Test games played

[Seravy]

Finished researching Inspirations. I'm putting everything on skill again to finally be able to use spells. Hopefully, I really won't need gold on troops anymore. Satori completed Survival Instinct. I'm eventually going to get that Djinn node - but with my current casting skill I don't think I can. At the very least I would need to produce a buffed berserker stack.
Also, I don't feel the need to go for it - half the plane is still there to take from Satori, and it still has nodes.
Attacking those wasn't an option due to distance and, well, being at war. Still, half the plane conquered in 1411 is not bad at all for this difficulty level. Fortunately not as many Earthquakes as I was expecting - Maniacal or not she probably wants to summon a lot and Gorgons are still expensive, even though they cost about half as much as they used to. Conjurer also boosts summoning priority.
She hired 3 Doom Drakes! That means access to Myrror.

I'm a bit stalled though. I need Resist Magic on my units to attack - but my skill is still low and I also need Inspirations on some cities. Every possible remaining target in the world is on her continent. (she has Petrify now so Resist Magic is important - even if I don't run into Gorgons.)

I'm lucky - her race is Klackon. No real threat expected except more Nature creatures. If very rares start appearing, it'll be hard but enough skill for Lionheart should let me deal with that.

[Seravy]

The Myrran wizard broke a tower in Satori's continent. As expected, 5 Life, 5 Nature, 1 Death, Tactician. Maniacal Expansionist, joy.
They are weaker than Satori on the graph., and have no treaty. Would be nice if they got into a war but both being 10 good in alignment, I can't count on that, despite the double Maniacal.
Satori meanwhile started to make Warships - these are harder to kill but only one city makes them - and it has 1 tile access to sea. I put one stack there so the ships won't be able to leave port.

Inspiration didn't raise my production enough to make 1 berserker/turn, but it's fairly close. I'm aiming for Stream of Life next - I have quite a bit of unrest even though I have a low taxes.

I realize I can now trade with Seravy. 
Prosperity for Healing. Heroism for Raise Dead. Holy Weapon for Disenchant Area. Prayer for Holy Word!!!!
He still has spells for me but I don't want to offer Inspirations and Lionheart.
Having Prayer is huge! My armies are now twice as deadly as they used to be.
Next turn he casts Life Force. Well, that wasn't offered for trade. Then he declares war for equal forces. Lucky he can't reach me.

Even with all the nodes and Astrologer, my power production is the lowest. And then he casts Clairvoyance. Hoping he doesn't have Earthquake...and talking about high power production, this will raise it further.

   

[Seravy]

The sheer amount of troops I see on Satori's continent makes me realize I have to cast Move Fortress to stand a chance. I can't deal with all of that against a 3x cost modifier. Fortunately the closest city I have is Nomad - best unrest table in the game. Only problem - I don't know Move Fortress yet, and it's not even on my research list. Good news, it shows up the turn after. I research it in a single turn and cast it immediately. I'll decide if I need Stream of Life to remove unrest at all afterwards, as having a Nomad capital changes that. the Myrran wizard is growing in army - if I could knock Satori a bit lower, it could trigger a "same size army" war for these two. I'm going to aim for that, seeing the hordes of units Satori has surrounding the open towers, I suspect a war could cause her to lose a lot of them.

Seravy casts Holy Arms. This might be that extra push to start a war.

Stronger spells start to show in my research. Wind Walking - I don't have much use for this unless I get a high move hero. Mind Storm - might be nice with Confusion. Supreme Light - I could use this with Unicorns if I ever feel the need for a regenerating, teleporting, high resistance army...wait that doesn't sound bad at all.
Next spell on the list...Arch Angel, now that makes a difference! Heck that+Supreme Light = win by itself. No need to worry anymore, I think time is on my side now, even though my territory is only half a plane.
And the Sorcery very rare is...Suppress Magic. Powerful but not exactly what I had in mind. Not when my casting skill is low.

Time to land my first stack on Satori's continent. Closest city is 9 Magicians, I buffed the stack with Bless and Resist Magic so it should be fine. Wish I could also have Holy Armor or Endurance but not waiting for that. There are another 3-4 full stacks with no buffs waiting for their turn. Thanks to the bless, the Magicians do very little damage - only 1 unit of berserkers is lost. Most are wounded though.
The Orc Magicians clear the leftover Chaos Node with the 2 Chaos Spawn. I get a Rogue hero which...might not be such a bad deal. Legendary and Noble are nice extra gold. Also a worthless Staff of Inner Fire.

