ghouls

[Arnuz]

The many chaos spawn node has 9 of them! My 8 archers need to retreat twice, cornered by the horde of chaos spawn, and I lose 4 archers to kill 2-3 CP. The numbers then become manageable, I still lose 2 to 1 then start pairing them up with my second ghoul army (3, 2 FMed) and finally get a chaos spawn out of all of this effort ^_^' woot! My first decent undead, in '05! I also get a mystic X plus a bow of resist magic, wonderful - the beastmaster is now confusion safe!

The war against Horus goes slowly but well. He has a lot of elf towns west of here, I wonder whether he didn't start elf or if he had a war with merlin before they did the spell pact, seems strange.


Merlin is worrisome but the difference in army strength should keep him wiser than declaring.

Still a lot of dangerous lairs and nodes unexplored in my mainland, the chaos spawn is boating in that direction to eradicate all the damn spiders :D

[Arnuz]

I send all the captured nagas into random lairs to die and whittle them down. I'm slowly working on my skill, all those klackon cities are getting closer to amp. towers (4 already in production). All in all I call this game won, Merlin should be easy given that I should be able to attack him at leisure. Of course we'll see what's in myrran, but in 10 turns I'll be well prepared to deal with it. There're 2 towers with djinns that'll give me a good mobile ghouls+spellcasters army. Undead djinns having assured black prayer makes the ghouls barrage a wonder, and with beastmaster and the mysthic who got guiding beacon (and might, lol) they will be unstoppable. I can keep 2 stacks like this - djinn, spellcaster, 7 ghouls - and gobble up 2 cities per turn in a war. I even have traded endurance, for speed 5 stacks.

Well, that's the plan at least, let's see if I get there!

A merchant passes by and I find myself buying a chainmail of wraithform for 1700 despite having the spell (never used) because of the resist magic it also grants, lol. Both heroes are now protected from confusion.

[Arnuz]

Sorry but I've overwritten the same save file a bunch of times - on the next report I'm at febr. 07. It wasn't very interesting, I've finished conquering Horus' cities rather easily (ghouls vs klackons and a sorcery/life AI without even star fires makes for an easy one). Eventually, Merlin has become worried about my expansion and declared war without any single stack menacing my cities. I know where his capital is, I start preparing for the war at my leisure... In a lunatic setup, quite the luxury.





In the meanwhile my armies have liberated an assassin prisoner, in a many chaos spawn nodes entirely dealt with by a stack of nomad horse archers in 3-4 turns. I cast heroism and some buffs. I've found some good item sets: chainmail of speed (+4Def +2Res teleporting), a mace of shadow (attack through shadows gives a thrown attack, weird name), an orb of elemental armor +3Att+2Def+5 skill and the spell. With these plus heroism, holy armor and endurance Tumu has 14 shields+1 to def, and +9 thrown+2to hit. 

Other heroes, as a reminder: Beastmaster (lvl 4), Unknown (lvl 3 with heroism). This will become meaningful soon: as the halfling wizard is going to be difficult with ghouls, I decide to do some hero push-ups with the more difficult, still uncleared nodes and lairs. The first one?



Ouch, unicorns hurt! Tumu can teleport though. I calmly leave and heal, the unicorns then die. I heal again, deal with one angel, retreat and heal again.. When I end up out of mana I teleport around till the battle is over, repeat 2 turns, and I end up with an undead angel too thanks to the final round where - against a single angel - I cast siphon life  3 or 4 times then finish it off with Tumu. Undead angel plus focus magic, and Tumu has quite a great spellcasting support at his side, as they go around at speed 5!

Up north, I send the Unknown on his own against many sprites, giving him the protective set of items first. Emboldened by my success, I send the Unknown against "a few fire giants", that I deal with by repeatedly "warping creature" until they're all terribad (I even get to suck one with siphon life, at 0 resistance, and grab an undead one) and then him with the ghouls against "many cockatrices". In a short while I've almost cleared all the nodes and lairs, I'm left with a demonlord one that I probably need some more beefed up defence first to do, and the towers that I want to keep intact until I've dealt with Merlin.

In the meanwhile the beastmaster with another dwindling set of ghouls grabs some cities from Merlin, but the slingers are letal.

[Arnuz]

While I'm dealing with Merlin the last AI shows up with a shadowdemon! It's a mono death specialist/guardian. It could be worse:





Spell power is so much higher thanks to a combination of focusing on building amp. towers in all those klackon cities, and the spells taken from trading commons and some uncommons with the AIs thanks to having books in all schools.

