Nomads + Life, non-Artificer hero strategy

[Nelphine]

I'd also highly suggest looking at difficulty resource bonuses. While this should reduce early wars, it should be a huge boost to AI expansion and resource development through strong cities.

[Catwalk]

April 1408 (yes, huge jump)

I have conquered most of Arcanus by now. Oberic has been defeated, Merlin is banished and mostly gone and Rjak has just been banished for the first time. Several things played out differently from how I planned it:
1) Rangers played no part in my strategy. In part this is because I got Jaer and didn't have to focus on rangers, my stack had excellent mobility on its own.
2) Horsebowmen turned out to be powerhouses, I've been using those extensively.
3) I have had minimal luck with heroes, for the longest time I only had the wind mage (wind walking), the bard (holy bonus and leadership) and the dwarf (armsmaster). All 3 are useful so I decided to keep them and they work for me. But I'm underwhelmed and a little disappointed. I just recently got the black knight, he's a power house which can form a solo stack. I've found a plate of invulnerability and a ring of pathfinding + water walking, so he does just fine on his own.
4) Rangers will end up important after all, as I lucked into two fully developed nomad cities with Adamantium that Merlin made for me. They will be used to stage my assault against Sssra.

Lessons learned:
a. My setup was strong, but go for Mana Focusing instead of Sage Master. I need early advantages, and sage master didn't do that.
b. It's highly feasible to rush enemy capitals with 2 heroes buffed with Holy Armour + Endurance + Heroism.
c. It's crucial to have support stacks ready once a capital goes down, that way I can grow my economy massively.
d. I need to plan out my targets with a longer perspective, I've found myself going back and forth several times and losing valuable time when I had a stack that was capable of taking out capitals.
e. Keep focusing on exploration after I know what's nearby, I need to know the location of all enemy wizards so I can make a conquest plan.
f. Don't ignore expansion, I got caught up with battles and lost interest in building settlers. My economy could have been much bigger, and I never managed to break the barrier to where I can just point at things I like.
g. Inquisitor is definitely not recommended, it's feasible to capture stuff early on and it's feasible to hang on to AI conquests.
h. Nomad worked out well for me, but they don't give me the early speed I need. Horsebowmen worked out well, but only because I lucked into the wind mage. Without him, my movement would have been too slow. Gnolls and barbarians both offer a cheap pathfinding unit with 3 moves early on. Rangers come too late to plan early conquest around them. So for my next game I'll be deciding between gnolls and barbarians.
i. Remember to plan lair conquest as well, and don't forget to send spearmen to investigate. I've passed on a lot of rewards in this game. Also remember to plan to take enemy nodes, they're often pretty easy.

[Nelphine]

Welp, that's certainly better than my solo hero takes all strategy.

[Domon]

what involved fixing the bug, if normal people can understand it?

[Seravy]

what involved fixing the bug, if normal people can understand it?

The call to the "get surveyor data" procedure now has "0" as the first parameter if a scouting check is needed, and 1 if it needs to be skipped and works accordingly. Originally, the first parameter was a pointer for returning how many scouted tiles are in the area. This data was left unused after all calls to the procedure so it was completely unnecessary.
So calls the AI makes now set this parameter to 1 while the F1 screen sets it to 0.

[Catwalk]

November 1408

This game just got a lot more complicated. I've banished Merlin again and stolen more sweet Life spells, Rjak has also been banished a second time. He only yielded Disenchant Area, so he should be taken out expediently. Problem is, I'm running out of time:

Sssra broke through a tower leading to my central continent and put this stack where the cursor is at on the overland shot. This stack spells big trouble if I don't take it out fast, I can't stack enough troops in all my cities to defend against it. What's worse, my heroes are scattered here and there as shown on the overland map of Arcanus. My 3 main heroes (Brax, Jaer and Valana) are down by purple Rjak mopping him up. Mortu is in the yellow city to the right where he just single-handledly banished Merlin again. Malleus (just got him) is near my capital top right. I was hoping to finish off Rjak and Merlin so I wouldn't have an extra flank on Arcanus when taking on Sssra. Due to time pressure that's no longer realistic. I hope to take out both of them with normal troops while my heroes rush to defend against the myrran invasion. Sssra is still neutral with me, but I have little reason to expect that to last much longer.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a devious plan of my own to take the battle to my enemy. I have Astral Gate, and I can use that to open a portal that leads straight from my nomad power house island straight to Sssra's fortress (see where the cursor is on the myrran overland shot). The two nomad cities to the right on the above screenshot both have adamantium and the middle one has mithril. The top right one is producing rangers (shock troops), the others are producing horsebowmen (much more cost efficient, excellent garrison troops). I'm bringing Mortu back to this island pronto, where he's first going to help me take out Merlin's last city here (guarded by 4 magicians and various riff raff, too tough for ranged units to take on their own without more casualties than I can afford) and then help stage the raid on Sssra's fortress. I managed to find another armour with invulnerability, so both Brax and Mortu have it now.

