My sprite strategy

[Nelphine]

My current game:

Extreme, late 1409.

I am nomads (probably should have done halflings, nomad cities just grow so damn slowly); I have 2 gnoll cities and 2 high men cities, and there's a barbarian city I'm hoping to nab. Total I have 16 cities (though that will go up to about 21 cities, maybe as high as 26, before I run out of space). I have 8 nodes (I've been trading one of them back and forth with Oberic, and I had a 9th) and there are 3 unconquered nodes still, far away from me in Oberic's empire. I have ~125 casting skill. None of my cities are remotely fully developed. I don't have any amp towers, no armorer's guilds, and only one wizard guild.

The weakest AI, Oberic, (who is stronger than me on history graphs but whatever) has 11 cities (high men, he might have some other races); he's not at war with me, but he's maniacal, so he's attacking me almost every turn (he's never won a battle, but he's stolen a couple of nodes by killing everything I had guarding it, and he's wiped out garrisons in a few cities) and raising volcano's on all of my minerals (I don't have anything good so I don't really care). He has 3 nodes (one is mine damnit!)

His military is about thrice mine, his power production is about 75% of mine, and his spell power is ~110.

I could crush Oberic, except he's allied with:

The strongest AI, Sss'ra (Myrran).

Sss'ra has 4 (beastmen) cities on Arcanus; his power production is a tiny bit higher than mine, his spell power is ~120. His army strength is about.. 15 times mine. He's lawful. I can't realistically fight him at all. I doubt I could even hold any towers against him (he doesn't have astral gate!) and he's got 3 or 4 of them controlled anyway. He has 2 Arcanus nodes.

The third AI, Freya, has 11 or 12 cities (halflings, possibly something else). She has a tiny bit less power production than I do, and a spell power ~140. Her army is about 6-8 times mine. Her territory and mine are rather intertwined. If I go to war with her, I'll probably lose 6 cities in the first 6 turns, and lose at least 4 nodes. I can't realistically fight her, but she's peaceful and at war with Sss'ra, so she isn't a huge factor. She has 2 nodes.

There is no 4th Arcanus wizard. I managed to get a double Myrror AI game without picking Myrran, so since I have no ability to go to Myrror, I haven't met them.

The only summoning spells I have are sprites, arcanes, angel, and gorgons. I managed to miss every uncommon summon, and didn't get any very rare summons. My gorgons (especially with an angel) are extremely powerful, but I don't have land linking or survival instinct (both Oberic and Freya do). I also missed Iron Skin and every city enchantment aside from Heavenly Light and Astral Gate (because I SO want to go to Myrror and meet someone ELSE who will just want to kill me). But they're waaaay too expensive. I can't get nearly enough of them to remotely defend my empire (which covers about half of Arcanus).

The only heroes I have are Valana and B'shan, and I don't have many items (Sss'ra has been clearing all the lairs and towers, and I've only been taking weaker nodes - I need to get the top nodes on both planes to see if I can get some good items). They really aren't strong enough to do much.

I'm basically.. holding my own, until Oberic decides he actually wants to fight, at which point Sss'ra will join in, and I'll get slaughtered.

[Catwalk]

I'm going to surprise everyone (including myself) and withdraw my insistence that Sprites be nerfed. I don't have the time to prove it conclusively (I think I already have and Seravy admitted that he's in love with Sprites), and I just realized that there's a much easier way to balance them: Boost Sorcery defenders. Sorcery nodes are really what make the Sprite strategy tick. Taking out other targets is also great, but the early influx of power from easy nodes gives you a rocket boost. They're also weak against other units, but you need a little more time to fetch these. This is a peace offering Seravy, I hope you will give it due consideration

I propose the following boosts:

Phantom Warriors: Large Shield
Phantom Beast: 4 moves and a weak gaze attack to let them attack fliers (I suggest Doom 1, or maybe you can invent a Sorcery themed gaze attack if you prefer not borrowing from other realms?)
Nagas: 3 moves and a small Thrown attack to let them attack fliers (also fits flavour-wise, tridents are commonly accepted as thrown weapons in addition to being melee weapons)

This has the added benefit of making these creatures more useful in general, both for node defenses and in the hands of the AI. It is far easier for the human player to use phantom warriors than it is for the AI player. Phantom Beasts also suffer from being an incredibly boring upgrade of Phantom Warriors. They're basically the same thing, with Phantom Beasts being a tiny bit better against low offense targets. This way they would feel more distinctively different.

