Random Game Situations

[prokolyo]

Maybe we can have such a topic, like the Random Question topic, where we can discuss some random situations that arise and how to deal with them...

So, how do you deal with someone spamming corruption in the early game? I have high elves, so no priests, life/sorcery/nature. Can't get a city with a race that have priests/shamans, unless I start a war which I'm not super willing to do atm. Is disenchant area a solution? Seem like spending too much mana for uncertain result... Or try to improve relations with the asshole that does it? Looks like it could be cheaper, but still expensive... Are there some other ways? And in this line of thought, does a corrupted node still produce power?

[mercy]

I just sent 2-3 priests there and put them to purify. In ~3 turns they finished purifying the area. Then they go to an other corrupted place, like garbage truck workers. I think its certainly cheaper than for the enemy, who is wasting spell fuel for corruption. Also you at least know he is stupidly being busy with JUST corruption, which is safe. Start to worry, when he doesn't do any corruption anymore. I always play on Lunatic, (non-Life) where everything usually develops into a massive clusterFCK World War scenario.

Like my dear specialist wizard opponent Raven, he is obsessed with Aether Binding, which I just can't allow, sorry.. I'm constantly spell blasting him, when he reaches like 160MP.  For this, quickly checking enemy wizards and getting back, to where I was, before checking them, I'm using the fantastic-amazing Save State feature in Dosbox SVN Daum.
This best instant = superfast quick-save/load feature, in my opinion, makes DosBox behave exactly like the best Playstation emulator, ePSXe.

[prokolyo]

Well yeah, only that I didn't have access to priests... Read my post past the first sentence I lucked out though with a purifier hero. So I just took the corruption like a champ. It now covers more than 50% of 2 of my 6 cities and is really slowing down my development. On top of it, one of those cities has double mithril, so I couldn't do mithril soldiers, the other one has gold which I was about to transmute to adamantium. All ore tiles corrupted of course... My poor purifier hero couldn't catch a break. By the time he cleans the tile, it gets corrupted again. Plus I was loosing out from not having him in my capital to increase my casting... Eventually, many turns after, I succeeded to improve relations with the corruption guy, and stop the war and the corruption. I'm still hanging in the game, but the whole corruption business set me back dramatically.

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[massone]

Maybe we can have such a topic, like the Random Question topic, where we can discuss some random situations that arise and how to deal with them...

So, how do you deal with someone spamming corruption in the early game? I have high elves, so no priests, life/sorcery/nature. Can't get a city with a race that have priests/shamans, unless I start a war which I'm not super willing to do atm. Is disenchant area a solution? Seem like spending too much mana for uncertain result... Or try to improve relations with the asshole that does it? Looks like it could be cheaper, but still expensive... Are there some other ways? And in this line of thought, does a corrupted node still produce power?

Most of the time, I would just ignore it if I didn't have access to priests. I'm not even sure if Disenchant Area works on corruption on the latest versions, as it's technically not an active curse, but a tile status. I would certainly improve relations with any Chaos wizards and/or kill all their units trying to scout into any of my cities with mithril/adamantium/orihalcon. You can try to get the Druid hero who has purify, but summoning specifically for this purpose isn't a good use of casting skill, so that only works if you have an actual hero-based strategy. Finally, you can try to manipulate the Chaos wizard into focusing on somebody else instead.

On lower map sizes, the severity is larger, and you benefit from playing more aggressively as the AI doesn't snowball as fast--simply destroy the Chaos wizard first, or conquer the cities you need to produce priests. On Large/Huge maps and the highest difficulties, its better to keep good relations as long as possible. Nature and Life have access to Gaia's Blessing and Consecration, which will help in the mid-game, as you'll want to cast them anyways for other reasons.

[prokolyo]

Oh, good to know about disenchant area. Not that it'd make much sense even if it worked - too expensive. But I figured I could have used it at least for the mithril/adamantium tiles if necessary... Instead of engaging my purifier hero 5 turns at a time (I did get a Druid hero by luck). I did try improving the relations for a while but he was really hating on me, probably for not supporting his war in our short-lived alliance (I mean, I'd hate me for that too ). When the corruptions started, it was already too late to block his scouts; I didn't even think about that honestly (do they have to have seen your city in order to start casting corruption?). I did start blocking the scouts of another chaos wizard that's in the game though.

