Nomads + Life, non-Artificer hero strategy

[Seravy]

I think the Hisou sword has Crack's Call x4 in it so more of that coming.
Those are not items I expect to see in 1409, Impossible difficulty sure lives up to its name.
It could be worse though, fortunately there are no fantastic units to benefit from the Soul Linker +2. Supply Commander paired with 3 Nightmares and 3 Magicians can turn out to be relevant instead.

[Catwalk]

Round 1:
1) Swordsman goes down without harming Mortu.
2) I almost take out the Witch, she survives with a few hearts. Annoying.
3) Rangers do 1 point of damage total to the beastmaster... He's going to be trouble!

Sssra round 2:
1) The Witch raises the Swordsman from the dead, he casts Prayer. The Beastmaster now has +3 to defend!
2) More Crack's Call, both of them fail.
3) Ranged damage focused on Malleus, he has 15 out of 22 hearts left and can now be taken out with Crack's Call.

Catwalk round 2:
1) Valana casts Dispel Magic on the Beastmaster, Holy Weapon is cancelled. Not what I wanted, but may come in handy if I need to melee him.
2) Rangers and horsebowmen take out the nightmares.
3) Mortu enters the fortress, he'll be chewing up the magicians.
4) Witch goes down and Jaer casts Dispel Magic on the Beastmaster. Holy Armour is cancelled. Also not what I wanted, but it will help.

Sssra round 3:
1) Sssra raises the Witch from the dead right next to Mortu.
2) More ranged damage on Malleus, now down to 9 hearts.

Catwalk round 3:
1) 2 Magicians left inside the fortress, Beastmaster still alive.
2) Lots of Dispel Magic on the Beastmaster, Endurance is the only damn spell left on him now! Saving my arrows on the rangers, they do no damage to him.

Sssra round 4:
1) Resist Elements and Heroism cast on the Beastmaster.

Catwalk round 5:
1) Only Beastmaster left alive now, still can't dispel Endurance.
2) Crack's Call hits Mortu, he's down to 9 hearts. Unfortunate, as he may hold the key to taking out the Beastmaster.

Sssra round 6:
1) His casting skill is gone, and the Beastmaster (foolishly?) keeps using his bow rather than his amazing sword or its ability to cast Crack's Call.

Catwalk round 6:
1) Endurance is cancelled! My mage heroes and the ranger can now damage him, and he's quickly lowered to 6 hearts.
2) Mortu goes in for the kill!

[Catwalk]

June 1410

I'm declaring this game a victory, nothing left but mopping the floor now. Sssra buckled with a whimper and a hiss, I barely lost any troops against him. I took half his cities in the first two turns after taking his fortress, and I just banished him a second time. Merlin and Rjak are also sitting ducks, but it'll take a bit longer to get troops in position to take them out.

This game was a lot of fun, and I'm going to try to analyze whether I was just lucky or if my strategy is overpowered. This is a rough account of how it went:

1) I was planning on making an early expansion and then making a beeline for rangers so my impressive hero army could move fast. Instead, Oberic settled two klackon outposts near my capital so I switched plans and just cranked out horsebowmen instead. This turned out to be the right call, even if he hadn't settled up on me. Two heroes + 6 horsebowmen were able to take out his capital on turn 38, and then I was able to take out the rest of him in short order. This provided a huge boost to my early economy, which was actually under significant pressure. Oberic casting early Corruption on my capital and my gems was the biggest challenge I faced in this game.

2) Jaer + Brax + Valana proved to be an adequate group of heroes, supplemented by excellent horsebowmen. I guess I did get a little lucky with those heroes (I didn't think so at the time), but there are so many other heroes that would also have been great. It was easy to take out Merlin as well (even though he had Adamantium units), and from that point on I had access to horsebowmen and rangers with adamantium weapons (Merlin had adamantium because of Change Terrain). I did get lucky by finding an early plate mail with +8 defense and Invulnerability, I think Oberic crafted it. Maybe the AI shouldn't be so keen on creating powerful items? This was a huge reward for me.

3) Rjak was also easy, but when I was about to deliver the killing blow Sssra busted a tower and sent a powerful stack to my main continent. I had to let Rjak live and focus on Sssra sooner than expected. He had already been banished once and his major cities were down, so I was not concerned about that. Merlin also got to survive on a separate continent, no threat there either.

