LIFE Realm

[Seravy]

95% of the time, yes. Nowadays I usually play Expert as it's a fairly good middle point for testing game balance. I plan to eventually move up to higher difficulties again, but only after all the remaining races are fully balanced.

[Nelphine]

Playing lunatic, I literally never produce military units without an alchemists guild, unless they're barbarians. (This is literally 0 units without magic weapons, over all my games since patch ~2.0.)

I do produce spearmen, transports, engineers, and settlers without an alchemists guild. I would consider building magicians (but not trolls) without an alchemists guild.

[Bahgtru]

Ah. Good luck doing that in higher difficulties I'd consider testing the higher difficulties while you do the balancing, there are systemic differences that make it not a quantitative process only. Like this one. You risk to end up having to redo the whole work.

I can see that you'd be annoyed at your MW-less undead though if you do that, but you can see the weapons of the units you attack after all. If there's a choice between - say - casting lifesteal on a unit or the other, the MW one can be chosen. So having the mechanic would reward good choices. At higher difficulties MWless troops are quite rare, the alchemist is an early choice for the AI, so your issue wouldn't come up much.

You haven't answered on the point of early chaos? Or did I miss it?

[Nelphine]

Bahgtru I don't understand which point you are driving at, as I believe you didn't respond to my post about lunatic.

[Seravy]

I haven't answered to early chaos because I find that is
1. A non-issue, as Chaos is meant to be weak early while Death is meant to be strong early (we can start a debate about whether the amount of relative strength is good or bad, but this isn't the place for that, use the Chaos thread - I admit Chaos is hard to play in the early game but I found it good enough so far, I'm having a harder time playing Life or Sorcery.)
2. Less important than how undead work as a game mechanic - even if we determine Chaos needs to be improved,  this isn't going to do enough to be worth making undead worse. Ultimately, this change would favor a single spell over an entire game mechanic, that's rarely a good thing.
3. Fire Elementals are bad against Death to begin with - they have low resistance and are torn apart by a unit of Zombies.

Mostly the second - it should have been obvious that changing an entire game mechanic for a single spell specific interaction is putting the carriage before the horse and it's not going to beat my argument(s) in importance.

[zitro1987]

Is it just me or is life really a struggle at the start of the game? Their buff spells are not very cost-effective with cavalry, forcing you to sacrifice some economy by getting a fighter's guild and alchemist guild. Then you can enjoy the buff spells.

It seems now that heroes starting a bit later to show up damages the early start, but I don't think that's the problem. I think the issue is that life struggles a lot with the efficiency of buff spells early on while other realms do a bunch of summons.

[Bahgtru]

I see, thanks for the answer.

Just a final clarification,generic in nature: wasn't "[it] is meant to be weak early" exactly what you disagreed with and drove the sorcery redesign?

[on the wrong thread - yep. But this discussion stemmed from heroism and XP... Shatter was a plan B on that proposal, which also got stomped.]

Nelphine - our posts crossed. I do a lot of units before having the guild, because they're ways to kill minor stuff and I consider them expendable, they'd die anyway and getting the loot 2 turns earlier matters in lunatic. Love my unbuffed, non MW elf cavalry, two of them can kill a bear in a tower with 1 loss, or kill the ranged units in a neutral city fast giving them only 1 shot. I am surprised that you can beat lunatic without doing this, but looking at your other threads I see that you like playing rich/desert/dwarves, heh, alchemy retort, or strong magic maps, which slows down everything as the node guards are stronger.

[Nelphine]

Rich dwarves have been a recent ploy, mostly to try to beat lunatic as mono chaos (I believe this is the hardest lunatic realm, but I also suck with chaos). Rich dry is actually a rarity for me - rich fair is much better generally, unless playing omniscient nature.

Yes I use the alchemy retort. But again, you could remove the magic weapon from it, and it wouldn't change much except id cast holy weapon before holy armor, instead of often skipping holy weapon entirely.

Ghouls, spiders, and naga, all wouldn't see any changes at all, and I still don't ever build city troops until I have alchemist guild. Don't use alchemy retort for any realm except life. My life games are just the ones I can win lunatic 90%+ of the time, so they get the most exposure.

And yeah I always play max power, although the reason for that is gone now, I'm still in the habit of doing so. It actually benefits the AI more so I should probably stop, but oh well.

[Seravy]

Just a final clarification,generic in nature: wasn't "[it] is meant to be weak early" exactly what you disagreed with and drove the sorcery redesign?

Not really. "overpowered late game" was, but to bring that down to more acceptable levels, the early game had to go up to compensate. Basically, old Sorcery pushed the "weak early but strong late" concept way too far, it was often literally unbeatable in the late game - which is a problem because the Myrran AI might be Sorcery.

[teelaurila]

Zitro: I've had decent success with Life and (early) city units, even on master. But you need a specific plan with an early unit, of which I've only had success with ranged. So far I've done nomads/horsebowmen and elves/longbowmen. You can take a lot of treasure with 9 of these shooters with holy weapon. Add flame blade (which you can also leave to be cast in combat) for busting even very rares.

I was thinking of trying this with lizardmen after my present nature game. The main hurdle is likely what you say: getting up FG (with barracks and alchemist), and then building a stack, takes time.

But it is somewhat interesting how this could work with early melee units, instead (we know alchemist berserkers, but other).

Klackons could be an interesting twist with going instead endurance+holy armor on halberdiers. I think it would be hard as those can kill other wizards units well, but treasure not so much.

Halflings would be interesting with heroism - which jacks up the cost of units hugely. Probably not feasible beyond expert.

All in all, I feel life is pretty balanced, just plays a little differently. You need to designate at least a couple early cities for unit production, which puts you behind in economy. (Ideally treasure and loot feeds into these cities to keep them up). Would be interested to hear what people prefer to build before going units. By the early-mid game, you will have a much easier time with more units than could be summoned. Making a "doomstack" out of any stack of units, by buffing, is a lot faster than summoning a stack. Which gives you versatility.