So, plan as follows:
1) Jaer, Brax and Valana return to my main continent (joined shortly by Malleus) and hunt down Sssra's stack of doom pronto. Then help seal off that tower so I don't see a constant influx of invasion troops.
2) Keep building elite orc units and using them to take out what remains of Rjak. He also has several juicy nodes that I need to add to my empire.
3) Mortu returns to the nomad island and takes out the last red city there, then gets ready to break through to Myrror in short order. He's much needed as Sssra is heavily on troll magicians. He'll be bringing a large contingent of horsebowmen and rangers with him, but if possible I want those to be for myrran garrison duty only. Sssra's cities are excellent and I need a good handful of them if I am to survive against his impressive armies and spellcasting skills:

[Catwalk]

March 1409

The war with Sssra is brewing, spurred by an opportunistic strike by me against part of his doom stack. He chose to take out a node first and then leave 3 of his units as garrison. I sniped those easily, and was able to find out that he favours casting Cracks Call against my heroes. This doesn't worry me, I have Raise Dead and can exchange that back and forth with him. Even so, it is a potent spell and he has far more casting skill than I do. Next up, my reinforcements have arrived and I'm taking on the remainder of his doom stack:

I won this easily without casualties. His units are strong, but I didn't pose any real danger to my two melee units. Malleus cast Flame Strike on turn 1 (did very little) followed by Prayer from Jaer and Lion Heart on my horsebowmen from Valana. Then carnage ensued. He cast Prayer and tried to cast Crack's Call, little did it help him. I'm confident I'll be able to take him on shortly.

[Seravy]

I sniped those easily, and was able to find out that he favours casting Cracks Call against my heroes. This doesn't worry me, I have Raise Dead and can exchange that back and forth with him.

I would be worried - Crack's Call does irrecoverable damage and always has been doing that - the only mod change is the amount of damage, instead of 200, it's only doing 21 damage to single figure units so a very high level hero might survive one shot.

[Catwalk]

Damn, that stinks. I'm happy to see that it costs 25 mana, otherwise all his magicians would be able to cast it! I'll just have to suffer through it and make sure to bring enough heroes for the fortress assault.

[Catwalk]

Assault on Sssra's fortress!

Here's my stack on Arcanus and on Myrror, this city has an Astral Gate which lets me sneak right into Sssra's backyard. I have 4 stacks of 9 units (horsebowmen, rangers and magicians) standing by to beat up on Sssra as soon as his capital falls. 2 of the rangers in my main stack have Lionheart for a massive 14 ranged attack. I almost brought 3 magicians, but realized they'd fall like flies on the first round of combat. Decided to bring the elite ranger and the two elite horsebowmen instead, I may need their speed 5 melee attacks.

Here's Sssra's garrison and results after his first round of combat. He has cast Crack's Call twice on Mortu with no success, and their magic ranged unit shot at my ranger unit killing two figures as shown.

Enemy heroes. All their items are awesome, the witch and the beastmaster have invulnerability. It's easily game over if I win this battle, and I think it looks very promising.

Battle plan:
0) I cast Prayer, Valana casts Healing on my rangers.
1) Take out the witch with Jaer and Malleus, she should succumb easily to their magic attacks and she has 90 spell points waiting to hurt me. She launched a useless ranged attack on round 1, luckily.
2) Have Mortu go head to head with his swordsman hero. Mortu outclasses him massively, no worries.
3) All ranged units go after his beastmaster hero. This is the tough one, 16 shields with +2 to defend. And with 29 swords at +2 to hit I'm not confident Mortu can survive him in melee. This is where my ranged units come in handy, I hope they'll be able to lower him enough for Mortu to take him out with first strike in round 2.