I tried this somewhat odd combination because I wanted to do something different:

Oberic's portrait, custom name Dragonhead.

All points in Nature books.

High Elves

Gaia's Blessing
Change Terrain
Transmute

It was an interesting game, and quite effective, although I'm not sure it was as much fun as some others I've tried.

Essentially you can take any city site, no matter how bad, and turn it into an economic powerhouse. And that was how I won the game, through sheer economic might. I simply had more, bigger cities than anyone else. GB increases production from forest tiles, so I planted as many as I could. That jives well with Elven Lords being Foresters. Transmute is also useful for a couple of different things. Not only can you take away your enemies access to mithril, you can turn their gold into iron and their gems into coal. I had Gaia's Blessing running on every city. It was entertaining to watch Chaos mages trying to hit me with Corruption, since GB cleans it up automatically.

The offensive army I used to crush all my enemies was the Wind Mage and six mithril Pegasi. They're quite effective in a horde.

I actually never even made it to Myrror in this game. All my opponents happened to be on Arcanus, and I wasn't close to any towers.

This sounds like fun. I'll have to try it sometime.

Was the reason you chose High Elves due to their mana generation?

It is odd how bad HE's are gimped in not having both Engineers and Shaman/Priests.

Although truthfully I find Myrran races that cannot take advantage of Adamantium to be much more frustrating. And that actually includes both Dark Elves and Trolls.

A much simpler reason: I had never tried High Elves before. I picked the Oberic portrait because he looked like an elf.

The mana generation is definitely useful though, since you'll be casting lots of spells, and the poor growth rate is not much of a problem when all your cities will have Gaia's Blessing.

I've tried a couple of variations on this theme since, and none have worked as well. I tried going 5 Nature books, 4 Chaos books (I wanted Raise Volcano so I could colonize arctic regions), plus Chaos Mastery and Nature Mastery. Very much harder, because you can't start out with Gaia's Blessing, Change Terrain, and Transmute. Those three spells are they key. Without them High Elves are hard because they grow so slow, and like you say they have no engineers or shamans. And no Warships either, for that matter. I could just barely produce enough food and money to scrape by. If I were going to try it again I would scum an exceptional starting city location or I wouldn't bother.

High Elven units are pretty good though. Elven Lords are decent, although they seem slightly less powerful than Paladins (I haven't checked the numbers though). The Longbowmen and Pegasi worked best for me. Both should be used in large groups. The trick with Pegasi is to get as close as possible to the target before using the missile attack. Not usually a problem with a fly speed of 3.

And yeah, when I first figured out Trolls couldn't use Adamantium I was disappointed. On the other hand, Black Channelled Champion War Trolls are already massively powerful.

You should ALWAYS choose Alchemist if you ever play with Trolls as it gives all your guys "Magic" weapons that give +10% to hit bonus and bypass weapon immunity. This is what the Alchemist Guild does if you don't have Mithril or Adamantium present.

To me it's so frustrating to spend the 3 picks to start on Myrror and to get stuck with a race that cannot use the biggest bonus of Myrror. I always do this for at least a half decent starting town when playing on Impossible. I mean the computer is so damn cheaty that todo otherwise guarantees a loss no matter how good you are. I mean I have had my capitol attacked by 2 Doom Drakes on like turn 15-20 one game, sheesh barely had my granary built. The main reason they seem good is because of the +10% to hit bonus they all enjoy. Halfling units actually have a similar but even better bonus of them all having the Lucky ability which gives them not only +10% chance to hit but also gives each shield an extra 10% chance to block damage. Not to mention they get a resistance boost of +1 as well.

Lucky is often a severely overlooked ability, mainly because it does not add the obvious boosts that some of the other abilities do. However Lucky is one of the few ways you can increase the base 30% chance to block per shield in the game. The other 2 ways are from the Prayer and High Prayer combat enchantments. There may be one or two others but I cannot think of them atm.

