Illusionist Discussion

[Devin]

I'd like to discuss the classes of this game, and I thought I'd start with our quirky new friend, the Illusionist.

For people who have not used him yet, I'll explain something about the mirror mechanics.
Lets say you buy a regular mirror, and use capture images on it. It now may have 10 images.
Lets say it summons 5 of those during a fight, and 2 are killed. After the fight, it now has 8, as the surviving 3 return. Spells placed in mirrors are always used up.

So your mirrors do get exhausted with time, and you'll have to refill them with another ritual.

Illusionists also have strong vision, with both a wandering eye summon, as well as a full on scry.

Late game, we have phantasms, which are like illusions, but more "real".
We also have similacrum, a 50 gem ritual to clone our commander.
50 gems seems like not a bad price for a tier 3 illusionist, even if the copy can't do rituals.

I'm curious what everyone thinks about them.
To me, it seems they show promise, but are going to struggle against anything with high magic resist.

[Hobo Elf]

I've tried the Illusionist twice and I just can't make it work. Some relationships are just doomed from the beginning and this seems to be one of them. I am unable to successfully have fun with this faction. Can't find the fun in summoning illusions of animals with horrible stats when I could just play a Druid and summon real animals with less horrible stats. I never got further than mid game with the illusionist so I'm unaware if they get any interesting and unique units, but if all they get are gimped versions of real units then I just don't see the appeal in this faction.
Waiting for someone to educate me.

[Devin]

Well, 25 gems can get you this.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559932879

[peterebbesen]

I find the Illusionist class very powerful in the mid- and end-game when I focus on the summoning mirrors and simulacrums and give the spell casting mirrors a pass.

Since any of the four gem types is equal for Illusionist purposes, it is fairly easy to start amassing enough to fill the cheap 10g mirrors at the start of the game (trade obviously helps here) - soon you just need a small bunch of spearmen/archers do provide an initial buffer to hold the line until your mirrors have spat out enough illusions to overwhelm the enemy.

And there's no limit to how many mirrors you can bring along. Attrition is an issue, but if you bring 2 or 3 apprentices along that know how to make Image mirrors, you can fill them up in no time after big battles, something that is much, much, quicker than recruiting troops and bringing them to the front.

Assaulting fortified positions is particularly fun because the walls are rendered irrelevant; Once the siege engines have done their work and it is time to come down to business, all the illusionary creatures pass straight through the walls to attack the remaining defenders.

Once past the initial stages, trading at double price to ensure an income of as many gems as possible can be wise, as money will primarily be needed for mages and catapults. (Unless you've been really unfortunate finding gem and trade sites).

The mid game with large mirrors and T2 summons can be given a pass if one isn't under pressure in favour of just stacking up lots of T1 mirrors until the player is ready to transition to T3, because T3 is where the Illusionist goes from being a pretty strong faction to being a very, very, strong one.

Yes, other people can summon dragons, or hydras, or beholders, or what not... but when an Illusionist makes a L3 monster mirror at a cost of 75 gems and 150 gold it will spit out up to 5 monsters in battle, and while a phantasmal dragon or beholder can't stand as much punishment as the real deal, they deal the same damage and are ethereal. (The other L3 summon mirrors are nice too, but the monster mirror is the best. I am particularly fond of the Beholder phantasms.)

This points to the only really weak point of the Illusionist - while his special troops are much less vulnerable to physical damage than other factions, they are considerably more vulnerable to non-physical damage as that bypasses the primary defense and hits their much fewer hitpoints. But then, if he didn't have any weak points, it would be a boring faction.

And just as things are starting to look a bit balanced, we get Simulacrum.

Where another player might be wary about risking a good L3 caster in battle, and where all other players tend to have limited numbers of L3 casters, the end-game Illusionist has as many as he wants to pay for, as he can duplicate himself with Simulacrum for only 50 gems, and so long as he has a copy remaining the death of the original, who is the only one who can use rituals, just means that one of the copies becomes the real one and can cast rituals.

Since the copies know the same spells as the original at the time the ritual Simulacrum is cast, it is strongly advised to learn all the L3 spells first if there's a L3 library handy- if not, get all the best L2 spells first.

Have the original move with your main army, filling mirrors etc, possibly accompanied by other Simulacrums, while at least one Simulacrum is somewhere else safe.