The second problem is that you can take neutral cities way too easily and way too fast with Sprites. The easy fix to this is to increase the starting size of neutral cities. This would also make the game more fun in general IMO, taking neutral cities should feel like accomplishments rather than just walking one or two units and telling them to surrender. Most neutral cities are fully capable of defending themselves against sprites once they have a few ranged units, and most races have capable ranged units. The only exceptions are gnolls and klackons. If you bring back gnoll bowmen you've solved one problem, and maybe Klackons can have Catapults instead of Halflings? It's a strange unit for Halflings to have, and Halflings are already one of the top tier races with their own amazing unique ranged unit.

So:
1) Faster Phantom Beasts which can target air with a gaze (or maybe Lightning Breath?)
2) Faster Nagasa which target air with Thrown (rebalance unit stats as needed, I personally think they were way overdue for an upgrade already)
3) Large Shield or Resist Elements for Phantom Warriors
4) Much larger neutral cities (I suggest minimum size 6)
5) Catapults for Klackons
6) Bowmen for Gnolls

With these changes in place, Sprites no longer need nerfing. They're still an excellent early game unit which can let you gain considerably advantages, but they will no longer be game breaking. Problem solved.

[Nelphine]

I don't know if I agree with the phantom warriors - I think its fine if they suck. I don't see sub pop 6 neutrals often, so i wouldn't mind losing them, but i also dont think its required since i dont see them often. But I agree with everything else on the list (naga spit poison, phamtom beast need something to make them different to warriors, klackon catapult makes perfect sense for the production race, gnoll bowmen I've advocated for already. Halflings could certainly lose catapult and stay in flavor.)

[Catwalk]

Forgot one important change. Nature nodes are also way too easy because of Earth Elementals, Great Wyrms and War Bears (to a lesser extent Cockatrices). There's way too much here that can easily be taken out with Sprites. Suggestions:
7) 11 shields for Great Wyrm (up from 8 currently). It is strange that very rare wyrms should have such weak defenses. If this makes them overpowered, lower their melee to 25 or increase their cost.
8) Elemental Armour for Earth Elementls (also fits well flavour-wise).
9) Increase Cockatrices to 5 shields, increase casting cost slightly if needed.
10) War Bears are fine as is if the above 3 are fixed, they're great units already.

[Catwalk]

I don't know if I agree with the phantom warriors - I think its fine if they suck. I don't see sub pop 6 neutrals often, so i wouldn't mind losing them, but i also dont think its required since i dont see them often. But I agree with everything else on the list (naga spit poison, phamtom beast need something to make them different to warriors, klackon catapult makes perfect sense for the production race, gnoll bowmen I've advocated for already. Halflings could certainly lose catapult and stay in flavor.)

Note that neutrals should be larger in general. I'm always excited to see big neutral cities in my games, it gives me a feeling of achievement when I can take them out.

Why should Phantom Warriors keep sucking? Is it fun to have useless node defenders? With the above suggestion they're really not that much better, they're still pin cushions.

[Nelphine]

Phantom warriors is primarily because common spells are generally extremely well balanced anyway, especially combat ones. I'd much rather not change them if possible, and if the other sorcery units change that should fix enough if the sorcery nodes to remove the problem.

[Seravy]

No, unless you prove Sprites need any sort of action directly or indirectly, I'm not going to do anything because I have already proven they don't need any. (if you aren't going to play, you can watch my recorded games if you want)

Your suggestions contain a whole lot of things I disagree with :
-Stronger early game for Sorcery wizards
-Larger neutral cities when we just recently lowered their size exactly for this same reason (a large neutral city is too much early benefit - smaller cities also have better defenses so they should have a ranged unit unless they are like, size 1 or 2.)
-Ranged units for races that aren't supposed to get them
-New units that cannot be added without removing existing units
-Enabling advanced production increasing buildings for klackons (Catapults require Mechanician's guilds!)
-Taking out the last type of lair/node the player can reasonably fight in the first 50-75 turns of the game - we have increased Sorcery targets not that long ago exactly because there weren't enough acceptable targets in the early game, making scouting unfun.

...oh there is more, let's see.
7. The other two very rare summons in Nature have high armor. Wyrms have low armor because they are the "high damage, fast movement" unit.
8. Elemental Armor is not a unit ability, it's a spell. It would be strange to have spells on units without anyone casting them.

If you have problem with node defenders, suggest something that addresses it without changing the creatures themselves please. New lair budget values for the units, or additional restrictions on where/how they are placed should be the way to solve lair issues. Maybe extra effects for the "Node aura" bonus though that won't help with lairs/keeps.

