merlinme

[quote who="smeagolheart" reply="1" id="3402935"]I've found shadow shift situationally useful early-midgame to port yourself over and swap places with a spellcaster so that the rest of your team can demolish him. [/quote] The AI actually did this to me in a battle once. I was very confused why my sovereign suddenly died, I thought it was a bug until I checked the abilities of the AI hero who had swapped places. It does seem a bit of a suicide mission, I have mixed feelings about the AI do

It would be nice if the manual and Hiergamenon were updated at some point, in any case. Off the top of my head: a: how much damage does Tidal Wave do? Is it reduced by Defense or resistance in any way? b: I'm not aware of anywhere the tactical benefits of summoning are listed except after you have selected that Trait and can view them in a tactical battle. c: As per my other thread, I'm very unclear on the exact mechanism for checking the requirements of a Spell of Making vi

Could anyone explain to me how the Spell of Making is supposed to work? In particular, how do you stop someone casting it? The manual doesn't really give any clue; in fact it seems to be out of date, it doesn't mention the Towers at all. It might be simpler if I explained what happened so you understand why I'm asking. 1) In one game an AI successfully cast the SOM. I definitely lost, but the ending was a bit messed up, I think the game score screen t

Other than making the AI train more troops which can't be knocked prone, the most obvious way to at least let the AI maybe get an attack is to give Titan's Breath a one turn cooldown. Titan's Breath would still be powerful, but not quite so much "I win" as it currently is against troops which can be knocked prone.

[quote who="joeball123" reply="20" id="3402855"]the biggest thing you had making Titan's Breath as potent as it was is that you had a bunch of units that can Maul[/quote] Sorry, this is a misunderstanding. What makes Titan's Breath with -1 casting time so potent is not Maul. Having Maul is nice, but I assure you I would have won the battles fine without it, if not quite as quickly. The battle goes something like this: High initiative sovereign with Titan's Bre

[quote who="Fallenchar" reply="1" id="3402799"]Too bad you could only win with Beastlord.[/quote] Hey, I'll take what I can get! But I agree Beastlord is powerful. In fact I think I could pretty consistently beat Insane playing as Umber now, with the same tactics. Not all the time, but any game where I got a decent start, and assuming I had access to the Master Quest if an AI I couldn't reach started casting the Spell of Making. But where's the fun in that. I might have an

[quote who="sjaminei" reply="15" id="3402699"]Yeah, don't expect Stardock to fix abusive stuff[/quote] The thing is I don't think doing extra damage with Maul to prone units is abusive. It makes sense that you'd be able to do more damage to a prone unit. And if you have Titan's Breath and Bears, which you will do if you play as Umber, what are you supposed to do to the prone troops? Not attack them with your Bears? That seems crazy. The only stupid t

[quote who="joeball123" reply="16" id="3402725"] I certainly agree that Titan's Breath with a virtually guaranteed knockdown against non-immune enemies is nice[/quote] I agree with pretty much all of your discussion about the different schools of magic, but my point is that getting a 1 turn Titan's Breath with a 97% knockdown is not "nice", it's an "I win" spell for almost any battle, certainly against the AI (which tends to have lots of troops which can be knocked prone), which m

Well, Beastlord + Titan's Breath may be abusive, but that's what they gave one of the standard factions, i.e. Umber. People get worried about custom factions, and one of the standard factions has one of the best combinations of traits? Also I've been asking since whenever for them to fix Maul on prone unit = certain kill, but to date this has not been done. Even if the chance of a hit went down by 3% per time at least you wouldn't get 150 hits till death. But anyway it

[quote who="joeball123" reply="6" id="3402493"]since his starting magics are Air I and Life I, neither of which gains that much from the bonuses present in the Mage tree since Life and Air are more defensive support schools than offensive support or offensive damage schools[/quote] Most of this is good advice, but I disagree with this particular point. I guess it just goes to show how many ways there are to play the game, but see ny Insane post for how I beat the game using Titan'

This is the story of my attempt to beat the game on Insane. I haven't seen any posts like this recently, so I hope people find it interesting. I love strategy games and I've been playing them for about twenty years. I really enjoy Fallen Enchantress/Legendary Heroes. I've been steadily increasing the difficulty level since I started playing, although the AI has got a lot tougher since the 1.2 and 1.3 patches. I've won the game using most of the standard factions, and I