Fun thing to consider. With L3 rituals you can spend 50 gems on getting a Simulacrum that will cast L3 spells every round in combat (if you know them) OR you can spend 75 gems on making a Greater Spell Mirror that can hold a fixed number of the same L3 spells but cast them two at a time so long as there are charges remaining. And when there aren't, you'll have to recharge for 75 gems...

Most cases, if you want to deluge your enemy with L3 spells, it will be much cheaper just to mass produce Simulacrums than to make Greater Spell Mirrors. The one huge advantage to using the mirrors is that they have more hitpoints, so if you are up against enemies that deal lots of battlefield wide damage, Greater Spell mirrors will hold out longer than Simulacrums.

And there the other nice things Illusionists can do: Floating Eye, Scrying, Mirror Walk, Mirror Gate, and Mirror Wall. Unprecedented mobility and information gathering second to none save a Senator's Augurs.


NOTE: The single most important lesson I learned playing Illusionist was ENABLE COMMANDER RENAMING LAUNCH OPTION. It makes it so much easier to keep track of the many Simulacrum copies that way.


EDIT: Removed nonsense about Silver Mirrors. I'd forgotten they were needed for L2 Phantasm and Spell mirrors because I mostly skip L2 rituals.

[Rockscissors]

They are my favorite class currently. I did a quick run through with everything then did a couple serious games. I keep wanting to go back to them. I don't think they are OP or anything but they scale so nice. They can be effective in early, middle, and late game where I feel some classes are more powerful in different parts of the game.

[Devin]

When you put it that way, the simulacrums do sound better than the tier 3 spell mirrors.
Another cool thing I noticed, while the apprentices have no special power, a proper illusionist is stealthy, and a master is invisible. So if you have 4 simulacrums with your army, your enemy may not know that.

[jeremiah]

I really love playing as the Illusionist, the mirror mechanics with summoning units and the bewilderment spell are great. But I've run into some real issues though when facing high magic resist and morale enemies. For instance, there's an AI army of ~220 Hoburg units with 12 Ents running around my current game and there's basically nothing I can do about it. The Ents have too much HP (331), and along with their morale and magic resist they just stop me cold. I've tried tons of illusions, phantasms, displacement beasts, simulacrums and regular gold bought troops and catapults, but none of it works. Their 4 attacks and HP/armor just let them eat through any amount of illusions and troops, even catapults did negligible damage. Then because I can't rely on fearing them or confusing/charming them, I can't go through their ridiculous HP pool before my army runs out. Even with up to 8 bewilderments per turn I was only able to confuse 2 of them for a handful of turns. But who knows, maybe every other class would have an impossible time with 12 Ents and maybe it's that unit that's broken. Otherwise the Illusionist is easily in my top 3 classes to play.

[Tchey]

I still didn't win a single game after 8 hours of playing, but i like the Illusionist a lot, because of the "tricks" : floating eyes, scry, mirror walk, are all really nice to explore quickly.

[melting_wax]

Wow, he's an awesome rusher. Played half an hour with him. Bought 2 small mirrors turn 1, then went all out for conquest. I had the lvl 1 creature binding so at turn 10 I had both mirrors filled with a total of 10 creatures, which turned out to be quite effective. I took out both Necromancer and Demonologist without many losses and before the end of year 2 I had 3 citadels :D.

edit: Additionally my Illusionist had the Mass Sleep spell (forgot its name), which is extremely strong! It was Baron difficulty.

[melting_wax]

Played another game with the illusionist. I played FFA Baron lvl AI and had a lot of fun with the class. The summoning mirrors are very valuable. The gold mirrors summon some very strong creatures. The phase beasts are very good as well. They are exceptional blockers against ranged units and do decent damage. I didn't use spell mirrors, but they can be useful for decisive battles.
The rituals of the illusionists are mixed. Floating eye and scrying is nice, but ineffective. Starting without creature mirrors is tough!

[Bulluthu]

What's the difference between an illusion and a phantasm ?

[Devin]

Originally posted by BRING EMOUT BRING EMOUT:

What's the difference between an illusion and a phantasm ?

Illusions only have 1 HP, and so they can be easily removed. (Although being ethereal helps)

Phantasms are "more real" and have more than one HP, and possibly better attacks.

Example, a phantasm moose has 20 HP, can trample, and is still etheral, so it's actually better than a real moose.