One thing I've noticed about this build is that all Nature is not great for heroes. You can create items with pathfinding, water walking, and elemental resistance, and that's good for scouting and exploring, but you aren't going to get flight, invisibility, guardian wind, magic immunity, or true sight. Sorcery nodes tend to be pretty tough, since phantom beasts and warriors will be a pain, not to mention sky drakes.

I found the Entangle spell to be very handy for sky drakes, though. For some reason it hardly ever fizzles from the sorcery node.

Actually it may surprise you to learn that for all of those guys my usual method of defeating them is Malleus at only level 4 (Heroism life spell gets him to this level) along with a +9 Attack, +3 Hit and +3 Def Staff along with a +4 Atk/Def, +3 Movement Jewlery. I one shot Phantom Warriors and also most of the time also one shot Phantom Beasts.

Also I can also usually take out Sky Drakes with this guy as well although it takes around 3-5 shots so I usually need another +3 Move Jewlery.

That works, but if you're doing all-Nature books, crafting a staff like that takes a long time. Definitely try Entangle. If you can get one past the sorcery node it makes Sky Drake hordes much easier to handle.

Toward the end of my Chaos/Nature game my favorite way to destroy cities was a combination of Entangle and three Mana Vortex spells.

I believe a staff with the following:

FLAMING +3 Attack
+6 Attack
+3 Hit
+3 Defense

Takes 700 mana when I make it with my Runemancer + Artificer Combo which reduces it's cost by 75% therefore without those It would cost 2800 so yeah definitely would take a while. But then again this is why it's such a super combo that lets you make a Magic attacker able to take out a Sky Drake who is magic immune lol.

I'm going to do another play with the build from the first post, and I'll report back how it goes. Since I've considered it more, I believe I selected the perfect race for this nature build the first time, even though I didn't put much thought into it. Gaia's Blessing negates the High Elves biggest weakness - their painfully slow growth rate - and one of their primary strengths - 1/2 mana production per population unit - contributes to the build's optimum playstyle.

The prospects for other races are tantalizing, but each one seems to have a drawback. Dark Elves would be even more perfect than High Elves, except the build won't work without all points in Nature spellbooks, which rules them out along with all other Myrror races. High Men or Orcs are workable, but the lack of mana production makes them less effective than High Elves, and although they grow really, really fast with Gaia's Blessing, they just don't seem to work quite as well. High Elves have several little touches that make them perfect, like their best units having the Forester trait.

I think this build needs a proper name, too. I'm sure I'm not the first one to discover it, but for the time being I think it should be called the Landscaper.

If you can get elite longbowmen (I know you're playing nature), they decimate sorcery nodes. Verteran might be okay in large enough numbers. Maybe try to find a armsmaster? I know it's easier said that done, haha. Do Elven Lords work well at sorcery nodes? I would think first strike would be exceptional against sorcery creatures.

Don't forget regeneration on your heroes or any high value creatures. That spell is ridiculously OP for late game.

Basiliks might do well at sorcery nodes.
-Stoning gaze for mowing down phantom warriors?
-High hp (30 or 20?) to micro manage against phantom beasts and disperse the dmg amongst your units?

The reason entangle has a high success rate at nodes is beacuse of it's high casting cost. The formula for the nodes chance to counterspell is

Chance = 50 / (50 + CC) * 100 (where CC is the Casting Cost of your spell).

Thus, entangle only has a 50 / (50+50) * 100 = 50 / 100 * 100 = 50% chance of being counterspelled. For comparison, Giant strength has a 86% chance of being counterspelled.

Alternative strat name: Elven Lord Contracting

Maybe Naturescaper is a good name.

I'm all but done with my new game. I've reduced my last remaining opponent to one city, and that got hit by a meteor so most of the terrain around it is corrupted. I can finish it at will.

First, Landscaper is a very viable way to play, and can lead to an overwhelming victory. So it works.

CONS:
The success of this play style is constrained somewhat by your starting position. If you're crammed on a small island with two rival wizards and no easy way to expand, you're very vulnerable. In fact, the whole course of the game is determined in the early going, because before you get a few cities up and growing, you can be stopped.