Phantom Warriors are fine as they are and the AI knows they need to summon next to your units. I believe they also know not to use these against ranged armies but if not, I can teach them that.
Phantom Beasts, I think it's true they are too much like warriors. There are differences of course (beast is stronger against single figure or illusion immune targets because it has more hit points and swords) but overall it's similar. However the suggestion would make them into another air elemental - a fast unit that hits fliers and ignores armor. Except with double hp, less armor and no invisibility so their overall durability would be the same.
Nagas with thrown would deal double poison damage. (the unit is attacking twice)
Earth Elementals are definitely too easy to kill due to their slow speed - but again, buffing them would make the spell overpowered (it already is above average, it's a combat summon with 30 hp and 25 swords!)

[jhsidi]

Earth elementals are an odd one. What use do you guys find for these as an actual summon?

Nature is my favorite school (alongside Sorcery) but I rarely find cases for earth elementals. They just seem to have too many demerits: in head to head group combat, they can't reach anything in time to be useful. As a solo defender, they get shredded by way too much stuff. Anything with ranged combat is instant checkmate, anything with high melee (e.g. berserkers) eats them for breakfast. I do wonder, why would an elemental made of dirt and rocks have extremely high offense and low defense? (Also the characteristic that makes them pushovers for the lowly sprite.) The slow speed is thematic but makes this elemental a non-event as literally everything in the game except zombies can run away or around it, leaving the elemental scratching its rocky butt as my hero or ranged unit gets thrashed.

Versus something the air elemental: legitimately scary when I see an enemy wizard cast this, I know one of my units is going to get torn up. It has a ton of utility uses as well (guarding city gates, destroying ranged defenders, destroying buildings in cities I can't conquer by resting in the back row of the town while I run down the combat timer, sitting around while I cast...) No such utility use to EE, except at city gates.. which I also avoid, since once a single lightning bolt or similar goes off there's suddenly an enemy unit behind the gate.

But maybe I'm just failing to see the killer strategy for these guys!

[Nelphine]

I'd still like you to play several gnoll games. They really are exceptionally weak. Specifically play without a common summon that hits air. Similarly klackons have issues though I forgot that they don't have a mechanicians guild. I'd suggest playing several games with them with the same restriction on spells.

I'd still rather see phantom beast get a gaze attack. Sure they're more similar to air elementals, but I'd MUCH rather have them similar to a non common spell. EVERYONE gets common spells - any other rarity might never be seen in a given game, and the higher the rarity, the less likely it is to be seen by a given human player.

Nagas can just have their melee weakened to compensate and their poison reduced by 1. To avoid having sprites far stronger than other summons, in a niche fight that we specifically said we do want early (weak early nodes), I think this is a worthwhile change.

Can we put a restriction in saying no earth elementals with great wyrms in nodes? And/or not with war bears? That would reduce the worst offenders for sprite abuse.

[Seravy]

Well, the killer strategy is simple, summon it next to an enemy unit, and hit them for a ton of damage. It's strong enough to take out at least one, often 2 expensive normal units. It works best against single or low figure count units - armor is not very relevant against those.
Also works well against city defense as long as there aren't too many ranged units inside.

A few improvements that could make sense thematically :
-Weapon Immunity - a pile of dirt isn't heavily armored but hard to damage without magic just like a fire elemental.
-Fire Immunity
-Merging (this would be far too powerful and/or pointless if movement stays at 1)

Can we put a restriction in saying no earth elementals with great wyrms in nodes? And/or not with war bears? That would reduce the worst offenders for sprite abuse.

Whether I can do it or not we'll have to see (most likely yes but space might be a problem if we end up with too complicated rules) but this is the direction I prefer for sure.
This nerfs flying unit tactics in general though, it's not limited to sprites.
I'd still like to first see it proven there is a need for such changes, because I've already did my part of proving there is no need.

And while not directly related, keep in mind the AI similarly has an easy time against certain monsters in lairs - particularly Air Elementals and Demons for sure, maybe more due to those units having a very low strategic combat value. So we can't say only the human player has advantage - it's just different monsters for different players.

Specifically play without a common summon that hits air.

You're supposed to have spells that counter flying units if your race cannot, that's common sense. Aside from Life wizards, everyone can hit flying units with direct damage, grant flying, or summon flying or ranged units.
If you really want to go mono-Life with Gnolls, make sure you get cities from other races (you're supposed to do that with gnolls anyway to have better economy) and build your ranged units there.