Test games played

[Seravy]

So much for that - green declared war already. They must be pretty far from me on the map though - might be able to get away with no actual battles.
I trade Just Cause for Endurance with Flandre - I hate to boost the economy of the lizardmen death wizard but Endurance is a very important spell. I don't give her Heavenly Light for Holy Weapon though.
I could trade Endurance for Earth to Mud or Water Walking with the wizard I'm planning to attack, but neither seems to be worth it. My horsebowmen are fast enough to not need Earth to Mud to be effective and I already have ships. I could also get Bless but Endurance is far superior - this would be a very bad trade.
I attack the node. Turns out, Tenshi knows Web - just didn't offer it for trade! This costs me two Horsebowmen but I have the node! I will need to quickly ship more horsebowmen across to ensure I can protect both nodes.
Water Walking shows up on my research - too late for that. I pick Heroic Shout instead. Having researched Heroism, I proceed to cast it on my Amazon which is now guarding my second node alone.

A stack of 2 sprites 2 magic spirits and 1 war bears shows up belonging to the green player. Bad news, there is no way my hero can deal with that alone, especially not in a Nature Node Aura. I pull the 4 horsebowmen out of the first node to reinforce the second. They should be able to get there in time...wait, no they won't, the bear is water walking and there are river tiles in the way. I will have to pull out both armies and merge them outside, as I can't reach the node tile in time. If I'm lucky, the stack will still attack my units and I get to be the defender, if not they'll occupy the node tile.

Unexpected - a single spirit leaves the stack to meld the now empty node, while the remaining units are no longer in my range of vision. I attack the spirit with the merged stack. I kill the spirit and see the other one, also alone, most likely heading towards the other node. The 2 sprites and bear are still out of my range of vision.

   
Looks much better with the node on my side...

[Seravy]

It only takes one more turn and the red wizard melds my first node. The 2 sprites and bear also reappear. And I don't have any spirits nearby...it'll take at least 5 more turns to get the node back.

My reinforcements of 6 horsebowmen arrive, so I can place some on the - now red - node and use the rest to have a 9 stack of horsebomen+hero. It should be safe to attack the sprites now.

Meanwhile my own sprites made it back and will attack the cockatrice cave - I added a 7th sprite, 1 horsebowmen, and my dervish hero to make sure I have a full 9 ranged units. They should be able to hide behind the sprites in an unreachable corner if the bears end up too durable but I hope that won't be needed.
Lucky, there is only one cockatrice, but I use the corner tactic anyway. Don't want to risk my Noble hero.

   

I find a Trinket of Protection, 3 Def, 3 Res, nothing else. The Amazon is happy for the DEF boost but has no need for resistance, being charmed. The Devish won't need either, as I'm not planning to use her against wizards.
Many cockatrices and "few" chaos spawn are clearly too much for my stack without knowing web so I have no target again. The node with many sprites and few earth elementals is better be done using horsebowmen later - right now, the cost (probably at least 12 dead horsebowmen) would be too much. I don't have Resist Elemental on my research list.
My magic spirit passes by near my boat so I decide to let it board allowing me to get the node back 2 turns faster.

...forget the small stack that's probably on my node, my 9 stack is standing right next to Tenshi's largest noncapital city...and I can take it out with 8 horsebowmen for sure - there is only a single bowmen as ranged defender. I hope she won't kill my hero with fire bolts though. I do have endurance and heroism on her but no Healing...might be a better idea to leave the hero outside and only use the hosebowmen? The Amazon is a great hero and losing it would be stupid - I don't know if I'll get resurrection or not yet. My trading chances are poor, no one has 2 or more Life books.

Spell Lock is on my research list, and there seem to be no Sorcery opponents - buffed hero stacks seem to be viable this game, as long as I keep them away from Crack's Call and Wave of Despair. One more reason to keep my Amazon alive at all costs.

Although it takes 2 turns, I succeed in taking the red city - so now I have a place to summon spirits if anyone melds my nodes - which will soon happen as I saw a red magic spirit 2 tiles from my unguarded second node.

