1861

That just happened to me by 2 different AI players. I have always been able to buy up the independents I’ve encountered before the AI makes them vassals. But this game I got beaten to the punch 2x.

1862

Costly mistake…
I just wandered a little to close to 8 units that included 4 Archon Titans. My low tier halflings didn’t stand a chance. Time to take a trip to the void.

1863

OH MY GOD STOP BUYING MY VASSALS A TURN BEFORE I FINISH THEIR QUESTS AAAAGH

1864

lmao, the AI does that same shit if you team up with it.

1865

Oh no, we’re on locked teams. Gosh darnit.

1866

If your early to midgame expansion gets slowed down it isn’t hard to lose in this game. Now that I’ve played with each class with the Seals victory enabled, I think I feel comfortable increasing the amount of points needed to win. Maybe to about 50 for a medium map game. My reason for using the Seals victory is to get rid of late game mop up, not because I want time pressure.

I lost by a bit more this game to a Dreadnaught. I had the dragon dwelling, and used a dragon army to grab a couple Seals, but it was too little too late. He had 3 stacks guarding his last Seal and was closing in on a victory so I couldn’t use my 2 Seals to catch up. His cannons tore through my poor dragons. I needed another stack.

1867

I guess i don’t get AoW combat all that well because defending in a city is always worse than fighting in open field. With the huge number of flanking/flying/teleporting units all the walls do is allow an army to isolate your units even easier than they normally otherwise would.

1868

It hugely depends on the army you’re facing. Flying/teleporting units are not all that common below Tier 3, and breaking down those walls can be really hard if you don’t have Cannons or something. Some spells and some archers/supports can with a Pikeman to hold the gates can inflict way more casualties than they would in the open field behind some city walls.

Flying and teleporting units do handle walls well, but early flying units are not exactly robust.

1869

I ran into this problem last campaign trying to take the last capital I needed and the opponent had repair walls and I neglected to bring trebuchets. it quickly turned into a comedy of errors where I could almost charge my way through the front gate but enough of the damage was repaired between turns to make it so my unit got slaughtered by ranged enemy units before the gate could be taken down.

1870

You always have the option of falling back behind the walls. I once won a pretty lopsided victory with mostly horse archers behind walls. The enemy force was about about half flying. I pulled my archers back and the enemy flyers came over the wall. I used the horse archer’s mobility and range to focus on one end of their line and took them all out over two rounds. By then, the rest of the enemy army still hadn’t breached the walls, so they got slaughtered at the gates.

1871

I’m amazed how quickly you can expand with a peacekeeper specialization and aggressive scouting. There’s a real snowball effect. I’m using the income from the vassals to buy more peace treaties and more vassals. Each treaty increases my relationship and alignment, so the next treaty is cheaper. I’m playing on King and stealing the ‘rightful’ vassals for AI’s that are on the other side of the map.

Now, of course, I wonder if I’ll be able to hold onto them…

1872

That is a pretty good trick, will be interesting to see if you hang on to them, my problem is random events will drop some T3 or T4 bad guys near some of them and they are lightly defended enough that they get taken rather easily.

A stack and a half of trolls took two of them on me yesterday, so now I’ll have to troop over there and reclaim them. The random events can prove annoying, but I like them just the same because a campaign should have unforeseen complications along the way in my opinion.

1873

Question: I’m at a point where I’ve got one well developed and well defended Dreadnought left. The campaign has seals turned on, so naturally I’m thinking of tackling that instead of a frontal assault. Question is: what is the best counter to all these elementals guarding them? I’m playing as an archdruid btw.

1874

You always run into a mix of elementals at seals, so the best thing to do is bring a mix of damage types so you can match up against their weaknesses.

Or just a whole bunch o’ murder. Those defender armies aren’t that tough, and remember you can bring multiple stacks.

1875

One thing the AI still needs work on is getting their walled cities attacked. They still sit back for far too long. I brought 4 trebuchets, 3 spell casting heroes, and a bunch of other troops. They had several manticore riders along with other troops. I think we had roughly the same number (15 -20 each). The AI just let me pick it off until is ranged units were gone and then it attacked. It would have done much better if it just attacked in force right from the start.

1876

In the Elven campaign it’s a mistake to go through the portal that takes to to the west by the Elven towns, isn’t it? I feel like I triggered the enemy players too early and that I should of just worked my way west.

1877

Thanks, I decided to just bum rush’em and use multiple stacks. My AI teammate did the same thing so we’re both off to the races on seals. Interestingly the remaining AI race opposing us has not made a move against us or the seals, so I’ve decided to work on rolling up his undefended cities as well, just in case the seals thing doesn’t work out.

1878

I find that crushing my opponents under a tide of unrelenting murder works well.

1879

Usually if the AI is in a position to, they send multiple stacks to kick you off of a Seal, or at least start grabbing other ones.

1880

Does anyone understand the rules by which the AI will decide to ally with you or not? I am pure good, the other Ai is pure good. We are at peace and have open borders. My reputation with them is like 1200. I own half the world.I have an insanely large army, yet they refuse to ally with me. In fact, no AI in this game will ally with me. I am getting so tired of this kind of stupid BS. Its going to turn into yet another slog of taking over the world. Am I going to just have to declare war on them at some point? Is this the only way?

BTW, if you declare war on someone, are you removed from their territory?