sorcery + life lizardmen

[teelaurila]

So I've tried at master with a build like:

Lizardmen
6 sorcery + 3 life
specialist
warlord

and with the alternative of dropping the warlord for 5 life.

The theory is that javelineers hunt for early treasure, and mid-game practically invulnerable turtles stomp all over arcanus. A single turtle can defend a city, especially behind walls, with blur+prayer. Spell lock and magic immunity for late game.

The theory seemed sound but I just can't get off the ground fast enough. I have succeeded so far with master with 3 builds: ghouls+channeler, holy+flaming weapon horsebowmen and endurance golems.
Beats me how anything would work fast enough with Insane.

It takes some time to get javelineers going, meanwhile I summon a 3-5 nagas with 2-3 focus magic. But it seems I need to get very lucky with AI wizards so that I won't get either a all-around-alliance and a run-away-mushrooming leader, nor an early attack on me before the first turtles are up.

Any advice?

[teelaurila]

After half a dozen tries with slight variations on this, I'm giving up. Endurance turtles work well, and holy weapon javeliners too, but lizardmen just can't seem to get them up fast enough and are left otherwise toothless in the midgame. The turtle defense is also too risk prone, and if it successful it feels cheesy, so in the end not even that fun.

I'll try next if klackons could speed up the start enough to make up for beetles quite not matching up for turtles. Klackons would need to swarm more, leaving the extreme buffs to later game for heroes and rare+ summons. In contrast klackons would buff cities with stream of life, which wouldn't leave much casting for unit buffs anyway.

[Nelphine]

Have you considered holy armor + endurance, on units that aren't so hard to reach? Klackon swordsmen come to mind. 

Or if you take it a little further, draconian swordsmen, and skip the sorcery books altogether (myrran, tactician, spellweaver replace the sorcery books, which leaves you enough for 2 sorcery books for resist magic if you don't think bless is good enough), and go for rush killing of everyone.

I didn't really want to suggest this, as, its basically following the thought processes that led to my life barbarians, although it obviously hasn't gone the full cycle yet.

[teelaurila]

I did the mono-life rush on one of my first successful expert games (at least sort of). Had high elves then, but my nearest AI had lizardmen, and I actually ended up using buffed turtles a lot to take Arcanus. I don't have that much interest to repeat the experience at master - in large part because the experience you've talked about here leaves little doubt it can be done.

The purpose was specifically to try out spell lock + specialist (or runemaster) with magic immunity for a late-ish game strategy. I figured this would synergize well with lizardmen and holy weapon / endurance earlier in the game. Guess not. So I'll try to find some rushier early game to complement the sorcery. Seems to also imply that lizardmen are really hard to play on harder difficulties, where you won't have chance to expand much. Perhaps life+chaos runemaster could work (holy+flaming weapon javelineers and endurance+immolation turtle).

Another reason for curiosity towards the turtle build was how it could screw with the AI: strategic strength calculations lead the AI to suiciding against those turtles a lot. Which actually did happen, but with the bonuses the AI gets at master, this was far less effective than one might think. Nearly impenetrable spell lock on a stack of buffs could likewise screw with AI combat casting, causing it to waste it on ineffectual dispels. But I never really got that far yet.

[Nelphine]

Many many patches ago I did master lizardmen, but I took the myrran retort. Suddenly lizardmen expansion speed matters again. Not saying it would still work, but I had less opponents to contend with and the myyran races are naturally slower, so I got a huge amount of myrror through expansion .

Taking aura of majesty instead of spell lock might be more helpful for that though.

[Nelphine]

I've just tried an expert lizardman (on arcanus) game, and I agree. I can't expand fast enough - admittedly, I was against another lizardman, and a barbarian, who are both fast expanders, but my third (built) settler was fighting for (and LOST) a spot that was max 6 population, with no ores on it. I don't think I'll end up with more than 10 cities or so (and my opponents have 2 cities within 4 squares of my capital), and that includes taking an early neutral which promptly built settlers as well.