Fallenchar

Try Trojasmic's Let's Play. The Links are here in these forums somewhere.

If you are far ahead in Research, you can win any way you like. Unless you decided beforehand to try a Spell of Making victory and beelined Research towards that. Otherwise, the Quest victory is the only way of winning if you feel like you are losing. If you are in a war and reached a stalemate of sorts, Spell of Making could be an option, while the Quest could still be too difficult. But I have never been in that situation myself. edit: typo

Potential is only worth it if you have a mage Sov with many spells that deal x damage per level and that damage output is more important than a new trait.

What Coyote said. As soon as your city hits lvl 2, train a Pioneer. Basically, build all tier 1 buildings before moving on. Build on all resources asap. Train many, many Pioneers. And some more. Make sure all your cities are connected. If you have a hard time beating the game, check the forums for other 'advice' threads. Or you can post your current experience (your Sov and Faction and how you are doing) and people can give you specific tips.

My top 3 picks in 3 categories: Faction Traits: - Enchanters. Extra Essence means more and stronger City Enchantments to cast. Arguably the best trait. - Master Scouts. Being faster means more exploration, more goodies. Makes it a lot easier to conquer opponents. Don't indulge and fight too much. - Wanderlust. I love this trait because it can almost win you the game by itself. Quests are fun. Rebels is bad. However all

If you feel like you might lose the game, I would go for whatever is easiest. If you have a powerful Stack of Doom, I would go for the Quest. In my experience, the Spell requires lots of Research and/or the ability to destroy your opponents' Towers. If you already have both, you might as well win by conquest.

Impressive

Old news. AI's get higher tile yields, higher production/research/everything, startup money and bonus abilities for troops.

Lower your taxes to o% at the start of the game. Like Primal said, focus on production and unrest reduction buildings. You can safely ignore Gildar buildings until you decide to focus a specific city on it. Always use all your Essence (the blue circles) slots on your cities. Best spells: Sovereign's Call (Life), Inspiration (Water), Meditation (free), Enchanted Hammers (Earth). Water, Earth etc are Spell Schools, your leader (Sovereign) starts with 1 or 2. Basicall

In addition to the great answers above: #3 There are 6 ways to obtain new spells. These are, from most to least common: - The 6 Spellbooks; Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Life, Death. You can pick spellbooks at the start of the game and most heroes start with one or two. Also, the Decalon trait allows you to research and buy all Spellbooks. All, except Death/Life, because they are mutually exclusive. All spellbooks have 5 levels of spells. - The Mage path traits. These inclu

Did the devs ever tell us if this (no Life demons) was intentional or not? As I write 'Life demons' I suddenly get the feeling it is intentional:)

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="19" id="3405993"] Thank you for posting, and for listening. I do think that the AI still needs serious work. Sadly, I cannot play on HUGE maps, because of the difficulties surround unit pathing or non-hostile units not being able to share tiles with other non-hostile entities. Most maps larger than medium require my units to move too much, and this is simply a nightmare when a friendly outpost, shard, resource, town, or unit happens to be in a

[quote who="parrottmath" reply="18" id="3405357"] I may undermine my argument by "not building more than 8 cities" but I do not raze any enemy city I take. thus, after I build my 8 cities, I grow my empire by taking AI cities (and not razing them). So, I deal with the city penalty and the grouchy (occupation) unrest for the 3 turns. They become eventually become productive cities.[/quote] Interesting. So you end up with 60+ cities in large games? And I don't think th

[quote who="joeball123" reply="17" id="3405290"] Quoting Fallenchar, reply 12Joeball: penalty for trying to apply logic to a fantasy game. Umpire, I dispute this call - fantasy and logic are by no means mutually exclusive; the logic need only be consistent with the fantasy. [/quote] While your statement may be true, it does not include the word 'game' anywhere. Therefore, your challenge is denied on technical grounds. The call still s

[quote who="Primal_Savage" reply="16" id="3405272"] You're fired! Quoting Spharen, reply 13 Quoting Fallenchar, reply 12Primal Savage: penalty for suggesting a mod in a 'balance thread'. Well said. LOL, tough crowd; did you read reply #10?[/quote] Fired from lurking the forum? Crap, what else am I going to do during office hours? [e digicons]*_*[/e] You are right, with post #10

[quote who="merlinme" reply="14" id="3405168"] Hey, don't I get a mark? [/quote] Merlinme: some valid arguments, some not-so-great ones... Ok, 2 points, for effort. Don't spend them all at once [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

Apheirox: penalty for using an abbreviation without explaining it. Joeball: penalty for trying to apply logic to a fantasy game. Primal Savage: penalty for suggesting a mod in a 'balance thread'. So even though Parrotmath completely undermines his argument by admitting to only build 8 cities, he currently has the best arguments, leading 0 to -1/-1/-1. Please carry on [e digicons]}:)[/e]

Great story Eric :) Anyway, since nobody has said it so far, let me be the one to play Captain Obvious: You can only cast Freeze and Tremor in friendly territory. That's the reason why... - I would never consider these spells too powerful. They are only useful for defense. - You should always try to avoid hanging out in enemy territory. Conquer cities and outposts the same turn you enter enemy territory.

1: Both spells have a 3 turn cooldown, so you cannot cast them every turn, unless you have multiple heroes who can cast those spells. 2: The AI should not stack armies. It's one of the stupid AI moves that hopefully gets fixed someday...

SPOILER ALERT: Some quests can develop in different ways. For Rats in the Sewers, sometimes there is a (medium) fight, sometimes there isn't. Fights in quests can also be slightly harder or easier than the quest level, to keep things interesting.

Don't get me wrong: Infection is an awesome spell. Especially in combination with Graveseal. My army is usually too vulnerable to take any damage though, so I have to start with crowd control: Titan's Breath, Pull of the Earth, Skeletal Horde, etc. Blind is a bit of a gamble. Curse is usually not needed, as I do mostly Lightning damage anyway.

Infecttion is too slow, imho. I usually buff Ceresa's initiative and use Crow Demons to knock everything prone. Damage dealers are Ceresa/Air Elemental/anything I picked up. Battles can take forever, but I usually don't take any damage.

Congratulations! Fun to read someone's experiences. I agree completely that playing on Insane is probably less enjoyable than playing on a lower difficulty setting. However, I keep going back to it, because it feels so silly to play at Expert if you've beaten Insane. Too bad you could only win with Beastlord. Well, I am not going to say anything negative about it. I always turn 'Spell of Making' off when playing on Insane, otherwise I do not stand a chance. Alt

Capitar is pretty decent. The Mancer blood trait of movement 3 is extremely powerful. Like the OP said, 'Lucky' is pretty good as well. Also note that you can give any unit Roadbuilding for free, not just Pioneers! This makes Capitar/Mancers the most suited race for conquering the map. Unfortunately, this doesn't synergize with their theme of 'expert traders'. All the small trade advantages are rather mediocre. Fun if you like to try and roleplay Capitar. O

Excellent suggestions! Well, except for one: [quote quoting="post"] 3. AI Championbuilding: - Suboptimality: The AI will frequently equip a "natural" mage, such as Procipine, as an axe-wielding warrior, resulting in greatly ineffective champion. - Suggestion 1: AI Sovereigns should have more detailed templates according to which the AI chooses equipment, traits, and behavior. Some sovereigns, such as Procipine, should focus much more on