Extreme and Impossible 1.5 11 Books

[rgp151]

So, for a long time I played 1.5 Hard without 11 books. On a level playing field, 11 books is clearly a "cheap" strategy and gives a massive advantage. However, I recently started trying 1.5 Extreme and Impossible using 11 books. I still haven't found a totally satisfying approach yet.

Here what I've tried:

Nature : Basilisk, Water Walking, Gia's Blessing > High Elves
Life: Prayer, Raise Dead, Stream of Life > High Elves, Nomads
Death: Black Prayer, Night Stalker, Wraiths > Halflings
Sorcery: Phantom Beast, Flight, Mind Storm > High Men

Haven't tried Chaos.

The issues I've run into are these:

Nature seems like the best overall most balanced start, because you get a nice city buff that can put your development on turbo AND you get a powerful summon that you can use for early conquest. The problem is, Nature is just so darn weak overall. The Basilisk seems great on paper, but inevitably I constantly run up against Black Prayer and Confusion, which just wrecks them. It's also difficult to maintain momentum with Nature, and it offers little to help you hold on to conquered towns other than trying to cheese a Sprite into key towns with walls and use them to block entry.

Life is generally good, and yes I know about Invulnerable Guardian Spirits, but those don't really work so well. And on Impossible you just can't take out enough capitals fast enough with Guardian Spirits to really make that strategy worthwhile. So I think it works better to take Stream of Life. But you run into the typical Life problems how to garrison towns you have conquered and how to move over water. I also almost always play Life with Warlord, so not having Warlord really slows things down when garrisoning newly conquered towns.

Death has a lot going for it, sort of, but as usual, Death doesn't really have that much that can help you in a fight if you don't have Undead units on hand. Berserk can be quite useful, but other than that its just Black Prayer mostly. I my last game I was able to wipe out most of the wizards pretty quickly, but I didn't take out the Myrran wizard quickly enough while I was wiping up Arcanus. Then Horus, who was mostly Blue with a little White and 2 Red, got really powerful and obtained Spell Ward, which really shut me down hard. He had Banish and Doom Bolt and Psionic Blast, along with Invisibility and Mind Blast. Plus he had a vast empire of Dwarves and Dark Elves. Many of the Dark Elf towns got Warlocks and the Dwarven towns were Golems and Cannons.

I wasn't getting any heroes, even with over 100 fame, so I had to summon own, which worked ok, but I couldn't use then against Horus due to his direct damage. When he started putting Death Wards up I just gave up. 

The problem with Sorcery is that it doesn't really have a power spell to get you going, like Gia's Blessing, Stream of Life or Wraiths. Yet, Sorcery of source has the best overall late game power. I'm not really sure what to start with using Sorcery. Mind Storm was ok. I took it because at 35 base cost it is at least castable out of the gate. Storm Giants are lackluster and pretty expensive for what you get. I considered Wind Walking, but meh.  Invisibility maybe? Of course the key here is the Flying Paladins, but it takes some time to get those. Still, being able to just crack Paladins and Word of Recall them to new towns does make it possible to keep the conquest train rolling once you get going.

For Nature you could take Gorgons, but then you have the problem of how to garrison and support conquered towns. At least with Gia's Blessing you can boost your economy to try and keep up with the AIs.

Anyone have successful strats for 11 books on 1.5 Extreme+?

[rgp151]

Maybe Barbarians are the answer. The big problem, as usual, is Sprites. If you can't hit the Sprites then you can't take capitals. With Nature, the Barb Cavalry can be buffed pretty good with Stone Skin, Giant Strength, and Resist Elements. Paired with a Pathfinding Basilisk they should be pretty potent. With Life, maybe you do take Invulnerability instead of Stream of Life. Use the Guardian Spirits to take neutral towns early then use Invulnerable Heroism Cavalry once you get them. Sorcery still has the best long-term potential. Maybe a single Invisible Cavalry is good enough to take Sprites? I'm not sure about that. At 10 mana per turn its pretty tough early on. Without Heroism your stuck having to either build a Fighter's Guild or try to take some simple encounters to level up a little.

[rgp151]

Yeah, Life Barbarians taking Invulnerability has proved to be the most effective so far. Definitely better than taking Stream of Life.

[Anskiy]

I remember trying a Chimera start with 11 books Chaos, and it worked okay, but I wasn't convinced it was the way to go, given the cost of summoning them and the fact that they still do take damage from some early game units, like Hell Hounds.

