A very bad combo - Barbarians + Sorcery/Chaos

[Anskiy]

After losing thrice with this particular combination, I can definitely say it's one of the weaker wizards, if not among the weakest. Sorcery and Chaos are both weak realms early game that rely on surviving until they get good stuff by the mid game. Barbarians lack any source of research outside of Wizard Guilds. This leads to many situations where they get stonewalled by an opposing wizard and have to wait for a good summon or tech to show up. But thanks to their awful research speed, they get beat in the tech competition by the time they unlock relevant techs. It doesn't help that besides Flame Blade, most early game buffs are irrelevant or situational for Barbarian units. And running into a Life wizard shuts them down completely, since Life can just turn its units into brick walls. It's especially bad when they run Barbarians too.

What do you all think?

[Sapher]

I think i could beat the game on lunatic with any starting combo ^_^.
Barbarians can build a cavalry and use confusion+retreat combo. That can kill some strong lairs and give starting items to heroes who are invincible with magic immunity+spell lock.

[Seravy]

Barbarians with Chaos or Sorcery depend heavily on producing Gladiators and conquering other cities using them giving you a better expansion ability than what those realms could otherwise do at common/uncommon tier. Gladiators work fine without buffing and benefit from Blur and Resist Magic massively. Chaos doesn't do much to buff them but can support them in other ways like Disrupt and Warp Wood and Flame Blade can help ignore weapon immunity when needed.

[massone]

Not at all, Barbarians are quite strong thanks to Cavalry + Confusion as Sapher mentioned, or Bowmen + Flame Blade with their natural +1 to Hit without alchemy. Plus Thrown gives them a natural way to attack Flying units, and Flame Blade removes their problem with Weapon Immunity units. Chaos' early game isn't that bad, it's just average, and Flame Blade is a far better buff for bowmen than Heroism because it's extremely cheap to combat cast it for the same offensive benefit.

What's more, barbarians don't have advanced units, because they don't even need them. Gladiators are incredible melee units with both attack, defense, and good HP. I'd consider them better than a number of actual advanced units, so the fact that you can get them with just a coliseum makes them really good for having superior units long before your enemies have any.

When facing enemy Barbarians, you can use Nagas against them because they have terrible resistance. But you have Resist Magic to shore up resistance against any other resistance rolling effects.

Once you're at uncommon, Chaos Channels and Mystic Surge makes your units even stronger at melee, and capable of quickly rushing the opponent. And if you can't rush them, you still have Guardian Wind to protect from missiles to get in melee range.

[Anskiy]

Yeah, I suppose my mistake was over investing in Berserkers when facing Life and Death wizards. Life wizards turn their units into tanks even against mighty berserkers, and Death easily fucks them up due to their low resists. I'll try this build with a bigger focus on buffing and report back.

[Sapher]

Life wizards, Death wizards....it may be can work on expert but on lunatic you should focus on treasure hunting, getting power from nodes, making peace until you can get an overwhelming advantage from treasure.
That's why barbarian bowmen even with flame blade are useless. They just can not do treasure hunting. Even chaos spawn that is made to die to arrows will kill them because he will catch them(they have both speed 2), but even 1 horsebowmen will slowly kill all the chaos spawns(ofc with a help of fire bolts and buffs, killing 1 chaos spawn/turn).
Just an example of what i am talking about. 1 centaur killing 9 chaos spawns. You need things like that. Barbarian cavalry can do the same against medusas with a help of confusion. Cavalry can kill sorcery node that has nagas/warriors/beasts (confusion vs beast, warrior vs naga/warrior). Even a node with air elementals can be conquered but with spearmen and warrior spawm.
The real question should be what lairs/nodes can i take with starting resourses that my build gives.

[massone]

Going to have to disagree with the above. Treasure hunting is not only viable strategy on lunatic. It's also a strategy that the AI is not allowed to compete fairly with you on, because it's programmed not to attack nodes its capable of defeating, and the Quick Calculations do not allow the AI to use advanced combat tactics necessary to defeat nodes with strong enemies. If you're going to take advantage of a different rule set the AI doesn't have access to in order to win, why not just directly lower the difficulty level instead?

Even in treasure hunting, comparing bowmen to a highly buffed centaur attacking chaos spawns doesn't make any sense. There is no need for mere bowmen to be attacking a Rare level lair. It's for the early lairs and neutrals during the common stage, and there they are very strong. The centaur in Sapher's video had 11 ranged attack +2 to Hit with 3 buffs--mithril, Heroism, Holy Weapon--the OP's build doesn't have access to plus Warlord. Life is extremely good at buffing early game units. If you take Warlord, Flame Blade then try a few Mystic Surge on your bowmen until one of them has enough attack and +3 movement, it can also destroy the Chaos Spawns using the same kiting strategy, and that's still only Uncommon tier.

[Sapher]

Well, treasure hunting is not the only way of playing. It is just the best. I did a few games where i played a peacefull route focusing on researching magic immunity. So you can get your win condition not only from lairs. Also i won by rushing armour guild units, night stalkers, giant spiders, giant lizards may be somthing else i dont even remember.
But since he is struggling to win he should be adviced something strong.
Buffing a bowmen with Mystic Surge can probably work. But you need an uncommon spell(how are you going to get it?), it will be at 1hp after the fight so you need a lot of bowmen attacking in a chain(i could work with 1 centaur sending a few in each direction).

[massone]

I'd normally agree with you Sapher, but OP doesn't seem to be asking for advice, but whether a specific build is very bad. So before looking at non-build options, it makes more sense to discuss the original topic of whether Barbarian + Sorcery/Chaos has anything it can do to be competitive at an advanced play level.

[Sapher]

But i was talking about his build and said that the build was fine but he played it in a sub optimal way. Because he says that other wizards crush him(were you trying to make peace?), he needs to build wizard guild for research(just conquer some nodes instead).