Best strategies on Lunatic?

[zuzzu]

I'm trying my game with Lunatic difficulties. Any good strategies/combinations you would recommend?

I am a fan of 6-7 Life books + 1 nature, warlord, guardian, astrologer. Seems to be really though to beat the computer with this one.

What are you favorite strategies?

[jhsidi]

Guardian seems like a waste of picks. I think the general consensus is that it's a retort for AI. Players can avoid losing cities without it and you've already got heavenly light with Life.

Not sure how Nature fits in your strategy. Web? But you've only got 1 book so that's a crapshoot... Chaos or Sorcery probably have a better chance of giving you something game-changing. Probably go for 2 books in your secondary school to ensure you get something really good. Sorcery is just full of great stuff.

In general I'd try to make sure every retort is somehow game-changing. For Life, maybe omniscient? Alchemy? Spellweaver?

My build right now that's working very well at Lunatic is: 5 chaos, 4 life, specialist, spellweaver. Chaos channeled ranged units with Life buffs helped take out a lot of powerful Chaos nodes very easily, and got me 2 more Chaos and 1 Death book. I'm trying to avoid fights with Sorcery and Death wizards due to the lack of resistance and the incredible pain in the ass that is dispelling wave.

[massone]

It's rarely a good idea to take 2 double-pick retorts unless they have very strong synergy with each other.

Warlord is very strong when combined with other buffs to go over what would be maximum stats on your units otherwise. It's not as great if you only use it to have a lot of slightly stronger units (for this reason, I don't consider Crusade to be among the best Very Rares for Life either).

Guardian has been buffed in the latest builds because the max pop limit has been removed. It is a very strong defensive retort as well, but is only great for some specific builds. It should be combined with a race like HM that strongly benefits from building more of its own racial settlements than capturing other races. It's also more powerful on Dry setting where the average city-pop is much lower. It helps you a lot if you start in a bad position, and greatly benefits turtling strategies, but otherwise is probably not a great pick overall if you plan to do any conquest.

Astrologer is very good if you have a strategy focused on capturing nodes. Otherwise, it's next to useless.

The 1 nature book is a tough pick for Lunatic. At this difficulty level you aren't looking for late-game versatility, you need as much early advantage as possible. If you really like playing the Nature spells, you can consider using 2 Nature books in order to get the Sprite common spell. That will let you capture some very early nodes, and increase your versatility in the end game, plus giving access to more trading options.

At the Lunatic level, you need to have a strategy that can either outrush the AI, or diplomatically keep them at bay. It's not feasible to play a defensive game without diplomacy, especially if you're dealing with a lot of other Wizards. So Charismatic is actually a very useful retort.

It's also probably better to play a 5-5, 5-4 or 6-3 split between books in two Realms, or go full a 8+ specialist route. Trading is much more powerful in 14 Wizard games, and there are a lot of synergies between realms to look at, or shoring up particular weaknesses.

For example, Life is good during common but somewhat weak during Uncommon. Nature has a few great spells at Uncommon that can really help. Giant Spiders are an easy and cheap way to reinforce new conquests or deal with flying units that you can't attack in a pure life play, while Transmute for Adamantium is extremely powerful when stacked with life buffs.

The guaranteed Uncommon at 5, starting common at 2, and access to Very Rare at 4 are all very important. It's hard to have a good build for Lunatic without considering the spells and races in the strategy.

[jhsidi]

Astrologer is very good if you have a strategy focused on capturing nodes. Otherwise, it's next to useless.

I agree with everything you wrote except this. Astrologer is one of the most valuable picks in the game if you like to treasure hunt and take nodes.

On a recent game I was playing, I found a two-pick treasure, and one of the picks it dropped was Astrologer. Before, my total power income was a bit under 500. Astrologer increased my mana by an additional 600! So, suddenly my income was more than doubled. Out of curiosity, I save-scummed until I got Cult Leader instead, figuring it'd be great since I had a lot of High Men with all their religious buildings in place. But that only added a bit over 100 mana, iirc. The extra unrest reduction wasn't worth as much as I'd imagined either.

So many nodes are balanced to be nearly worthless, with power income around 10-15. But there are a LOT of them, and Astrologer gives a flat bonus to every single one. With my playstyle, no other spell / pick / strategy provides nearly as much power income.

