This game is SO hard

[EngineerKenny 123]

So I am playing on the easiest level. Quickly (about 60 turns in), I et atttacked bytwo of the enemies. I lose my capitol. I notic something - it says "WRATH OF GODS" when I examine the cities. Anyone know what that means?

[TickTack]

E.g. some tips for the first 60 turns are:

1. Allocate all Skill and Research power to Mana power (using 'magic' sliders on one of the menus)
2. Summon a Magic Spirit and put it on Autoscout mode
3. Have 4 troops inside your city to defend it (either build them, or summon them using spells)
4. Use gold to purchase a building (granary, armory or sawmill, usually). (Convert excess gold into mana for battles, using Alchemy menu)
5. Increase tax rate until it's as high as you can get without creating a rebel in your city
6. Using mana to cast combat spells, and storing them in your spellbook for future use
7. Create a settler once you have 2 units to escort it

Edit: If you have some time for reading over the weekend, have a look here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=281425

Have fun!

[dergefata]

Are you willing to start a new game? I think you might benefit from starting fresh and creating a custom Sorcerer Lord, if you're willing. The premade ones are all less powerful than what you can make yourself.

For world options, I'd suggest you choose a few different planes to get a feel for how they're different. Put World Features on Common or higher, because you're going to want to have enough of them to attack to get experience, practice fighting, and lots of treasure. Any other settings you think you'd enjoy, choose. Then you can make your custom Sorcerer Lord.

Pick the traits you want first. You can worry about spell circles later. Here are my suggestions for a new player:
--Cartographer (this will let you see your entire starting plane, so you will know what's out there, where to go, and how quickly any enemy SorcLords are expanding on your home plane)
--Warlord (Unit levels are very powerful. Getting two more levels for your troops makes a huge difference. However, you will only benefit from this trait if you can keep your troops alive, so if you pick this you need to be as careful as possible in combats not to lose experienced troops)
--Archmage (Spellcraft is the most important stat in the game. This will help you increase it)
--Butcher (this will give you +1 pick and is not a very painful penalty)
--Tyrant (This will give you +2 picks and is not a problem *if you keep your city population low for the beginning of the game*)

Don't worry about getting a spell school to mastery. You're having trouble with the beginning of the game, so pick things that will help you most in the beginning of the game. I recommend the following:
1 pick in Life (choose Heal if playing a living race, choose Disrupt Undead if playing Unhallowed)
1 pick in Summoning (choose Healer Familiar)
1 pick in Death (choose Bone Aura)
1 pick in Earth (choose Summon Slime)
1 pick in Water (choose Phantom Warriors)
1 pick in Protection (choose Searing Aura)
1 pick in Augmentation (choose Bless Weapon)

Anything else that looks good to you, either spell circles+spells or positive or negative traits, go ahead and choose.

Got all that? Great. Now you're ready to kick the game around. Splitting posts here; next one will be play style suggestions with the custom SL from above. You won't always need to make a custom SL, and you won't always need to pick the things I've suggested, but those things will help you a *lot* while you learn how to play this game efficiently.

[dergefata]

There are only two main ideas you need to keep in mind to stay ahead of the power curve in this game: be aggressive, and keep your troops alive.

At the strategic level, I have disagree with several of the tips TickTack gave you. Many of them are wrong or going to hurt you in the long run.
--Do not move your slider all the way to mana; make do with what you've got(edit: in some cases, you might want to make mana for one or two turns. But as soon as possible - usually after the first turn - you should stop wasting your power on mana). You need research in the early game, and you need Spellcraft always. Get more mana by attacking world features. Keep as much of your power in Spellcraft as you can afford. You'll always want to cast more spells in combat.
--Do not keep troops in your city. You have free city defenders, and if you keep troops in a city doing nothing, they are an expense and not helping you at all.
--You cannot store combat spells for later use. You *can* store strategic spells for later use.
--Do not waste your gold buying buildings in the early game. You need to have some laying around to buy units from Inns, or to recruit heroes if they offer to join you.
--Do start making settler units as soon as possible. Placing a few cities on resources will swing your economy hugely, and as long as a city population is low, unrest is only a small problem.
--Raze conquered cities you capture that are not placed well, instead of keeping them. A city in a good place is worth much more than a city in a bad place. Consider both max population, and tile resources. You should almost always be able to get at least three resources per city, and that's going to make a huge difference.