[rgp151]

Yeah, Chaos just doesn't seem good for 11 books, which is funny because its one of the best for 10 or 9 books. But playing on Extreme or Impossible with 1.5 is just too crazy. They grow and develop so fast. Life Barbarians is working ok in the game I'm doing, but like every town is Lizards and Gnolls and Barbs, so my food is sucking. I've got it fairly well handled, but I'm having to cheese now with some restarts because the main wizard left is Freya on Myrran, who also had 11 books (well 12 really) and she has so much power she can Crack's Call indefinitely. So I've had to do a couple of reloads. Its a kind of a bad combo because I'm so strapped for food I can't easily make lots of excess units (even though I have tons of gold from Prosperity). I'm trying to take her out now with some Invulnerable/Lionheart Berserkers that I Plane Shifted next to her on Warships, along with a Flying Torin (got lucky and found a ring of Flight). We'll see. She may Disenchant Area.

Edit: Yeah, got her with 4 Berserkers and Torin, no losses. She didn't try to Crack's Call, she tried to Disenchant Area and it just didn't disenchant enough. I had lots of buffs loaded up and really I just needed the one Berserker with Lionheart/Invulnerability/Endurance/Holy Weapon. He tore through the Gorgons just fine.

But yeah, the Invulnerability was the key to being defensible. By having that it was possible to defend towns from teh endless onslaught using spearmen and such.

[rgp151]

Ugg Crack's Call is such a PITA. I've faced it many times and been able to deal with it, but on Impossible there is just such an endless stream of battles, its impossible to avoid it. At this point I'm just reloading when she gets critical Crack's Calls because I'm on Myrran in towns now that are connected to her big array of towns and she's just sending an endless stream of small armies in again and again each turn and Crack's Calling. Its inevitable she can just Crack's Call any garrison down to nothing. I mean that spell is one thing on reasonable levels of play, I've never really had a problem dealing with it, but when she's got like 100+ Spell Power and her land is covered in stacks of units and there are magic roads and she can just send in like 5 battles a turns, with essentially infinite mana, I mean it just gets absurd at that point. I may end up giving up on this game, we'll see. When I get through like 2 battles in a town and then the 3rd battle for the turn in the same town I lose the town to Crack's Call, a reload means having to redo all three battles, and its like the odds are just not good. Its like in a single town having to face 15 or 20 Crack's Calls a turns. I mean come on.

[Anskiy]

Yeah, 1.51 Impossible really does show how absurd the original game's bonuses were on that difficulty level, now that the AI can use its resources and units better. I think that there most likely just isn't any single strategy that will work reliably on that difficulty, and a lot depends on what spells and retorts your opponents roll. Though, it seems clear that what is most likely to win is units capable of killing many mediocre units without getting hurt much. So, perhaps Life strategies with heroes? Crack's Call remains an issue, though, unless you get Invisibility from some Sorcery books.

[rgp151]

Yeah many problems are compounded on Impossible. Since the AIs develop so fast, virtually all of the encounters, except like Great Wyrms and lots of Death Knights and Sky Drakes get taken, so it makes gaining XP for heroes very difficult and and obtained rewards difficult. Ideally Sorcery would be the best school, but its just too hard to get off the ground. Life is pretty good, but has no real counter to Cracks Call, although Torin can at least be re-summoned no matter what. I had gotten an Alliance with Tauron, who I never really defeated. He was isolated to a small island with just 5 cities, but now he decided to attack me and he can use multiple Flame Strikes. So now I've got to deal with that on top of Crack's Call Freya. I did finally obtain a Draconian city on Adamantium with 5 pop. And its close to where Freya put her new capital. I've got Alter of Battle and Stream of Life on that and I've purchased up an Alchemist's Guild and now several Adamantium Spearmen. I think I can take her capital with just the Spearmen. If I go in with a full stack she can't Crack's Call them all and I'll be able to get Invulnerability and Lionheart on one that should be able to to the deed. But now on Arcanus I've got cities full of multi-figure units getting decimated by Flame Strike. I did finally manage to find a single High Men town, and I've purchased up the stuff needed to make Paladins there, and I've got some Dwarven towns I took from Freya I can make Golems and Canons in, but there just isn't time to do all of this and move all of these units around, even with me taking in over 1K gold per turn and purchasing lots of stuff. So we'll see.

[rgp151]

I guess the Rare spells that really matter when playing Extreme or Impossible 1.5 would be the ones that can help a unit defend against attacks. Of course the best of these is Invulnerability. Comparable spells from other schools are Iron Skin for Nature and Invisibility for Sorcery, so I guess those are really the best Rare spells to pick. Picking an overland summon doesn't really work for any schools except Death, because Wraiths give you free garrisons of undead units, so they are worth it. Those undead garrisons combined with Darkness are generally powerful enough to keep newly acquired cities defended until you can produce more units and Wraiths are cheap enough you can get a few of them pretty quickly.