[massone]

Astrologer is very good if you have a strategy focused on capturing nodes. Otherwise, it's next to useless.

I agree with everything you wrote except this. Astrologer is one of the most valuable picks in the game if you like to treasure hunt and take nodes.

On a recent game I was playing, I found a two-pick treasure, and one of the picks it dropped was Astrologer. Before, my total power income was a bit under 500. Astrologer increased my mana by an additional 600! So, suddenly my income was more than doubled. Out of curiosity, I save-scummed until I got Cult Leader instead, figuring it'd be great since I had a lot of High Men with all their religious buildings in place. But that only added a bit over 100 mana, iirc. The extra unrest reduction wasn't worth as much as I'd imagined either.

So many nodes are balanced to be nearly worthless, with power income around 10-15. But there are a LOT of them, and Astrologer gives a flat bonus to every single one. With my playstyle, no other spell / pick / strategy provides nearly as much power income.

To get an increase of 600 you would have to have a LOT of nodes. For example, by 1510, you'd need to have 600/(2*10) = 30.  So as I said, it's very good if your strategy focuses on that. At the Lunatic level, treasure hunting is not a major part of gameplay unless you specifically focus on it because the AI will take most of them first. By 1508 or so, there will typically be no lairs left on Arcanus on any size map except Maximal. Plus, you'd be lucky to get and hold 10 nodes on a Normal map let alone 30 by 1510. With how quickly the AI takes nodes on Lunatic, I would only expect to have 1/4th to 1/3rd as many nodes as I have cities in most strategies. So if you have 15-20 cities by 1510, you should have around 6 nodes, which would only be 120 extra Power. But I'll admit that calling it next to useless was a bit of an exaggeration. Most other retorts won't generate more either if you just throw them into a build without considering synergies.

But picking it as a starting choice is quite different from finding it later. There are many retorts which are much better if found than if chosen from the beginning, simply because they don't contribute much at the start of the game. Astrologer is one of those, as it gets better with time, and contributes very little in the early years. Because of compounding growth, the retorts that contribute continuously from the beginning of the game are worth a lot more.

Btw, if you're seeing 600+ Power from a small number of nodes, that could be a bug. On Lunatic one would actually expect to hit 500 total Power earlier than 1510 to be competitive (except for strategies that stack RP/SP production separately from Power), so my above assumption for Astrologer's 10 year elapsed, 20 Power per node bonus was probably quite generous as it was probably earlier in the game. But even using that, the 30 nodes would imply about 450 base Power production at 15 Pwr each, which would be almost 90% of your total Power income. I'm not sure how this can be possible without a bug, as city Power should generally account for 50%+ of total Power even on node heavy strategies.  Even if it were 1515 with only 20 nodes and 300 base Power, that still means city Power was less than 200, which doesn't seem to make sense when just a Fortress and 10 cities with religious buildings and Wizard's Tower could produce more than that.

[jhsidi]

I do tend to prefer treasure hunting and taking nodes, so 30 nodes by 1510 is quite high for me but not impossible if I focused on breaking into Myrror early and managed to avoid wars.

I've got Astrologer in my current game and I'm not close to 30 nodes. It's now Feb 1510 and I have 613 power income: 400 from nodes, 213 from cities. Oddly, I have the exact same number of nodes and cities: 11 of each. (Although I have quite a lot of conquered nodes on Myrror that spirits haven't reached yet.)

So is it worth it even with just 10-ish nodes? I'd say yes. A solid 1/3 of my power income is from Astrologer. True, that number was less in early game; but Astrologer helped me to conquer some nodes I couldn't otherwise take, so it was also responsible for their income. An additional 30-50 income in early years is nothing to scoff at. I've also gotten 3 extra spellbooks from nodes, which have unlocked new strategies (I got both life drain and warp creature, so I'm now raising undead from the nodes I conquer).

Now, if you focus on wars and conquering cities, this is all of questionable worth. You're correct on that.

... but personally, I just can't stand constantly being in wars on Lunatic. There's so much curse spam, dispel spam, and random attack spam it's just not a pleasant game for me to play. And while beating other wizards to the treasure is indeed difficult, it's not impossible.