I wonder if my stack of 7 sprites is strong enough to take out "a few" demons. I think it's not. One or two probably yes, three or more, no, due to Mana Leak. They also have Missile Immunity so my hero and horsebowmen can't help out.

The red wizard melds my second node so I have to split my stack and send the hero plus 3 horses and a spirit to retake it, while 5 horses are left in the city.

I notice the red wizard made an alliance with yellow, the lizardmen. While this puts green and yellow at war, it means I'm also going to be at war with yellow which is bad news. There are plenty of their troops near my home continent while I have pretty much nothing there. I will have to keep all horsebowmen produced on my main continent from now on. It might be a good idea to also keep the sprites stack home for additional defense, albeit I really want to hit the chaos spawn lair. I think I'll keep the hero in my capital and have the horsebow and 7 sprites go there. If lucky, I might be able to also get the mithril city from the yellow wizard which is right next to that lair - but best would be if they forgot to declare war to be honest.

[Seravy]

The first node with only a single horsebowmen falls to 3 hell hounds, and in the same turn, those get taken out by the green player's bear and sprites. Fortunately green is less likely to send a spirit there quickly. My stack meanwhile retakes the other node.
As I don't have red troops on my nodes, and my military power is higher than theirs, this might be a good opportunity to offer peace to red - leaving me at peace with yellow as well. However if I do that I have no further means to expand - I still haven't seen green territory, meaning it's most likely on the other half of the world, and I don't have astral gate to go towards Myrror. I'm stronger than red and they have no good answer to my horsebowmen yet, so I should take more of their cities.
   

This stack on my shores says I want that peace. Now. I'm clearly not ready to defend myself (still only having 1 horsebowmen per city) against that. Unfortunately Tenshi doesn't want to listen so I'm stuck with the war for now.

Let's see the chaos spawn lair. Two of them and 3 hell hounds. A bit more than I hoped for but seems doable... success - thanks to not having a chaos node aura here - still, this used up all the ammo of my sprites. So 4+ Chaos spawn are definitely problematic, although running in circles works if there aren't too many and only 1-2 are left over. I get 880 gold for my efforts and nothing else. Not impressed but it can buy me some extra horsebowmen.

The mithril city has javelineers, so sprites won't work - but if I buff them up with guardian wind, they will! Expecting to go to war with this wizard, it might be a good idea to start buffing them up - there isn't anything much better to do. I still see one chance to avoid the war - if their military power isn't high enough to allow starting a third war...wait, third? what? The chaotic wizard broke the alliance and started a war. Now every AI wizard is at war with every other AI wizard. I don't need to plan for fighting yellow! I don't have much else to do with my casting skill though, so I guess I'll summon more sprites - if nothing else, they will be better to protect my nodes than hrosebowmen. Seeing this lack of good spell options, I should start pushing research instead of skill now.

[Seravy]

Having nothing more important to do, I cast more Earth Lores to see the rest of the continent I'm trying to conquer.
I discover no more red cities, but there is a red node. There also seems to be a neutral gnoll city. If my Sprites could make it here...but they are half a map away. There is also unclaimed territory - all these wars destroyed a lot of outposts most likely. Again, too far and in enemy territory so I can't dream about sending settlers, but it's nice to see there are no enemy cities there spawning more and more enemy units. Only green cities were revealed - two of them, and neither has more than just a sawmill and fighter's guild. I might be able to conquer these eventually if enough horsebowmen can make it that way.
   
The graph shows how busy these early turns were for everyone.
   
Looks promising, I might be able to win this...
I wonder what's in the northern hemisphere though, seems like all I know about is the southern one.

Unicorns show up on my research...idk, I really need some decent overland spell, especially a summon, but Unicorns? I'm not fighting the death wizards yet and I haven't seen much magicians either.

I conquer the other red city, so now red seems to only have their capital. I don't know what the defenders are there, but probably too much to deal with - I only have horsebowmen and sprites.

