Regarding enemy mages

[Janthis]

Does anyone know if it's safe to leave them alone for a while, or is it like AoW where they keep growing in power and eventually steamroll you if you don't take them out early? I'd like to take my time and explore/learn the game for a bit.

[sandman25dcsss]

It depends on difficulty level. I set world progress to story mode in my game and while I am on week 14 already, both surviving mages are not even in cold war yet. Two dead mages were friendly too.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943544153

[Janthis]

Thanks, it's good to know they remain friendly, but my question was more whether they keep growing in power like in AoW and become almost impossible to defeat later if you leave them alone long enough. Also, may I ask how you got that strong and took out 2 of them by week 14? o_O

[Cold]

They can spawn full team T3 + one T4 units (lvl 1-8)
This is their best armies and no more stronger

[Robineus]

You can leave them alone for the entire game unless you've set them to really angry in the difficulty settings, as long as your rep with them remains around 100 or above they will for the most part ignore you.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Johnny_B_80:

Thanks, it's good to know they remain friendly, but my question was more whether they keep growing in power like in AoW and become almost impossible to defeat later if you leave them alone long enough. Also, may I ask how you got that strong and took out 2 of them by week 14? o_O

Yes, mages grow in power, but world progress speed determines how fast it happens.
I haven't beaten hard/impossible yet, but on balanced and below I was much stronger than them eventually (I killed last mage on week 17 on balanced and on week 11 on story mode I think). I am really slow in this game, I use it as sandbox to explore the world.

[Robineus]

I've never lost my tower to an enemy mage (or anyone) I don't play on it above balanced and no they definitely don't do the AoW thing where they build 5 billion units to come and take your everything and then keep doing that over and over again to create really long tedious battles that make the game really boring.

One of the reasons I like this game so much more than AoW.

[Janthis]

Originally posted by Robineus:

I've never lost my tower to an enemy mage (or anyone) I don't play on it above balanced and no they definitely don't do the AoW thing where they build 5 billion units to come and take your everything and then keep doing that over and over again to create really long tedious battles that make the game really boring.

One of the reasons I like this game so much more than AoW.

Thanks, that's good to know. I also hated that situation in AoW. :)

[spinn72]

Enemy AI is very passive (too passive imo), even on the most aggressive setting. You have to anger them a lot by repeatedly being in their territory, killing their armies etc to make them go to war with you and actually commit to destroying you.

If they are agressive at any stage in the game you always have the option of flying your tower away from them. Ive never seen the AI send troops far away from their territory.

[Kaysoky]

Originally posted by spinn72:

If they are agressive at any stage in the game you always have the option of flying your tower away from them. Ive never seen the AI send troops far away from their territory.

Playing on higher difficulties, the AI in Cold War will start sending armies at you regardless of how far. They'll even send armies at you before you've met them.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by spinn72:

Enemy AI is very passive (too passive imo), even on the most aggressive setting. You have to anger them a lot by repeatedly being in their territory, killing their armies etc to make them go to war with you and actually commit to destroying you.

If they are agressive at any stage in the game you always have the option of flying your tower away from them. Ive never seen the AI send troops far away from their territory.

It's worth noting that some AI are more passive than others as well, both in how they act and the random events associated with them. Even at Acceptance Uram the Red will send minions out to harvest all the resources he can and events related to him will create hostile army spawners near your tower. Isgrimm the Smith is deceptively passive in that he never directly interacts with you while you're at peace with him, even to make requests like most of the others do. On the other hand, he spends a large portion of the game harvesting all the ore he can to build an army of golems and expand it (via events) even if he's 100% friendly with you. Yria of the Light will actively interact with your stacks via events that let you trade five gold for a single-battle blessing, but I haven't seen much else from her. She'll also send minions out to harvest plants. Yria becomes annoying at cold war levels because there's an event where she just spontaneously drops a spire right outside your domain that prevents you from exploiting things in a wide area.

Ianna the Singer is insanely passive in that she never directly harms you while at acceptance, doesn't seem to leave her territory as much as the others, and will randomly boost your relations with a city if she likes you. The only problems she causes at acceptance are that a knight seeking her affection might try to antagonize you since he considers you a rival and a stack may wander across people she cursed, which will anger her if you break the curse. That, and later on she'll start hurting your relations with random cities.