I've also noticed that if I take an AI city and then don't garrison it, relying on the inbuilt garrison troops, then if anything attacks the city, the city will fall without a fight. In other words, it's as if the city has no defenders at all. Is this as designed? Is this the same thing that the rest of you are seeing, i.e. city defenders disappear after one battle, and that even applies city defenders after the city is conquered? In my last game this happened to me even

I'd also be a little bit cautious with roadbuilding in neutral territory if you're playing against AIs of a similar power level to you. I like road building, but once or twice I've been caught out by monsters or AIs who've been able to travel very fast to kill the unit I've been using to road build. In the worst case the AI can follow your road back to your territory and start taking your cities. If you're always the aggressor this doesn't really matter, but if you

[quote who="Ericridge" reply="5" id="3402092"]One does not simply avoid Curgen's Volcano, Tornado, Starfall and more. If you was to invade me And I have appropriate heroes with appropriate spells ready to go.[/quote] Well, sure, but in practice the AI doesn't do this. I've seen it immobilize and obliterate stacks which are in its borders, but not outside. Perhaps it could be more aggressive with its strategic spells outside its borders, especially if it ha

[quote]I made general Carrodus a commander instead of a warrior, defender assassin or mage[/quote] I personally always make my sovereign a Mage, as I personally think that's the most powerful choice. However, if for roleplaying reasons (or because you think it's more fun) you want to make your sovereign something else, good for you. Commander is arguably the next most powerful after Mage, in fact, as long as you concentrate on the Commander combat traits. Accuracy bonu

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="12" id="3402133"]The city directly adjacent to this conclave is a Fortress, which was set for producing Research[/quote] I was under the impression that the AI had got better at using its Fortresses to produce units. One of the exceptions that I raised to this was that you might wish to train units for defence. Usually if I can see an AI city that I'm at war with then the city has < 10 turns to live, so it should focus on defence. However if it w

[quote who="Ericridge" reply="2" id="3401944"]Uh I don't just invade the AI with single army of death, it can be disrupted by spells via strategy mode[/quote] It depends on your strategy, but I find one mounted Stack of Doom with +1 movement is a much more efficient use of resources than lots of small stacks. You can avoid strategic spells by only entering enemy territory if you can take the Outpost/ City in the same turn, which with movement 5 is normally possible. In the cases w

[quote]So keep those posts coming. It makes a big difference.[/quote] Hopefully you saw my previous posts in this thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/448105/page/1/#replies where I suggested it might be possible to make a formula to compare the results of different spells. So, for example, a Mass Curse which eliminates 300 points of armour for three turns with a very low chance of resistance should almost

Is Warlock any good? I wasn't really inspired to buy it by the reviews. AI was criticised, as was depth, too much of a grind at the end, etc.

[quote who="NeoNick7" reply="8" id="3401141"]What happens if you have a Great Wolf and magic staffs[/quote] I would assume not. Attack is physical damage, staffs are elemental damage. I haven't tested to confirm though.

Interesting, I might try XtraSavage it once I've beaten the game at least once on Insane. To be honest I'm not particularly enjoying my game on Insane, the only way I've found to win is a bit repetitive. I don't use anything I'd consider an exploit, but I do drive hard for a tactic the AI can't cope with.

Are you using any mods?

[quote who="sjaminei" reply="13" id="3400935"]"1 Elite army beats everything"[/quote] Yep. The main problem is surviving long enough to get there. I've been trying Insane the last week, looks like I'll succeed on my third attempt. I'll do a write-up if or when I win.

[quote who="sjaminei" reply="10" id="3400739"]3 damage per unit per water shard[/quote] I think the enemy stack was heavy on individual units, if I remember correctly it was an Fire Elemental with accompanying shrills, so maybe that explained the tiny damage. Do you know if Tidal Wave causes physical damage and is reduced by Defense?

[quote who="dimstog" reply="13" id="3400733"]Maybe it should be tweaked it to aggressively target roaming spawns and leave lairs untouched ? [/quote] Turn the difficulty up? Trust me, when the difficulty gets high enough the AI will have higher level heroes than you. The AI may have chosen rather random traits with the levels it has gained, which I wish they would fix, but gaining experience is not a problem. It can also probably buy better equipment from its Shop than you can get for your he