Test games played

[Tlavoc]

I don't think roads speeding up plains is necessary. The whole point of (non-enchanted) road is to make a smooth standard pathway. You may walk a little faster on a road compared to an open grassland, but it wouldn't be by much. If anything I'd say the movement through the desert should be higher. Walking on shifting sand and heat is rough.

As for the roads/dwarves thing I was just hoping it would be possible to remove enchanted roads from myrror and allow dwarves to build them, which would then help them on their home plane, but impossible is impossible.

[Nelphine]

On a completely different note, can anyone else try 10 books of one realm (hoping for people to try a variety of realms) specialist sagemaster? On either master or lunatic. I'm doing death on master, and I seem to be doing just fine (although its annoying that one draconian halberdier beats one shadow demon. I have to get 4 or 5 together to take out Sss'ra Doomstacks. I'm actually quite happy its Sss'ra on myrror, with draconians. Just feels 'right'.)

And no I haven't summoned a single ghoul .

I'm trying to find strategies that don't rely on super heavy retorts to win at lunatic.

[Tlavoc]

I was going to try something similar, but it was going to be with death as well due to being able to make undead. I'll give nature a go since my nature run was demolished due to bad luck.

[Nelphine]

Oh I don't mind if you go death. I'm specifically not using ghouls so I don't get the most consistent undead creation. Since only a few people have done lunatic with ghoul spam, I'm totally fine if you want to give it a go to. More people is more data is always good.

[Tlavoc]

Well, my nature run with 10 nature, alchemy, sage, nomads on expert (I'm not up to master yet) is going well. 1411 I got my first behemoth. It feels a bit cheap though, two wizards are on myrror, which really freed up my ability to expand without pissing anyone off. Due to that I've been able to keep my army at a somewhat reasonable level and have a wizard's pact with one of the arcanus guys - the other doesn't like me for some reason. I probably could have gotten more of the lairs but I've been putting a bit too much focus into research - a bit of a habit.

I'm still seeing ghouls and sprites running around, but there are some normal units too. I can -almost- pop a tower with three djinn and one sky drake with my single behemoth, so he's getting a friend. Currently researching colossus, but pumping up my skill so it's a low priority.

The spiders were awesome at the start, fast movement so good exploration and a single spider could take on around 6 or 7 nomad swordsmen, so taking the neutral towns early was easy - particularly since it took longer to run into opposing wizards due to only two others being on arcanus.

[Tlavoc]

I've seen you guys talk about a spell called 'Fairy Ring', is that in Nature?

[Nelphine]

Yes, it's a brand new spell. Nature's Wrath is gone completely; Fairy Ring is the replacement; instead of the earthquakes Nature's Wrath gave when an enemy cast a strong spell, it summons a creature for you (random uncommon to very rare of the summons you know).

[Tlavoc]

It's... interesting. Getting a free spider or lizard every turn and a half. Seismic mastery is 'get a free earthquake every time you summon a behemoth!'

Right now I'm kinda wishing I had meteor storm. Sooo many units running around.

Biggest guy on the block just declared war and he goes crazy with cracks call. He also has Myrror COVERED in cities. The other myrror wizard apparently did nothing to slow him down.

[Nelphine]

You should have ~20-25% chance of getting a behemoth from Fairy Ring each time it triggers. (and ~50% of getting an uncommon summon)

[Nelphine]

My death game continues to go well. Sss'ra is at war with both Oberic and Sharee; Sharee is lawful and has a wizard pact with me. Oberic is happy with me because I'm attacking Sss'ra but not treaties. (Tlaloc got banished by Oberic and had 2 outposts only. By the time he finished spell of return his capital was up to population 4. It took a LONG time.)

I think the only reason I'm surviving is that Sss'ra is astral gating doomstacks to attack Sharee and Oberic; who in turn send doomstacks to take out Sss'ra's doomstacks; and so cities keep changing hands and eventually being razed on Arcanus. This keeps Sharee nicely in check (as he's almost twice as strong as me overall; and Sss'ra is perfectly matched against him.) Oberic after 3 years of this 3 way war has finally dropped to be weaker than me. (Since I've picked up almost a dozen draconian hamlets with shadow demons from Sss'ra, I can say that the majority of my overland strength is due to draconian population power and regenerating shadow demons. However, I lose any battle that has 3+ draconian halberdiers AND I fail posession. I simply don't have enough shadow demons, and 10 melee/6 fire breath/10 armor/3 hp/6 figure monstrosities just chew through my shadow demons. Fail a possession roll and they chew through the whole army Sss'ra sent against me. It's like fighting against flying bezerkers!)