We chose all resurrections (opponent entered Shakti twice :eek:). In the end, red was bottled out, with two external Medusa dwellings, a home Dragon Utopia, a ton of gold, a Monolith with stables and gloves — everything would be great if not for one thing — ГО via trackless terrain, secondary heroes connected by a simple road through standard guards, the opponent reached the RE by meeting... there things were more modest...
The second game, Gunnar spawns from the start, and well, that’s probably all :o, one road to who knows where, which even Gunnar has to run and run; the respawn is cut up by cliffs and mountains, forcing you to make figure-eights while scouting. On the respawn there is an external dwelling of cats, but it’s guarded by 19 Elementals of Mind (since the Sphere of Permanence is thrown in), and it’s a 4-day hike through mountains — I gave up. I ran along the road, which actually turned out to be just one, with a tiny branch to the ГО underground. On the secondary it went better — a couple of crypts, gnoll huts, and I found two Griffin Conservatories! With the money earned, I shopped around, first broke a level-1, then a level-3 Conservatory, and at home I picked up another level-3 with a scout hero, sacrificing an angel and a ton of growth. Then I went into the treasure zone. Nothing special there — two Dragon Fly Hives with 12 hornets, a bit of stats, and an external Azure dragon dwelling in the far corner of the treasure zone; I claimed it only on the third week and immediately portal-summoned the Azure dragon — the gold boxes in the treasure zone really helped. Well, that’s basically it — nowhere else to run; both of the opponent’s secondaries accessible through passable rocks are out of the question. Through mountains, through forest, I headed to the gates, which lead who knows where (since the generation was already bugged) — turned out the gates lead to the treasure zone.. There’s Tamika there, who snatches two Dragon Utopias from under my nose, and also has Flight on top of that (I already have one GM5 built — completely empty, the second GM5 is under construction). And then I got lucky — right in the corner, directly under the Dragon Utopias, lay КЗ; after that, Gunnar easily caught up to Tamika even with Flight, her army after the utopias wasn’t exactly plentiful — after killing one of my Azure dragons and losing 150 bone dragons and 4 angels, Tamika runs away. Then I farmed gold for Azure dragons, broke through ГО and captured the opponent’s towns, eventually taking all of them. Through the opponent’s secondary (or my bugged secondary, depending on how you see it) I went into the treasure zone where the opponent was heading — there I took a utopia for +6 all stats and armor +4+4 and some junk.
Tamika in the final battle surprised me by bringing 1000+ bone dragons and 4 new angels :confused: + close to 20 hornets, 15+ unicorns, 45 orcs — in short, a mixed bag from all over. Stats were roughly equal — I had literally 2-3 more, Tamika had the Crown of the Supreme Mage, which was equipped against dragons, but the dragons could still cast for some reason — I was as surprised as the opponent.
I had 19 hornets, 6 angels, 4 Azure dragons, 15 Arch Liches, 4 cats, split into singles — in short, the fact that we fought without magic only played into my hands, and victory in the final battle came relatively easily. Most likely, if Tamika hadn’t worn the Crown of the Supreme Mage, she could have driven Gunnar off, since she had a bit over 240 mana versus my 200 and higher Spell Power.
As the saves showed, there were two Griffin Conservatories on each secondary, home Dragon Utopias, two fully built Citadels up to bears, a fully built Rampart with an external dwelling up to horses — in short, a full spread.
In a nutshell, for those who can’t be bothered to read — buy Fairy Dragons, even if they don’t carry, they demoralize and suppress the opponent. :smile16:
P.S. On month 2, week 1, day 1 there was a Plague month, which I think also played its role, since I had practically no critical growth, and the plague didn’t particularly interfere with portal-summoning dragons and buying them from the external dwelling.
Thanks for the game!