I was unpleasantly surprised when freaking Tumu (poison, blademaster) managed to outperform Taki (super agility) in combat. I finally got both killed while summoning champions, but seriously. Taki just couldn't handle anything that mattered.

Elite lizard units have a good pile of hp, given the racial bonus and the elite bonus, but yeah. Turtles just don't have a high enough attack value when they are a single figure unit, even with the fire breath. They only get the +1 to hit at Elite, so their limited attack is also rather inaccurate.

The real fun is going to be sieging Ariel, who has a whole pile of Stag Beetles, when I'm limited to mostly lizards, a few gnolls, and some nomads. The nomads are busy giving making infrastructure while the lizards and gnolls are working on making dudes to go to war.

I was about to comment that any other race you find would be able to build boats, and lizards don't need them. But I hadn't considered that bit about the heroes. Yeah, that could be a problem.

Most colors have spells that should be able to fix the problem (planeshift, water walk, flight, chaos channels, wraith form), but a given setup isn't guaranteed to receive those spells. If nothing else, just look for mage heroes to add to casting skill while garrisoning your tower. Or Jaer.

4 Life, 4 Nature, Myrran.

I was pleasantly surprised at how effective Draconian Swordsmen were when conquering. The Large Shields helped weather to assault of dark elf magic attacks, and several units of swords would swarm troll halberdiers to keep them from regenerating. Healing helped keep them alive in the field.

Roland went from being along for the ride to wiping out two Sky Drakes per combat round once he got some items (including a flight belt) and levels. Blademaster is an amazing ability, especially with a few extra + To Hit items and spells. First Strike, Armor Piercing, and 100% To Hit? Yes please.

The amount of Prayermaster floating around this game was silly. The 6 stack of heroes all had resistance in the 30's.

Also, I learned that each AI and the player has a separate ability roll for the same hero. Their version of Alorra may have different abilities than your version of Alorra.

5 Chaos, Alchemy, Conjurer, Channeler, Archmage, Chaos Mastery

Started with Hell Hounds, which were as solid as usual. They could overrun Phantom Warriors and Naga in Sorcery Nodes even when slightly outnumbered, and they could kill Phantom Beasts while taking a lot of casualties. Night Stalkers were a nasty surprise, tearing through the hounds; I think I initially mixed them up with Nightblades, which do not have Deathgaze. Oops.

Fire Giants started providing some heavier muscle, and worked out decently well in large stacks against mid-tier enemies. Small groups of Shadow Demons could still tear through them, though.

Gargoyles were a big disappointment. They were somewhat tanky, but I suspect I'm too used to only fighting them in Chaos Nodes. Even spearmen were able to inflict bits of damage here and there, and Gargoyles have a very, very underwhelming attack (only attack 4!).

Fire Elementals continue to be a pretty hit and miss unit. They have a decent attack and decent hp, but they don't have any To Hit bonuses and rather low defense, so they vary wildly between hitting hard and getting eaten alive. Oh well.

While all those retorts may be beneficial early, if you're trying to go for Chaos Conjuring I think its best to just take Conjurer and Chaos Mastery. The casting cost discounts you get from having 9 books makes a big difference on top of the Conjurer retort. With just those retorts you should still be able to cast 1 Hell Hound per turn instantly from the start of the game.

In addition, if you are going to go for Conjuring then you really want to be able to guarantee that you'll get the good Summons, and by having only 5 books that's highly in doubt. With 9 books you're pretty solid for getting the good stuff. Also Chaos depends a lot on spell combos so you really need a high number of spellbooks to get all the right parts of the puzzle.

I find that the two best races for Chaos Conjuring are High Elves for the extra mana and pairing Forestry with Fire Giants for Pathfinding, as well as High Men. You can rely on summoning early to let you focus on building toward Paladins quickly, and critically the Paladins give you the protection that you otherwise lack with Chaos, as well as having Priests for healing.

The biggest weakness of Chaos is basically having no defense. I've lost games on Extreme and Impossible due to other enemy Chaos and Death wizards getting too far ahead and not being able to deal with it when they get stuff like Flame Strike or Word of Death, etc. At least with Paladins you have built-in Magic Immunity to fall back on.

