Illusionists are a complete POS faction

[Rayder]

My favourite way to play is on large maps against a single Emperor AI, and I can usually pull out a win by avoiding the AI's main force, planting fodders in squares near it and capping most of the map before winning by attrition.

It works well with most factions, but Illusionists are simply trash at dealing with magic based factions such as Warlock.

I attacked a weak warlock army with just 1 full row of air eles and other assorted crap with my strongest possible stack: 3 Golden Mirrors with Phantasms and many other mirrors with illusions, about 2-3 columns of archers/crossbowmen, 3 lvl 2 mages etc.

It was here that the problems with Illusionist become apparent:

1. Mirrors are stupid when it comes to spawning illusions/phantasms: often they'll be behind your archers and will stay behind them for the entirety of the fight.

2. Spending 75 gems and 150 gold to get the "Swarm" summon is just pure BS. I know many other factions in this game have joke summons where you spend 75 herbs to summon a dud frog, but this is just ridiculous. You are literally summoning 200 fodder that don't even come out fast enough vs. ranged magic.


3. Magic attacks utterly demolish your entire mechanic. Including your mirrors.

4. There is for some reason a 50 gem summon that summons illusions, using large mirrors. Illusions that have 1 hp. Complete BS. The only worthwhile thing it can do is occasionally spawn beholder illusions or other ranged attackers. But this is still the crappiest value imaginable.


Now I think that you can still win with this faction if you're patient enough. Just avoid ever attacking your enemies main force and use a never-ending stream of chaff to slow them down until you throw multiple doom stacks against them.
However, it's BS that the Illusionist summons are so little value for money. It is tedious to try and win with them because their summons are so fundamentally broken. They are completely useless against elementals and undead, which are immune to most of their tricks, and have nothing to compensate for this weakness.

Their end-game plan is to basically use golden mirror phantasm summon and hope to not get insect swarm duds, and THEN if you get a monster mirror HOPE to get a beholder to come out.

Complete rubbish.

[Althaea]

Most classes have some sort of weakpoint and are better in some circumstances than others. The Illusionist is very strong against enemies without the proper immunities and resistances or which lack magic damage. Less so against an army of elementals - not that dealing with rows of Air Elementals is easy at the best of times.

The Troll King would conversely be extremely frustrated in fighting the Illusionist, or, for that matter, anyone with access to powerful spells that are normally balanced out by being resistable with magic resistance, such as the High Cultist or even the Necromancer.

I can't check right at this moment, but doesn't the Illusionist have access to summonable assassins? Or am I misremembering the traits of the Phase Spider? They wouldn't help against particularly sturdy spellcasters, of course, but that would help narrow the gap a bit.

edit: I misremembered. They don't, in fact, have an assassination attack. My mistake.

[Jakalor]

Illusionist is indeed pretty weak, it's not as weak as the Warlock (early on anyhow, later on the Warlock can wreck face, if they even get there) but it's hard countered by the Necro and units with magic weapons.

[Kid Icarus]

I also had a hard time with Illusionist. I thought I was being clever for a while, aiming for trade and mines while building up to take a nice library and work on building up my own mages. gaining mages seemed like the only possible way to deal enough damage to do anything.

a warlock kept harassing me and i just had to evade and give stuff up, slowly winning a war of attrition with an enchanter but losing the game meanwhile. i captured the library but was so low on economy that a runaway Senator was clearly going to win (score graphs on) and it was very unclear to me how to find a path to victory with the illusionist.

not unwilling to try again, but i'll have to be really sly and efficient it seems.

[Gilmoy]

I love Illusionist! Yes, you spam Golden Mirrors with tier 3 Capture Phantasm. Yes, a golden Swarm mirror is kind of blah. My workaround for that is ... offload that mirror to a scout, because you don't really want more than about 8 golden mirrors in 1 group anyways ^_^

3 golden mirrors is not much. Make about 15 of them, and cherry-pick the strongest 8-10 of them for the main group. It sounds like you got Emperor'ed, which is perhaps more indicative of the AI cheat bonus than the class you were playing.

Size-3 phantasms push their way to the front. Usually they shove archers behind them. (Rarely they push your only scout forward, so he gets shot first.) With about 5 golden Monster mirrors, you don't hope for a Beholder, you hope for a fifth Beholder :)

I never had undue problems with Necromancers or Warlocks. The bigger group always won, and no group is bigger than what 8 golden mirrors pours out. I haven't noticed immunities protecting undead and such from the special effects of phantasmal monsters, e.g. dragon breaths.