[Anskiy]

Sapher consistently wins games on the highest difficulty by targeting lairs with cheap tactics. I would say lairs are by far more important than cities unless you are going for a tall strategy.

[massone]

Sapher consistently wins games on the highest difficulty by targeting lairs with cheap tactics. I would say lairs are by far more important than cities unless you are going for a tall strategy.

If you design your wizard build around taking lairs, and proceed to play a strategy that focuses on lairs, then of course it'll look like lairs are more important than anything else, for that strategy. I also haven't seen any of Sapher's recent videos, so I don't know if you're talking about the COM1 COM2 balance, because it's pretty different. The pace of AI lair and node capturing is much faster in COM2, by 2-3 years, on 13-Wizard Lunatic games.

But everything has tradeoffs. The resources and picks you expend on defeating lairs could be used elsewhere, so there is an opportunity cost. Unless you've tried other strategies, it isn't always obvious how large the difference can be.

Additionally, defeating lairs is not the same as actually keeping nodes for Power production. Astrologer only matters for a fraction of lairs (the nodes only), and it's military advantage becomes less useful as your own army and spellcasting gets stronger, so strategies that focus on enhancing military power or spell power have alternative means of overcoming the node aura. You can also deal with hard nodes by repeatedly sending in more forces to whittle them down if you have more cities.

I do tend to prefer treasure hunting and taking nodes, so 30 nodes by 1510 is quite high for me but not impossible if I focused on breaking into Myrror early and managed to avoid wars.

I've got Astrologer in my current game and I'm not close to 30 nodes. It's now Feb 1510 and I have 613 power income: 400 from nodes, 213 from cities. Oddly, I have the exact same number of nodes and cities: 11 of each. (Although I have quite a lot of conquered nodes on Myrror that spirits haven't reached yet.)

So is it worth it even with just 10-ish nodes? I'd say yes. A solid 1/3 of my power income is from Astrologer. True, that number was less in early game; but Astrologer helped me to conquer some nodes I couldn't otherwise take, so it was also responsible for their income. An additional 30-50 income in early years is nothing to scoff at. I've also gotten 3 extra spellbooks from nodes, which have unlocked new strategies (I got both life drain and warp creature, so I'm now raising undead from the nodes I conquer).

Now, if you focus on wars and conquering cities, this is all of questionable worth. You're correct on that.

... but personally, I just can't stand constantly being in wars on Lunatic. There's so much curse spam, dispel spam, and random attack spam it's just not a pleasant game for me to play. And while beating other wizards to the treasure is indeed difficult, it's not impossible.

That's definitely a good amount of Power from Astrologer if you can get that many nodes, but it also required significant tradeoffs in growth in other areas. By focusing more on nodes than cities, you get a lot less RP, Gold, and production, even if you have a higher Power total.

Putting aside the appeal of different playstyles from an enjoyment perspective (because that's understandable but a different question), let's take a look at how much actual impact the Astrologer has.

I pulled up a recent Lunatic game Normal map save to compare, in which I used an research and economy strategy with a mix of conquering and lair capturing--in other words, a bit of everything, at 1509 September. I had 15 cities producing 309 Power and 6 nodes producing 102 Power, so 4 more cities and 5 fewer nodes. I also got 669 RP separately from cities. I was only involved in one significant conquest war, and didn't have astrologer. So my 4 extra cities generated 100 more Power, and your 5 extra nodes generate 80 more base Power or 180 after incl. Astrologer bonus.

But the thing is, those 4 cities aren't just generating 100 more Power.

They generate an average of ~80 gold per city (some producing 150+), and average production of 70+ hammers.

If we value that 2 gold = 1 Power (without alchemy) and 1 hammer = 1 Power (because 1 hammer = 2 gold), then the 4 extra cities alone are generating 440 Power-equivalent. That's already higher than the entire income you were getting from ALL nodes after the astrologer bonus. And this is without even accounting for RP and food production. Add those and it'd be closer to 700 Pwr equivalent.

So that 220 extra Power from Astrologer? It may look good at first glance, but based on these calculations, just 1.5 cities would make up for it.

Now if you compared to a more specialized strategy, but still competitive on Lunatic, for either "tall" economy or conquest, I think the total numbers will work out similarly. The pure tall economy strategies will generate even higher output from their small number of cities while the conquest strategies would have more cities with less output each.

