So I've been trying to figure out the fastest time-to-win on various scenarios, and I think I have something that works on just about all difficulties outside of Phantasm. Phantasm ends up being difficult because of the spell power bonus that enemy AI gets. It's just a bit too much for super early victories because of the fortress lightning. There's also some caveats that end up breaking any kind of rush strategy (actually just two.)
Basic 1 opponent rush defeat ends up being fairly simple on everything Lunatic and under. 6 books Life, 2 books Death, 2 books Nature - nothing else matters. Take Heroism, Discipline, Holy Weapon, Holy Armor, Healing, Wraith Form, and Earth Lore. Halfling for the race. If you've been playing enough, in my experience, you can roughly guestimate where the AI fortress is and do Earth Lore to confirm it. You can also just do debug mode and then reveal the map to see, if you just want to experiment. Start sending 1 Swordsman in that general direction and immediately start casting Wraith Form. Make sure to set your magic to be mostly mana (at least enough to cover overland casting), set the starting city to trade goods and use alchemy to convert gold to mana if you ended up taking Archmage. Then just use the rest -> heroism, holy armor, holy weapon, and discipline. Hopefully by the time you are done casting, you're at the fortress ready to go in. Send Swordsman in, use the 1 healing when/if needed, and basically kill anything else.
This almost always works out to being around 20 to 25 turns in, depending on start, and almost always works depending on difficulty. Lunatic is very 50/50 (or less), but does work. I can't get it to work at all on Phantasm, though.
Scenarios that don't work:
- Against Sorcery. By the time you get to the Fortress, they will almost always have 1 or 2 Nagas and maybe even Focus Magic on them. They make short work of the Swordsman, even fully buffed+Warlord, so don't bother. Even if they don't have Nagas, if they have Sorcery they probably have phantom warriors... also a no go. Every other early summon fails, and every other race can't defend with normal units, except ...
- Against Draconians. Fire Breath basically takes out what Wraithform does for you, and they're flying. Even if you were to kill them then the AI goes into a stall-forever-because-I-can-fly mode.
Alchemy? Only kind of... I didn't get an Alchemy user on Lunatic, and it didn't matter on Phantasm, so I'm not entirely sure.
If you're fast, you can take out the second AI using the same strategy but by adding 1 additional Swordsman. That tends to be around turn 50. Past that, you can switch to Slingers and the same thing will work with 4 slingers then 8 slingers for AI 3 and 4. Past that, you have to switch to more powerful things, or that is what I suspect. I started just trying other strategies to see if I could find anything consistently working as quick, and I don't see anything else you can do to eliminate AI wizards fast in the early game.
Insights after testing things:
- You can use the same method to basically take over almost any neutral city minus magicians/warlocks. Priests/Shaman don't do enough damage to counter the Halflings.
- Draconians are pretty amazing, since they can use normal units to defend where nobody else can - they're still no match for nagas so early, though, but they do alright taking out neutral cities since they can fly.
- Elven Calvary, if there's only grassland and forest on the combat map, cannot be beat here, either. If there's a river, or mountains or something, then you can get to them. Otherwise they'll kite forever. Bowmen can pretty much eliminate them, though.
- Dwarves are awful. I used to like them, now... they're just weak. Really weak. There's no saving the Dwarf Nation. Once you can get around their steam cannons from neutral cities, they have nothing going for them, and even then those steam cannons are pretty terrible past turn 120 or so. So they end up with no range, lack luster melee, and lots of gold. You get to die rich. Golems? Some slightly buffed lower tier units can murder them with impunity. I feel like there's something wrong here, I really do. They look great on paper, but they just aren't.
- Earth Elementals might as well be deleted from the game. They, too, are also bad. I knew I could kill them very easily with any flying unit, but I was accidentally attacking things while running units around and took out 8 with just 1 Swordsman. Yeah, okay, buffed, but not even Lionheart. I know I might have gotten lucky here, but really? They're slow, and die too fast.
- Turn 100 is definitely the turning point in higher difficulty games. You could be winning, and there's a good chance you'll start losing at turn 101. It's pretty drastic.
- I couldn't find it, but the AI feels like it has much higher hit % than the player. For instance, a few times I would go in without Holy Armor, or without Discipline, and recruit level dark elves would annihilate me, even if they were ultra elite. Then I'd be attacked by recruit level whatever, and my recruit level dark elves would mostly die. That isn't the only time, or scenario, either.
