Test games played

[Seravy]

About time to continue this game.
My Myrran settlements are mostly lost - the Myrran wizard attacked me way faster than expected. I'm building up to a stack of 9 shadow demons, which should in theory be unstoppable for this wizard. Once I have a few of those stacks, I can safely conquer the entire plane. This is an expensive and somewhat slow plan so as much power is going into skill as possible.

Unfortunately, one of the Arcanus wizards has low enough military power to be at risk of war - and all three of them are allied. While Myrror will go in my favor, Arcanus might not. I should play for defense here.
Although...I suspect it is that way because I was at war with this wizard and took some of their cities in the early game. Which means I probably have at least a peace treaty preventing war declaration for some time. If I could get enough troops to have a larger army, that might keep things safe. The other two are peaceful and lawful so they won't hit me first unless I reach their massively larger army strength.

My 9 shadow demons reach a small city owned by the Myrran wizard and conquer it effortlessly. Now I can summon them directly there, which saves me about 3 turns of distance on travel. Their capital is quite close so I'm going to hit that next - assuming there are no golems. (it's a Draconian wizard, so unlikely)

The mentioned arcanus wizard attacks one of my nodes. Thanks to Astrologer, I'm able to defend the node - my spells don't get countered. War is not breaking out unless I lose a city to one of those random attacks, but it might be declared based on army strength any time. There is some bad news though, I see the wizard's doomstack. 5 sprites and 4 water walking/wraith form ghouls. That's probably too much to stop with my 4-6 unit garrisons. (and even less so for the 2 undead units on my node) Fortunately they seem to head towards my capital, which isn't all that much more defended but the lightning and a hero should help. Thanks to Logistics on the hero, I win. My front lines reach the ghouls quickly enough, and my longbowmen kill the sprites. 3 Veteran Elven Lords with magical weapons appear for hire. Considering my bad position on Arcanus, I hire them.

I now see Flandre's capital. lots of ghouls, 1 shadow demon, 1 Sage hero and a Troll shaman. Easy. And just in time. A year or two later and it would be 9 Shadow Demons there.
As expected, I banish the Myrran wizard, without having to cast a spell. This reminds me what makes Shadow Demons so powerful - you can conquer the other plane without having to deal with the 3x costs, as long as you aren't attacking powerful stacks - and if you are quick enough, there are no powerful stacks to attack.

Unfortunately, Silver cast Divine Order - my Shadow Demons are more expensive now. I can live with that, eventually the Myrran cities will easily pay for these extra costs.



...and that's it for today., now it's sleeping time.

[Seravy]

As expected,  blue (all Death) declares war. The blue-white wizard, the current strongest, follows next turn. Fortunately most of my Arcanus cities have enough troops to defend themselves already, my nodes are not that fortunate, I'll need to improve their defenses.
As war broke out, I can now freely attack their stuff and expand, too, except I don't really have forces for it yet. While Shadow Demons shift plane, the area does not overlap with where they are on Myrror so I can't use them that way.
I can however produce elf Magicians in one of my cities, and stag beetles in another. I have some gold so I'll rush produce them as much as I can afford. I can summon 4 zombies each battle which is fairly decent.

I send the 3 elven lords, 3 longbowmen, a bear, a wolf rider and a magician to attack a nearby large city with a wizard's guild and cathedral - defenders are only 2 javelineers, 2 nagas, 1 halberdier+many speamen. The wizard has Prayer and Counter Magic, plus Heavenly Light so any better defenders would be impossible. I get the city, losing only a longbowmen, but the wizard's guild is destroyed. Still, not having to deal with another pop 19 lizardmen city spamming units on my continent is worth it.

I realize I should be casting Heavenly Light on cities conquered on Myrror, and this lizardmen one as well. This is a Cult Leader strategy after all. A small delay in Shadow Demons but definitely worth it, +5 power for each city.

Meanwhile my Shadow Demons conquer more and more cities. I only have one full stack of 9, but I do have enough extras to leave 1 in each city as garrison, and they are impossible to take out for the small, 1-3 unit stacks that roam the area, now that they regenerate 2 each turn.

   
Unless something goes wrong really soon, this will be a fairly easy victory.

[Seravy]

The third wizard also declares war, and for the first time this game, I lose a city. However, I'm able to steal a node from yellow instead.
Silver learns Spell Blast. That's bad news, I'm relying on Shadow Demon summoning as my main strategy. Fortunately they only use it at random - Shadow Demons are not on the AI's blacklist.


A stack containing 4 Dragon Turtles reaches my capital.  Not only are they almost impossible to damage for my units, the wizard has Guardian Wind so it's literally impossible. I summon some catapults but they get disabled by Vertigo. In the end I have to rely on the lighting to kill the last two while my units stay away.

...purple has Wraiths. I see the units gathering up for a doomstack and one wraith is among them. I don't think my garrisons or spells are ready for that, except maybe the magicians. In fact, being Nature/Death I have nothing against them until I research Petrify - but that would take a long time.

Fortunately the AI fails to build the doomstack - it's in my territory and parts of it are large enough to be sent to attack cities and nodes. Even the Wraith is wasted as it attacks into my magician city alone. If 2-3 of them show up though, I'll be in trouble.

The Myrran wizard starts retaking cities. 1 Shadow Demon isn't enough to stop any of the good stacks and I have no other meaningful defenses - normal units are just a target for Possession.
Seems like she also managed to build a doomstack - 8 draconian magicians and a gargoyle. And they all have adamant.

I was expecting to win but now I have some doubts. There is no way around it, a 4 way war is hard on this difficulty level if every enemy is still equal or more powerful than I am. I'm holding out surprisingly well, but I'm not expanding much.

