Test game: Life + Barbarians, hero strategy

[Catwalk]

Inspired by Nelphine's thread about hero strategies, I'm posting my latest test game here.

Settings
Impossible
4 opponents
Huge land mass
Max power
Wet climate
Rich minerals

Wizard
Barbarians
6 Life (took Endurance + Holy Armour + Just Cause + Healing + Heroism)
Warlord
Tactician
Famous
Sage Master
Specialist

My game plan is to get early heroes, put Heroism on them and rush neutral cities + easy nodes and lairs. I'm finding myself wondering if I shouldn't rely on Nomads and Rangers for Pathfinding instead, but oh well.

[Catwalk]

January 1403

Overland shots, my capital is the yellow city to the west. Top left city is orc, top right is high elf, rest are lizards.

Hero shots

Very pleased with my two early heroes, they'll get the job done for my starting continent and they offer great economic bonuses. Heroism done on Serena in two turns. Planning on taking all cities on this continent in short order. That means starting two wars (scratch that, three wars as the top left orc city is purple), but I'll risk it.

My two cities. Gearing up for berserkers in my capital shortly, will be focusing on infrastructure in the lizard city.

Magic and research. Casting skill is too low for all the mana I'm pumping out, but I'll have 40 SP from Serena in two turns so I'll be at 25-30 skill in no time. Researching the fastest spells first, want to see what's available to me before committing. Already researched Star Fires, Bless, Holy Weapon, Heroic Shout and Summoning Circle. I'm sad that I'm missing out on Heavenly Light.

[Seravy]

Based on the portraits, I guess your enemies play mostly chaos and death books. That's not the best for heroes but could be worse, at least these get nasty antihero spells at rare only. (nature with crack's call still hurts most because that's uncommon)

[Catwalk]

Death + Chaos, Death + Chaos and Death + Life So yeah, I expect to be feeling the pain. But a simple Bless spell goes a long way towards shoring that up, and since I'm not facing Dispelling Wave I can go ahead and put all those nice buffs on my heroes fairly safely.

[Nelphine]

What difficulty?

[Catwalk]

Impossible, added settings to the original post. I'm already regretting going with Barbarians instead of Nomads. While I do benefit from added mobility very early on, mobility isn't crucial this early. And nomads are massively better mid-term and long-term than barbarians, they have better units and better economy.

EDIT: I'm crying on my keyboard as I'm realizing that rangers have 6 melee and 7 ranged + long range, that's a vastly better choice than Barbarians. To top it off they even have Scouting IV and high resistance.

[Catwalk]

January 1404

Overland shots showing that I've taken most of the continent. Saving Rjak (green) for last as he has life magic (I want to trade for Heavenly Light).

Power base is now up to 40, I also get 40 free SP. I've recruited Spyder who's boosting my fame handsomely, I'm now at 43 and am able to recruit champions.

Plan now is to consolidate my continent quickly. The sorcery node has phantom beasts and nagas, that one will go down soon. The tower has a colossus, not sure how easily I can take that one. The chaos node has chaos spawns, might be doable. Overall nothing much to fight on my continent, so I need to move on to a better one fast. Either that, or I can try to take out the opposition quickly.

Also, I've decided to relocate my atrocious high elf city in the top right corner. It has max pop 9, no production bonus and can't build miners' guild or foresters' guild (= no longbowmen). That's completely useless. So I'm selling all the buildings, buying a settler and letting the AI take the city. Then I'll raze it and build a city that shares the game below with my lizard city.

[Seravy]

can't build miners' guild or foresters' guild (= no longbowmen).

I thought I removed the requirement of hills for the Miner's Guild. No foresters guild without forests is still a thing though and it's bad for elves.

[Catwalk]

You did, my bad.

[Tlaloc]

Thanks for the detailed game report. Your island sure has a lot of river tiles. I noticed that the main river system goes all the way from the north ocean to the south ocean and is in fact an invalid freshwater river system. It is more like a saltwater canal. Can the world generation be changed so that river systems are more realistic and originate somewhere on the continent?