Yeah, my game is on small map I think (the pick below fair), so I had 6 cities, after all the settling was done. Thus having two of the cities half corrupted did/does suck a lot. Going after that wizard wasn't an option really due to his location, on the exact opposite side of the map, very inconvenient. Wasn't feasible to conquer a priest/shaman city because the other two wizards that I could attack were/are allied and evenly matched with me (hence twice stronger, the both of them). Consecration and Gaia's Blessing do sound good, but they are a long, long way.

Anyway, I did succeed to make peace with the bastard, he stopped corrupting my land, and my purifier hero is slowly but surely cleaning it up. Meanwhile the other two wizards are having their way with this guy, so he won't be a threat any time soon. One of those two wizards is chaos also though, so... Is it possible for a chaos/death/life 4/4/1 wizard not to have corruption? I think that guy also had reasons to corrupt me (maniacal, mostly in unease status), but I don't think he ever did.

[Seravy]

(do they have to have seen your city in order to start casting corruption?)

Yes, they do.

Is it possible for a chaos/death/life 4/4/1 wizard not to have corruption?

Possible. If they had 1 more book in either Chaos or Death, they would have chosen Corruption as their last Chaos starting common but with 4/4, they are one spell pick short.

[prokolyo]

Some final words on my situation. I got out of it by making peace treaties with the two guys that were spamming corruption and volcanoes, respectively. Then I bought a bunch of shamans from my new orc city, who slowly but surely cleaned up mostly everything. And OMG, the spike in gold and mana from the now functional tiles and extra population...

THEN, I realized (1) that Change Terrain converts volcanoes to mountain!! Had I known that, many turns ago, things could have been different...

Further, the only guy I could realistically attack and expand after I recovered from the "recession", was the guy with the volcanoes. But I was scared that if I attack, he'll volcano my adamantium and mithril tiles. So I planned this elaborate attack on his capital and some naval targets (which I executed flawlessly , destroyed some 10-15% of his army in one fell swoop) thinking that while he's banished, he can't cast volcanoes and I'll have some time to finish him off, or worst case, produce as much adamantium and mithril units as possible by the time he comes back...

THEN, I realized (2) that raise volcano can only target mountains and hills (all my adamantium and mithril is on hills). So, if I had done change terrain on those hills with ores to grassland, he couldn't target the tiles with raise volcano (am I correct on this?)

So had I known (1) and (2), the situation would have been much much better. But, you live and you learn. I'm probably too behind to win against the Myrran, but if I win Arcanus, I'll be happy with this game.

[Seravy]

THEN, I realized (2) that raise volcano can only target mountains and hills (all my adamantium and mithril is on hills). So, if I had done change terrain on those hills with ores to grassland, he couldn't target the tiles with raise volcano (am I correct on this?)

Wrong, Raise Volcano can target tiles that aren't
-River
-Sea
-Nodes, towers

[prokolyo]

THEN, I realized (2) that raise volcano can only target mountains and hills (all my adamantium and mithril is on hills). So, if I had done change terrain on those hills with ores to grassland, he couldn't target the tiles with raise volcano (am I correct on this?)

Wrong, Raise Volcano can target tiles that aren't
-River
-Sea
-Nodes, towers

Huh, damn it... I was pretty sure I read somewhere that it could only target hills and mountains. Must have misunderstood it... Well, back to the drawing board then

[massone]

THEN, I realized (2) that raise volcano can only target mountains and hills (all my adamantium and mithril is on hills). So, if I had done change terrain on those hills with ores to grassland, he couldn't target the tiles with raise volcano (am I correct on this?)

Wrong, Raise Volcano can target tiles that aren't
-River
-Sea
-Nodes, towers

Huh, damn it... I was pretty sure I read somewhere that it could only target hills and mountains. Must have misunderstood it... Well, back to the drawing board then

That was true in MoM, but not in CoM.