Conquest of Elysium 4

[Raapys]

Dem Golden Mirrors guys, amirite

 

[Agesilaus]

I don't even know what to say about that.

 

[Mortmal]

I don't even know what to say about that.

150 gold units and you have to spend gems to cast rituals on them, then refresh them frequently. I think it better be good at this price.In front of them its just basic goblin units.Coul do better with many factions with lot less hassle and lighter cost.

 

[Destroid]

The demilich is a pretty funny unit. Immobile, but can teleport around the strategic map. Lucky for him he is a high level caster and totally impervious to mundane damage, allowing him to destroy quite large armies alone. He also respawns at the temple if you kill him.

On the downside he needs a corpse to teleport to, and it's not a very accurate process.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Something I've noticed is that having a huge army isn't necessarily the best thing to do, although it depends on your army and unit types. I was getting frustrated that my army of 360 undead was getting absolutely blasted by 10~ hellhounds, the ice deamon lord and 3 lower tier fire demons (the red ones, I forget what any of these guys are called). Then when I downsized my army by a significant amount, say, kicked some 200 undead away, I was able to defeat them. The reason being that having a large buffer of weak as shit units doesn't really help much when your frontliners, usually the best units, are getting wrecked by archers and casters while your own archers and casters are waaaay behind and can't help your frontliners at all. I also haven't figured out which faction is the best equipped to deal against demons. Maybe High Cultist if you use a Starspawn to summon Horrors against them, although that's just replacing the problem with another problem.

 

[Destroid]

They need to implement a Chinese and an Ancient Greek faction. Right now, my two favourite historic/mythological factions are missing.

Dominions has both of those.

 

[Haba]

Something I've noticed is that having a huge army isn't necessarily the best thing to do, although it depends on your army and unit types.

Two rows of tanks, two rows (max) archers, then casters. If you add in another row, the casters won't actually get most of their spells off. Sucks that we have to micro it like this, but what can you do.

With El, for example, I basically need two army stacks early on. If the enemy is human-based, remove the second stack with archers/mages. Otherwise the mass conversion won't go off before half of the enemy army is dead already.

 

[Dayyālu]

Guys, enlighten me how to use properly the Necromancer.

I get incredibly little gold and no resources, and my only chance is to hunt for battlefields and graveyards to summon chaff that gets mauled down by deers in short order. I can try to focus on hands, but the resource requirements for the Good Old Rituals (that were the natural objectives of Necromancers in CoE3) are kinda harsh, and the AI is keen on sending me 100 or so footmen before I can get more than 6 hands par turn.

In CoE 3, you focused on Lichdom/Vampyrism, and I think here it's the same, but the time requirements seem to be a bit harsh before the built-in bonuses of the AI get outta control. Or I should focus on TwiceBorn mages and expansion in Hades?

What I'm doing wrong?

 

[Grimwulf]

What I'm doing wrong?

Maybe you just playing it crampled, setting too many AI's on small maps?

Also, I noticed that AI usually doesn't bother you unless you go aggro on him first, much like in Dominions. So if you don't capture his objects and attack his bands, you can coexist with neighbours peacefully for some time.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Guys, enlighten me how to use properly the Necromancer.

I get incredibly little gold and no resources, and my only chance is to hunt for battlefields and graveyards to summon chaff that gets mauled down by deers in short order. I can try to focus on hands, but the resource requirements for the Good Old Rituals (that were the natural objectives of Necromancers in CoE3) are kinda harsh, and the AI is keen on sending me 100 or so footmen before I can get more than 6 hands par turn.

In CoE 3, you focused on Lichdom/Vampyrism, and I think here it's the same, but the time requirements seem to be a bit harsh before the built-in bonuses of the AI get outta control. Or I should focus on TwiceBorn mages and expansion in Hades?

What I'm doing wrong?