Since you chose Cartographer, you can see the entire starting plane. That's a huge, huge help. Take a few minutes at the very beginning to look around at the world features near your capital. Some of them will be too powerful to attack, but some will not. You need to attack the world features that are not too powerful. Start from Turn 1. It's never too early to start getting loot and levels for your troops.

Here's how to win in tactical combat in this game:
--You have two good summons, Slime and Phantom Warriors. Your best use of Phantom Warriors is to do high damage to a single enemy unit. Your best use of Slime is to tank one or more enemy units for a turn or two while you move your "real" troops around for best placement. Make heavy use of these. There's no penalty for losing a unit summoned in combat; just summon another next turn, if you need. Slime and PW are both very cheap. Let them take damage and die while your real troops survive and gain levels.
--Bone Aura and Searing Aura are cheap damage resistance, and damage resistance is the most powerful thing you can have in this game. Fighting a bunch of Spearmen, or archers? Bone Aura will save your life. Fighting Hell Hounds or Fire Elementals or Nightmares? Searing Aura will be a huge help. The idea here is to get one melee unit to stand adjacent to as many enemies as possible and tank their attacks. With damage resistance, you'll be able to survive many many more attacks than usual. Also, remember how I had you pick 1 Life and 1 Protection? You're going to be able to research a spell called Circle of Protection. It is game-changingly powerful. As soon as you get it, use it all the time.
--Some enemies, like Werewolves and Earth Elementals, have Mundane Resistance. Use Bless Weapon to ignore their mundane resistance so you can do full damage against them. Keep in mind that it works both ways, and if you're fighting enemies like Clerics, Runepriests, Paladins, or enemy SLs that cast Bless Weapon, any mundane resist you have will be useless against those enchanted troops.
--Healer Familiar lets a unit cast Heal three times per combat without costing you any mana or spell skill. It's a huge help. Once you've attacked a couple world features and have some spare mana, try to cast it on at least one unit in each army(if you're a living race. If you're Unhallowed, you might only want it cast on your heroes). It will make a big difference in keeping your troops alive long enough to gain some levels and get powerful.
--The AI will always choose to attack a unit next to it (if it can reach it) instead of running toward a weaker unit. Use that to your advantage.
--If you have a flying unit and are facing a hard fight against enemies that do not fly and cannot reach you, you can move your flyer next to enemies, summon a Slime in one corner of the map, and chase the enemies toward your slime. You'll get a free backstab attack each turn. This "backstab kiting" will let you win fights easily that you might otherwise not be able to win. It's a little cheesy and I don't recommend using it all the time since it takes away some of the challenge, but early on? Use every tool you've got =)
--Mobility is life. High Men and Dwarves are powerful once you know how to use them but early on, you might do better with Grey Elves or Draconians. They are fast and that speed gives you options you don't have if you're slow. Also Grey Elves and Myrodants both start with a flying unit, and of course all Draconian units fly.

Wall of text? I'll stop now. =) If you have specific questions, feel free to ask.

[EngineerKenny 123]

@ dergefata, @TickTack: I do not think I ever have been so surprised by response to a question I posed. I just cannot believe you two guys took so much of your time to write down what you did. I will keep my response short, becaues I know you have better things to do. YES, I am going to start a brand new game right now. My first two were as the Grey Elves, and the Dark Elves. I did fine in the first game - made it to about turn 200, no problems - I just wanted to try another race. But the Dark Elves were a disaster. War very quickly, and I was always being attacked. Just a bad game. I learned MANY things from both of your posts, and WILL put them into play immediately. I don't expect to master the game, even on easy level, but I sholud do better than I did as Dark Elves. That was terrible, and I blame it on ME not the race. But I am going to play as the Myrodants now and just have fun - putting into practice what you have taught me. But more than anything, I thank both of you so much for trying to help me. And TickTack, I do want your mentoring on how to beat a Tyrant - I saw that in another post you had answered. Thanks Guys.

