I'm rusty at this game

[rayrox222]

haha an old classic . . . I suddenly thought of this game when I found a DOS emulator and was looking for great old games to play to kill time. Missing an instruction manual and not finding an online source has left me stuck in this predicament of my current game.

I am on a small island, have explored it entirely, building up an empire of lizardmen. If it's possible for me to build ships I have not figured out how to do so. Now I know there is some way to travel to the other plane but I can't figure out how to do it! As such I am stuck on this stupid island and can't get off :-X

There's a couple of nodes; beat the one with phantom warriors/beast, I get owned if I attack the nature node wih wyvers, and other than that there were a couple of ruins I explored and then they disappeared from the map.

sooooooo how do I get off of this island? Either I unluckily loaded a random map that got me stuck on a small landmass or I'm forgetting something crucial here!

[Korenn]

you're lizardmen? lizardmen can swim... just walk to the next island.

[rayrox222]

lol touche

it's funny because I gave up and started over as barbarians and while my troops were out this neutral lizardman unit suddenly comes bounding over the high seas without a boat and I finally remembered they simply did not need ships to travel across the waters

Only problem was I had a archer hero I wanted off that stupid island too but he was no lizardman and would've been doomed to the small confines of my starting region.



Does anyone know the difference between difficulty levels? Seems AI leaves a lot to be desired and as far as I know they don't get smarter at harder difficulties. Do they just get more resources to work with so they can develop more quickly? Any handicaps for your units or magical spells when playing a harder difficulty? I was able to crush Merlin within 20 turns just by raiding his main city before he had many defending units and turned his other 3 or 4 cities into neutral ones that were easy pickings. I probably should've gone with a harder setting. Oh well I'm still having fun :)

[nyarlathotep]

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Does anyone know the difference between difficulty levels? Seems AI leaves a lot to be desired and as far as I know they don't get smarter at harder difficulties. Do they just get more resources to work with so they can develop more quickly? Any handicaps for your units or magical spells when playing a harder difficulty? I was able to crush Merlin within 20 turns just by raiding his main city before he had many defending units and turned his other 3 or 4 cities into neutral ones that were easy pickings. I probably should've gone with a harder setting. Oh well I'm still having fun :)

At impossible, enemy wizards don't pay upkeep for anything.

[Aureus]

rayrox222 wrote:
l
Does anyone know the difference between difficulty levels? Seems AI leaves a lot to be desired and as far as I know they don't get smarter at harder difficulties. Do they just get more resources to work with so they can develop more quickly? Any handicaps for your units or magical spells when playing a harder difficulty? I was able to crush Merlin within 20 turns just by raiding his main city before he had many defending units and turned his other 3 or 4 cities into neutral ones that were easy pickings. I probably should've gone with a harder setting. Oh well I'm still having fun


At impossible, enemy wizards don't pay upkeep for anything.

That's an understatement.

At impossible, the AI is difficult for a variety of reasons.

1. They are bestowed with a very large power level to start the game.
2. They don't have to maintain armies with food or gold.
3. They don't have to maintain summoned armies with mana. However, while the creatures don't get dispelled, they almost certainly drain the AI's mana reserve (either that or they cast a lot of spells) when the upkeep is high enough to offset their per-turn-power level advantage. It is common for the AI to go down to 0 mana for precisely one turn. After the AI hits bottom, it will get a 500 or 1500 (or 5000) mana boost the next turn, depending on its cities and captured nodes, and then the cycle repeats. When the AI has found a lot of nodes... it can't spend it's mana quick enough, and the mana begins to stockpile. Morale: early on, compete for nodes that the AI are targeting!
4. The AI is very aggressive. They will declare war on you almost always by the year 1408, even if you are on favorable terms. This is a lot sooner, than in the other difficulty levels. At this point prepare for an endless stream of armies and magic coming your way. The AI is still fairly stupid, but when their power-level is 100x higher than yours, tactics become irrelevant (picture a flock of wraiths raiding your citadel when you're busy building chaffe like slingers or priests). Morale: try to knock out neighboring wizards before 1408!
5. The AI seems more adept at targeting vital resources (like their effeciency at trying to kill your heroes), but I'm not 100% sure.