Since Necromancer always tarts with a Gallows they get +3 Hands each turn, which is more (or the most) special resources than other summoner factions get. That means that you can quickly start getting units summoned. I focus on minor summonings first for a while, until I have capped enough nodes to get like +8-10 Hands each turn, then I start going for the mid tier stuff. That's the standard, but depending on the map you might just have to make do with less, or sometimes more.

Revive Longdead and Soulless with your apprentice necromancers on the first turn within the gallows, not your main guy until he's a vampire / lich / rank 3 Necromancer, take them back to your citadel and uses hands to upgrade the units. The Bane Fire Archers, upgraded from Longdead for 10 hands, are top tier archer units. They do 1-3 physical damage, 1-2 magical damage AND cause decay. One hit from their arrow and it's GG. Leave Soulless to defend since they are slow.

Stygian Paths is a rather expensive spell, but it's very good. For 25 hands you can move about 10 blips worth of movement points instead of 3. It takes you into Hades for one month so even if it's winter or a snowy region you won't have to worry about 2 movement points per tile.

I'm not sure how important it is to concentrate on Hades since you don't get any resource nodes with hands of glory and I find that money and iron is relatively useless for Necromancers. The one good thing about Hades is that there are a lot of Old Battlefields there so you can boost up your army quite easily there with Raise Legion. Other than that it's a rather meh plane. Oh, and access to level 3 libraries as well, I guess. That can be quite good as well. Oh, and if you really do want gold and iron for some reason with your necro, it is incredibly easy to defend the resource nodes in Hades. The only thing you have to worry about there are Dispossessed Spirits, which are rather easy to deal with.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Forgot to add that you shouldn't waste all your hands of glory on Raise Legion in old battlefields, even though it may feel incredibly alluring to get all those units and even if you feel like you can afford to go nuts. It is critical to use Major Summoning as well since there are very strong units in there that you cannot get from Legion. Banshees, Dracoliches and Wraiths are critically important units. I skipped out on this ritual completely on my last game and only went for the old battlefields. The game didn't go all too well for me in the end.

 

[Mortmal]

Guys, enlighten me how to use properly the Necromancer.

I get incredibly little gold and no resources, and my only chance is to hunt for battlefields and graveyards to summon chaff that gets mauled down by deers in short order. I can try to focus on hands, but the resource requirements for the Good Old Rituals (that were the natural objectives of Necromancers in CoE3) are kinda harsh, and the AI is keen on sending me 100 or so footmen before I can get more than 6 hands par turn.

In CoE 3, you focused on Lichdom/Vampyrism, and I think here it's the same, but the time requirements seem to be a bit harsh before the built-in bonuses of the AI get outta control. Or I should focus on TwiceBorn mages and expansion in Hades?

What I'm doing wrong?

You are doing nothing wrong, the necro can be incredibly gimp or massively overpowered acording the map ressources and opponents. If you get many hands and the good rituals you can steam roll. You need stygian path to move fast via hades, dark knowledge to find battlefields. If you cant get enough ressources on mainland ,its worth fleeing to hades when you can .Turtle there ,as the major summons are better and basic troops are unmatched,death knights commanders etc. You can hold fortresses in hades just buying 5 spectral arches for 150 gold in each of them. Should make you impossible to beat as no one will venture in hades. Then you can come back with planar walk and steamroll.
The problem is getting enough hands to turn your caster into a vampire count or lich, the massive reanimated arrmies are just good early game(never ever use your best casters for that ) while a vampire can single handle most armies.

 

[thesheeep]

I love how absurdly unbalanced this game is.
Some classes barely stand a chance depeding on the age, while others totally rock (compare Markgraf/Witch during Dark Age).
Makes for some very nice challenge & replayability.

I just wish there were some more truly unique classes like the Troll King or Enchanter. Some are very similar IMO.

 

[Kane]

I love how absurdly unbalanced this game is.

It's almost as if it has been made by the same people that also did Dominions!