I've progressed with Merlin at great cost in ghouls, albeit every ghoul lost to slingers has granted at least a city on average. But now the last 3 cities are well defended: in the capital he has a full stack of magicians, and in the other cities a lot of slingers and shamans, the ghouls wouldn't cut it anymore. He has a roaming stack composed of a draconian and a bunch of sprites, lol... I'll let that attack me.

[Arnuz]

Some months still, and I'm getting ready to strike the capital - probably with a single hero.
My armies include:
- a crapload of free undead city garrisons that let me keep high taxes
- the 3 heroes
- 4 earth elementals, 2 chaos spawn, 5 ghouls, 2 focus magiced cockatrice that merlin summoned and buffed (lol), and from nodes 4 cockatrices, 1 fire giant, 1 doombat, 1 gargoyle. I've lost some stuff to do nodes quickly. Oh, and of course an army of klackon engineers civilizing the wilderness.



Rjak hasn't yet moved into arcanus with anything else after the first shadowdemon, that he's moved on a merlin node that I had previously liberated, and that he has also corrupted. Given Rjak's army strength, I'll guess that he dwarves: enormous army strength but he won't be very fast... Given that I have undead troops and he's mono death I call this a victory, I'll just explore a bit Myrror to be sure after I finish Merlin off.

[Arnuz]

Merlin has started casting petrify which has killed some ghouls in the last battle, my heroes are safe thanks to stacking. I've got aether binding on the research book! Woop! Rjak has no hope, I just need to grab the djinns first - which, with an undead angel at my side, plus some already unkillable heroes, shouldn't be a huge difficulty!

[Nelphine]

I'd love to see what Rjak has - 1408 is late enough he could have some rares, even a very rare if he was very lucky. Probably not of course, but you never know. Wave of despair could cause you some problems.

[Arnuz]

Wave of despair against undead troops and heroes? Does that work? The beauty of the ghoul strategy is the amount of choices it gives me. Sure I don't have rares, but who cares, I can also build a crapload of troops now from the conquered cities, elves and nomads have decent resistance too.

I attack Merlin's capital with the Unknown equipping him for anti-AI work: +1def/wraithF/resist m chain, the orb of el. arm, and a -3 spell save wand - this is a mistake, I should have given him a weapon. I end up going in melee against most of the capital's wizards, and needing 2-3 melees for each of them. Nevertheless with me continuously healing the dude he carries the day, and I even get 2 undead halfling wizards. For all my troubles, I find summon spiders and summon zombies, lol. Oh well zombies can give one some help with the undead creation, especially with a caster with a -3 save wand - that's a lot of negativity

Then I swap again around the items, giving the rather OP jewel to the beastmaster, to whom I also give the node set: regeneration +1def resist elements chain, bow of exorcism and resist magic and go with 5 ghouls and a fire giant (called the bait for the lols) plus one of merlin's FM cockas against 3 djinns and 4 nagas, here's what the djinns do:
t1 - fire at hero twice, mind storm hero (I very often get something like this vs heroes). -2 health.
t2 - 1 shot at hero, the other 2 are lolwebbed. -6 health. The djinn is at 25% by ghouls and the FG, while the army retreats from the nagas.
Then I ghoul down the only unwebbed djinn and the rest of the fight is a piece of cake. I get 3 undead djinn, one naga, and a fantastic +6def chain of elemental armor. I'd call this game won right now but Rjak's sent other 2 shadow demon scouts close to my capital, let's see what he got after all...

Ah, Merlin's demise has made me Rjak's buddy: my battle with him shows how I fight for the good cause! I'm now at 199 skill, spending 780 in skill only. Research is dealt with by buildings. My assassin and angel taskforce is running towards another node, while the Unknown is going to finish Merlin's last city off.

[Arnuz]

* that means that we've got a wizard pact, at the cheap cost of 450 gold. Edit: and he's a maniacal expansionist!!! Moreover, Merlin's last city should give me even more relations, and I have an aura of majesty to keep them up despite the number of cities. That will let me explore Myrror before the war, with the chaos spawn carried around by the djinn I don't risk ending up close to his cities. I'll be able to find some more powerful undead and with aether's binding active, fucking up this game would really be hard.

[Seravy]

Wave of Despair works against heroes - against undead it doesn't, if you can afford to field entirely undead armies in every combat.
More importantly I thought I disabled shifting planes for Shadow Demons by the AI. I even remember meeting Shadow Demon stacks that did not. How did this change get undone?
Oh, there was a bug fixed in the same procedure two updates later...