Black and blue high men game

[teelaurila]

My first game with 5.11 I wanted to try high men for the first time. Went black and blue archmage channeler. Also the first fair sized map I've played with Caster. Expert level.

Plan was to start with ghouls asap, get first cities to Fighter's Guild level and churn out crusaders, knights, pikemen while one city at a time develops further.

Started on my own continent with ~8 city places, 1 had a neutral high elf city.

Built 2 settlers first, so 5 cities is my core.

Research was now very slow, and other resources lacking, too, so I looked at the new buildings and decided to go marketplace, magic market, library -> units. Except for the capital which went straight for crusaders after the settlers.

My second city went for magicians guild after library and a couple triremes. This was clearly ineffectual, should have kept with the ships and scout nearby neutrals and lairs.

Maybe I should skip ships altogether and pick floating island. Are islands of ghouls good at hunting ships? Do they rise as undead?

Had the first stack of ghouls about at the same time as crusaders and pikemen started coming along from the capital. Got 3 easy-ish lairs around my cities, but my 3 nodes had masses of spiders, cocks and sky drakes. Still no node cracks

By the time I took the high elf city, Sharee, my first neighbor planted a city in a mountanous spot on my continent. She is White+Black Nomads. Soon learned she is also by far the game leader, looking very much like running away. I have 3-4 stacks consisting of crusaders, pikemen, a lot of ghouls, a few knights, magicians and priests too. Every city is producing one type of unit, and for now it seems my capital cannot afford to upgrade to paladins anytime soon.

Still researching black prayer which I started as my 3rd spell. Research really seems to have slowed down - and I have at least libraries everywhere.

I felt like I had to declare war on Sharee at this point, it was only getting worse in time. Worst is, she is allied with Tlaloc, whom I have only seen roaming settlers of. I could take couple of Sharee's outlying towns, and her attacks across the sea are not decisive. But I feel I am fighting a losing battle: I am not seeing how I could assault her strong cities where it counts - her build with high resistance nomads and death units seems quite perfect counter to black and blue. It's only a matter of time when Tlaloc joins in, and attacks me from the other side...

So seems like I need to sharpen up my start. Magic Market, Library, Marketplace seem like a bargain, but perhaps I still need to skip and make faster soldiers. Not sure about those 2 settlers up front. On the other hand, without ghouls my soldiers aren't cutting much, and now they came along at about the same time (need those magic markets). Magicians were largely pointless - they are good at defense, but defending ghouls eat them before they can do anything. Offensively they can only survive with life or nature. Should probably skip crusaders for pikemen and knights - undead should keep the peace until a full garrison no longer helps.

Was surprised that crusaders can heal ghouls btw.

[crusader.mike]

Feels like you've "spread out" too much. First few game years you need one high-level stack -- it's composition is not very important, all high-tier units are pretty good. Then your objective is to extract as much value out of it as possible as quickly as possible -- cracking lairs/nodes, taking AI capital and cities.

To reach to that point you'll need very early stack -- to crack few easy lairs and get some gold. Ideally a node would be super-great (on the long run), but gold is even more important -- it allows you to instabuy that magic guild or cathedral and show up at AI's capital with units he "cannot resist". While your prod city produces your units, others should develop economically, but only at their own expense (i.e. don't buy anything there, all gold should be spent on hammers in prod city).

For example, in my last high-men game I tried early cavalry stack and realized that it is too weak, had to reload to start of game, built few food producing buildings and stack of bowmen that took 2 lairs nearby, gave me enough money to almost buy wizards guild. With 4 buffs (Heroism) they managed to take 1 chaos node (1 gargoyle, 2 chaos spawns) and 1 sorcery node (bunch of phantoms). That sealed "wizard guild" deal, gave me huge income (astrologer and alchemy rules!), few turns later my magicians stack was ready and off it went to claim what is mine... All this time I didn't invest a dime into research or skill and built only a single settler (to start a city on orihalcon). I was quite behind AIs in terms of cities and research, but when I showed up at their gates -- they had nothing to stop me with.

In terms of build order I found that Forest Guild is the most profitable building -- it gives you food, allows you to switch up to 3 farmers to workers, net maintenance is positive, etc. So, in non-prod cities typically my order is Sawmill (which is normally already present, since I typically take cities from AI instead of settling) -> Forest Guild -> Market -> Farmers Market -> Miners guild -> University -> etc. Don't be shy about switching non-prod city to trading -- your power is in "military bar" of F4 report, not in number of developed cities. Lots of focus on food producing building -- you need them for these armies, especially since you'd be mostly ignoring settlers.