EngineerKenny123

[MechaBill]

I agree with Dergefata in all major points, although I do have an alternative suggestion for a starting setup:

-Butcher +1
-Opulent +2
-Heretic +2
-Tyrant +2

-Cartographer 1
-Warlord 1
-ArchMage 2
-Mystic 2
- either Channeller OR Enchanter OR Enlightened OR a summoning pick to get SLIME

7 life picks (BLESS WEAPON, HEAL, DISRUPT UNDEAD, BLESS, TRANQUILITY, HEALER FAMILIAR, CIRCLE OF PROTECTION)
1 death pick (BONE AURA)
1 air pick (SCOUTING)
1 earth pick (STONE SKIN)
1 fire pick (SEARING AURA)
1 water pick (PHANTOM WARRIORS)

The Mystic vs Heretic is a straight trade to move your power base from buildings to people. It is most effective late game since a full strength city has a pop of 25 which gives 12.5 mana with Mystic. The most religious buildings you can have is SHRINE, TEMPLE, PARTHENON and CATHEDRAL which gives 10 mana or 5 with Heretic. So with neither, you get 10 mana, with both you get 17 (rounded down). However, it is still worthwhile in the early game I believe. An average early city might have a pop of 6 and a shrine and temple. With neither you get 3 mana, with both you get 4 mana (again rounded down).

Opulent reduces your Food, Production and Gold by 10%. By mid to late game, you will be swimming in gold from attacking features so that's not that significant. In addition, the gold can be used to buy things so that mitigates the production hit. In the early game, it might be a drag on your economy but the benefits of 2 extra picks make it worthwhile in my opinion.

7 life picks are mainly to get CIRCLE OF PROTECTION on turn 1. As Dergefata notes, it is extremely effective. However, the 6 tier 1 spells are all very good early game as well so you arn't really wasting picks here.

1 pick in each of Death, Air, Earth, Fire and Water rounds out the list so you have at least one pick in each element school. This means that ALL spells are available for research since each spell has an element and an effect school. Since you have covered all the elements, you can research all spells.

[MechaBill]

Insectoids (Myrodants) can only build a Shrine and a Temple for religious buildings so taking Mystic and Heretic is pretty much a no brainer here. This is especially true because the fast growth rate of the race will also grow your mana quickly.

The cavalry (Myrmidons) are mediocre but cost effective. The Attendant is a decent cleric type unit with Heal and 3 good buffing spells, but the best part is his Aura of Courage and Aura of Resolve which boost accuracy and saving throws respectively. The wizard equivalent, the Seer, is rather poor, mainly due to low mana reserves (20) which only give him 6 shots. The ranged unit, the Slinger, is not bad. Good potential damage due to the poison but with mediocre accuracy. Since accuracy is the fastest growing stat, raising them up a few levels increases their ability tremendously.

TITAN tactics:

First, most Titans cannot pass walls so if you can build walls when you see one coming, that helps a lot. These Titans are Bethos, Javen, Lamia, Magmat, Tandalitus, Shade of Night and Mark VI. Kwherezimian and the Last Uruthian both have wall crusher attacks and Dhimmon flies. However, the Last Uruthian cannot attack flying units so you can put a line of fliers in front of him and he will not be able to pass. Likewise, you can put a line of fliers BEHIND your wall and Dhimmon will not be able to fly over it. So Kwherezimian is the only Titan that can always get through your defences.

If you have the spell FALSE LIFE(lvl 3, death & biomancy), it will kill any living Titan....eventually. It has no save and no spell resistance. It will boost the Titans HP by 20, but after that, it wil gradually eat away the HP with Negative energy until death. Half the Titans are living: Bethos, Javen, Lamia, Magmat and Dhimmon.

If you have BLESS WEAPON (which you do), you can prepare your slingers with it. A stack of slingers with BLESS WEAPON will get through the Mundane Resistance most Titans have. A beginning level slinger has 4 figures doing 1-6 (plus possible poison) each. BLESS WEAPON raises that to 2-7 with an additional chance to hit. Each slinger has 8 shots. Assuming you miss half the time, each unit will do 36 damage so a stack of 10 will do 360 over 8 turns which is enough to kill any Titan except for Tandalitus because he regenerates.

