Test games played

[jsb]

I am doing 100-turn games with mono spell books and "thematic" races atm, sort of as a way to learn the ropes properly I guess. Two games into trying mono-Life + High Men ... well, I have no idea how this combination is supposed to work.

It's just soooo slow. In none of my starts have I been able to capture lairs or take out any nodes early, not even by turn 40 or so. I end up trailing dead last after the other wizards with no real advantage other than having survived into the early mid-game.
 
The High men's production boost to buildings (without death books and Omniscient) feels ... well, it doesn't really feel like anything at all. You hardly notice it. For this I have to pay in very real unrest generation which really hurts gold production in the early game. And normal mid-tier High man units are just garbage against nodes and lairs full of Ghouls and Spiders - but it's not like you can just put down a Wizards guild or build all the ridiculous crap you need to get to Paladins, not anytime soon. Not without treasure, ah - Catch 22. 

Meanwhile a mono Nature wizard will have conquered five Sorcery nodes and few lairs using cheesy Sprites! (I haven't gotten past doing Nature and Life yet, so it's the only comparison I have).

SO - does anyone have any tips or early game tactics for using High Men with mono-life, or is it just that ... meh?

[namad]

I am doing 100-turn games with mono spell books and "thematic" races atm, sort of as a way to learn the ropes properly I guess. Two games into trying mono-Life + High Men ... well, I have no idea how this combination is supposed to work.

It's just soooo slow. In none of my starts have I been able to capture lairs or take out any nodes early, not even by turn 40 or so. I end up trailing dead last after the other wizards with no real advantage other than having survived into the early mid-game.
 
The High men's production boost to buildings (without death books and Omniscient) feels ... well, it doesn't really feel like anything at all. You hardly notice it. For this I have to pay in very real unrest generation which really hurts gold production in the early game. And normal mid-tier High man units are just garbage against nodes and lairs full of Ghouls and Spiders - but it's not like you can just put down a Wizards guild or build all the ridiculous crap you need to get to Paladins, not anytime soon. Not without treasure, ah - Catch 22. 

Meanwhile a mono Nature wizard will have conquered five Sorcery nodes and few lairs using cheesy Sprites! (I haven't gotten past doing Nature and Life yet, so it's the only comparison I have).

SO - does anyone have any tips or early game tactics for using High Men with mono-life, or is it just that ... meh?

Highmen are one of the worst races in the game, imo. Also personally. I never play full life without warlord, because full life+warlord is so awesome, also you can only take 10life books and you get 12 picks so why not (did you take warlord and still struggle this much?) There are a wide range of races this strategy probably works better for though like halflings/lizardmen/barbarians/nomads? I think?
In theory though the life spell to remove all unrest should synergy well with highmen, but it's an uncommon spell which comes online later in 5.11 than it did in 5.05 due to the new overhaul to research.

Also if you just want the life version of sprites, go warlord draconian 9 life and make bowmen early on to cheese nodes/lairs that don't have ranged attacks or flying units the same way you would with sprites?

[jsb]

Well, I played a fair number of openings with Nature + High Elf so I thought Life + High Men's would make a good thematic combo (going for something like Death+Lizards, Sorcery+Nomads or Chaos+Gnoll after that). It feels like Nature synergizes pretty well with High Elf so I am sort of exploring the possible mono themes that could work well. Was hoping for High Men to work ... but.

The idea was to get 100 turns in, practicing openings and transition to mid-game. 

My first attempt with Life was using L10, Archmage, Specialist. Second game I went L8, Warlord, Archmage, Specialist. Both times I had real problems cracking any Nodes or dungeons. I guess the dungeons were a bit bad luck, as I should have been able to take for example War bears or a single Giant or similar. Had no such luck however and found only tough combinations that my troops struggled against.

Playing Expert with all settings on fair. I tried a game on advanced with Nature+Life and rolled the AI with no real opposition at all. I also won a Chaos/Death game on Expert before that, so I think it's the right level of play, just struggling with High Men.

I mean, at 100 turns I'm not out of the game or anything, but compared to Nature+Elf, the early game is just in a completely different league. So, maybe this is a bad combo ... but thematically that seems wrong since High Men have naturally holy units and all that jazz.

[Nelphine]

No, high men are just The slowest race. They take way longer to get going. But for having 2 of the top 5 city units in the game, this isn't surprising.

[zitro1987]

High Men are not very compatible with mono-life + normal unit based retorts.

If life combined with death, cult leader and possibly a 2nd retort, the race is quite impressive with impressive economic potential, if you can survive the early game with heavenly light, ghouls, early on. You'll get your paladins without massive buff potential, but at least you'll have the economy to easily produce stacks of these imperfect not-ultra-elite paladins while having wraiths, angels, or some other potent summons on the side.

[jsb]

Right. Well, since I am only doing openings I never get to see the late-game strength I suppose. It's probably just a very different play style than Nature+Elf.

My only concern with late game strength is that CoM is so obviously weighted towards early game snowballing due to the treasure from Nodes and dungeons. I'll have to play a full game and see.

