Focus Power / Fire Giants

[Littlenog]

So this is turning out kinda nice.

Took two books in sorcery and the rest in fire.

Got Astrologer and Conjurer since I planned to have a lot of summons and I like being able to cast while in nodes.

For Race I took nomad to see if the higher resistances would help early while I research spike to Fire Giant.  My starting location was pretty bad and there were no easy dungeons or nodes to take.  Though there was an easy zombie and it had like 7 night stalkers smh.

[teelaurila]

Yeah, stalkers and air elementals in lairs can really wreck games! (or entice to save-scumming) The honest way is to send in first a spearman to all death/sorcery locations - or earth lore.

But if you mean focus magic and fire giant, I am somewhat confused. FM should help ranged on multi-figure units most, and fire giant isn't a caster either. Fire giant should be more cost-effective just summoning more of them, instead of buffing them with FM. Resist magic might be good, if you're facing enemy wizards who attack resistance, as that is a weak spot for the giant.

So you might try FM instead with ghouls, shadow demons or cockatrices and see how it goes

That said, halflings with conjurer should be a solid foundation for summoning strategy in any realm. Depending on who you fight, FM halfling magicians can be strong (their weakness to magical ranged is the key point).

[Littlenog]

Continue on first game.

The Fire Giants are really tearing through the normal units.  I have really only used the Focus Power to affect what the AI targets.

They can easily take out a stake of 9 ghouls in a strong hold.

I also like the fact that unless you completely kill the giant they do not lose any damage output.  Wizard and Warlock as models fall their damage is less outside of Doombolt and Fireball. 

Finally took 2 nodes so Astrologer is paying some dividends.  I have a lot of summons and the 25% cost reduction is almost like a skill increase.

Bit sad that focus power isn't helping more but I've almost cast Aether Binding.  Access to healer units seems quite helpful as Fire Giants take a beating and that increase heal per turn helps a lot.  Nomads not having a healing unit off of Shrine building sucks a bit.  So next time I might take a race that has Shamans.

[Nelphine]

I'm actually intrigued to hear success stories with giants on the attack. Amazing!

[Seravy]

Nomads do have Priests instead from Parthenon - slightly more expensive but worth it.

[Littlenog]

I will download and put the stream on YouTube if people want to watch the game.

It is also saved on my Twitch channel in previous casts.

www.twitch.tv/littlenog

If you want to check them out.  They are shorter streams around 2 hours because I find I begin to get tired and kinda sloppy if I play for extended streams.  So I am trying to make them shorter.

If I can get these on my youtube I'll update with those links if the quality is good.

Part 1 YouTube link https://youtu.be/fC8cg97Az1w

[Seravy]

Nice, I'll watch as soon as I have time. Have to finish my current test game and release the update first!

[Seravy]

Watching your troll game right now, and would like to point out Blood Lust does not stop regeneration - Mammoths don't have Regeneration to begin with.

[Littlenog]

That was the 1st attempt and I didn't even use bloodlust on the trolls like i wanted lol.  2nd attempt went much better but troll only cities don't produce enough to keep up with late game races.

[Seravy]

That time when the AI kept using Blizard on your Dwarven swordsmen, at first I though it might be a bug but it was actually perfectly reasonable. All your other units either had regeneration (trolls) or cold immunity (mammoths, death creatures) so they would have taken no damage. The only thing it could have targeted instead were the heroes, but they weren't numerous enough to outprioritize the sworsmen (which was at a better position to ambush after the spell)