 

[Hobo Elf]

I think all of the classes are suitably unique. The only class that actually doesn't have a place in the game is Markgraf. They have nothing going on for them other than being an overwhelmingly inferior Necromancer.

 

[nimateb]

Just been playing this, very fun little game, even with no previous Dominion experience.

 

[Agesilaus]

This is a great game and I hope they've added a lot sonce I last played/when it came out

 

[Beastro]

Picked this up a few days ago. Still learning how to play when I've got time to but what's stood out right away is the music ad how much it sounds like older stuff I haven't heard since the late 90s, like the Civ II soundtrack.

 

[Dayyālu]

Picked this up a few days ago. Still learning how to play when I've got time to but what's stood out right away is the music ad how much it sounds like older stuff I haven't heard since the late 90s, like the Civ II soundtrack.

Dominions (and Conquest of Elysium) music is mostly a collection of old medieval\renaissance music




Plus some work by contemporary "traditional" Swedish groups, like Dram (http://www.draam.com/) or Falsobordone (another Swedish group focused on medieval music).

I am ashamed that I can't recognize many tunes, though.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I haven't played this game for a while so I took it for a spin to check out the new stuff they've added. I don't recall Warlock rituals getting a reduction bonus when cast from the appropriate elemental plane before. Also my tier 2 Wizard was casting two level 1 spells each turn and tier 3 wizard was casting 3 level 1 spells, 1 level 1 and level 2 or 1 level 3 spell each turn. I'm positive that this is also a new addition as I don't remember this being in before. It's kinda nice as it makes low level spells a bit more useful instead of something you simply wished your high level Wizards would not waste a turn on to cast.

 

[Beastro]

Already annoyed with the small size of even enormous maps. What's worse is the map creations tendency to cluster factions together leaving massive tracks of space in the custom maps I DLed.

I really wish there was more options for map generation.

Fucking hell, just loaded a good map only to find most of the AI clumped together in two spots and me far from anyone and free t expand too much.

This is reminding me of one of the reasons why I quit the Civ Series that I'd forgotten.

 

[Haba]

You have to realize that there are multiple planes... so the map size is fine. With players derping in the inferno, void, hades or elemental planes, the games would simply take too long if the map sizes were any bigger. And CoE is supposed to be a smaller scale game than Dominions by design.

 

[Beastro]

You have to realize that there are multiple planes... so the map size is fine. With players derping in the inferno, void, hades or elemental planes,

Which is moot when the game ends when all factions are dead, 80% of them are clumped together and die in the first hour or two of the game.

Does the AI make much use of the planes? I wouldn't mind them so long as factions expand into them, but there's little use for them all you do is fight indies while the AI stays in Elysium.

I DLed a mod to give everyone guardian statues in their home town to keep the AI from dying early, but it's of little use the game decides to spawn 3-5 of them within sight of each other.

 

[rezaf]

You really have to view of things like clumped starts as part of the overall dose of roguelike that's just part of CoE's design. Balancing is not a thing in this game, in every respect, so why should the starting locations suddenly be balanced. Just restart and deal with it.

Also ... bigger maps? What are you, a masochist? On the larger map sizes, if an AI happened to have enough time to build up, it might very well become an insurmountable foe - even on lowly difficulties. Some matchups rely on early taking out your opponent, and it's already pretty darn hard to do that on the current biggest maps.

I really like to play CoE as a bite-size strategy game, on medium maps with five or so enemies of not too high difficulty. This way, most matches tend to play out in ... sometimes only a couple of hours, sometimes a dozen. If I run into a Priest King with a gazillion summons as the Baron or something, I tend to just restart. Most matchups CAN be won somehow (especially since the AI isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer), but it's often just not worth the hassle, imo.

 

[Haba]

I DLed a mod to give everyone guardian statues in their home town to keep the AI from dying early, but it's of little use the game decides to spawn 3-5 of them within sight of each other.

It has been a while since I last played, but are you sure you are not spawning too many AI's for the map size? I don't remember having that issue in my games.