If you have the spell COMMAND, you can try to mentally dominate the Titan. It only works on living Titans though and has a rather low chance of success. Casting MIND WRACK first helps a lot though.

The spell CLOUD OF FLIES does crazy amounts of damage for only 20 mana. Each cast does 4 attacks of 12D6 over 3 turns. Saves do half damage and you can save for each attack. So if he always saves, that's 84 damage per cast.

WEB is great to buy time if you have no wall or if Kwherezimian is breaking through. It has no save and cannot be resisted.

Finally a stack of 6 Dark Elf Weavers always works.

[MechaBill]

Oh yeah, there are 2 Titans that cannot hit fliers (Mark VI and the Last Uruthian) so the flying backstab works on them nicely. Theoretically, you can kill them with a single unit (plus lots of casts of PHANTOM WARRIOR for bait) but 4 or more fliers can keep them way from the bait unit indefinitely so you only need a single cast or you can bring a ground unit. You will probably still need BLESS WEAPON on at least one of your fliers though.

[dergefata]

You like Enlightened enough to spend a starting pick on it, huh, MechaBill? I never gave it a try. Maybe I should.

One detail. You say "Since you have covered all the elements, you can research all spells" but you can only research spells you've got enough picks for. With that setup you can't research any second or higher tier spells unless they're part of Life. At least until you get some circles from world features, which admittedly won't take long :P

And for Kenny, one more piece of advice which might not be intuitive - once you have a good selection of spells(and if you've gone seven deep in Life like MechaBill suggests, you'll have good options right off the bat), the smaller your army, the more powerful it is. If you're having a hard time with a world feature or enemy army, try sending just one unit to fight it. You'll almost always win.

[EngineerKenny 123]

Just took a break from my current game - Insects - doing well so far - thanks to the great tips! And I appreciate your tuteledge MechaBill as well. Truly!

[MechaBill]

To be honest, I mostly use Enchanter or Artificer instead of Enlightened because I'm always spending mana on enchantments and equipment. But it makes sense to get Enlightened if you have Warlord, at least in the early game. Late game it is mostly useless since your key units have maxed out.

If you have difficulty in the early game, Enlightened makes sense. If you are as adept as Dergefata, maybe not.

With Artificer, it retains usefulness deep into late game because your limit isn't the amount of mana you have (essentially unlimited) but your spell skill that you can use to spend that mana. Artificer makes items cheaper so you can get the item *faster*. Which is always good.

Enchanter is also useful at all stages of the game for the same reason. You can cast more enchantments or cast one faster with Enchanter. Its not about saving mana.

Same with Channeller as well.

Great point about the starting spell picks. To be more accurate, I should have said, "Since you have covered all the elements, you can research all FIRST LEVEL spells".

There are a lot of first level spells that are very useful; for one thing, other than DISRUPT UNDEAD (which is specific to undead) there are no direct damage spells in my list. So some suggestions for research:

SLIME
SLAVEWORKS
SPRITES
VACUUM
FERTILE SOIL
ACID ARROW
FLAME ARROW
BERSERK FRENZY
ICE BOLT
PSIONIC BLAST

SLAVEWORKS is especially useful for Myrodants because it trades population for production and the Myrodants have a very high fertility rate.

Also, you have access to most of the LIFE spells with 7 picks....
TRUE SIGHT(2)
BLISTERING RADIANCE (2) - Interesting spell. Removes ranged ability and gives -4 to hit
RESIST ELEMENTS (3)
SHOOTING STARS (3)
ARMSMASTER (3)
GOOD HARVEST (3)
HEROISM (3)
DEATH WARD (4)
MOTHERS RESOLVE (4)
PRAYER (4)
HOLY SMITE (5)
MASS HEALING (5)
REGENERATION!!!! (5)
EDEN (6)
JUST CAUSE (6)
RIGHTEOUS MIGHT! (6)
INVULNERABILITY!!!(6)
SUNBURST (6)
HOLY WORD (7)
GOLDEN AGE!!! (7)
HOLY ARMS (7)
TRUE LIGHT (7)

[Thewizardlord]

Mechabill and dergefata give the more conventional and effective strategy.

