Earth Lore Analysis for Sprites

[Nelphine]

I am starting this thread. I'll update my post with my own maps, and analysis of those maps.  This will involve nothing more than what nodes/lairs/neutrals there are on the map, within 6 earth lores.  From here, we can determine whether this map had enough to get going.

Map 1: Extremely in favor of sprite strategy. Targets EVERYWHERE.
Earth lore 1:
Chaos node 2 squares from capital: many gargoyles, few fire elementals.
Lair 3 squares: phantom warriors.
Neutral 4 squares: gnolls.
Lair 5 squares: many earth elementals, few war bears.
Lair 5 squares: few angels, many guardian spirits.

Earth lore 2:
chaos node 6 squares: doom bat, many hell hounds
neutral 10 squares: high men, no ranged units
tower 12 squares: few angels, many guardian spirits
neutral 17 squares: nomad, smithy only

Earth Lore 3:
lair 6 squares: many phantom warriors (conveniently very close to that chaos node with gargoyle)
neutral 11 squares: gnolls (pop 6)
neutral 11 squares: nomad (pop 2)

Earth Lore 4:
Lair 8 squares: many hellhounds (very close to earth lore 3 lair)
lair 13 squares: great wyrm, many war bears
sorcery node 9 squares: many phantom beasts, few naga (adjacent to many hellhounds)
lair 9 squares: many phantom warriors
sorcery node 11 squares: few air elementals, few phantom warriors (first thing i've found that's a serious threat to sprites)
tower 12 squares: many efreet, few gargoyles (obviously not sprite capable)
lair 17 squares: many night stalkers, ghouls (not sprite capable)

first ai conquers that weak gnoll neutral next to my capital

Earth lore 5:
nature node 8 squares: behemoth, few war bears (sprite capable, if only 1 behemoth)
lair 8 squares: many ghouls, zombies
lair 9 squares: few werewolves, few skeletons
lair 10 squares: few chimera, few fire elementals
lair 13 squares: chaos spawn, fire elemental
tower 11 squares: many angels, few guardian spirits (probably not sprite capable)
nature node 14 squares: stone giant, few cockatrices

2nd AI is klackons

Earth lore 6: First AI capital (pop 4 barbarians) 15 squares
lair 6 squares: guardian spirit
lair 7 squares: many gargoyles, hell hounds
lair 8 squares: few shadow demons, few ghouls (not sprite capable)
neutral 8 squares: klackons pop 6
tower 11 squares: doom bat, many gargoyles
lair 14 squares: many demons, few zombies (not sprite capable)


Map 2: (Extreme)
Earth Lore 1:
Lair 2 squares: many phantom warriors
neutral 4 squares: high men pop 2, no buildings

Earth Lore 2:
lair 7 squares: many guardian spirits
chaos node 9 squares: many hell hounds, gargoyles
sorcery node 14 squares: few phantom beasts, few phantom warriors
tower 14 squares: many stone giants, cockatrices (not sprite capable)

Earth Lore 3:
nature node 6 squares: many sprites, war bears
nature node 7 squares: colossus, few war bears
lair 8 squares: many fire giants, fire elementals (not good for sprites)
neutral 11 squares: orc pop 4, no ranged units
neutral 12 squares: klackon pop 5
lair 15 squares: few fire elementals, hell hounds

Earth Lore 4:
lair 10 squares: fire giant, hell hounds
tower 12 squares: few gorgons, many giant spiders (not good for sprites)
lair 12 squares: great wyrm, many earth elementals (oh baby)
lair 15 squares: many guardian spirits
tower 16 squares; few death knights, many ghouls (not sprites)
chaos node 16 squares: great drake, many gargoyles (not really sprites)
lair 18 squares: unicorns, many guardian spirits (too far realistically, but this is the direction of all my neutrals and lairs and what not so my sprites will be out here)

First AI: klackons

Earth Lore 5 (all near the orc/klackon neutrals):
sorcery node 16 squares: many nagas
sorcery node 18 squares: many nagas, few phantom warriors

[Seravy]

I checked - there is no such problem. It's 100% value on all difficulties, except easy which is 50%.