I'm able to get Holy Weapon and Bless from Flandre for Heroic Shout and Star Fires. I still need Healing and Web...

Cockatrices show up on the research list next - this is more promising as I have Focus Magic and even Spell Lock and Bless - no Healing though. I'm going to go for it after I finish all the commons - I make exactly 100 RP per turn if I put everything into that.

Prayer shows up for research as well! Things are starting to look good!

Green offers peace - I accept although I'm going to break it fairly soon. I want to see if I can trade for web.  A sorcery conjunction hits this turn - so much for my research plans, I have to boost skill now. Both my nodes are Nature so my power output is 30 lower.
No web for me, but I get Nature's Eye and Earth to Mud for Enchant Item and Heroic Shout. Not the kind of research boost I was looking for but it'll do. Green has already taken the neutral Gnoll city and my sprites are not even halfway there. I saw "many guardian spirits on an island next to it, unless Earth Lore reveals something closer, I can try getting that.

Red also offers peace - not sure what to do. They have nothing really left for taking, except their capital, but if I refuse, I might be able to get a free spell offered and they have some good stuff. If I accept, I might be able to trade for the same. They don't seem to know Corruption so I guess I'm not in a hurry to get peace. Refusal makes them offer 260 gold - not a spell but hey, free stuff! Accepting of course.

The conjunction shows up on the graphs.

   
Tenshi has a sorcery node - already saw that and I hope to steal it as soon as I get a unit there. (I should prepare a magic spirit I guess)
What I haven't seen but this tells me is green also having a Sorcery node and Yellow having non-Sorcery nodes, probably each of them having only one.

Tenshi doesn't want to trade. I guess I'll need to have some good uncommon Life spell to get that Web - or crush her capital.

My casting skill is going up at a massive rate of 4/turn - and I expect the AI is not different. Combat will be more painful after this conjunction is over.

Flandre's power dropped further on the graph massively, without an apparent reason. I smell a bug so I use RVL to see the remaining corners of the map then reload. As I suspected, Flandre has no nodes (at least on Arcanus, I won't check Myrror), and loading the autosave prior to conjunction reveals a massive drop of their army power.
The only thing I can imagine doing this is failing maintenance due to pushing "skill" too much and having no mana to pay for maintenance costs. I have to check that.

[Seravy]

As expected, the AI wasn't careful with power distribution and had too low mana production to maintain armies, so I will have to replay the last two turns.

[Seravy]

Time to continue...2 turns were lost, so I'm still at war with red it seems.
This gives me a chance to annihilate a fairly large stack of their halberdiers and hell hounds using horsebowmen.
While haeding towards the guiardian spirit lair, my sprite get attacked by red's hell hounds. Fortunately she doesn't have enough mana to cast spells, so I don't lose any unit.
I remember I had to do the spell trading with green again to get Nature's Eye and Earth to Mud. Having nothing more useful to cast, I'm starting to put Nature's Eye on all my cities.
Red is offering peace again. Rejecting now makes them offer Stream of Life, which I'm happy to accept.
My taxes are set quite low (mainly due to owning a High Men city), so this should help me earn a lot more money.
My stack of 9 horsebowmen pass by red's capital but I'm not attacking it, there are too many defenders. I have no reason to eliminate this wizard right now anyway - I might be able to extort...erm trade for more good life spells from her. My stacks also pass by a green outpost - I was to conquer things, not destroy them.
My skill raises massively thanks to the Sorcery Conjunction - from 46 to 61 in only 4 turns! This puts me at the top of the "spell power" category. Stream of Life on all cities seems a viable plan at this point.
I load another 8 horsebowmen into my ship, as I'm going to need forces if I want to resume was with green and steal their cities.
The first Stream of Life, on the High Men city, allows me to raise taxes to the second highest, and raises my income by about 25 gold. Maxed taxes only put 1-2 rebels into cities, so SoL doesn't seem worth it for those, albeit the growth bonus might be. I'll keep casting more SoL until I can research cockatrices.
The conjunction ends already, so I can reallocate to research again.
I attack the first green city - gnoll halberdiers can't do much against horsebowmen but I run out of ammo so one unit survive. I have to try again a turn later. (I don't want to melee gnolls with horsebowmen, they'd take too much damage and a strong enemy stack is nearby.