...the city I lost has a Wraith in the garrison, and Wall of Shadows. I'm not getting that one back any time soon.

[Nelphine]

I take it you have no barbarian cities? I'd hope for rushing gorgons.. Hm. High men magicians would probably do well. Werewolves too.

[Seravy]

Barbarian cities, no I don't have any. Werewolves I could make but they are risky when the strongest wizard is Sorcery/Life. Banish, Holy Word and the like...the wizard with Wraiths also has Life.
Gorgons...Spell Blast is a problem with that. Also, 110 skill is kinda low, would take 3 turns to summon each. Shadow demons do well enough, problem is I can't summon them as quickly as I want either.
I'll need to hold out a bit longer and build some Amplifying Towers, then my Shadow Demons can handle mostly everything there is on the map at the moment.

Fortunately, the place where those adamant magicians came from was close enough to my Shadow Demon stack, and I was able to conquer it. I think the Myrran wizard will no longer be a major threat (tho I have to retake the city the stack found)

My magician production center is under attack from 2 heroes and 2 wraiths. One has Focus Magic. The heroes are fortunately weak, one doesn't even have Heroism on yet. It's the city with my Magicians again, and I win fairly easily.

Now 2 of the 4 wizards are equal in military strength to me - the Myrran and Yuyuko. The remaining two are still above. It might be a good idea to shift planes once I have a solid enough hold on the Myrran area around the adamant, and fight the purple wizard on the other side, before the wraiths turn into into a real threat.

...raise volcano on the adamant. I don't need to worry about holding that anymore....and an AEther Flux. Double the Shadow Demons? Yes please. I'm worried about the extra Wraiths though.

For a lawful wizard, I sure get spell blasted a lot. And there is only a single Divine Order. The curse priority bonus might be still too much, I wonder.

[Seravy]

The wraiths were just a diversion. 7 Shadow Demons plus a Draconian hero arrived to my city. I have no way to stop that. (the hero also has buffs and spell lock. 13 shields, bless, resist elements, etc)
   

Surprisingly I don't see that doomstack anywhere anymore. I don't think we made Peaceful one of the personalities that keeps their doomstack in the city...so I have no idea what's going on with it. Shadow Demons are slow but they shouldn't take more then 4-5 turns to reach my next city.

AEther Flux has its downside. So many Drain Powers incoming, I'm down to zero mana.

I see the doomstack agian...but it has only 1 shadow demon, 5 sprites, a naga and the draconian. That isn't right, where did the shadow demons go? Bug? Worrisome.
I'll have to remember to load this turn back and check after the game is finished.

[Seravy]

My second Shadow Demon stack is ready. Yellow has Storm Giants. I attack a city having 3 of them, assuming 9 Shadow Demons can take care of that. However, the city had Flying Fortress and I forgot we changed that spell. Those Unicorns which would otherwise do nothing, could attack my Shadow Demons and I lost the battle.

That's half my relevant military gone. Not good...

Change of plans. I'm going to raze every city I conquer from now on, and spend the gold on amplifying towers. If I could summon the shadow demons faster, I could still win, otherwise, hopeless.

[Seravy]

Blue, the weakest wizard, already has Famine, and Shadow Demons. At this point I'm quite sure I won't be winning - my Shadow Demons are too outdated, and I have no better spells. I could produce various normal units but that's not enough to win a 4 way war, and those would need food, which I'm not going to have much of soon enough.

I have to conclude a 4v1 on extreme is too much to handle, even from a good start. Maybe if I pushed for Amplifying Towers a bit earlier, I could have had more success - I still control half of Myrror but I see no real way to expand - I can barely hold my cities and what's worse I can't spend on research or skill - I need to max mana to be able to cast any spells at all (due to drain power). Due to having no mana for combat spells (it gets drained before the battles), I won't be able to hold those either.

I see no reason to continue, this game is lost. Time to investigate where purple's doomstack went.

after loading...it left the city as it was supposed to, good. It's still "the" doomstack, otherwise it wouldn't do that. Next turn, merged with a 9th Shadow Demon, perfect.

...meh it gets stuck in the "sea-land limbo"... the evaluated target when the unit is on land and when it's on sea are different and the land target causes it to step on water, but the water target causes it to step on land so it keeps going back and forth. No solutions for this one, as the two areas use different target selections - the order of priorities is similar but slight differences are possible as the water version is simplified, so this can only happen if the two targets have very similar power/priority.
On the bright side, as it's busy, another doomstack gets built in its place instead of nothing happening. Also, this doesn't meant the stack is lost eternally - as soon as one of the two targets change (either by getting killed or the player moving the units), it'll be able to move normally again. In other words, I just got lucky.

[Nelphine]

Give up arcanus, conquer myrror. Pretend you had the myrran retort. Stop trying to have mana for battles and focus on long term skill/research. Try to get peace with the myrran AI. When you lose enough, the arcanus wizards will go to peace with you.

[Seravy]

Peace with the Myrran AI huh...they refused. Maniacal and their army is slightly stronger than mine by now.

All my nodes are on Arcanus, I don't think I can afford losing the plane. Also everyone has Shadow Demons now, even the Myrran wizard. I won't conquer much with a single stack of them. By now I'd need to have like 3 stacks to win - but Spell Blasts, Divine Order, and losing a whole stack to that mistake means I don't have them. The Arcanus wizards are powerful enough so towers will break soon.

This strategy could have worked...about 10-15 turns ago. I guess it's worth a try anyway, though I'll have nothing to put into research.

Problem is, my Myrran cities have 1 shadow demon in each. I can't hold those without combat spells, I'm expecting to lose them all in a dozen turns at best. And no troops I produce will do anything against Possession spam, except for the two Dwarven cities.