[teelaurila]

Another try with this setup. This time I have:
Channeler, Conjurer, 6 black, 3 blue

Plan was first ghouls(+focus magic), then wraiths(+focus magic). Attack fast, gain undead. Also to try and break into Myrror ASAP, fighting that AI before clearing arcanus.

Opponents:
Jafar, blue orcs, chaotic
Raven, mostly blue klackons, expansionist
Tlaloc, black and green nomads, peaceful
Horus, white and blue dark elves, pragmatic (4 blue, 6 white, artificier)

Plan was to start out with ghouls en masse as soon as possible. Go fast for paladins and magicians. Had just 2 empty city spots on my island, with 2 neutrals, and 2 more neutrals on nearby islands. So no settlers.

Very little nodes or lairs for the early game, couldn't take massed cocks, massed shadow deamons, or a great drake with ghouls. Still, with all the neutrals (with undead garrisons), start felt decent.

Tlaloc had already hoodwinked all 3 arcanus AIs into an alliance with him as I met my opponents. Jafar had some early conquests against Raven, who was now behind. Jafar was growing fast, measuring a good bit above the rest. This isn't boding too good.

Soon Jafar started erratic aggressiveness against me, and launched a suprise naga-attack on a city next to my fortress, one of the ex-neutrals, taking it. I moved ghouls towards Jafar ... and turned out early blue+orcs is rather hilariously helpless against ghouls. I killed his fortress with a full stack of his own nagas reanimated.

I did my best trading/bribing Tlaloc with spells to keep from getting into a all-against-me war. Tlaloc sat there moping while I wiped the rest of Jafar. Just as Jafar was done, Tlaloc decleared war. Geographically Tlaloc was also behind Jafar as my armies advanced. My ghouls were generally winning and reanimating against Tlaloc, but I had to spend quite some time "besieging" his main cities, gathering forces. I had spread a bit too thin at this point. Now it was Raven's turn to mope in a corner. Just as Tlaloc was breaking, Raven declared war. Raven was more than weak enough.

So much for trying to break into Myrror as the wars forced on me on arcanus kept me busy enough. Just as Raven was clearing, the first Horus unit popped next to my fortress. Just a few turns later, a single turn before my stack to attack my nearest tower was there, Horus took it. Since relations were quickly souring, I decided to take and hold the tower instead (full stack of nightblades only, so it was an "accident" that I ran to them ). Anyway, war broke out quickly.

On the same turn war with Horus broke, I found demon lord spell in a ruin. At the same time I researched wraiths, but so much for needing them. Figured the game was about done, and summoned the first demon lord. Two turns later, Horus got detect magic, and now it's the old spell bast suppression all over again.

Horus has cities all over Myrror (maybe 15), but only 4 are on land on the arcanus side. Of these, one is against my city, one on a node, and one is his fortress that does not have astral gate, for some reason. The one that gated the first unit in was close to the cracked tower, so burned it. So blocking gates is easy.

Since I can't summon anything useful, I am trying to fight his mana with drain power and leading him on in combat casting. Got half of his mana so far, but not sure what good this will do - in the long run it probably means he will grow skill slower. Disjunction will take ~15 turns of research, then I can try to use it to slip in some more demon lords.

I got a good deal of undead great lizards and werewolves. Paladins and magicians form my backbone, got one city doing pegasi, stag beetle and griffon cities (3 each) are just starting to come in. Just discovered the beauty of wraith form warships. He has water elementals the most. No-one seems to have dispelling wave (yet). Horus doesn't seem to have holy word (yet). My hard attack stack is the demon lord, Golden One plus undead water elementals. The demon lord is unfortunately vulnerable to massed nightmares and water elementals and I can't seem to help this.

In combat my most used combo is black prayer plus syphon life/black sleep. In a few turns I will have Wave of Despair.

Horus's fortress is guarded by 7 warlocks and 2 heroes. No doubt all buffed to silly, but still maybe vulnerable. Any advice on if/how to take it? Paladins/griffon/stags will not likely survive the doombolts and lightning/ranged to kill anyone. All those lizards/werewolves could for a while longer, but likely a full stack would not prevail alone.