So many ships are produced I can't hunt them all down even with 4 islands on the job. Some Lizards and Halberdiers and Pikemen make it to my land. Some meaning a hell of a lot. Two entire boatloads. And these areas are poorly guarded.
To my surprise, Vertigo is enough to allow my Spearmen (with Prayer) to fight against the Lizards and Halberdiers (some including Adamant) evently, and beat them. Unfortunately I have to let the 2 Earth Elementals rampage through the city and destroy buildings. Satori has like 200 casting skill at least if she was able to summon two of them on top of the other spells. She also sneaked a settler onto the continent and summoned a Gorgon into the outpost. Eww. I do have lots of berserkers around that to take care of it but I need to put Resist Magic on them first.

[Seravy]

   
The Myrran wizard grows at an insane rate. Maybe time is not on my side after all? Their power production is as much as mine and Satori's combined. Army is now higher than hers too, unfortunately no war declaration. I guess the relation is too good for it between them. No pact either, Maniacal is hold it back I guess.

[Seravy]

The invasion is going well - already holding 3 purple cities and a node. I realize due to Expansionist, red will declare war on purple eventually anyway, if I reduce purple's army strength any further.

Unfortunately red breaks a tower right next to my second berserker producing city. I didn't want to fight him yet. A ton of Hammerhands, not very good news but could be worse. Don't know if he has Petrify yet, so I risk 9 berserkers without resist magic.  No petrify - good - obviously he has Prayer as I traded it from him. All the units have adamant weapons - that's a problem as they are about equal to a berserker this way. I lose 4 units to kill the stack but most survivors are below half health remaining. I think I'll need magicians if I want to keep this hole plugged without my entire army production going into it - and even those might not be able to deal enough damage to kill hammerhand stacks. I'll try to rely on berserkers and hope their stack strength is high enough to not get attacked often.

The earthquakes are getting more frequent. I'm going to put Inspiration on every city to be able to keep having an economy.

the city next to the tower has adamant and can produce those hammerhands. Defenders are 5 hammers, 2 cannons, a golem and a spider. If I could get this and produce hammerhands here for gold, it'd be great. I have 18 berserkers around so it's worth a try. Using 9 berserkers I kill...the spider, and damage the golem. Ehh. I have a stack of 9 Horsebowmen around too, I give that a try. Works better, I manage to kill 4 hammerhands. I send the last stack in, the golem and 2 cannons with 1 hammerhand should not be difficult. victory, but only have minimal forces remaining. I learn what spells he has - Construct Catapult, Black Sleep, Raise Dead. I'll need resistance after all. (he found a Death and even a Sorcery book) I'm able to drag 6 Horsebowmen from my nomad city inside to have a garrison - all of this is pointless if I can't defend it.

As my casting skill finally reached ~150, I decide to push for Arch Angels. I realize they are much more affordable to summon now, and they are an amazing support for my Berserkers while I grow strong enough to afford using 9 Archangel stacks instead.

The war between the two AI finally breaks out. Satori's army level is now as low as mine. I decide to take advantage of this and push towards that direction stronger.

Things start to go faster now. I control about half of Satori's continent already (7 cities and 3 nodes). Red controls one city but razes two more. He seems to have Colossus and Gorgons just like Satori. Her capital btw has 6 Gorgons, a Colossus, a Soul Linker hero and a Chaos Warrior. I'm not going near that, it would take lots of berserkers to win and it's not worth that much. I can't get spells from her and her combat spells don't bother me. Overland spells...aren't really a problem either, Earthquakes stopped happening - both because she now has Blizzard as well, and because she is likely targeting red cities instead of mine. (With Clairvoyance, she has the entire whole Myrron plane to destroy.)
Thanks to this I now have many Amplifying Towers and my skill is up to 213 (including heroes). 2 More turns until I can start casting Archangels. Most of my cities have Inspirations on them already, so perfect timing.

