Tips and Tricks

[GMBarak]

Hi, 

If you have any interesting tips and tricks please share them here:
Here are a couple of mine:

1. if you get a life drain/siphon life staff and don't have death books,
you can capture an efreet and use it to cast death spells and capture more efreets, you can place each efreet in a city and converts raiders to undead,
if you can cast invisibility and spell lock on it, it's the best IMO.

2. you can use wind-walking unit with engineers to quick road building->
for example, a wind walking wolf riders with 2 engineers can build 6 road tiles in one turn

[WhiteMage]

"a wind walking wolf riders with 2 engineers can build 6 road tiles in one turn" Is this a bug that they complete work in 0 turns and still have move left?

Here are a few of mine I routinely use:
1. Surround towers, nodes, and lairs with 0 upkeep units and spearmen to prevent them from spawning.
2. Use a wall of cheap individual units to defend my country (lizardmen and other spearmen with water walking, triremes, skeletons, etc.). Throw a spell on an attacker then flee or stay to waste their mana.
3. Defend cities with 8 spearmen in my heartland to improve morale. These cities will not be attacked by anyone.
4. Make a hole on the line of defense to lure the AI far from my cities. They will often go sideways instead of attacking a unit on the overland map.
5. 9 magicians can defeat most AI stacks. 2 stacks of 9 magicians can take almost any non fortress city.

[GMBarak]

Thanks for the tips WhiteMage yes, maybe it's a bug and if we start talking about bugs, there is also the bugs that engineers and settlers violate wizard pacts and that if you use confusion on an enemy unit and kill it in combat you can lose fame for that.

[WhiteMage]

Thanks for the tips WhiteMage   yes, maybe it's a bug and if we start talking about bugs, there is also the bugs that engineers and settlers violate wizard pacts and that if you use confusion on an enemy unit and kill it in combat you can lose fame for that.

Yes, I reported the latter bug years ago and argued extensively for fixing it. I reported over 1,000 bugs and other usability and AI improvement suggestions, etc...

But I think it is ok that engineers and settlers violate wizard pacts. They too can be used to attack and then throw spell on the enemy and they also block enemy movement in their homeland. I do not consider this a bug.

[Settemio]

But I think it is ok that engineers and settlers violate wizard pacts. They too can be used to attack and then throw spell on the enemy and they also block enemy movement in their homeland. I do not consider this a bug.

It might be OK for game balance, but is is still a bug. It says specifically in their unit descriptions that they don't trigger pact violations. Either that text should be fixed or the units should do as they say.

[WhiteMage]

But I think it is ok that engineers and settlers violate wizard pacts. They too can be used to attack and then throw spell on the enemy and they also block enemy movement in their homeland. I do not consider this a bug.

It might be OK for game balance, but is is still a bug. It says specifically in their unit descriptions that they don't trigger pact violations. Either that text should be fixed or the units should do as they say.

In this case, I would consider it a text bug. But where does it say specifically in their unit descriptions that they don't trigger pact violations? I can't find it.

[Settemio]

Sorry I was misremembering - only appears in UNITS.ini, not in the descriptions in game

[WhiteMage]

Sorry I was misremembering - only appears in UNITS.ini, not in the descriptions in game

OK, so that is not a bug. Bug is something that the player sees directly in the game.

[Settemio]

You are right, again I just misremembered - it does appear in the description of the Stealth ability but I think that is actually working, so no bugs there either.

[WhiteMage]

you can use wind-walking unit with engineers to quick road building->
for example, a wind walking wolf riders with 2 engineers can build 6 road tiles in one turn

I recommend you post this to Bug Reports thread along with a reproducible save.