Archangel's entire-battlefield double-fire-ring spell would wreck the mirrors, true. Air elementals (or Diamond Constructs) in enough numbers would eventually zap everything, including mirrors and leaders (so it's a race to pop out enough phantasmal monsters to zap them first). I count swordsmen and archers for basically nothing; they're strictly meatwalls to give the mirrors time to spew. Summon Phase Beast is actually quite nice for this purpose: after you get the 6-10 golden mirrors for your offense, it's not a bad idea to build up a half-line of Displacer Beasts or Phase Spiders that dodge missiles and have decent hp.

Anyways, try to get to the critical mass point where you fill the board top-to-bottom and left-to-right with size-3 phantasms, so that they're chasing the fleeing survivors off the edge of the map, and your mirrors are still popping out new ones. Then beeline to every citadel, and stroll right in: even a Dvala is no match for that. (Bring meatwalls to soak up ballista bolts)

[Kid Icarus]

Those are very good points. I remember thinking i was never going to manage to win a seige with illusions when... duh... they just go right through the walls xD ... seems like illusionist just has to have a very particluar strategy but can be great! gonna play it again now! i just won with Baron but it was boring as hell because the AI just didn't stand a chance :/

seems like this game has a strange difficulty map too. the difficulty level plus the society / class match up can make certain things extremely hard or too easy. gotta find those goldilocks settings ;)

[Rayder]

I have played Illusionist a few more times and I've slightly revised my opinion:

They probably have some of the best endgame summons in the game and their Gold Mirror Phantasm summon gives some of the best value for resources in the game if you ignore insect swarm.

However, their problem is actually their complete lack of map control: they have no good commander summons, which lets other Magic factions like Necro take over the map very easily.
They obviously do not have the economy to take over the map quickly like Baron or Barbarian.

Every other magic-type faction has good 4-move or giant-size commanders or some other way of asserting map control, but Illusionist have nothing.

Gems are also an extremely hard resource to come by and every other Illusionist summon is terrible value for money except Gold Mirror Phantasms after mid-game.

Normal mirror for 10 illusions = 1 gem per illusion. They are nice early on but essentially work like longdead summons in that they have no sustainability. Except worse they cost you gems while longdeads cost gold(via recruit necros).

Silver mirror phantasms = are massive traps because you're getting 5 phantasms at 5 gems a pop. Compare this to Gold mirror soldier/animals.

Large mirror illusions = Hilariously overpriced and worthless. You get five 1-hp illusions for 50 gems.

Gold mirror phantasms = This is where ALL the power of this faction lies. if you get 50 soldier/animal phantasms that's 2.5 gems per phantasm. Value for money. 20 Otherworldly beings is the best value, with monster close behind(if you get a beholder phant out).

Phase beasts and simulacrums are complete traps.
The teleporting rituals are complete wastes of money considering the number of conditions you have to satisfy.

So apart from the gold mirror phants, faction is underpowered in every single way.

[twan]

Illu is far to be in the best factions in my mind but there are worse factions (or rather factions having worse disadvantages, if like the illusionist they also have a few strengths).

Take the hoburg for example, you pay half a turn of a "mage" (who happen to have no spell but still require some libraries to be reliably accessible more than once every blue moon past the first you get for free) and 20 gems of a particular type (often harder/slower to get than 50 of any) to summon a few (sometimes just one) never healable construct(s), going from excellent units to units barely worthing half their price (if your opponent don't use special damages and resist their own). Not even speaking of his level 2 summon requiring 150 gems of a particular type (compare with what a warlock may get for this price, or an illu with say 250 of any).

Also the engineer also has to lose a whole turn (even 1 1/2 if snowing) moving to forest to start summoning (and may destroy that forest), and it's even worse for your other summoner, the horticultist (the one you want in your armies as at least he has spells), who typically needs 5-6 turns minimum, crossing some forests, reaching an ancient one (imagining you play in a era where they are available at all); summoning, then returning, to add one of his best summons to your army. The hidden time costs of your good units are so huge with an hoburg you can even be jealous of an enchanter.

Finaly while you have a better economy than illu, and of course the capacity to build massive armies of crossbowmen with excellent damage for their price, you have as only map control (move 3, often recruitable) commander a front placed battle fast glass canon, requiring to gather several hogmeisters to make an army go anywhere and have a chance to arrive with a leader.