[Seravy]

The tower with 9 berserkers falls. They can't stop an attack from 8 adamant nightmares backed by a Bard hero (which had great items btw). Manage to kill a few but 5 survive.
I don't know how to deal with that, they shoot and my berserkers are slow. I don't have anything except horsebowmen and unbuffed berserkers nearby...and these probably can't even damage the hero.
This looks very much like the doomstack for the wizard - his other units aren't intercontinental so Nightmares are the best he can use. I lose a nearby large orc city. It's razed. I managed to pick off the two most damaged nightmares though. Only 3 left and the hero which might be a problem by itself. What's worse, the tower tile was reserved by that stack for a turn so a huge stack of hammerhands are also coming. The lone horsebowmen defending the lost city did make me realize they are capable of hurting nightmares way better than expected, which is nice.
I wish I summoned the first Arch Angel here...next is definitely going there.
I clear the hammerhands but it costs 5 berserkers and the rest are badly hurt too. What's worse I see the Chosen is coming towards the tower on the other side. At 17 shields, 28 swords and 28 hearts, berserkers will be no match for that.
I manage to also kill the hero and 3 nightmares but it costs another 8 berserkers and 3 horsebowmen. I get Thor's Hammer, the Archangel shield and the Helm of Tides - nice but I don't rely on heroes much this game. This wizard doesn't seem to have Crack's Call though, maybe I should.
Satori learned Call Lightning. Doesn't matter anymore, as she keeps losing cities to red, who is razing them all. Only 3 major cities left including the capital...
Looks like the tower is back under my control, at least until the chosen decides to attack it. It was with some weak troops so it probably went to regroup.
I decide not to waste too much time, I'm going to raze everything on Myrror - assuming i manage to conquer anything with my current troops.
The second Archangel is ready and I researched Supreme Light.
A Chaos conjunction happens to spice things up. Not very relevant at the moment.
The Archangel has a huge range of vision so I discover the other side of the tower is an island. The only other red city has 8 Warlocks and a Colossus - not going to send my Archangel there to die.
Let's see the stats...the Archangel has an insane 22 shields and +2 To Def with Endurance, Prayer and Supreme Light. I feel the other troops are just decoration.
With forces like this I can attack the "few behemoths" tower I avoided so far. The spell reward is a common counter Magic.
Well, Archangels are powerful, but not unstoppable. I get overconfident and lose one against 2 Colossus and 5 cannons. I will need to be a bit more careful about how I'm using them.

[Nelphine]

You are using ultra elite bezerkers right? If you want to hold the tower, throw some cheap buffs on them. Their army strength is so high nothing should attack them.

Consider: an ultra elite bezerker with alchemy, holy weapon, holy armor has:
10 melee, 6 thrown, +3 to hit, 8 armor, 4 HP
2866 attack
1152 defense

The chosen, assuming +4 to hit, has:
1206 attack
2352 defense

Adamantium veteran hammerhands have:
1080 attack
1152 defense

Even with 8 hammer hands and the chosen, they don't have 75% of the army strength of the bezerkers. And nightmares are weaker than hammerhands.

You don't need to win if the enemy won't attack.

[Seravy]

I don't have Spell Blast and my power is less than theirs so, yes I need to win. Also they have enough troops to raze purple's cities left and right on that continent - 3 open towers in that area. Either way, that's for tomorrow.

[Nelphine]

Yes sorry I just meant to hold towers not for winning. You can use it to build archangel stacks etc, but only if you can block them in enough places.

[Seravy]

   
Definitely too late to think about blocking towers - albeit I have to block the ones in my territory, my garrisons are definitely not good enough there.

I control the seas so red won't spread from that continent onto mine, and I have strong garrisons on that continent as it's full of enemies anyway.

Most Berserkers on my main continents are not ultra-elite - I don't have Altar of Battle. Some of those on the enemy continent which had plenty of fights are - but on the main continent, I only have newly produced ones.

I realize using Archangels with Supreme Light might not be such a good idea on Myrror. Seravy has Dispelling Wave (from 1 Sorcery book!) so I need to cast it more than once, and a single cast takes 210 mana! That's expensive for killing random stacks on the map. (big targets are a no-go for a single Archangel, multiple cannons or warlocks are also out.) It might be better to use Healing only but that means really strong units are also a no-go (like hammerhands).