Anyway, I'm having some early success in my third game using the 4 initial swordsmen + Holy armor as meat shields for Heroism+Holy weapon archers. It's very all-in, but I've taken out three lairs so far. Enough to finance development of my first settlements and a new settler on top of that. Tricky finding suitable dungeons though. Am using cavalry to scout ahead, but lost 1 cavalry to retreating in the process. You'd think a 5 move unit could escape a 3 move pursuer ... but ... unlucky. Guess the horse broke a hoof or something.

Current build is Archmage, Warlord, Cult Leader with 8 books.

[crusader.mike]

I've had some success building stack of cavalry very early (literally: forest guild -> stables ->9 cav) then roaming around, scouting and picking easy dungeons and occasional sorcery node. Also, you end up finding AI early and get *his* easy dungeons (thus denying them to AI) -- resulting money/mana gets poured into hammers in the capital to speed construction of buildings that open heavy-hitting units. Artefact(s) goes to hero(es) or discarded. Having Alchemy helps a lot.

Depends on a luck too -- sometimes "easy dungeons" simply don't exist.

[jsb]

So ... my third game. I used L8, Warlord, Specialist and Cult leader (mistakenly said Archmage before). I basically went full retard with the early game units, using all the swordsmen from my capitol and my expands to act as meat for buffed bowmen (heroism+holy weapon). It worked fairly well, but far from amazing. Just buffing enough units made it take until turn 22 before I could capture a lair.

I used scouting cavalry to find dungeons that I could safely take out and I managed to get three cleared before I had to turn my attention to enemy wizards who were encroaching on my territory and taking my spots.

There were no nodes I felt I could tackle without summons, so Cult Leader + Heavenly light had to provide all my energy. Cult leader proved a good investment though, as the synergy with culling extra High man unrest proved useful.

What I was really missing though was Alchemy. I had to spend all my power to provide mana instead of buffing casting skill and building Alchemists guilds became a necessity early as I had to fight enemy wizards using Wraithform.

Nevertheless, I managed to hold off two enemy wizards from my continent, one death-nature and one death-life. I later made peace with the latter, even exchanging some spells. By turn 96 I am about the same power as the bottom two wizards. I control a small continent with 7 cities, all powerfully garrisoned and they are all building high tier buildings. Sounds like a success right?

WRONG!

Beset by two enemy wizards who could easily have conquered me if they had the smarts (I had no answer to death-spells like Black sleep or fighting large stacks of Ghouls ... but you know, AI strategic vaue I guess). In any case, my entire army had to stay back in garrison to keep my cities (and my only source of power-generation) safe, lest their stacks would roll me.

I had no nodes - zero. I was slowly building up enough offensive power to mount an attack using Magicians, but it was late, soo late. In a desperate attempt to get more settlements (and power) I had sent a settler to Myrror with Planar travel and immediately found Ariel, Myrran, L10/C1, Ruthless/Theurgist. Dark Elf. She has more than twice the power and spellpower of any Arcanus wizard and thinks so little of me she even trades me Stream of Life for a pittance.

Thus ends my third 100 turn opening using Life / High men. GG, after three openings I didn't find myself in a winnable position in any of the games I played.

So - is High men just totally shitty by themselves? To test it out I tried another game using Alchemy, Omniscient and 2 of each spellbook.

Rainbow-men!


Result was wildly different. I picked Heroism, Earth lore, Ghouls, Focus magic and Flame blade for my initial spells and using Earth lore to scout I could quickly find another High man city to conquer on turn 15 using my initial swordsmen, two cavalry and two Ghouls.

From that I went on to conquer a sorcery node on turn 19 and then another sorcery node shortly thereafter. With Alchemy I could easily turn all my gold into mana and pump my casting skill from turn 12 and on. I fought a war against a death+life wizard who invaded me with klackon scum, razing her crappy cities and driving her off my continent into the sea.

My game is currently around turn 70 and I have more than twice as much power and casting skill as any of my mono-life games had at turn 100. I only have 7 cities, but they are all High man and three are producing high end units (magicians) which I can buff with Focus magic for all kinds of abusive ridicilousness.

I haven't encountered the Myrran wizard yet, but the game has felt twenty times smoother than playing mono life. This is ... disappointing, since it means that High men are probably ok, just terrible using pure Life magic which (to me) feels like their intended thematic combination. I dunno, I picked rainbow mostly to try as many early combinations as possible, but it's actually not a bad choice for them as they really feel smoother with the Omniscient+rainbow synergy. You gain a lot of gold, production, research and even power and growth in the process. It all adds up to speed them along exponentially as a result. My cities had more high end production at turn 60 than at any time during my previous games.

The treasure from lairs and nodes also helped finance some early economic expansion, but in comparison to the first two games at least, I really just spammed military units from my cities to keep my rivals at bay this game.

Don't know what to take from this other than I still have no idea what to do with mono life and High men, if anything.

[Domon]

don't be so sure to dismiss a game as lost or won so early as turn 100. youe monolife game could be totally winnable, and your rainbow game could take a very hairy turn of events once your rivals reach the very rare tier, if you can't win before that.

[Nelphine]

Yup - graph power doesn't mean much. Its all about what you can actually fight. Admittedly ghouls are rough for high men to deal with early on. 

But my play is to get one stack that the AI can't beat or even cause casualties to, then just raze their entire empire, and steal their nodes. If you're really built up, you can conquer a few cities. But if you treat all 4 AI like one enemy, then 'raze the entire rmpire' means youve win, so conquering isn't important.