Experimental version

[Nelphine]

I've had 1000+ gold since 1406 or 1407. Just seems odd to have 0 hero offers in over 100 turns. (I'm also trying to figure out why my opponents power production is so gigantic. But that has to do with map exploration so isn't relevant to this thread.)

[Nelphine]

As a note, I'm playing my life game. Buff beastmen halberdiers all the way. Extreme difficulty. I'm in 3rd place right now (I have no idea why Merlin, 7 life/3 nature, with no nodes that I've found has 50% more power than me, even if he's dark elf, but there are 4 nodes somewhere on Myrror I haven't found, and he could have astral gated to Arcanus since that's a thing now.)

The other person ahead of me is Raven (1 life, 12 nature and sorcery books). He has Aether Binding cast - does its bonus show up on the power production graph? Otherwise I assume he just has a lot of arcanus nodes.

Behind me is Jafar (10 sorcery, Myrran, with aether binding, but practically no army, power production, or spell power, even though he's got 6+ dwarf cities) who is literally no threat to a rick let alone my beastmen.

Also behind me is Ariel, 10 Life, who astral gated to my continent, declared war on me, got into a war with Raven, and hasn't been heard from since (I have a single halberdier on the astral gate spot and I haven't seen her cross planes anywhere else.) She is no threat.

Its 1411. I'm about to finish casting crusade, and I'm going to finish researching Lionheart on the sane turn. Those two things will make my halberdiers unstoppable, as long as they can intercept the enemy. All towers are controlled by me, or not open, so I should be able to keep Raven out even if he declares war. That leaves only Merlin as a potential problem. My plan is to take 3 or 4 cities including his capital on the turn I declare war, then go to town quickly across at least half a dozen more before he returns. Last I checked (1410) he was still using heavy sprite garrisons. If he had more concentrations of warlocks or flocks of nightmares to attack me from behind, I'd be worried. But I haven't seen either. So I'm not.

[Seravy]

does its bonus show up on the power production graph?

No. Only raw power before it is distributed.

[Nelphine]

Ugh. He's gotta have a lot of nodes, given that I have 7 max power Myrror nodes, and almost a dozen beastmen cities, and he's still ~70% higher than me.

[Nelphine]

I hate being patient. I am slowly, OH SO SLOWLY gaining on Raven and Merlin (finally confirmed they both have numerous Arcanus nodes, so they aren't improving although since I'm still getting the most powerful nodes, I am). And my troops are individually better. So if I just wait.. and wait.. and WAIT.. I'll get strong enough to crush them. If I don't wait.. they might all turn on me at once, and I won't have enough troops to defeat them. Argh! And.. Raven will probably declare war on me soon, just because my military might catch up to his. (Especially when my charm of life finishes.. I wonder.. if I time that right, I could skip the entire 'equal army strength' problem and just go from weaker to crazy powerful..)

On topic: Astral Gate is definitely working for the AI now. In general, the game play hasn't changed with all the new changes, which I think is good, as we don't want overall gameplay change, we want specific strategies to be changed to be more balanced. Lots of lairs/nodes now that are giving me.. 1 item, that isn't worth a ton. Clearly a spell is actually in the treasure list but I have no spells available to find. Except I still have rare and very rare life spells I can research, so presumably they are mostly uncommon spells. Or maybe I'm just overestimating how much should be in the treasure, and the 1 item is everything. But my guess is the uncommon spells, as that's ABOUT the value I would expect in addition to the item in most cases (though it's not an exact science or anything, without looking it up.)

I find it interesting that the same strategy on extreme and then on impossible is like night and day. On extreme, I don't really have a chance of losing unless I actively choose to mess up, but it takes a long time, and there are lots of rooms for error. On impossible, I can barely stay alive, and only with amazing starts do I have a chance of winning. It feels like the difference between extreme and impossible is about the same as the difference between normal and extreme (whereas I would expect the difference to be about the same as the difference between hard and extreme).

Edit: Sorcerer wizards with 500 casting skill and aether binding make it REALLY HARD to keep very rare spells in play... at least he never got spell blast..

[Nelphine]

All right, 1415, and still not a single hero offer ever. I'm currently sitting on over 17000 gold and 65 fame. I have to assume this is a bug. Even ignoring the first 30 turns, that's still over 150 turns without a hero offer. I have managed to find 2 heroes amidst all the lairs and nodes and towers I conquered, but even with 2 heroes, I should be getting offers occasionally. It would be one thing if I was rejecting bad ones, but I literally haven't got a single one.

(Raven defeated Ariel, so Raven controls 80% of Arcanus. He can cast a full strength disjunction in 2 rounds - which means I only have 1 round to spell blast it. Since he has Aether Binding, I have to spell blast if I want to keep my globals. Since I don't want to go to war with him yet, I've had to let him disjunction all of my very rare life spells. My new plan is to attack Raven and Merlin and Jafaar all on the same turn, banish all 3, and then just go on a mass razing campaign. Won't bother collecting a single city, will just raze 4 cities per turn for 15-20 turns (Raven has ~35 cities, Merlin ~21, Jafaar 10, myself 12). I'll probably still lose some cities, and at least half my nodes, but at that point it doesn't matter. As long as they can't take my fortress, and can't beat my offensive stacks, I can afford to lose everything else. Silly that I'll do it without very rares and without every capturing an enemy city though - life very rares, just like chaos very rares, simply incur wars when I don't want them, and so casting them actually does me more harm than good, and cities just slow down offensive stacks.)

Also: *drum roll* I have seen the extreme AI.. BUILD A SPEARMEN! I have no idea why. At all. The city has 4 swordsmen, 1 spearmen, 3 halberdiers. I assume it randomly picked it as the very first thing to build when the outpost turned into a hamlet, or something else like that. (I have a node garrison on the island, and we're not allies, so I'm assuming my presence increased the chance for the city to build military enough that it did that instead of a smithy.)

[Catwalk]

I've just tried out the new mod, it's interesting. With Omniscient and buffed Cult Leader, Conjurer is no longer required. I'm currently playing this:

2x Life (Heavenly Light)
2x Nature (Sprites)
1x Chaos
1x Death

Tactician
Famous
Cult Leader
Spellweaver
Omniscient

2 nearby sorcery nodes can be taken out with a few Sprites, so I'm getting all the benefits of the sprite strategy with just 2 nature books invested in it. Heavenly Light gives me 7 power and shrines give me 4 power. I expect to be able to build my power base rapidly. I thought about picking Archmage instead of Spellweaver, but it's much garbage now that it only offers +22.5% on starting skill. With 6 books that's a mere +2.7 starting skill.

[Catwalk]

Scratch that post, Tactician and Famous are far too unreliable and help me too late to be much use. Conjurer is still a great option, and it should be combined with either a chaos book (for more power and fun chaos spells) or a nature book (for Earth Lore). Probably Earth Lore, having info about your targets is a huge help.

I'd say the sprite strategy is stronger now, I just need a random neutral city early on. 2x Heavenly Light and 2x Shrine and I have a power base of 41 (using High Elves, but they make little difference). That's enough to fuel my spells very early on and start building up casting skill as soon as I pick up some mana crystals.

[Nelphine]

Has anyone else played without famous? I'd like to know if anyone else is having the problem of no hero offers showing up. I'll play some more test games but I really want to actually finish my life game and see if it plays out like I expect.

[Catwalk]

Do you know how hero offers are supposed to work right now?