Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Tlaloc]

Sawmill, marketplace, 12 settlers. Take swordsmen from outposts to act as a defensive force. Pick your first outpost location as the highest pop spot you can get to quickly, and try to build that up to a fighters guild asap to start building troops. Once you have 2 or 3 cities building halberdiers and javelineers, you can start building settlers at a different city, which means your capital can finally start developing.

I lost a few cities to raiders and monsters, but its all about quantity. An outpost earns you 3 power towards casting skill (or some obscene amount of research if there's something worth going after since I was sagemaster) but losing it only costs you gold, which you are literally rolling in. Retake with a horde of lizardmen, rebuild. Enemy declares war? Neutral around? Wipe them out, colonize. Constant expansion. You have a stack heading toward a war zone, detour and take out lairs. Casualties? Who cares you have 3 more the next turn. Make a mistake and lose a city? Who cares, its hardly developed compared to what the ais natural troll and dark elf and dwarf and beastmen and draconian super cities can do, so they don't gain anything from it, they won't make settlers there which might slow down your expansion, and you can already crush the 'superior' races through sheer quantity.

Where do you fit in Granary and Farmer's Market in your build order? Do you build Barracks before Fighter's Guild? Is Just Cause worth casting?

[Nelphine]

Just Cause super super important, especially when you have an actual second city. I always do barracks first, but not totally sure I should. My first city doesn't bother with granary and farmers market until i have other cities going.

[Seravy]

The racial population growth, granary and farmer's market are supposed to be the parts of growth unrelated to terrain. An average race gets +60 racial and another +75 from those buildings for a total of +130. That's more than the +120 from a pop 25 spot, so terrain supplies only half the growth or less. The advantage of good terrain is that you can get away with building the granary and fm later.

. you have systems already in place to balance the power of neutrals,

Not sure what you mean by this. Having extra cities allows building settlers and military - with even more neutral cities, economy as well at the same time. It's way more advantage than something like a gold ore even if looking at the raw numbers (8 gold -> 4 production vs 12-30 production) and the military consequences are even greater (if you find an early gnoll or barbarian city, you have access to amazing units without the disadvantage of having to play that race)

[Nelphine]

What i mean is that almost all my extreme/impossible wins have been without conquering a single neutral, over a variety of starting positions. Therefore, neutrals can't make that much difference, IF you plan to not use them.

[Seravy]

Therefore, neutrals can't make that much difference, IF you plan to not use them.

I don't follow this logic. Neutrals are not making a difference if you don't conquer them? Well sure...but most players will. If you mean to prepare for being able to take them early, I always have some sort of a "plan" to do that because it's easy and the reward is ultra high. Wraith Form, Sprites, Fire Elemental, Nagas, Spearmen+direct damage, etc. Life is probably the only realm that is somewhat unreliable, but in most cases a single unit with holy armor and endurance will do it. Death and Chaos can easily take neutrals on the other half of the map using a single magic spirit.

Yes, winning is possible without them - but that is completely unrelated. Having them makes winning easier a lot - except for maybe lizardmen who have an abundant source of people and military anyway. And the problem is not really "do I get a neutral or not", more like "do I get 5 neutral cities or none at all?". Finding 5 neutrals is effectively the same as starting with 5 settlers and 20-30 extra people in your capital.

[Nelphine]

Right, but my point is, you can plan to find 0 neutrals. You can maximize your growth based on the idea you will get no neutrals, and do it well enough that even if it turns out there are neutrals, its not a huge boost to get them. Or, you can choose to play a wizard that is much weaker without neutrals, but if there are neutrals, you'll be stronger than the one who plans for 0 neutrals.

The human makes that choice with his initial picks. Therefore, even if 5 neutrals is potentially far stronger than 1 neutral (for wizards that get that boost), its still a controlled choice like choosing rich minerals.

If its a controlled choice, I don't think its something you need to worry about.

[Seravy]

The human makes that choice with his initial picks. Therefore, even if 5 neutrals is potentially far stronger than 1 neutral (for wizards that get that boost), its still a controlled choice like choosing rich minerals.

If its a controlled choice, I don't think its something you need to worry about.

Aside from playing lizardmen I don't see any way to start a wizard that benefits significantly less from neutrals than others. I don't call "I'm not playing lizardmen" much of a choice unless you imply people play that race 50% of the time - in that case I probably need to look for my nerfhammer.
Yes, if playing barbarians or gnolls, getting a more advanced race is a larger benefit, and when playing a more advanced race, getting barbarians or gnolls is, but that's not a controlled choice and while it matters a lot, the quantity of the neutral cities matter more than the quality.
If you mean intentionally not picking any of the spells that help against neutrals, I don't think I ever did that. Most Chaos commons are unimportant so there is a room for picking Fire Elemental. Wraith Form is a top priority regardless because it allows going over water and can turn ships into amazing transports. Nagas when playing Sorcery it's the only summon I can get so ofc I'm going to pick it. Sprites is usually my first pick from Nature - it's mainly for nodes but they work on neutrals just as well. When playing Life, Holy Armor/Endurance are generic purpose spells I prefer to have if I can.

[Seravy]

Eh, the Myrran wizard is not loading its settlers into the floating islands for some reason, no wonder it's weak, stuck on the starting continent. The settlers did pull the floating islands there and seem to keep them in place properly to get loaded, but they don't move.

[Nelphine]

Inquisitor retort.

[Seravy]

Inquisitor retort.

That's not a choice a player makes for every game, and it goes way beyond the choice of "can I get neutrals". Besides, assuming about 10% of the games are played with Inquisitor, it still means 90% of the games are affected.
If this was an opt-in choice, like "if I pick X then I can get neutrals but usually I don't" then I can justify it being a player choice. If the default is to profit from neutrals, with an opt-out pick that has major other consequences, that's not a player choice. Ultimately we don't play with a non-Inquisitor wizard because we want neutral cities, we play it because we don't want to play Inquisitor.

Edit:
...ehh, I found the problem with settlers, omg. There are two copies of the "Is this a shore" function. I knew this but hey, it's not the first time I find duplicates so who cares. Except...the two are different. One of them doesn't recognize a whole bunch of tiles as shores, and this one is called by settler boarding - the other, normal one is used when the settler decides where to go to board the ship - as well as every other part of the game. The settlers being stuck were next to a quite unusual shore tile, with land around it from 3 direction, which explains why this wasn't found earlier.