two wizards. I beat them reasonably early, idk 1408-1410? and stabilized the continent.
Then I started turning my attention to the third wizard who was Life/Sorcery High Elves. I was able to conquer 4 cities from them and then they researched Spell Ward and Holy Word, stopping me from advancing. This AI was far ahead in magic power and research due to stream of life high elves.
Then I took out whatever nodes and lairs I found and prepared for tower breaking time, and started conquering Myrror. In 1422 I'm still doing that and while it looks like a win, I'm having mana problems (with maxed mana production and an income of 1600) and there is an undefendable tower that is right next to the AI's capital and sees new stacks containing at least 1-2 Great Wyrms each almost every turn.
The Myrran AI spams Earth Elemental with Call Lightning on, making the battles very expensive to win, both on defense and offense. Earth Elemental is an extremely powerful spell as it's ridiculously expensive to kill them with spells, and you usually don't have the luxury to have multiple, move 3 or higher ranged units that are also durable enough to not die to lighting and cheap enough to be affordable garrison stacks.
Oh and Suppress Magic has been going up and down since idk, 1414?16? Something like that. The Myrran wizard is a Runemaster so it goes down quite a bit - without that I'd be already losing. I'm relying on Shadow Demons to conquer Myrror as Nature has no way to stop them when they have Resist Elements on (I found 2 Nature books). But I can't cast Resist Elements whenever the Suppress is on. I also can't cast Dark Rituals and Cloud of Shadows then. My only big spells are the globals (get dispelled a lot, the Sorcery/Life AI didn't get a very rare and the other is a Runemaster) and Final Wave (which is nice but half of them are stopped by random spell blasts and I probably already killed most very low resistance units.).

If Myrror had a different realm wizard, a wizard with Colossus instead of Wyrms, etc, I would have already lost the game. If the Arcanus wizard had Angels, Archangels, Sky Drakes, or even Djinn, same. Their only summon is Storm Giants, but now that a stack of 8 water walking lionhearted giants and a hero showed up, I'm having problems with even those.
   
   
   
Based on these I'm still winning, but only barely. Not how it should look like where we expect 100% wins, more like, where we expect, 30-50%. 

Maybe I should have tried Wraiths? I'm not sure they are strong enough to melee adamant minotaurs and stuff like that, despite their low resistance. And it makes no difference, they STILL need resist elements to stay alive like shadow demons.

The sad thing is, I'm not fighting against Chaos, or pure Sorcery or even another Death wizard, I'm fighting 9 book Nature (fairly easy) and Life+Sorcery (used to be easiest, nowadays it's pretty hard but still better than...mono chaos or death). Oh and I found 2 very good spellbooks...

If I had to predict, this game will end with yellow casting the Spell of Mastery. I have nothing to attack a spell warded fortress right now, I do have one great hero but for that I would need much more and I don't have the breathing space to bother summoning and gearing heroes. Even if I did, there is no way I'll ever have a hero stack capable of fighting an all Storm Giant garrison.

[Nelphine]

Ah, no, I think that's actually ok. You had an AI manage to research spell ward pre 1414; that's done on purpose. Late game sorcery is still extraordinary.

Personally yeah, I'd be using mass shadow demons against that nature and throw resist elements on them. I'd use demon lords against the life/sorcery offensive stacks, but obviously not to attack their cities. I'd probably resort to surrounding the life/sorcery cities with units (like 8 spearmen) so they couldn't attack me until I could settle and build something on adamantium that could kill them (probably just something with tons of health, so they can soak for the invincible hero to actually do the killing.)


So I take back the 100%; it's 100% except when the AI are allowed to reach a game winner - in this case, spell ward against a mono realm that doesn't have strong city troops. Realistically, you 'should' have killed the life/sorcery first, but even then, chances are he wouldn't actually get spell ward, so I don't think you necessarily played poorly.

And I'd be using death knights against the nature guy.

Edit: Actually large stacks of demon lords can probably still take spell warded cities; doom bolt is spectacular, and they can summon demons maybe?

[Seravy]

Except, for this difficulty the AI shouldn't really be reaching a game winner in 1412-1414. (think it was more like 12 for Spell Ward, 14 for Suppress Magic)
That could have been Armageddon or Call the Void if it was a Chaos wizard...

(btw they also don't have Magic Immunity or Mass Invisibility or High Prayer or Charm of Life so I'm still extremely lucky to win this. Or Great Unsummoning, or Time Stop. In fact I wonder how did they even pass the "must have a game winning very rare spell or combination" check.)

Conquest of Myrror is going smoothly but now that sorcery wizard is starting to move there to attack my poorly defended freshly conquered cities. Fortunately he razed one so balance is now in favor of Arcanus again but if I conquer 2 more cities he'll go to Myrror and I'll have a hard time stopping that. I mostly have only zombies and shadow demons on that entire continent...

Edit : He doesn't have anything listed in the required very rare section so it means he still has more to research. Seen only 2 spells of each realm I think.

Also note with 1 more very rare in each realm, this would be even harder, he probably would get a summon and I'd be looking at buffed archangel stacks by now.

[Nelphine]

No, spells like call the void aren't game winners. Spell ward isn't a game winner against dual realm, if you hit fast enough. 

But spell ward against a mono realm? You can't do anything. Suppress magic doesn't even compare to that. There's a reason we have discussed spell ward as being potentially overpowered. Against the wrong strategy, it's on the level of old school time stop, where the AI just gets dozens of turns.

Same thing, high prayer just isn't on the level. Yes high prayer is great, but you already figured out how to beat prayer - high prayer isn't game breakingly better. Supreme light with the wrong very rare summon, yeah that can be a game winner. 

Armageddon, IF you can't stop it, that's a game winner. But in this game, on the third AI, you would just attack and defeat, no more Armageddon.

Spell ward is one of the few spells that just shuts the whole game down and says 'no I win' and you simply can't do anything. but it only works against the wrong strategy.


I'm super curious how the AI managed to research two very rares by 1414 on expert though, particularly with no power retorts. I'd like to replicate that in my own games - on expert, on huge, it's 1415 and I have yet to see a single very rare.

[Bahgtru]

Do I remember that right a 10 Death book, Specialist, Archmage wizard with a decent race (in my case Nomads) should be a 100% win on Expert?

I consider nomads trash nowadays. Why do you like them? The no food buildings, after the rework of food buildings, is a huge hindrance.

With humans you would have won by having stuff in half the time.

Before lowering AI advantage, I'd finish the races and introduce a progressive AI advantage. Yes, before making it easier make it harder.

[Seravy]

It was the Stream of Life elves. He had a power base of like 900 by 1410 from them (and buildings and whatever else). He also had Altar of Peace and no wars until I started attacking. By the time I had contact with him he had like 4 times my power income if not more.

I like nomads because they have a reasonably good unrest table, a strong early game unit (Horsebowmen), all economy buildings (except food), fairly good late units (Gryphons and Rangers, so you can pick between ranged and flying) and even pikemen not that I needed those with Death. Oh and on top of all that they have very high magic resistance, something I can't buff on my units when playing Death.