So this is about my (still on-going) nature game, sparked by "nature can't beat death (early)" comments.
10 nature, conjurer, specialist, high men. Expert level.
AIs
Rjak, 9 death 1 chaos guardian nomads.
Oberic nature+chaos nomads
Sharee death+chaos gnolls
Sss'ra 9 chaos 1 sorcery specialist myrran beastmen
Started with 4 sprites, got an early earth elemental node, and a bit later a minor werewolf temple. Not that good luck with cheese-able treasure there.
Capital had coal, and one gold and one silver not too far. So I planned for 4 cities with adamantium, though Oberic snatched the spot on the other side of the gold.
Started the capital on the path to mass produce magicians. Spiders was my first research, so after only half a dozen bears, a lot of spiders.
Rjak decleared war almost immediately on contact, and so did Sharee. Sharee was already at war with Oberic, so Oberic became my ally. I had already given him a few spells to pave the way for that. Rjak was expansionist, so I was snatching a lot of small cities with spiders. Defenders were horsebowmen, and a bit later pikemen. Magicians came to good use against the pikes. Rjak only had the sporadic ghoul, easily killed by spiders. Spiders had enough resistance that mostly Rjak rather summoned zombies instead of black sleep - to no effect.
Rjak's fort was defended by 8 ghouls and beastmaster, so that was a major hurdle (+3 to attack on ghouls). Losing just a few spiders to undead would have been a major trouble. 2 stacks of spiders did win that fight, because most of the ghouls did not have wraith form: The first stack webbed what ghouls they could, and did manage to destroy the wraith formed and the hero. They then chewed on webbed ghouls while the web was up. They couldn't have won the fight, but they all attacked until red and webs were torn off, and then retreated. I lost only 2 spiders as undead this way, and the second stack wiped what was left.
Sharee was already losing to Oberic, so I rushed in to take Sharee's homelands. Had a few adamantium paladins at this point. It was not contest, except to take the cities before Oberic. Not that gnoll cities are that great, but most Amplifiers (3) stayed intact. I was lucky Sahree did not have volcano, otherwise I would have lost my adamantiums.
With most of the cities nomad and some gnolls, unrest is ever present. But got taxes to 1.75 which seems to do.
A lot of treasure had doom bats to guard it, or water and air elementals, which kept me from taking treasure and nodes until quite late. Cockatrices made short work of bats, and used (resist elements) paladins and magicians against the rest. Perhaps I should have aimed for the treasure a bit sooner. Got one chaos book, astrologer and 2 more nature books.
Broke a tower with 4 great drakes with a stack of adamantium+flame blade rangers. Sss'ra's city was right there, and declared war like 2 turns after contact. His fort is on a small continent with no towers. Took 1 small city from him, and destroyed one doomstack of chimera with a 9 magician stack. Sss'ra now seems to be breaking towers with halberdiers (beastmen), got 2 broken near my cities that I hadn't fully prepared for. Looks like I will lose a couple of my nomad cities when ss'ra scouts them and then volcano+corruption. Hopefully I can keep him away from the one producing adamantium rangers. My high men mainland doesn't have towers nearby, the rest are in Oberic territory, but near the cities I took from Sharee, and there my defenses are weak.
I am planning to alchemize some of the mana I got stashed from treasure to boost magician production as much as possible. Petrify is great against halberdiers and chimera, and magicians can deal with chaos spawns as well. I switched from spider summoning to change terrain / transmute / gaia's blessing s the main casting after those came up. Now I am almost done, but a few Gaia's still on the magician producers. Adamantium paladins, and magicians, form most of my forces now.
Next research is gorgons, which I planned to summon a stack of and bring that to sss'ras fort. Don't know what the defenses are yet, but chimera / chaos spawn / beastman magician seems to be his stronger garrisons.
Beastmen Myrran seems to be breaking towers easy because of strategic strength of halberdiers. Which is a threat pariticularly with chaos, as one would need to keep cities from being scouted. Again particularly because my nature strategy at this stage relies largely on adamantium city units.
We are even with sss'ra on power graph: I got a lot more power and he has a lot more army. So it seems he does not yet have most myrran nodes. Which will likely change soon because halberdiers.
Got unlucky with heroes, I got only a sage and a witch that are worth their while, and no way to use them against sss'ra: Even with elemental armor, resist elements and bless, lightning bolt will decimate them (or any hero). Only invisibility seems to give a chance to survive. I could make a regen item, though, which could turn heroes into lightning rods to soak up combat casting. But the cost of that is perhaps too high, and I am yet to research create artifact.
It was clear early nature can beat aggressive death in the early game, using spiders. But one does have to be careful: undead spiders are horrifying against living ones. Also the AI will spread ghouls thin with city units - if you wait until a proper doomstack of ghouls comes up spiders can be in a lot more trouble. Though my trouble at the fort had a lot to do with guardian+beastmaster, a full stack of wraithform ghouls can spell trouble for spiders.
Nature does work more by force and bulk, so I predict this will become a lot harder at master, let alone lunatic. Strategies based on untouchable units should suffer comparatively less from hiking the difficulty.
