I'm sinking my teeth into this delicious mod, and am curious to hear what others feel are the strongest combos right now. I have some ideas, but I need to test a bit more before I feel confident enough to post them 
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Most powerful combo (as of 3.1)
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I think he means the release thread and his current lizardmen game?
Lizardmen are certainly one thing that need testing - despite previous nerfs, they might still be overpowered, and while I don't think the outpost changes improve this, it does leave their advantage pretty much unchanged. Dark Elves and Gnolls are the other two races that might be problematic, on the "too weak" side of the spectrum. I'd also mention nomads, specifically horsebowmen might be far too powerful for their cost (I think we even had a discussion and agreed they should cost more? 45 or 50, not sure?), the race on the whole is probably ok, although being good at ranged with high resistance plus a gold bonus is a lot of perks, no food production buildings is enough to balance it out. Best strategies? There are plenty but I think Soul Linker might be one. Especially if you use it with Chaos Channels and normal units/heroes. Chaos being an otherwise poor match for heroes balances it out though.
February 4th, 2017, 01:30
(This post was last modified: February 4th, 2017, 01:44 by GermanJoey.)
I agree that Chaos Channels + Soul Linker is one of the strongest general strategies. it's also balanced in that without soul linker (and a lotta XP), it can get shut down pretty hard by bless+prayer. also, the Great Unsummoning, can turn out to be a thing.
Lets see, I guess it'd be fun to run through a best-of list of all the various things in the game. The 5 realms are pretty well balanced against each other. IMHO most generally useful realm throughout the game is Nature, and the least useful is Sorcery. But then, Sorcery is kinda weird in that it's the best realm to pair with other realms in a 2 or 3 realm strategy, due to it having many amazing standout spells but poor "fundamentals." Spells... every single realm has its own abusive spells, if you get them in the right situations. Since you wanted the most powerful, then, without considering Very Rares, I'd say the most standout "S-Tier" spells among all the realms - the ones that will skew the game the most by themselves - are: Web Nature's Cures Transmute Blizzard ======= Endurance Heroism Prayer Incarnation ======= Focus Magic Dispelling Wave Aether Binding Wind Walking Magic Immunity ======= Summon Zombies Black Prayer Zombie Mastery ======= Chaos Channels Doom Bolt This isn't intended to be a list of every good spell. For example, Giant Spiders is a really awesome summons, but I'd rate it as just A-tier because it's just a realy good cost-effective summon, not something that will skew your whole strategy like Transmute. Or, for example, Sprites can be super crazy if you get the right kind of nodes/lair nearby, but aren't so great otherwise. A list of some effective combos are here: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8181 Next, Races. The strongest races are, IMHO, for a general purpose situation, while also factoring in that the Myrran races cost 2 picks, Beastmen, Lizardmen, and Draconians, in that order. There's some very powerful cheese strategies though. For example, dwarves + nature for transmute abuse, best if done on a Rich resources map. (but then, that setting is the best for every game). Another is Blue + Troll Magicians, which is slow to get started but then is essentially impossible to stop, especially if you can add some heroes to the mix. Some other combo ideas are here: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8531 Finally, retorts. Specialist is probably the best, and makes single-realm strategies better on average than 2-realm strategies. 2-realm strategies can still work pretty well though, and can be more interesting/fun to play. Archmage is the most generically useful retort, followed by Alchemy and Sage Master. Myrran is pretty damn good, especially on Rich resources. (which, again, makes for the most interesting games). Astrologer can be amazing with the right setups. Warlord is really good if you plan on using a lot of Normal units. In general, I think you usually want to have somewhere around 2/3 books, 1/3 retorts, plus or minus a book or two, for a nicely balanced game. 
Blizzard is better vs high end units. And iirc it costs less
Btw firestorm first and blizzard then (if you have the skill) is absolutely way more devastating on average than casting either twice on most mixed situations.
February 4th, 2017, 17:12
(This post was last modified: February 4th, 2017, 17:12 by GermanJoey.)
Firestorm is really good too, very close to S-tier IMHO. But, the thing that makes Blizzard better is that it's a lot cheaper. So, you can get to where you can cast it twice in one turn very fast; with specialist and 7-8 nature books, you're lookin at something like, IIRC, 88 mana per cast. Which means you only need 89 skill to get off a double cast in one turn, which is quite reachable by 1406-1407. If you get it a lot earlier, you only need 44 skill to cast it with just one press of "next turn." Since the AI loves to garrison with Magicians and Sprites, getting Blizzard early means you can take at least one or even two capitals really damn early, especially if you've got some land-linked Giant Spiders in a stack that can just walk around a Wizard's defenses.
It's really good late game too, where you can cast it 4-5 times in a single turn to wreck significantly tougher capital garrisons. I mean, it's not gonna kill uber heroes or VR summons, but thinning out the crowd even a little bit really helps when you got spells like Web and Crack's Call, not to mention making the AI waste casting turns on Healing, etc. (February 4th, 2017, 08:54)Nelphine Wrote: I think it's amusing that the spell list is so diverse. At least half of the spells listed I tend to ignore, not because they're bad, but because I don't like the style. Like incarnation and zombie mastery. I mostly don't cast Incarnation when I have it because IMHO Torin is still just way too overpowered. It's like, ok, I cast it, now I layer him up with other Life enchantments, and now I win. But, you can't deny that it's S-Tier. |