Basically exploit the best level 1 spells and use superior tactics to beat world features.

This allows them to generate lots of mana by winning at world features so mana is rarely a problem hence they tend to focus on acquiring spellcraft. Like in MOM Mana tends to be plentiful though mom it's via cities generating gold for alchemy.

A newbie player even with the best spells will probably be less adept at besting world features initially though.

Ticktacks' advice on getting high tax rates setting for gold, to max mana slider is probably easier to follow AS it relies on knocking over world features less but in the long run is less powerful.

[MechaBill]

Interesting point. I don't think our strategies are that hard, but I admit I may be biased in that regard.

One of the simpler, yet effective strategies is the "Super hero" strategy. Despite the name, it does NOT rely on heroes or champions. Instead you take a regular unit and cast enough enchantments on it to create a "Super Hero" unit. Usually you pick a fairly high end unit for this since you will be spending a *lot* of mana on this unit. For the Myrodants, that means STAG BEETLES or possibly MYRMIDONS. You then take this unit out and solo features. Because you only have one unit, it gains XP at the maximum rate and levels up quite quickly. Thats why Warlord is a recommended pick.

The STAG BEETLE requires a Fantastic Stable and a Fighters Guild. Counting all the prerequisite buildings (including the ones you start with), that's 940 to get the buildings plus 140 per unit. The MYRMIDON just requires the Fighters Guild so it only needs 440 plus 90 per unit.

In terms of combat ability, the STAG BEETLE is probably better, but only by a little. The MYRMIDON is definitely cost effective. However, it seems that the STAG BEETLE stats increase with levels more than the MYRMIDON.

Suppose you have a lvl4 (base level) MYRMIDON. You cast STONE SKIN, HEALER FAMILIAR, BONE AURA, SEARING AURA, BLESS WEAPON, BLESS and SCOUTING on it. Now you have a unit with AC 21 and does an average of 24 damage with a +11 to hit. As soon as you enter combat, you cast CIRCLE OF PROTECTION and squat in it. That gives you AC 26 and mundane resistance 10. 20 if the attacks are piercing. Many low level guardians only have accuracy of 6 or less, meaning that they can only hit you on natural rolls of 20. If any damage gets through the mundane resistance, you heal it with your HEALER FAMILIAR (3 casts of healing spells). This unit can handle maybe 80% of features. Only the bigger and nastier guardians, like Dragons, Wyrms etc. will pose a problem. Also, certain magic users like Marids or Efreets can create trouble with Reflection type spells. Learning CLOUD OF FLIES is good for them.

The tricky part of the strategy is to know what battles to walk away from. Youve invested a LOT of mana into this unit so don't lose it!

Once the unit has maxed out XP, you add another unit to the team. This second unit just sits in the back and gathers the XP while leaving the super hero unit to do all the work.

Repeat as required.

[dergefata]

I'd like to add two tidbits to MechaBill's suggestion from above. Just additions, not corrections; that's pretty much the perfect superhero strategy.

It could in some cases be to your advantage not to cast all your [element] reduction buffs strategically. If you're going to fight Demons or Marid, they'll often cast Fire Shield/Reflect Damage, and at least in my combats, Fire Shield/Reflect Damage reflected damage ignores all *strategic* fire resist (for some reason, Reflect Damage is also fire type) but does not ignore Searing Aura/Resist Elements/Elemental Armor cast tactically. I don't know why that happens.

Units can always hit on a natural roll of 20, but if your AC is at least one point higher than their modified roll, they do not then get a critical threat. This can be a big help for heavy-hitting units with medium +hit bonus, like Fire Giants, Berserkers, or Elders. On crits those units can push out quite a lot of damage. So sometimes it's worth stacking an extra AC boost or using Weakness if you know the combat will go long and there's a real risk of losing your buffed unit.