4) Sssra had a large empire that was quite intimidating, but considering that he had the playing field all to himself I'm actually not all that impressed with his expansion. I'm guessing he spent far too many resources building useless military units. How does he determine how many units he needs? Was he unable to figure out that he was facing zero threats for most of the game? Why didn't he give higher priority to expanding? Even so, his units were duds by the time I got to him. War Trolls, Hammerhands, Steam Cannons, War Mammoths and Golems crumbled before my mighty horsebowmen. 45 hammers! I think Horsebowmen are crazy broken, I'm going to try nomads out again to see if I can repeat my results.

5) I spent very little time this game taking out monster lairs. If they happened to be on my way to the enemy and matched my army I'd do a few, but I mostly passed them by. I think this was the right call, if you have an army that's strong enough to take out an enemy capital. If there's a window of opportunity to bust a wizard, go for it. And fortress combat is still pretty easy. This is not a CoM fault (it's a little harder due to better garrisons and the random lightning) but I feel that far more has to be done to remove this as a no-brainer strategy. You're almost always better off making a focused strike on the enemy's fortress and then picking off his possessions afterwards. The AI is at his most dangerous when he's able to cast combat spells. Yet you're able to nullify that power 100%! Lightning does help a little bit, but it only really prevents me from doing turn 25 retreats. That helps remove a few broken strategies that let you whittle down his forces, but it does little to nothng when you have a powerful army. Fortress combat should feel epic, and you should overpower the enemy's forces massively if you want any chance of coming out on top. My battle with Sssra was actually a lot of fun and did pose a small challenge, not so much because of his garrison units (troll magicians are great against ranged units, admittedly) but because he had a hero with massive defensive bonuses. How about removing Guardian as a retort and giving that bonus to all fortress defenders ? That also helps the human player survive, which is something we want.

6) All the magic I really needed this game was common Life spells. Everything else was Win-More effects, never critical to my strategy.

So, did I get lucky? A little. I didn't get nearly as many heroes as I was planning on nor as fast as I was expecting them (I haven't done the math, I think my dice rolls on hero chances were pretty bad) but the ones I got were just what I needed. Had I gotten other heroes I probably could have made those work too. Wind Walking was nice, but never crucial. With Endurance and horsebowmen as supplementary troops, my stack was usually able to move 3 times in a turn. That's plenty mobility to get where I need. Not needing ships was nice, but that's really more of a convenience factor than a really strategic limitation. By the time I needed to ship over to Merlin it was trivial to crank out two triremes and make a quick trip across the channel.

I think my easy win was mainly the result of a very strong setup: Life + Warlord + Tactician + Nomads. Horsebowmen are a steal at 45 hammers, and that's really all I need. I'm going to try this strategy again and see if I can replicate the results.

[Nelphine]

I'm going to try horsebowman as well. I generally dislike nomads, but based on my hero game, that sounds like the horsebowman were a huge factor.

Don't discount wind walking so much. The AI navy is extremely aggressive - and its very easy to lose your units while being transported. Similarly the holy bonus from the bard plus adamamtium makes a huge difference.

I'd love to know if oberic actually crafted that plate. That should be fairly expensive without artificer. More importantly, his hero should have been very hard to kill, even without other buffs.

Finally, recall what we just learned about AI settling. They literally don't know (until next patch) about terrain the human doesn't know about. Which means sssra was settling quite literally at random. Ais on the other plane currently have a huge disadvantage (which could also play into seravys dream of a late game boss, as well as why I've never experienced it.)

[Catwalk]

I'm going to try horsebowman as well. I generally dislike nomads, but based on my hero game, that sounds like the horsebowman were a huge factor.

8 ammo and speed 5 is huge. It's easily the best unit in the game for its price and requirements. And rangers are on steroids, giving amazing end game power. Nomads do suffer economically (no food), but these units are amazing.

Don't discount wind walking so much. The AI navy is extremely aggressive - and its very easy to lose your units while being transported. Similarly the holy bonus from the bard plus adamamtium makes a huge difference.

I want to try using ships next game, if only because I've never really used them in MoM. Looking forward to having my fleets sunk

I'd love to know if oberic actually crafted that plate. That should be fairly expensive without artificer. More importantly, his hero should have been very hard to kill, even without other buffs.

I can check and see later, I'm not 100% sure if it was maybe from a lair instead. I don't recall fighting a hero early on with a plate of invulnerability, that would indeed have been hard to fight.

