So, I randomly got a mod idea: the units are the same as in MoM/current CoM, but gain stats based on the buildings constructed. Say, Barracks could grant +2 attack, Shrines could grant +1 resistance, and so on. What do you think?

After some extensive play, it becomes apparent that there are a few particular scenarios you need to be able to handle for success. I'd say the most important of these is the ability to defeat a full stack of Sprites inside walls, as this is a fairly common situation that you'll run up against and is one of the most challenging to deal with if not prepared, esp in 1.4x+, when flying units won't suicide themselves. 

From my experience there a re few ways to handle this scenario early, which does a lot to dictate how I approach the game. Here are approaches that can be used to handle this common scenario, necessary for defeating many enemy wizard early on. In no particular order: 

1) Hell Hounds: Generally, a full stack of Hell Hounds beats a full stack of Sprites, but you won't have much left when its over (which is fine).
2) Basilisks: Generally 2 can take a full stack of Sprites. 
3) Shadow Demons: Again 2 is good.
4) Barbarian Cavalry: How many it takes depends on how they are buffed, what level they are, and if they have magic weapons. Generally, for aggressive play if you are using Barbarians you should have Warlord and Alchemy. If so, then, along with a Healing spell you can typically take a full stack of Sprites with as few as 3 Barb Cavs. It may require as many as 5 if they aren't well buffed or leveled.
5) Flying Paladins: Typically you can defeat a full stack of Sprites with a single unit of Flying Paladins, but be careful, if they gang up on you in melee range they could take the unit out. Still, with decent maneuvering a single Paladin is all it takes. 
6) Doom Drakes: Between 2 and 4 are needed, depending on buffs and experience levels.
7) Horsebowmen: You can take a full stack of Sprites with 4 to 6 Horsebowmen, depending on the magic used and their experience.
8) Stag Beetles: Two Stag Beetles are able to do the job.
9) Dragon Turtles: 2 or 3 are needed.
10) Wyvern Riders: Not sure as I haven't tried this, but I'd assume 3 or 4 would be needed.

Not much else is really worth considering. I guess you can also use Slingers or Halfling Shamen, but as 1 movement, those just just aren't great offensively.

Of this, the fastest stack to get out is of course the Hell Hounds. This makes Chaos so powerful in the early game, with one of the best offenses. Rushing with Hell Hounds is always a good path to success. 

Other summons that can work are Basilisks and Shadow Demons, but it can take a while to get those and they are much more expensive to cast, plus Shadow Demosn are quite slow on the map. 

Barbarian Cavalry and Horsebowmen are other fairly fast options that are pretty solid. I'd say the Barbarian Cavs are a bit stronger than the Horesebowmen, but Nomads have a stronger late game than Barbarians. 

Doom Drakes are also solid, though for as fast as it should be to get them out, it seems it usually takes a while to actually field an the first 3 Doom Drakes, and on Myrran you will often face capitals that are more difficult than just Sprites to deal with.

Stag Beetles, Dragon Turtles and Wyvern Riders, while all capable, take quite a while to field, and really who wants to play those races?

This leaves the flying Paladins. This is by far the surest best. Its true that Paladins can take a while to produce, but the thing is, once you have flying Paladins you can conquer pretty much anything. And it doesn't really take that long to get them out. If you rush for Paladins you can get them out fairly quickly assuming a decent starting position. You can do this with Sorcery if you use Nagas for early offense and post a couple of Nagas on defense in your capital as well. If you go with 9 or 10 Sorcery books you should be able to research Flight fairly quickly as well. I can often get it Flight by the time I am able to build Paladins.

I should note there that Dwarves with flying Golems can work much the same way as Paladins, so really that's another option. 

So generally there are really just a few options that can give you a strong opening with the ability to take pretty much any wizard capital in the early game (assuming they didn't start with 11 books). 

1) Chaos with Hells Hounds is a sure and fast bet.
2) Barbarians or Nomads provide fairly cheap and mobile units that can be built early on.
3) Draconians, while a little slower and more challenging to start, offer strong units capable of taking out capitals early.
4) High Men (or Dwarves) with pure Sorcery offer a reasonably fast super unit. This is by far the strongest of the options, but also takes the longest to field. However, when you start as High Men it really doesn't take that long to get Paladins, and once you do they are essentially unstoppable when paired with Flight and Guardian Wind. 

I find that any time I try some approach that doesn't provide these options, the early game is far more difficult and I often get stuck with the inability to take out an enemy wizard early because their capital is full of Sprites. Gearing to be able to defeat such capitals will generally set you up for success.

I've been trying out some new setups lately and have found this one to be pretty good. I've always liked Nomads, but have found them a bit tricky to really get going with, however this works out pretty well. I use the following starting setup:

Picks:
Alchemy
Warlord
2 Nature books
6 Life books

Life spells: 
Endurance
Healing
Holy Armor
Just Cause
Heroism

Nature Spells:
Water Walking

This gives you pretty much all the tools you need to really go off. Generally, you can start with a buildup to Forester's Guild, i.e. all production buildings except Miner's Guild. Of course cast Just Cause ASAP. If you need to get active then you can go for a Stable here and make 3 Horsebowmen to begin raiding. If you can wait, though, then you can go straight for Rangers first to use those instead. It depends on what you find and what hero you get early on, if any.

Generally, though, the early game will consist of making 2 to 4 units of Horsebowmen and/or Rangers, with Heroism on at least one of them, and probably a hero with Heroism on them to go along. You'll want at least one Ranger ASAP even if you start with Horsebowmen. 