It's not a great build for heroes. I found it advisable to pass on hiring heroes at all unless they were really good ones. The Dwarf and the Beastmaster are pretty useless (although the latter can scout for you at the beginning) for this build, since you won't have any extra mana to spell them up or make good equipment for them until later in the game. The best heroes to get are scholar/spellcaster types like Serena and Zaldron, and just leave them at your tower.

Every last bit of mana you have will be used for casting Gaia's Blessing, Change Terrain, and Transmute. Over and over again. In fact, you'll never have enough mana, ever, even with the Elves inherent magic production. Luckily you'll have so much money you can burn it into more mana without even blinking. I set my sliders to full mana generation and left them there for a long time, until I could sustain my mana with gold.

PROS:
Once you get the ball rolling, it quickly becomes unstoppable. You want to find areas for new cities and start cranking out settlers as fast as possible. Everything hinges upon this, because the power of the Naturescaper lies completely in juicing up new outposts with Gaia's Blessing. Even with the terrible growth rate of the high elves, they grow so fast you can fill Arcanus with max population cities before your rivals can get off the ground.

You'll be rolling in money and mithril. Found a city with iron and coal, and it will be a city with gold and gems. Find one with silver, and it will be mithril. Between Transmute and Change Terrain, you'll be richer than Croesus. With the Naturescaper, you'll be seeing out those vast, gem-filled desert areas to colonize. On the other side, your rivals will all be poor.

You can put Regenerate on created artifacts. This is the one big plus in the hero department. It's expensive, but well worth it.

High Elves have good units that are all useful. You won't have engineers, but you can generally find a city to conquer in order to get them. I started out using enchanted longbowmen as garrison troops until I got my first mithril city up and running. They're very good. I pulled off some surprising victories with just one unit defending my outposts. Since money literally grows on trees with this build, and even food is not that hard to come by with an enormous population, I replaced my garrisons with mithril elven lords and more mithril longbowmen as soon as they became available. Finally, I started producing hordes of mithril pegasi. In a large group with a hero or two they can handle almost anything. If they need help, just bring along some more elven lords or longbowmen.

The one time my pegasi flock had trouble was with a sorcery node populated by five phantom beasts and four djinn. The djinn spelled up the beasts with guardian wind before I could stop them, which was a problem.

All in all, it's a good build. It's well worth trying because it's so different from builds like artificer/runemaster and black channeled war troll hordes.

You know, I'll have to try it. I've been using a pegasi swarm as my offensive force most of the time.

I gave a variant of this build a try with Archmage and the rest Nature books instead of all Nature. It wasn't as overpowering in the early game, but it still got the job done. Waiting on Gaia's Blessing was not particularly painful because High Elves are a good race even without perfect city sites.

Once I got Gaia's Blessing, my fame plunged, as I proceeded to expand like a point-eared plague across Arcanus, razing every city in my path that did not please me. Very few pre-existing cities pleased me. Once you give up on fame, it's kind of cathartic to find a continent full of large Klackon cities and burn their so-called civilization to the ground, trampling over the ashes and grinding their chitinous corpses into the soil to fertilize future forests.

What? I really don't like Klackons.

I think we can be fairly sure the feeling's mutual. ;)

No, I'm sure the Klackons love me. If they didn't love me why would they infest all my games in such enormous numbers?

I also tried the build with Myrran and 8 Nature books as Dark Elves. That game was profoundly unpleasant. I really can't find a good use for Dark Elves. I had plenty of mana to keep up Gaia's Blessing and Change Terrain to my heart's content, and GB even helps a bit with unrest, but Dark Elves *REALLY* need a way to disable those ranged attacks. I lost so many units because I kept flinging puny ranged attacks at first strikers or fire breathers while they merrily got to keep using their first striky-ness on me.

I wish spell charges could be set to level up with the unit, then I could take away the standard ranged attacks from DE units and give them spell charges of some ranged attack spell or another. Then the shots would only go off when the player wants them to. Sadly, my alleged modding skills are not up to the challenge of setting that up properly.