Mana Focusing was awesome early on, and it will be again soon as I'm about to deplete my treasure mana.
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Test games played
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Game is now over - without Great Lizard I have no way to fight against wizards who use Lightning Bolt 3-4 times per battle (which got upgraded to Warp Lightning soon after).
The sprites didn't get a chance to do anything on Myrror, Fire Storm killed the entire stack. The game is being uploaded right now : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJZoCBZ...e=youtu.be I'll try again, this time with Astrologer instead of Conjurer. (I'm not sure the current AI can even be beaten on impossible to be honest - maybe I should do extreme instead?) 
I'm quite confident I'll win my current game (without heroes), and I'm certain Impossible is still beatable. I suggest trying again with Nature only, this is the setup I'll try next:
1 Conjurer 1 Specialist 2 Astrologer 1 Mana Focusing 1 Archmage 6 Nature (Sprites / War Bears / Nature's Eye / Web / Call Centaurs) Strategy: 1) With mana at 100%, spam sprites constantly for exploration 2) Scout extensively, locate easy targets 3) Explore all targets reported to be safe, send magic spirits in instead if they're close by 4) Make a conquest plan to take out as many targets as possible in the shortest amount of time 5) Give expansion top priority, you'll be able to defend your cities 6) Target enemy settlers with war bears, only incurs a small diplomatic penalty 7) Settle attractive sites closer to your enemies first, backfill less attractive sites in your backyard later 8) Rush settlers in size 2 cities, rush sawmills in other cities 9) Focus on casting skill as soon as you get your first mana treasure, it's easy to fund all your casting with mana treasures 10) Get more nice summons and smack the enemy around (giant spiders and giant lizards are excellent additions, sprites work well to take cities from a banished wizard and war bears are good cannon fodder) Quote:6) Target enemy settlers with war bears, only incurs a small diplomatic penalty I'm pretty sure settlers are worth like -20 each. Bug? Isn't it better to steal the city after it grows to a hamlet? I'll give it a go with all Nature then. I did try that once before with Conjurer Specialist (about 3 months ago) but failed - Myrran wizard had Suppress Magic early.
They did get pissed off, so yeah it probably did give a higher than normal penalty. But that's still preferrable over having to go to war once they've settled in. I was able to kill 3-4 settlers this way before they declared war, giving me extra time to prepare. I think the system is balanced enough, but going for settlers first is definitely the way to go unless you're ready for war. And delaying war is almost always a good idea, unless you can strike his fortress.
How early is early for you? (March 5th, 2017, 12:13)Catwalk Wrote: They did get pissed off, so yeah it probably did give a higher than normal penalty. But that's still preferrable over having to go to war once they've settled in. I was able to kill 3-4 settlers this way before they declared war, giving me extra time to prepare. I think the system is balanced enough, but going for settlers first is definitely the way to go unless you're ready for war. And delaying war is almost always a good idea, unless you can strike his fortress. If you mean that Suppress Magic, it came around, idk, 1406 maybe? I agree that avoiding war is preferable if it's an option, but if I aim for that, I prefer not to attack at all. Attacking enables hostility which puts me into nearly the same position as a war at least until it gets rerolled.
First test game starting in the new experimental system.
"random game on hard" - gave me 3 Chaos and 1 Life book, and 6 retorts. heh, below 2% chance for 6 retorts and I got it. Warlord, Archmage, Sage Master, Tactician, Runemaster and Astrologer. Nomads for race. I start on a small island. I consider quitting for a moment (crappy wizard with a bad location, ewww) but find land nearby using a magic spirit so I start building settlers. I build 3 cities on that continent and take a small neutral city (also nomads). There is a mono-life wizard on the same continent, and they are way behind. I checked later and at least one of their settlers must have vanished, but probably even two. I suspect the neutrals destroyed them - there was another, larger neutral with elves close to their capital. Life wizards are really weak to that as they have no summons or early units to do anything against raiders. I hired three heroes - Thief, Druid, Beastmaster. I didn't get Heroism, so buffed them with Holy Armor and Endurance. I was able to get some mana and gold out of a few weak lairs - another thing Life AI has no chance to do in the early game. I have to say, early heroes are unstoppable and it isn't due to heroism at all. Their decent starting armor, boosted by another 4 (2 from tactician, 2 from holy armor) and +2 To Defend (endurance and lucky) is enough to be invincible to any common unit. I effortlessly stole the cities the Life wizards built - all 2 of them - and the big neutral as well. I didn't go for their capital - even though they had no Guardian, the heroes inside were most likely as good as my own, and the buffed halfling swordsmen are no joke. I was barely able to kill 3 of them using 6 horsebowmen - and they didn't have all the buffs, only 1 each. I discovered a Chaos wizard on a nearby continent. They were even weaker - even though they didn't have neutral problems. Hard AI is just that slow - they managed to fill their continent with 4 cities, but they only finished their fighter's guild when I unloaded my army there. Even halberdiers wouldn't have been enough to stop my heroes, but since there wasn't any, it was even easier. Having no really useful research options, I got Fire Storm and used it on their capital. It wasn't particularly needed as the units inside didn't do anything to my hero anyway, the only unit inside that could have been a threat was their Monk hero - with Super agility it had as much shields as my hero - but lacking the +2 To Defend it was no match for my Thief anyway. This wizard is eliminated now, and I control all 4 of their cities. Being all Chaos, this could have been a threat to heroes (I don't even have Healing!) but they started with Archmage, leaving them with no mana crystals to spend in combat at all. All their mana went into making Hell Hounds instead as they had more skill than income. I feel like I'm playing on Normal, not Hard, although admittedly, Hard is not much of a challenge most of the time and I got Tactician with Warlord which is far too good for it. Early heroes are clearly powerful, but Heroism doesn't seem to be related (aside from the ritual abilities) - Holy Armor, Tactician, and Endurace all do the same thing. I was also lucky - I got great heroes for the early game (two of them with Lucky!) and two enemy wizards with no spells to damage heroes in combat. The Thief hero is particularly unstoppable in the early game - with Charmed and Lucky, it's invincible to all but Illusion damage. I'd say early heroes (with any buffs) are too powerful for the Hard difficulty, about right for Extreme and idk about Impossible. The Thief might be more fair as a 5 Fame hero though. Not sure if there is much of a point continuing this game but I guess I should...maybe the remaining two wizards got a better start than the first two. (March 20th, 2017, 21:14)Nelphine Wrote: Agreed on the heroes are op in combat and don't need heroism for it. I'm a little surprised about how slow hard AI is. I winder how rough the sawmill and swordsmen is on their economy? Not at all, but they most likely lost advantage through the free sawmill feature despite the higher starting gold (which is not even that much higher on Hard). Not only did they lose the free turns they had by building it faster, but also lost the advantage of having something they can buy for gold as their first production, which further improved this advantage. Also, as I don't need to buy sawmill for gold, I can afford hiring a hero earlier than usual.
First game is done. Won easily - not surprising on Hard with a strong early game.
The Myrran wizard had Pestilence - I suspect from a tower - if I this was a higher difficulty game I might have lost to that by itself, but they had no chance to stop my Efreets using their uncommon spells, and had far too few cities to matter. Game ended extra early, in 1413. Here is the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4mrpXm...e=youtu.be I moved the hero related posts to a new thread, they deserve one : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8723 |