Finally, recall what we just learned about AI settling. They literally don't know (until next patch) about terrain the human doesn't know about. Which means sssra was settling quite literally at random. Ais on the other plane currently have a huge disadvantage (which could also play into seravys dream of a late game boss, as well as why I've never experienced it.)

Good point, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how big an upheaval the new settler decisions will be.

[Seravy]

I did get lucky by finding an early plate mail with +8 defense and Invulnerability, I think Oberic crafted it. Maybe the AI shouldn't be so keen on creating powerful items? This was a huge reward for me.

The AI is literally unable to cast Enchant Item and Create Artifact before turn 150 or so - this item came from treasure and you're very lucky to find such an amazing armor, it's probably the second best in the game or at least it's in the top five.

Sssra had a large empire that was quite intimidating, but considering that he had the playing field all to himself I'm actually not all that impressed with his expansion. I'm guessing he spent far too many resources building useless military units. How does he determine how many units he needs? Was he unable to figure out that he was facing zero threats for most of the game? Why didn't he give higher priority to expanding?

The AI is limited to having 2 active settler at a time per continent, and 1 city building a new settler at a time. This is almost always adequate, but a huge map on Myrror takes time to fill and you used an extremely early strategy.
I don't know if he even had intercontinental settlers (life+chaos does not have water walking/wraith form/flight to use on settlers so only if he was playing draconians), if not, using ships to expand is a somewhat slower process, but looking at the map, 15 cities in ~100 turns is perfectly reasonable - don't forget that settlers move 1 tile a turn (or 2 on enchanted roads) and that continent is like 40 tiles wide.

I think Horsebowmen are crazy broken, I'm going to try nomads out again to see if I can repeat my results.

They might be, they're on my "watch list" still.

You're almost always better off making a focused strike on the enemy's fortress and then picking off his possessions afterwards.

I have suffered severe losses doing that many times, the fortress garrison is often way stronger than it looks like due to heroes. It's still a good tactic if you win, but the risk involved is a lot higher than before.
Also, if it wasn't done in the early game, the AI casts Spell of Return in 3-4 turns and gets back to action - unless you were able to prepare a dozen 9 stacks to attack all their cities, it's not all that much time.

Good point, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how big an upheaval the new settler decisions will be.

I'm planning to upload the new version later today (~12 hours from now) after having a friend play a test game. You might want to start the new game after that.
I will probably postpone any decisions on changes for unrest/stream of life/great wasting because this update is too important to delay.

[Nelphine]

Can we change the number of settlers based on how many wizards the AI has met? Specifically: he can have 6 active settlers at a time, -1/enemy wizard they have met?

Then, he can build settlers in 3 cities -1/2 wizards he has met?

That would let AI do more expansion especially if alone on myrror with a huge map. Or even if 2 are on arcanus.

Or is settler priority too high and that would result in nothing else happening?

(As an aside, since so have tons of mana, they might want to prioritize endurance on settlers similar to the intercontinental spells. Its not as good, but its all life gets.)

[Seravy]

Can we change the number of settlers based on how many wizards the AI has met? Specifically: he can have 6 active settlers at a time, -1/enemy wizard they have met?

Yes we can, but honestly I think more than 2 per continent at a time is overkill except in very specific cases.
The current logic is :
2/continent
4/plane
but 1/continent and 3/plane if Tiny land
and only produce it with the best race on the plane.

Maybe we could do "if turn<150 and Myrran and no one else is Myrran then +1 settler/continent for large, +2 for huge"?

...actually no, as you say, settler priority is high so it would mean the wizard doesn't get to build anything else in their capital for a long time - although they get to build stuff in the new cities when they are ready, but not sure if that's fast enough. Expansion is good but having no military to protect it is not.

[Catwalk]

I'd say rapid expansion will work well for the AI, at least on Impossible. Maybe scale it to the difficulty level as well? With the bonuses at higher levels, they can definitely provide units for new expansions. And if an outpost is wiped out, it's no big loss. It prevents the human player from expanding until it's taken out, and nothing is gained by the enemy if an outpost is captured.

Can available land on own continent / other continents be a factor in decision making?

[Domon]

"Maybe we could do "if turn<150 and Myrran and no one else is Myrran then +1 settler/continent for large, +2 for huge"?"

maybe just for myrran, +1/2 settlers for the myrran plane? this could work on tiny, too.
but i fear what an impossible AI with lizardmen could accomplish