The phantom warriors will probably yield low treasure (even if many, especially if not) but the earth elementals one will be a lot. The nomad neutral is not sprites compatible (they have bows) but the other two are - however the high men seems small enough to take out with a single fire elemental or zombie or other common. That one is not relevant to sprites. The gnoll one, if big and heavily defended, might be, but based on chance I'm assuming it is small until you say otherwise.

Overall, out of these I consider the earth elemental one relevant to our case only but there are 4 more earth lores.

PS : we might want to keep track of the types of targets we judge being exploitable on the maps that end up in the "overpowered" category so if we end up having to do something we'll know what to do.

[Nelphine]

Right, the reason I think this is a problem is that one sprite (MAYBE 2) would take out all the neutrals (the nomad is population 2), and won't require extra spells. Sure, you could take them with something else, but getting that something else to the target requires more mana (which doesn't get the conjuror reduction); water walking on war bears, wraith form on ghouls, whatever. Sprites do it cheaper than anything else. The whole problem with sprites (as mentioned, rereading the past threads really showed the common themes) is the sheer speed it happens. And the sprites can just hit these plentiful weak targets while waiting for a stack to hit the bigger ones.

This is the same problem with the phantom warriors - of COURSE anything could take it, and it will be low reward - but that is the IDEAL lair for the 'pre turn 10' mana, that allows you to get skill boosting going. It also gives your sprites something to do while you stack them up enough to take the chaos node with gargoyles in it. If I was playing this map, I'd have my first sprite hit those warriors until it was clear, and that means that sprite is active from literally turn 1. I don't need to wait until I have 'enough' (3 war bears? 3 ghouls? oh and it's across water, so they need to have travel magic too), I just do it with one.

Sprites do it cheaper. Sprites can afford to send one sprite in to plink away at certain things - you can't do that with anything else. 9 phantom warriors? you're going to lose something if you try to take them on with only one summoned creature that's not a sprite. Which means your sprites don't lose any time that the other summons would. Which means, they do it faster.

The whole problem boils down to the speed that sprites hit critical mass. Try to have a full stack of powerful units, with multiple uncommon spells (and maybe even a rare or very rare spell), before 1405, without using sprites. Can't be done.

This is not saying that other units are weak. Other units aren't weak. That's why they're all balanced. Sprites when it's a poor map - totally balanced. Sprites when it's a good map? Ridiculous. That's the basic problem; it's not that sprites can win a map that something else can't win; it's that on certain maps, something else might not win, but sprites will allow utterly domination. Basically, it's a matter of degrees.

[Nelphine]

First map done. I'd say, this would be a ridiculous map to actually be doing with sprites. There are targets EVERYWHERE, including multiple nodes, and both first two AI are races with no ranged units (hello conquering all their outposts/secondary cities and crippling them)? And every neutral has been almost tailor made for sprites, and there's a fair amount of neutrals.

[Catwalk]

Nomads are compatible with sprites, especially if you have web. Good idea Nelphine, although I recommend just using Alt RVL instead of Earth Lore. Your analysis is correct. For further proof, compare how fast you take out targets with sprites compared with other units.

[Catwalk]

Oh, and sprites win without damage (for the most part). Using War Bears (who are in fact a good early choice) you will suffer some damage and be delayed. Using a mix is often the right strategy. But the fact remains that sprites are unbalanced, and it is easily remedied.

Changing lair defenders is a clumsy method with limited effect and other downsides, but it will probably work.

[Seravy]

I checked, Phantom Warriors are worth 50 treasure points each. You need to kill two to break even on a single sprite, four if you got gold instead of mana. It's not the kind of advantage we are looking for, sure it's something but not enough to change the flow of the game.
I have no experience with fighting nomads using them but they shoot, and they have large shield (assuming they had a smithy, I think pop 2 gets one?), even a pop 2 city which gets 4 defenders would probably kill 2 sprites (wasting 160 of your mana) but the least one, while a War Bear or anything else could do it without losses.

Also, why are you so persistently ignoring bowmen? You can clear out 6 phantom warriors with a single longbowmen, or two normal bowmen. With the starting sawmill done, that won't take much time, in fact if it's not longbowmen, you can start making them on turn 1.

