@the bottom of page 3, yeah I find nature to be my worst/weakest realm. Maybe they need more buffs? even now that giant spiders and war bears and gorgons such have been mildly improved.
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Test games played
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y'all are crazy, nature is the strongest realm. at least, the strongest commons (on average), the strongest uncommons, and the strongest rares. arguably the weakest in very rares, but thats not to say its weak there.
March 2nd, 2017, 13:17
(This post was last modified: March 2nd, 2017, 13:20 by GermanJoey.)
first of all, there's Transmute. this is a massively useful spell. first of all, it can pretty much give all of your troops, in all unit producing cities, undispellable +2 atk and +2 def, and, in many cases, also lower their production costs. on top of that, you can convert all your otherwise marginal minerals into crystals for a massive power income. you can also use it to scuttle your opponents' adamant, mithril, and crystals. so: it's a strong buff that you don't have to recast on every unit, a strong production/power income city buff, and a city curser. with no upkeep and can't be dispelled. it's stronger than most Rare spells. (of any realm)
next, Nature's Cures. the effect of this spell is huge - it lets you keep fighting constantly and at full strength. this is useful both offensively, as it prevents you from getting worn down by the AI over repeated battles, as well as defensively, as you can just keep one home-based stack to continuously vaccum up the AI's carpet of doom. having this spell also allows you to play battles differently, to distribute damage among your own troops more evenly instead of needing to "save" some troops at full strength for later battles. for most practical purposes, having this is as good as Herb Mastery, a strong VR global enchantment. it's effect is weaker (no +1 health/turn in combat) but then it isn't several hundred mana and it isn't disjunctionable. it's also cheap enough to cast every turn, even in the early mid game, and later on multiple stacks per turn. so those are the two "S-Tier" spells. next, and very close to S-tier, is Giant Spiders. the best uncommon summon. cheap to research and cast, very high damage, very high defense and hp (perfect for nature's cures), extreme mobility. crushes most normal units. you can take out 2 ranged units within the first 2 turns of a battle with each spider. i'd bring it up to S tier with conjurer/specialist/land-linking make this S-tier, although that's a bit more of a niche setup. i guess lets grade the rest. Land linking is about an A to an A-. Change Terrain maybe B+. (its quite good but slow and very expensive). Cockatrices - B+, Nature's best tool against Death stuff. Giant Lizard, B to a B-. (strong but very expensive to research and cast) Crack's Call is a B; unreliable but lets you kill anything you can Web. Ice Bolt is a B-, decent but unfortunately useless against all death realm stuff. Summon Catapult - C, Centaurs are better for most circumstances. In contrast, Life has only Prayer, which is S tier certainly, and Raise Dead, which is maybe an A- since the nerf. Nothing else above A.
Hum. I'd rather have healing than natures cures, but I understand how its helpful. I like the vacuum idea but I'm used to just not taking a lot of damage over battle.
Play on poor minerals. Transmute is much much worse than that. Even on fair minerals the majority of my cities won't have an ore. But that's quantity over quality..maybe playing nature I need to plan for that.
I'm playing Nature right now, and I acknowledge that it's good. I forgot that Transmute gives you easy access to Adamantium, that is indeed huge.
But more importantly, Nature has a killer early game with Sprites + Conjurer + Specialist + Archmage. Your start is insanely fast with those. 
Started the nature+sorcery test game.
I'm recording it so I won't go into too much details - it's too early for it anyway, however, the game is meant for testing sprites, which are an early game unit, I can at least comment on their role. -Sprites were certainly good. I was able to get two early nodes thanks to them, and a few other neutral locations. -However, those nodes would have been easy to take out with anything else, albeit probably about 20 turns later but still in time before the AI gets them. -The treasure was ok but not a big deal - I've found some low and mid tier items, gold, mana, and three spells - Counter Magic which is just a common, Create Artifact which I have absolutely no use for but it's at least ok for trade, and Stasis which, well...I should be happy about it but Web is just better. 10 Mp for stopping a unit for a few turns, which is enough to kill it with ranged attacks is better for the early game than 25 MP for stopping it permanently. No one else has 3 Sorcery books so I can't even trade it away. -I did use Focus Magic but I'm pretty sure I could have taken out every place I attacked without it. Lizards would have needed a few more shots of confusion, and cockatrices would have taken many turns longer, but with web they were not a threat to the sprites. I haven't found a single place where Focus Magic is actually needed yet : most places have impossible units like Air Elemental or "many" fire Giants. I don't see the hype - Sprites without Focus Magic do the exact same thing, just a bit slower. What exactly am I supposed to use FM against, anyway? (also, Sorcery contributed absolutely nothing for this strategy so far except killing the lizards with confusion - it'll be very important for the late game though so I'm happy I picked 5 Sorcery books.) -While using Sprites was highly profitable, I think it'll bite me in the back because it means I wasn't able to use War Bears in the early game - Had to use all casting skill on Earth Lores and Sprites, to find those juicy targets. (No, they weren't anywhere near enough to find without EL and if I don't know the secondary monster, it can wipe out the entire stack of sprites) I didn't even pick War Bears because I knew I couldn't have had the capacity to use them when they were relevant. -If I used War Bears instead, I probably could have attacked the stronger adjacent wizard. Not only does that mean I could have taken out or at least severely hold back a 10 Chaos Warlord Specialist, but I could have also stolen their two nodes and gottten extra power from stolen elf cities. At this point I can't do it anymore, as the wizard pushed research for Gargoyles, and is now the wizard with the largest overall power. That's a major problem as a Chaos Warlord is pretty much unstoppable in the late game - fortunately 5 Sorcery will give me a fighting chance. -To make things worse, the Myrran wizard also plays 10 Chaos, so the time I lost on not taking out the one on my plane means I can't even think about going to Myrror to fight the other. At least I sent through my Sprites - there was an open tower in 1405, the Arcanus chaos wizard is that powerful - and can now grab treasure from the other plane as well, but it means I have to cast lots of Earth Lore again to find the targets, and what's worse, I can't meld the nodes there - sending a spirit through a tower in enemy territory and defending a node are both pretty much impossible. So any further treasure I get from nodes means a Chaos wizard gets free power. -Finally, I feel the ~6 cities I have taken from another wizard using my normal units (horsebowmen and a low-end hero) will contribute way more for my cause than the two nodes or the random treasure - simply by allowing me to have additional sources of good units (Javelineers, Longbowmen) and by turning a wizard that could have been another unstoppable threat into someone mostly irrelevant (this wizard is a chaos-life warlord with Maniacal) (March 5th, 2017, 05:48)Catwalk Wrote: Also, what is your setup? I'm surprised you found room for getting 5x Sorcery. I'm guessing you didn't use Astrologer, it's amazing with early node access. Conjurer is also crucial, and Specialist is very nice. Alchemy, Conjurer, Archmage, 4 Nature 5 Sorcery. I didn't want to go below 4 book in either realm - it means very rares are unavailable in that realm, so if I get a very rare spell treasure and the rolled realm has fewer than 4 books, I get a lower rarity spell instead. I guess I could have picked it instead of Conjurer and the 5th Sorcery book. |