Now we can't just ignore rewards from defeating lairs either, but that's quite hard to quantify because they aren't continuous income streams, but one time rewards. I believe the game was balanced with lair rewards providing reasonable income to strategies that focus on lairs, but I don't know if that really applies at Lunatic. The issue is that synergies can drastically increase the economic output from other sources, whereas you only get more out of lair rewards if you can take more lairs. So Astrologer would definitely have an impact on that basis, but I'm skeptical that the incremental income would make up for the massive disparity in outcomes shown in the above calculations.

[jhsidi]

Yikes, I typed out a whole answer and somehow the entire text got deleted.

Anyway, what it boiled down to is this: I think you're stretching when you start comparing city hammers to power. Cities need to be defended, which takes a hell of a lot of resources, and they don't just sit around on trade goods earning gold in the early game (at least, not in any playstyle I've seen). Meanwhile, due to the dispel effect, I can defend a node with 2 units, where I won't leave a city with less than 8 (for various reasons, including public order etc).

Yes, this boils down to playstyles and what you favor. But I don't think having 10 cities / 10 nodes is some kind of maniacal focus on only treasure hunting. I felt like I was doing a mix of things too; a bit of war, a bit of treasure hunting. And Astrologer was making a very credible contribution. Much more than you'd have gotten from, say, Cult Leader; even with 15 cities. I'm assuming all those cities aren't fully kitted out up to cathedrals at that point in the game...

As for the point on how much treasure you actually get from nodes and whether it's worthwhile -- I had about 10 nodes, but I'd conquered around 20, I believe? Each node tends to give something useful: a common / uncommon spell, a hero, a vial (worth 1000 mana each), or items (worth ~100 - ~500 mana when broken down, usually). It adds up, in my experience.

Anyway, your original evaluation of Astrologer was "next to useless" for anyone not focused on capturing nodes. I would revise that: next to useless only if you're really focused on empire building. I get the sense that a lot of players enjoy treasure hunting enough to get a good payback from it, and there are many retorts that are much more questionable than Astrologer.

[massone]

I already admitted that my original wording was an exaggeration, so there's no disagreement there now. There are definitely a lot of retorts that are much more questionable than Astrologer, but I consider them all situational and not that different from Astrologer's case. You can make builds with them that are very good, with the right synergies. For example, you compared Cult Leader, which I also think is not that good. It can however, shine with the right races and spells. +50% unrest reduction is 2.5 with Shrine, Parthenon and Oracle, which is almost as large as SoL, or as large with Cathedral. This is a huge bonus for non-Life plays, as each pop is worth about 4.5 power, in addition to the synergies it has with religious power effects.

As for the gold and hammers to power equivalence measurement, this is the reference that Servavy uses for balancing, and I consider it a more than fair measurement.

In fact, if anything, I think my calculations were too conservative and underestimates the true value of cities. The gold values I used were net of expenses, not revenue, as shown on the list of cities page. But there is significant strategic value in having various buildings that have upkeep, especially the Towers, animist guilds for healing, barracks/War colleges for free experience, and the ability to produce specific strategically useful advanced units in addition to the actual productive capacity itself.
Hammers also directly translate into casting skill via Amplifying Towers, which is MORE efficient than spending Power on SP above ~90 base. From this POV, hammers are actually worth more than 1 Power each.
Gold also serves a strategic purpose that mana can't be used for. Buying units/buildings instantly wherever you want, in as many cities as you have, including newly conquered ones. With mana and summoning, you're limited by casting skill even if you have huge amounts mana.

Finally, I disagree with the idea that nodes require less resources to defend. The node aura is much weaker than the wide array of stacking defensive additions cities can have, such as enchantments and walls. Units can't heal with Animist Guild or Stream of Life, and they're harder to reinforce due to distance. Plus, the node aura is useless if your opponent uses the same Realm, and a hindrance to yourself if you are dual Realm, or you've captured a non-aligned node (which realistically, you'd have to, if you're getting that many nodes, considering they're all equally distributed). On the other hand, getting a 9-unit garrison simply means that your city is producing defenses for 9 turns. You aren't expending any resources beyond what the city itself generates.