A problem with Life only is Life doesn't provide support for moving over water. Death has flying summons and Wriathform, Sorcery has Floating Island and Flight, Chaos has flying summons and Chaos Channels. This is where Water Walking comes in for Life.  With Water Walking you'll have full mobility to take advantage of the Ranger Pathfinding. 

Once you get that first stack of about 4 Horsebowmen/Rangers + hero(s), then you move on to building toward the Fantastic Stable to get Griffins. If you find a good spot to settle on Mithril or Silver (Transmute) it could be worth making a Settler before you start building your Armor's Guild, but if not then I wouldn't bother making Settlers.

The ultimate death stack for this setup is 4 Griffins and 4 Rangers. The Rangers of course get Water Walking and all units get Endurance. Now you've got a stack that can move 6 tiles per turn and is capable of taking on pretty much anything. Holy Armor and Bless as needed. Maybe its best to include a hero with the stack, depending on what you get, or to make a separate sack for all heroes. I also use a lot of stacks early on with heroes plus Griffins or maybe heroes plus 1 Ranger, etc. If you have a melee hero then maybe 3 Griffins and 1 hero plus 4 Rangers, or with a ranged hero then maybe 4 Griffins 4 Rangers and a hero, etc.

Rangers can seem pretty lackluster when you compare them to Slingers or Longbowmen or even Air Ships, but I actually ended up liking them. In the past I would typically only include a single Ranger per stack, but once they are Elite they are pretty effective in sets of 4 or 5. Endurance also works wonders for them on the battlefield as well, which makes up for some of their weakness. With 3 moves they can close the gap fairly quickly and shoot at close range, which makes up for having only 4 units.

The point is, Endurance and Water Walking are a potent combination paired with the Pathfinding of Rangers, and the Flying ability of Griffins is very value for a Life wizard who otherwise has no means of enabling melee units to hit flyers. You end up with a very fast mobile force quite quickly, that is very well rounded, with Griffins and Rangers. Yes, Rangers aren't the best combat units around, but in stacks or 4 or 5 they can deal out pretty good damage in support of the Griffins. You can even take on Sky Drakes and Great Drakes with this setup, using the Rangers to weaken units and the Griffins to finish them off. All the better if you get Web to help control the battlefield. Holy Armor can make Griffins extremely though, especially if they have Mithril, and I've even stacked up Holy Armor + Stone Skin + Mithril on them to get 11 defense at Ultra Elite, which makes them virtually indestructible, esp. with Prayer in play.

I also like the fact that Nomads have good race relations. With Just Cause in place, you rarely have any unrest problems. This can greatly facilitate early conquest. I typically play High Elves a lot, and unrest can be quite a challenge with them. 

I guess a question for me: what's better, this setup or Draconians with straight Life? I guess the comparable Draconian setup would be Myrran + Warlord (don't need Alchemy as much here) with the same 6 Life books. So you don't get any more Life books with this setup, you also don't have Alchemy, and you don't get any Nature books. On the other hand, you have flying units from the start and can get Doom Drakes much faster than Griffins. Doom Drakes + Shamen with Endurance is a solid early stack for Draconians that moves at 3 and has healing. Then Doom Drakes with Endurance + Air Ships becomes the ultimate death stack. But getting going on Myrran can be harder and the race relations of Draconians aren't as good. Another problem I run into with this setup is that my heroes often get left behind because they can't fly. The nice thing about the Nomad setup is you have Water Walking so your heroes can always have full mobility.

Not all heroes wear capes.


Alternative Title: Amicalola Has a Tenuous Grasp of Memes

I've been playing version 1.50 for a long time, pretty much always on Hard. With 1.5 the just between Hard and Extreme is pretty... extreme. But Hard is really not a challenge anymore, while Extreme is almost always too difficult.

Hello,

Some of the possible heroe's abilities or vials have diminishing values as the game time increases and you get bigger economy, mana income and cities:

Noble
Sage
Legendary
AEther Master
Ritual Master


So, I would like to suggest that heroes should not get these traits after a certain year (maybe 1505?) and that there should not be possible vials from these traits,
Also I would like to suggest adding these two traits as possible vials:

1. Wind walking
2. Quick casting


Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks!

Would you be interested in playing a Tournament game? Master of Orion Realmsbeyond had that for many years and it was fun. I even organized one.
If we can get at least 4 people to sign up, I would organize one or let someone else organize if volunteers. There would be a start date, deadline to finish and the same random map all participants would play. There would be honor code that no cheating of any kind is allowed. Also, an objective criterion how to compare results. Earliest win based on game time wins. For losses, the highest score wins. More details would be given later. Tournament reports are cool how to compare different strategies, RNG, and outcomes for the same starting point.

Friends, can you recommend some nice strat for trolls? No death magic, around expert level...

How about recreating the simple in-game cheats (Alt+RVL; Alt+Magic)?

Thinking about a new possible pitboss with some rather vanilla settings, 8-10 players, snake draft. Emperor if map leans towards usual RB richness, poorer map Monarch. Using the latest CtH Mod 

Desired map spec:
Tight-ish borders 1 - 1.5 rings of expansion ~12 tiles distance between capitals. 

Borders between players wider, not choked, and no clear distribution.  I don't want to make borders super rich—no luxuries/wet-corn—but to make them worthwhile and interesting, I suggest making the borderlands riverine with sheep/banana as the sort of food. Curious to hear thoughts. 
 
Usual settings:
No Huts/Events/Spies
AI Diplo
1 city per peace treaty
No barb ships/cities