"nature node 8 squares: behemoth, few war bears (sprite capable, if only 1 behemoth)"
Seriously? How are you expecting sprites to damage a unit with 16 armor? (or 21 if it casts Iron Skin on itself)
Behemoths are impossible for sprites.

I consider these targets that are relevant for us :

Lair 5 squares: many earth elementals, few war bears.
lair 13 squares: great wyrm, many war bears
sorcery node 9 squares: many phantom beasts, few naga (adjacent to many hellhounds)
neutral 11 squares: gnolls (pop 6)
lair 9 squares: few werewolves, few skeletons
neutral 8 squares: klackons pop 6

That's still a lot albeit there is only one node included so sustaining the advantage over time can be difficult if the treasure rolls are not favorable. Overall this map has the potential to be "overpowered" but it's not guaranteed. You need to get actual gold and mana (or items) from the big targets and there are only 3 and a half.

Map 2 has :
sorcery node 14 squares: few phantom beasts, few phantom warriors - but this one is very far and easy with bowmen, I don't think it counts - sprites won't do better for these
sorcery node 16 squares: many nagas - that distance is troubling, this is the kind of node you lose 5 turns after getting it to enemy attacks, also bowmen can do it albeit I admit you need a fairly good stack for this one so sprites have the advantage in this one
sorcery node 18 squares: many nagas, few phantom warriors  -same - any potentially hostile enemies around these nodes?
lair 12 squares: great wyrm, many earth elementals (oh baby)


Overall I'd say this is a bad map due to distances. If you get a big pile of money from the wyrm+elemental lair then yes otherwise no.


...so far I think the only really problematic setup is Great Wyrms with Earth Elementals (or with bears/lizards/alone). They have a high value and can't fight back. Disabling this pairing makes sense from a flavor viewpoint too, Wyrms eat and dig through earth so they are the natural enemy of an earth elemental.
If we can agree this is the setup to remove or reduce in frequency then we can save ourselves a lot of time.
I think the other pairings are fine - they might be possible to take out but require a lot of forces and multiple turns for a much lower amount of treasure so the reward isn't that far off from how much work it takes to clear them out.
Sorcery monsters are an entirely different problem : they are easy with everything, not just sprites. Whether we want to do something about that or not is something we need to decide, but it's not related to sprites.

[Nelphine]

You can't get bowman fast enough. If you're building bowman, and a ship wrights guild (if you're lucky enough to be on a coast, not something you can rely on) and a trireme, you're forced to not build settlers, or long term buildings like a foresters guild. You will never have bowman fast enough to meet the timeline.

Also, I'm playing the second map out. I had all 3 sorcery nodes, and all 3 neutrals, before 1404.

The klackon AI (pure chaos) is a joke. He has no nodes, only 3 cities and 3 outposts (1 I captured, destroyed all outposts). He has no units stronger than swordsmen and hell houbds. The next AI, whom I don't know race of but probably barbarian already has more power production than I do, and a billion times the army size of me and the klackon.

I think this shows two things - it emphasizes the need to look at klackons, and the starting sawmill seems to speed things up enough that sprites aren't way more powerful than AI (although I could never have the 3 nodes without them due to distance and water.) I'm going to continue though and see what else this game has.

Edit: your question about the safety of the sorcery nodes - the orc and klackon neutrals were both within 6 or 7 squares of those two nodes, making them effectively inside my empire. I try to list ai as soon as I see any cities - the two sorcery nodes, and two nature nodes, and the two neutrals made up an island, along with a few lairs, so no AI anywhere in sight.

[Seravy]

Meanwhile I completed the new monster algorithm - regardless of sprites I'm pretty sure it's necessary. I'm going to post it in a new thread in a minute.

[Catwalk]

Nomad Swordsmen do very poorly against Sprites. Have you tested them? 4 ranged at +1 to hit vs 6 shields is fine. 2 ranged at -2 to hit vs 2 shields is very low damage. Your analysis is flawed and based solely on theory which you apply inaccurately. Hammers are at a premium early on, while casting skill is freely available. That's why building immediately bowmen instead is not the correct play.

It is correct that Sprites can't take out Behemoths, though.