- Heavenly Light is more powerful for defending than Heroism+Warlord.
Basic 1 opponent rush defeat ends up being fairly simple on everything Lunatic and under. 6 books Life, 2 books Death, 2 books Nature - nothing else matters. Take Heroism, Discipline, Holy Weapon, Holy Armor, Healing, Wraith Form, and Earth Lore. Halfling for the race. If you've been playing enough, in my experience, you can roughly guestimate where the AI fortress is and do Earth Lore to confirm it. You can also just do debug mode and then reveal the map to see, if you just want to experiment. Start sending 1 Swordsman in that general direction and immediately start casting Wraith Form. Make sure to set your magic to be mostly mana (at least enough to cover overland casting), set the starting city to trade goods and use alchemy to convert gold to mana if you ended up taking Archmage. Then just use the rest -> heroism, holy armor, holy weapon, and discipline. Hopefully by the time you are done casting, you're at the fortress ready to go in. Send Swordsman in, use the 1 healing when/if needed, and basically kill anything else.
This almost always works out to being around 20 to 25 turns in, depending on start, and almost always works depending on difficulty. Lunatic is very 50/50 (or less), but does work. I can't get it to work at all on Phantasm, though.
Scenarios that don't work:
- Against Sorcery. By the time you get to the Fortress, they will almost always have 1 or 2 Nagas and maybe even Focus Magic on them. They make short work of the Swordsman, even fully buffed+Warlord, so don't bother. Even if they don't have Nagas, if they have Sorcery they probably have phantom warriors... also a no go. Every other early summon fails, and every other race can't defend with normal units, except ...
- Against Draconians. Fire Breath basically takes out what Wraithform does for you, and they're flying. Even if you were to kill them then the AI goes into a stall-forever-because-I-can-fly mode.
Alchemy? Only kind of... I didn't get an Alchemy user on Lunatic, and it didn't matter on Phantasm, so I'm not entirely sure.
If you're fast, you can take out the second AI using the same strategy but by adding 1 additional Swordsman. That tends to be around turn 50. Past that, you can switch to Slingers and the same thing will work with 4 slingers then 8 slingers for AI 3 and 4. Past that, you have to switch to more powerful things, or that is what I suspect. I started just trying other strategies to see if I could find anything consistently working as quick, and I don't see anything else you can do to eliminate AI wizards fast in the early game.
Insights after testing things:
- You can use the same method to basically take over almost any neutral city minus magicians/warlocks. Priests/Shaman don't do enough damage to counter the Halflings.
- Draconians are pretty amazing, since they can use normal units to defend where nobody else can - they're still no match for nagas so early, though, but they do alright taking out neutral cities since they can fly.
- Elven Calvary, if there's only grassland and forest on the combat map, cannot be beat here, either. If there's a river, or mountains or something, then you can get to them. Otherwise they'll kite forever. Bowmen can pretty much eliminate them, though.
- Dwarves are awful. I used to like them, now... they're just weak. Really weak. There's no saving the Dwarf Nation. Once you can get around their steam cannons from neutral cities, they have nothing going for them, and even then those steam cannons are pretty terrible past turn 120 or so. So they end up with no range, lack luster melee, and lots of gold. You get to die rich. Golems? Some slightly buffed lower tier units can murder them with impunity. I feel like there's something wrong here, I really do. They look great on paper, but they just aren't.
- Earth Elementals might as well be deleted from the game. They, too, are also bad. I knew I could kill them very easily with any flying unit, but I was accidentally attacking things while running units around and took out 8 with just 1 Swordsman. Yeah, okay, buffed, but not even Lionheart. I know I might have gotten lucky here, but really? They're slow, and die too fast.
- Turn 100 is definitely the turning point in higher difficulty games. You could be winning, and there's a good chance you'll start losing at turn 101. It's pretty drastic.
- I couldn't find it, but the AI feels like it has much higher hit % than the player. For instance, a few times I would go in without Holy Armor, or without Discipline, and recruit level dark elves would annihilate me, even if they were ultra elite. Then I'd be attacked by recruit level whatever, and my recruit level dark elves would mostly die. That isn't the only time, or scenario, either.
- Heavenly Light is more powerful for defending than Heroism+Warlord.