Not to say hoburgs are the worse of the worse, cases of "this faction weaknesses outweight its strengths" can be made for a good half the factions.

[Orpheus]

Illusionist works exactly as I would expect it to work. The nature of the illusionist's power means that they are obviously NOT well-suited to fight a large scale, open war. You win by subtlety, by outsmarting the enemy.
Make yourself appear weak. Let the enemy discount you as a threat, and fight among themselves. Then pick off those who were most weakened in the conflict. You may not have map control, but you should have enough Floating Eyes to know everything that happens in Elysium. So you know where and who to attack, when to strike and when to vanish.
I really dislike playing as the Illusionist because it requires a playstyle that I would never naturally adopt. But it works. Despite being one of my least-favourite factions to play, it's also the one that I can most reliably win with.
It's like the Bakemono - you can't play it in the same way as you would another faction, you just don't have the brute force to deal with either mage-class monster summons or non-mage infantry hordes. You have your own strengths though, and you have to apply them correctly. You can't match any other class in direct, conventional war. So you maneuver the enemy into situations where their superiority is negated. Dodge the doomstacks and hit lightly-guarded locations. Lead their armies into areas where you hold nothing worth fighting for. Find and target the commanders who aren't leading the doomstacks - but may very often be the ones topping them up with troops.
Give the enemy a tempting target to chase, lead them out of wherever thay are guarding, then swoop in behind them with minimal force. Use the 'spearman minefield' - you don't need to kill their armies, you just need to hamstring them while you outmaneuver them. Exploit your superior map knowledge.
If you're clever you can play your enemies against one another by leading opposing doomstacks into the same region, with a target that both would want to take. Then sit back, and watch the carnage from the comfort of their now-unguarded citadels.
Illusionist in CoE is just like Illusionist in D&D or every other game ever. You don't have muscle, but you shouldn't be relying on it anyway. Fight with your mind, and you can win without needing brute force.

[Rayder]

What you say doesn't really apply to me. I play either duel against emperor AIs or on huge size maps against 2 emperors. I can't exactly "play enemies off each other". Nor would I want to since it renders the game kind of trivial. The AI is already very exploitable as it is.

I have since moderated my opinion on Illusionists: they just have a very annoying lack of good commanders for taking over the map efficiently which I am used to with economy-based factions like Baron, Voice of El, Barbarian. Nor do they have the fast and powerful commanders of summoning factions like Necro, Warlock, Demonologist.

However I will submit that once you are able to get 2-3 Gold mirrors with Otherworldly/Monster up, you pretty much win the game against everything.

I had also been playing them the wrong way, thinking silver mirror phants were inefficient when they're much better than illusions in the long run in terms of efficiency.

[Orpheus]

I agree with all of this, except the first paragraph. The AI is indeed exploitable, which is a perfectly legitimate strategy when it outnumbers and outguns you (as it almost always will, when you are playing illusionist!). If you were playing against a human player who made the kind of mistakes that the AI does, you'd be pretty damn stupid to let them get away with it. It's one of the most basic principles of strategy - when the enemy shows their throat, you aim for it. If you can manipulate them into doing this, at little or no cost to yourself, you should do so.
You are dead right that they Illusionist doesn't have a lot of useful commanders, although since you can spawn a horde of basic troops from mirrors you have less need to recruit masses of regular infantry, and so you should at least be able to afford plenty of Captains and random wizards-for-hire. Use these captains and other generic commanders as your main leaders, carting mirrors around along with whatever regular troops you feel are needed. Make sure every army ALWAYS includes at least one empty mirror, so that your ritualists can mirror-walk in and top up the summoning mirrors when needed. Also place empty mirrors in strategically-important locations, to allow your Illusionists to outmaneuver any invading force.
Another thing to note is that Illusion magic, at least at level 2 and 3, is a lot more powerful than it appears, particularly with multiple casters in a single stack. The combination of large-area Sleep and Confusion effects is incredibly potent against non-mindless enemies (incidentally, Confusion can potentially Charm units that are immune to Charm, including non-mindless undead!). I just watched my starting L2 commander, by himself, take a neutral town with around 12-15 defenders. Not only that, but thanks to Bewilderment he 'captured' enough of the enemy to garrison the place afterwards!
Like I said before, it isn't necessarily a weak class. It is weak, if you try to play it like a Baron or a Warlock, but if you can get to grips with the, frankly, weird playstyle, it can be just as strong as any other. You just need to play against the enemy's weaknesses, rather than trying to match their strengths.