Wave of Despair seems a bit different, not sure I get what kind of chance it would have. Since it ignores bless and resist magic, it might actually devastate those warlocks (37 attack versus ~13 resistance as defense)? Btw does resist elements work against the cold (seemingly not since death)?

[Nelphine]

If you can get a few stacks to attack, psionic blast should kill warlocks in one shot. If you can stack with 2 fodder stacks you should be able to take out most of the warlocks then attack with your demon Lord stack to kill the heroes.

Also,personally if playing black/blue, I don't build city troops (my recent game was also high men) until paladins. I make ghouls do everything. Toss focus magic on the main stack, and roam with non focus magic ghouls just to clear junk and get garrison troops. Which gets me things like undead djinn and undead chaos spawn, before the ai can remotely fight them. That lets you rush buffed Paladins (get mithril) and magicians (if you find orihalicrum) and they come online around the time the ai finally starts hurting your ghoul hordes. 

My game I took this to the extreme, 2 death/2 sorcery, with cult leader and 2 life to get going faster, channeler and conjuror to get more ghouls, and spellweaver to.. get more ghouls. All the ghouls! Worked very well.

[Seravy]

Are islands of ghouls good at hunting ships? Do they rise as undead?

Yes, they do.

her build with high resistance nomads and death units seems quite perfect counter to black and blue.

Yes, you had bad luck on the enemy here, not only is she resistant to your tactic, but you are vulnerable to hers (high men are low resist). Famine is the best counter to nomads if you survive that long, as they have no food buildings.
Lacking that, knights or paladins with guardian wind and resist magic could work maybe. Ghouls are a problem though, resist magic has no effect on poison. So the only way to beat them is through overwhelming force.

I don't think building magic markets and libraries is a mistake, but do pick one strategy - either military or magic, and stick to it at least up to the point where it starts to get you going and expand. Going magic and using summons and combat spells for early expansion works just as well as producing units, or in case of high men, possibly better. You could use your own ghouls to counter theirs, and nagas to eat their normal units (albeit nomads with their resistance as sadly still strong against both, but that was just bad luck.) or even try to push early research for an uncommon (Werewolves are amazing for that, but Shadow Demons, Nightstalkers, Water Elementals all have good potential, they are just way harder to afford than the wolves.). If you go military, don't bother with magic buildings, unless you are already having enough troops and can't maintain more without losing too much resources. (You still need libraries and alchemist guilds though for the magic weapons, at least in the important production centers.)
Considering your picks, you most definitely want to go magic, not military with it. Chaneller means you'll heavily rely on combat spellcasting, so instead of troops, casting skill is your "army". (Nomads though are hard for that strategy - you must use guardian wind and phantoms because Death magic won't be very effective.)

Wave of Despair is very effective against warlocks. And it does ignore resist elements, not that it works against Death magic anyway.

[teelaurila]

With black prayer I could syphon life + ghoul against nomad pikemen and horsebowmen easy enough. Didn't meet a single ranger, and he got just one city started with griffons as I was at the doorstep already. Werewolves (land link + mithril) were by far the worst Tlaloc could do. Spiders were semi-nasty, but only a real threat to death units at nature nods (of which there seemed to be a lot where the fighting occured).

Nomads wasn't like syphon lifing the klackons after that, but still certainly doable. It's _very_ strong, since you get skill and units, so you can also afford to just splurge (you get roughly even skill for your mana, so if you compansate on the sliders you can use syphon life at no resource cost). Although Channeler was responsible for most of that.

[teelaurila]

I just managed the fortress strike with the help of an undead djinni and 2 undead hydras. Lost the djinni. One expendable stack bought time for 2 waves of despair, which killed 4 out of 7 warlocks, while severely damaging the remaining. Am now summoning more demon lords, I don't think I can get in more than one before he returns (I have ~200 casting skill), but hopefully at least that. Disjunction is still some turns away.

I got dispelling wave from a ruin, which has proven decisive. Not sure whether the fortress strike would have been possible without, I think it depends whether the warlocks had lionheart before I hit them with all the dispels. Got psi-blast from his fortress.

He broke a tower and managed to jump one of my lesser cities. Mega-life-buffed adamantium trolls are quite something. And these don't even have invulnerability, but they do have resist magic.
Turns out he does not want to buff with true sight much, for whatever reason. I have succesfully undercut some otherwise buffed-to-silly units with phantom warriors. Especially when at a sorcery node influence zone.

This game looks almost certainly a win, just a little bit more to do.