10 nature, conjurer, specialist, high men. Expert level.
AIs
Rjak, 9 death 1 chaos guardian nomads.
Oberic nature+chaos nomads
Sharee death+chaos gnolls
Sss'ra 9 chaos 1 sorcery specialist myrran beastmen
Started with 4 sprites, got an early earth elemental node, and a bit later a minor werewolf temple. Not that good luck with cheese-able treasure there.
Capital had coal, and one gold and one silver not too far. So I planned for 4 cities with adamantium, though Oberic snatched the spot on the other side of the gold.
Started the capital on the path to mass produce magicians. Spiders was my first research, so after only half a dozen bears, a lot of spiders.
Rjak decleared war almost immediately on contact, and so did Sharee. Sharee was already at war with Oberic, so Oberic became my ally. I had already given him a few spells to pave the way for that. Rjak was expansionist, so I was snatching a lot of small cities with spiders. Defenders were horsebowmen, and a bit later pikemen. Magicians came to good use against the pikes. Rjak only had the sporadic ghoul, easily killed by spiders. Spiders had enough resistance that mostly Rjak rather summoned zombies instead of black sleep - to no effect.
Rjak's fort was defended by 8 ghouls and beastmaster, so that was a major hurdle (+3 to attack on ghouls). Losing just a few spiders to undead would have been a major trouble. 2 stacks of spiders did win that fight, because most of the ghouls did not have wraith form: The first stack webbed what ghouls they could, and did manage to destroy the wraith formed and the hero. They then chewed on webbed ghouls while the web was up. They couldn't have won the fight, but they all attacked until red and webs were torn off, and then retreated. I lost only 2 spiders as undead this way, and the second stack wiped what was left.
Sharee was already losing to Oberic, so I rushed in to take Sharee's homelands. Had a few adamantium paladins at this point. It was not contest, except to take the cities before Oberic. Not that gnoll cities are that great, but most Amplifiers (3) stayed intact. I was lucky Sahree did not have volcano, otherwise I would have lost my adamantiums.
With most of the cities nomad and some gnolls, unrest is ever present. But got taxes to 1.75 which seems to do.
A lot of treasure had doom bats to guard it, or water and air elementals, which kept me from taking treasure and nodes until quite late. Cockatrices made short work of bats, and used (resist elements) paladins and magicians against the rest. Perhaps I should have aimed for the treasure a bit sooner. Got one chaos book, astrologer and 2 more nature books.
Broke a tower with 4 great drakes with a stack of adamantium+flame blade rangers. Sss'ra's city was right there, and declared war like 2 turns after contact. His fort is on a small continent with no towers. Took 1 small city from him, and destroyed one doomstack of chimera with a 9 magician stack. Sss'ra now seems to be breaking towers with halberdiers (beastmen), got 2 broken near my cities that I hadn't fully prepared for. Looks like I will lose a couple of my nomad cities when ss'ra scouts them and then volcano+corruption. Hopefully I can keep him away from the one producing adamantium rangers. My high men mainland doesn't have towers nearby, the rest are in Oberic territory, but near the cities I took from Sharee, and there my defenses are weak.
I am planning to alchemize some of the mana I got stashed from treasure to boost magician production as much as possible. Petrify is great against halberdiers and chimera, and magicians can deal with chaos spawns as well. I switched from spider summoning to change terrain / transmute / gaia's blessing s the main casting after those came up. Now I am almost done, but a few Gaia's still on the magician producers. Adamantium paladins, and magicians, form most of my forces now.
Next research is gorgons, which I planned to summon a stack of and bring that to sss'ras fort. Don't know what the defenses are yet, but chimera / chaos spawn / beastman magician seems to be his stronger garrisons.
Beastmen Myrran seems to be breaking towers easy because of strategic strength of halberdiers. Which is a threat pariticularly with chaos, as one would need to keep cities from being scouted. Again particularly because my nature strategy at this stage relies largely on adamantium city units.
We are even with sss'ra on power graph: I got a lot more power and he has a lot more army. So it seems he does not yet have most myrran nodes. Which will likely change soon because halberdiers.
Got unlucky with heroes, I got only a sage and a witch that are worth their while, and no way to use them against sss'ra: Even with elemental armor, resist elements and bless, lightning bolt will decimate them (or any hero). Only invisibility seems to give a chance to survive. I could make a regen item, though, which could turn heroes into lightning rods to soak up combat casting. But the cost of that is perhaps too high, and I am yet to research create artifact.
It was clear early nature can beat aggressive death in the early game, using spiders. But one does have to be careful: undead spiders are horrifying against living ones. Also the AI will spread ghouls thin with city units - if you wait until a proper doomstack of ghouls comes up spiders can be in a lot more trouble. Though my trouble at the fort had a lot to do with guardian+beastmaster, a full stack of wraithform ghouls can spell trouble for spiders.
Nature does work more by force and bulk, so I predict this will become a lot harder at master, let alone lunatic. Strategies based on untouchable units should suffer comparatively less from hiking the difficulty.