Next turn I conquer the city (total loss of 3 horsebowmen in the two battles) and the sprites reach the guardian spirit cave, earning 418 mana. The city raises my gold income by 20!

The graphs look quite different with the bug no longer affecting Flandre :    

Next to the guardian spirits, my sprites clear out many skeletons for 258 total gold/mana.
I raise taxes to max level, and cast two more stream of life on cities, while eliminating the 1 unrest in smaller towns using an extra spearmen. I earn a massive 176 gold/turn now, which dwarfs my pretty nice 105 power income from the two nodes.
Having nothing else for my sprites, I send them towards a far away Chaos node with "Chaos Spawn". One one or two should be doable with 7 sprites.
The research of cockatrices is done, but I'll keep pushing research for a while to get prayer as well.

[Seravy]

My next Horsebowmen stack reaches the other green city. This time they don't do so well - too many get cornered by the fast gnoll defenders and I only have 3 of them remaining (2 damaged) from the stack, and 3 defenders still alive (also damaged). I need to reinforce this army but have no way to do it - the 6 horsebowmen in the city I already conquered would be killed on the way as there is a stack of 5 units nearby.
I decide to kill the green units on my node - if the yellow player does it first, I lose my node because they are not an enemy of mine.
Next turn the green city has 2 additional bears and an additional halberdier. Can't do that, will need more forces.

Surprise - the red wizard is offering an alliance due to their Chaotic personality. I don't see any merit in accepting that, when she is at war with people I don't want to fight yet.

Prayer finished researching, and I have started making focus magic cockatrices. I'm going to need resist magic on all of the as well.

I can trade Prayer for Web or Healing with the red wizard. idk...with 1 city they aren't a threat but still don't like the idea. I'll pass for now, I'm going to have more Life spells to trade eventually.
My sprite stack is attacked regularly on the way to their target. I already lost 2 units and one is damaged.

Two of my cockatrices are ready for action. I don't think that's enough to attack wizards yet, but this node with Many Fire Giants might work. I'll need bless on them to reduce the incoming damage. The "few fire elementals" might be a problem for a change - they are immune to petrification. I'm going to need a second battle using horsebowmen for those. All according to the plan - the second attack takes out the elementals. I find 988 total mana/gold and a Floating Island spell - but the real reward is having another node! The cockatrices are wounded, one of the units definitely needs to rest now.

My army power bar is raising to dangerous levels. While the yellow wizard is peaceful, our relation is low due to opposite realms, so if my power catches up, we'll have to fight. The only way to avoid that is if they are already in enough wars to be unable to commit to another, but they have made peace with both other AI wizards unfortunately. What's worse, Cockatrices with focus magic are worth a lot on those graphs - if I don't stop summoning them, I can't avoid catching up.
I have to start improving garrisons and build city walls in my cities.

My sprites reach the "chaos spawn" node. I'm able to kill one but there were two. The other manages to corner and kill three sprites, leaving me with only 2 units. I think I have to put focus magic on at least one of them if I want to be able to win the next battle. I think I wait the extra turn and put it on both to be safe. Success! 778 mana/gold for my efforts which isn't all that great, but I have a node...except, this is so far from everything I have no idea how to get a magic spirit here without it getting killed. It's an island at the north edge of the map, and there is only a red outpost on it.

What I see on the graph is worrying, I can't waste time. I have to make more cockatrices, ASAP!
Both green and yellow are growing at a massive rate.