Most other summons are far more expensive and don't help you defend cities unless you post them in the garrison, where they aren't helping you offensively. So you need defensive spells. This is where Chaos falls down, because its uber spell, Flame Strike, is just too costly to be able to cast any time soon. You need to really boost your casting skill before you can use it, yet Invulnerability, Iron Skin and Invisibility have a base casting cost of 40, which means you only need 24 casting skill to use them in combat. With 11 books you start with 22 casting skill, so you can pretty quickly get your skill up to 24 to have access to those spells. You need over 30 to be able to cast Flame Strike though, so it will just take too long to do that.

Sorcery also has the benefit of Phantom Beast, which is even cheaper to cast and also helps defensively or offensively. But neither Invisibility nor Iron Skin are quite as good as Invulnerability. Of course an Invisible flying unit in a gate can be used to cheese many battles. You could possibly take Air Elemental, which has a costing cost of 50. This would require 30 casting skill after the discounts. I'm not sure how long it would take to get your skill up to 30, but of course Air Elementals would be very powerful in the early game so that's another possibility, though its a bit riskier.

Sorcery High Elves I guess is another possibility. Invisible, Flying Elven Lords would be pretty powerful and could take out Sprites easily and they come a lot faster than Paladins. The other option would be Gnolls, for Flying Wolf Riders and just hope you find a good race to conquer. Plus Wolf Riders don't come out as fast as you would think, because without Warlord you'll need a Fighter's Guild, so you have to build up to a Fighter's guild plus a Stable anyway. With High Elves you build a n Armorer's Guild instead of a Stable, which is a little more expensive but you get a much better unit out of it.

[rgp151]

I did finally win the Impossible game with Life. Once I banished Freya a couple of times I was able to just keep banishing her quickly every time she came back. This was only because of the Draconians though. I made a stack with 3 Doom Drakes, 3 Bowmen and 3 Airships that I was able to pretty well handle anything. All the Bowmen got Lionheart overland buffs with Invulnerability on two of the Doom Drakes. I added in Flying Torin in place of a Bowman for the attack on Tauron. And once I got Tauron banished the rest of his cities all went down quickly.

So yeah, Life Barbarians seemed to work pretty well. Life has no real answer for Crack's Call other then producing large stacks with lots of units, but there were point in the game where that wasn't possible and I had cities defended by one or two units that she would send waves in to Crack's Call over adn over. I did have to re-load several times to deal with that since fighting 3 to 5 battles in a town per turn garrisoned with a single unit was doomed to fail to Crack's Call when she was casting it like 10 times per battle. And they were just key cities I had to have, mostly to try and get some food since the rest of my empire was all Gnolls and Lizards with tons of rebels and really poor food production.

They key thing, though is that you need to be able to hit flying units early in the game (Sprites), you have to be able to defend towns from waves of cheap units early on, like being attacked by full stacks of Hell Hounds turn after turn, you have to be able to attack towns filled with Shamen, and you have to be prepared for the fact that essentially every resource and encounter will be taken by the AI. This means you'll have few opportunities to get loot or level up units/heroes.

All of this really makes Life Barbarians about the only viable solution for an 11 book start, other than Death with Wraiths. Death/Wraiths is solid and has plenty of strengths. I did give up on an Impossible game with it though against Sorcery heavy Horus because he started putting Death Wards on his cities and got Suppress Magic. Once he had that I was stuck. Death relies heavily on summoned units, so the Death Wards were devastating and with Suppress Magic in play it was just too much. He was using Invisible Sky Drakes, and Death Knights with Berserk were my only answer to that. Trying to attack a capital with Invisible Sky Drakes was impossible without them. At least with Life I would have been able to use True Sight and Berserkers to handle the Sky Drakes.

Barbarian Cavalry with Endurance, Heroism and Invulnerability are super effective in the early game. You only need 1. I used a single unit with those overland buffs on, along with a second unit with only Endurance to take many towns and early capitals. Also had to takeover nodes that AIs had busted and put Guardian Spirits in them. I had to use heroes sparingly, and pretty much the only thing they could do was take towns of wizards that were banished. But eventually I got them leveled up past heroism.

Other than not having a good answer for Crack's Call, Life seems to be pretty well positioned for an 11 book Impossible game. You get few rewards from encounters, so having Prosperity is quite valuable to boost your gold since you won't get much from taking lairs. A big key to success was using Prosperity any time I wasn't casting something else to get it on most of my towns and then using that revenue to make mana with Alchemy and buy stuff to quickly develop and make units.

Sorcery has a lot of potential with Counter Magic, Invisibility, Magic Immunity, Air Elemental, Word of Recall, Suppress Magic, Spells Ward and Sky Drake, but its certainly harder to get going with than Life. Invulnerability is just too good. Nature just can't hang. It has no answer against Death or Sorcery wizards. Chaos has no real way to defend early on, so is pretty much not viable on Impossible. So it looks like its really just Death and Life, with Sorcery having a challenging start, but long term potential. I'm going to see if I can make Sorcery work. I've failed with it a couple of times.