Current Impossible Strategy

[Nelphine]

As a comparison to previous discussions: In March 1415, without Uranus' Blessing, I have 673 overland casting skill. Now, I only have 42 cities in this game; but unlike previous game's, I've only conquered MAYBE 6 amplifying towers. Probably not that many. I've had to build all the other one's myself. The increased destruction chance is definitely working (I've seen a city lose 11 buildings when conquered).

The 4th AI was killed by the (originally) strongest AI. That strongest (Merlin) AI is the one with 32 defense +2 to defend (before prayer) 60+ hp behemoths; he has enlightenment, crusade, and charm of life in play. The (now) strongest AI (Tlaloc) has eternal night and herb mastery, and a strong set of units as well, although not on the level of Merlin. The third (Sss'ra) AI is the one with his own crazy bezerkers, and fairly extreme chaos spawn stacks. All 3 of them have between 275 and 350 casting skill; this is fairly low for lunatic, because all 3 of them are roughly equal (and I smashed down Merlin several times to keep him from being too strong) so none of them have 20 cities.


However, the peaceful personality is working against them. Since I'm stronger than any of them, the longer we go without war, the bigger the gap gets between myself and them (even with eternal night against me). So, per the other discussion, in this case, peaceful personality is definitely weaker on this difficulty ONCE the player gets into a strong position.

Having 5 cities building bezerkers (instead of my usual 3; and I've confirmed 2 isn't really feasible, lunatic outgrows it) is definitely enormous. I probably wouldn't be able to allow so many very rare globals to stay in play without those 5 cities.

[Nelphine]

Ugh. Going to late war with nature/death hurts.  5 earthquakes per turn, plus minor things like drain power.

Does nightshade protect against earthquake?

Edit: Also, should surrenders happen with the following graphs? (I think you might need twice as much spell power as the rest combined, but spell power doesn't decrease as you conquer them, so I don't THINK it should apply? Also I know population does apply, but my population is about 4 times all 3 of them combined)

   

[Seravy]

I'm guessing it's not enough to trigger it yet.
The game adds all 4 categories together, it's not looking at them individually so the F4 graph might tell more.

[Nelphine]

Wait it adds all 4? They aren't all remotely equal are they? Like my power production in that graph, assuming it includes research only buildings, is ~4500 - and that's with an enemy eternal night in play. My populstion is only around ~750.

Adding them together would mean some of them just don't matter.

As a note, I'm specifically trying to check the surrender mechanic, which is why I'm trying to get details.

[Seravy]

It doesn't add the resource numbers, it adds the "length of the bar" variable.
Those go from 0-200.
However population doesn't work that way so good catch, population is over-represented in the system.

Assuming an average map has room for 50 cities, each averaging at 18 people, total population in the world is 900, so each player has about 180 in this system if they are all equal. That...actually isn't that far off from everyone having a maxed bar of 200.
Problem starts where the number gets uneven, in other bars you have 200 vs others at 100 if you're twice as good, here you have 300 vs others at 150, which is a 50% larger gap. (and on huge map or fewer players this gets worse)

Any suggestions? Or should I try to add a "bar shrinking" code for population to limit it into the 0-200 range like the others?

[Nelphine]

Um, I would follow the sane rules as the other bars. So presumably I have 200 power production in that graph, but earlier in the game, even if I was the best I might have only had 100. So, however the power production bar converts from the actual power production to the 0-200 rating, I would try to be as close to that as possible with population.

I concerned about spell power though. Spell power never goes down. So the AI could have 1 city (which implies low army and low power production), but their spell power could still be at 200 (and in the case of an omniscient sagemaster mono sorcerer, far ahead of yours) which skews the results. For surrender purposes I'd consider not counting spell power since it doesn't directly relate to actual ability to fight. (And power production is not a terrible gauge of spell power in most cases).

[Nelphine]

My history graph:
(Note: I don't expect to get a surrender any time soon; I forgot we need to be twice as strong as all remaining AI combined.  In addition to the graph shown below, cities and population are as follows:
I (Kali) have 17 arcanus cities, and 31 myrror cities - total population ~723.
Merlin has 5 arcanus cities and 6 myrror cities - total population ~66.
Tllaloc has 9 arcanus cities and 2 myrror cities - total population ~140.
Sss'ra has 11 arcanus cities - total population ~105.)

Spike at 1409 is holy arms; spike just before 1413 is charm of life, the flat is the fights after it, then the troops in those fights healed; the unbelievable spike just after 1414 is crusade. The dip around 1415 is Tlaloc declaring war and a lot of my units getting hurt; and then as they heal up, the dip goes away.

The 4th AI, Rjak (mono death, dark elf) was the Myrran AI and I think he was in last ever since I met him around 1406 or 1407. I think he declared war on me.. 1410? Ish? As you can see on the graph, you literally can't tell where he declared war on me. He never attacked my continents (I always had multiple bezerkers in each city, so nothing about the 'don't attack super weak' bug was at work there), and the only time he ever won a battle against me was the settler razing the city I had taken from him. I'm surprised that doesn't show up anywhere. I guess one city just isn't that important. Might be one of the flat lines just after 1411.

I've got ~249 champion bezerkers, some with buffs, some without.

When Merlin killed Serena the Healer in 1413 she had a little over 1500 experience.

   

[Arnuz]

As strong as all the others combined, rather than double, should be the mark imho. That graph is telling of a victory in 1412, and sure about in in 1413.

[Seravy]

As strong as all the others combined, rather than double, should be the mark imho.

Definitely not - there might be only one enemy wizard.

The razed city probably isn't showing because you got something of similar value that turn, maybe a node?

[Nelphine]

I doubt I got a node that late. By that point almost all the nodes were conquered on myrror (I had 9), and I wasn't yet exploring arcanus beyond my home continent. I might have acquired one of rjaks cities on the same turn though.

Realistically by 1409 I was confident of a victory. However, I hadn't even started exploring arcanus by that point, so I wouldn't have called it until 1413. (Don't think I found Tlalocs fortress till 1414.)

Interestingly, the other thing I expected to see a bigger blip on the graph from, is eternal night. Tlaloc cast that... I don't have any idea when. I never dispelled it. I wonder if that's part of the dip at start of 1413. I know it made me wonder if it was going to be harder to win than expected.