   

I notice a tower with "few wraiths + demon" is nearby. I think cockatrices are pretty effective at killing those, but I'm going to need more than 3.
Water walking green units start to show up on my main continent, one at a time for now. Not happy about it but I'll be able to deal with this much.
Right next to my cockatrices there is a lair with gorgons and few great lizards. This should be easy for 3 shooting cockatrices, as these aren't high resistance monsters. Not happy about the adjacent nature node though, might need two battles to clear it that way. Fortunately I don't - 450 mana and a staff is the loot. "The protector" 6 defense, elemental armor, guardian wind. Nice but I don't have a mage hero yet. I don't need more mana so I store it away for future use.
The adjacent nature node is "many giant spiders". They aren't strong monsters so I wonder if I have a way to beat them...but I think I don't. I would need something that's strong in melee and all I have are ranged units. cockatrices could work if I used like 9 of them but we are far from that goal.

...as expected, now things start to get real!

   

[Seravy]

This means the yellow city next to my cockatrices is fair game. 2 Ghouls? not gonna stop me!
Time to test this strategy in practice. City goes down easily, albeit the cockatrices take a bit of damage. I already have Nature's Cures if things start to get too bad, albeit Healing would be better.

I merge my 5 and 4 horsebowmen on two nodes together as there is a massive yellow stack nearby. they go towards the empty node, instead of attacking my stack. Not sure if that makes me happy or not.

Of all things, red declares war from the Chaotic personality effect. If I didn't have enough trouble already.

Merging all 5 of my cockatrices to one stack, I attack the tower with 4 wraiths and 2 demons and manage to clear it without losing a unit. 1408 mana and an Iron Skin spell are my rewards. This also reveals the Myrran wizard - as expected, it's Yuyuko with all death, and she has Guardian on top of that. She already has contact with green and they're at war. She isn't all that powerful on the graphs :

   

Meanwhile I lost a city to yellow - I will need to get that back later.
Iron Skin, especially this early, could be really powerful, but it costs almost as much as a unit of cockatrice (without their buffs though) and isn't nearly as good - nor do I have good melee units that could benefit from it.

[Seravy]

The Myrran wizard declares war, but the green wizard offers peace - this game is so chaotic and full of action.

The Myrran wizard has Warp Node already - why wouldn't she, it's quite early in the research list. As most of my current power originates from nodes, this is very bad news. My 200 power base dropped to 78 from just two uses of that spell. I'm looking at a power income of zero soon.
Meanwhile my cockatrices run into a charmed hero, which they cannot kill. I try to attack the AI's sorcery node nearby, but there are invisible units, again, cockatrices cannot kill those.

For the past 30 or so turns I haven't been able to conquer much, only a few small cities. I'm able to hold my ground, but that's about it.

At this point I'm 99% sure this is a lot game - my Nomad cities are vulnerable to Famine and both main enemies are Death. That plus having to play without owning nodes (heck, with owning nodes that produce a negative income!) is not going to end well. I could research Disenchant Area and try dispelling but that would mean I give up on summoning cockatrices and casting other spells for a while.

Maybe I should try attacking Myrror as a last resort?
...two more Warp Nodes hit next turn, so my power production is now 5.

Maybe buffing Warp Node wasn't the smartest idea? I don't know. Death magic might just be overpowered now, it's pretty hard to win a game without having magic power at all, and since the goal was to allow human players to do that to the AI, they can obviously do it to the human player as well.

Even without that, this game follows the usual pattern for old impossible games - good start, expansion, slowing down as enemy forces start to become stronger and stronger, eventually stopping completely and starting to lose ground. That's not good when I'm playing a very strong wizard, got fairly lucky with spells, and was even lucky with all AI players fighting each other for long periods of time.

Edit : It might be a good idea to change the "generic war declaration" formula to declare war when the human player is slightly stronger (+20%?) than the AI instead of at equal. As is, I can't seem to have enough forces to compete with other players without everyone declaring war just for that. Back when AIs with equal power were not a real threat this worked well but as is, it seems to have a bad influence on the game.

[Nelphine]

I think death (and chaos) both run into the problem of reducing the enemy resources - which works very well (even incredibly well) against the human, and does very little against the AI. I'd really be tempted to actually make the effects different whether the target is AI or not.