And it works out great because you can just focus on a summoned army until you can build Paladins to really speed up your town development.

With just Conjurer and Chaos Mastery you should be able to get a pack of Hell Hounds early to take some nodes to build a mana base and keep feeding you magic power with nodes early while you focus on building your capital straight to Paladins (or Elvin Lords).

Also, the best units for Chaos are Chimera. These should be the backbone of a Chaos Conjurer's army. They are very powerful. Slow but powerful.

Here is how I typically think of the Chaos units:

1) Hell Hounds : Awesome, summon as many as you can as fast as you can and take as much as you can with these in the early game. Leave 1 Hell Hound on every node you conquer to protect your nodes and serve as scouts. Also garrison early towns that you take with Hell Hounds for additional defense.

2) Doom Bats: The first unit to try to research. If you can get these out early they are great against low to mid level Normal units and work great as scouts.

3) Gargoyles: Never use these. If you do need to use them for some reason, the only way they are usable is with Immolation cast on them.

4) Chimera: These are the shock troops of Chaos and will serve you throughout the game. They remain relevant into the end game with proper buffs and magic support. These are extremely powerful when supported with Warp reality and Chaos Surge. It may also be worth casting Immolation on them if going against multi-figure units.

5) Chaos Spawn : Useless, never cast.

6) Efreet: Not worth it, typically don't both with them. They might be worth it on defense if you need help against Slingers or Longbowmen to cast extra Warp Woods, but probably not worth it then even.

7) Hydra: Can be great either on defense or if you have Wind Walking to bus them around. Otherwise, too slow to take on offense generally.

8) Great Drake: Slow, but still very much worth it. In the hands of a human player you can really take virtually any town with one of these.

The real key for Chaos Summoning though is Chaos Channels, Warp Reality, and Chaos Surge. You want to make it so all your units are Chaos type units and use Warp Reality and Chaos Surge. This is insanely powerful. With those two in effect even Hell Hounds are deadly in the late game and Chimera are comparable to strong Rare or weak Very Rare summons.

The rare summons for Chaos aren't good and I typically ignore them. But fortunately there are a few key units that are well worth it and the synergy with other spells can make Chaos summoning very powerful.

There are two sides to being a summoner: 1) Casting cost/casting speed, 2) Maintenance.

Conjurer, Chaos Mastery, and Archmage provide casting speed.
Conjurer and Channeler deal with maintenance.
Alchemy provides raw mana.

I could support several Doom Bats, several Gargoyles, more than a full stack of Fire Giants, and around a full stack of leftover Hell Hounds, all for less than 40 mana per turn.

Two chaos books guaranteed the good summon and gave me the combo I was looking for: Hell Hounds everywhere!

The plan was to make do with whatever I could scrounge once Hell Hounds stopped being sufficient. I no longer customize a wizard for maximum power; I pick a gimmick, build around that, and then see how things play out. I like the variety.

To each their own. I'm just saying that 9 books with Chaos Mastery results in a 35% research and casting cost discount on all Chaos spells, on top of the 25% from Conjurer on summons. So that's a 60% discount on summoned units. This makes all your summons much cheaper and faster to cast.

With 5 books and those retorts you're still paying 20% more per summon, because you not only get the 15% discount from Chaos Mastery, so instead of paying only 40% of the cost of a Summon (applies to Fire Elemental too), you are paying 60% of the normal cost.

So in the end all of those extra retorts don't boost your spell casting ability nearly as much as they seem because you are paying more for each spell to begin with, and on top of that your research goes slower and you get fewer spells to research, and your starting mana pool is lower due to having only 5 books.

The same goes for Archmage in terms of starting casting skill. Archmage adds +10 starting casting skill. So with 5 books and Archmage you will start with 20 casting skill. But by taking 9 books you will start with 18 casting skill, so you start with only 2 less casting skill. True your skill will go up slower when you invest in it, but actually your spells are 20% cheaper, so its like having a 20% bonus to your casting skill anyway.

So for example, by taking 9 books with Chaos Mastery and Conjurer, Hell Hounds will cost 16 mana to cast. By taking 5 books with Chaos Mastery and Conjurer they cost 24 to cast.

So its a matter of of starting with 18 casting skill and they cost 16 to cast vs starting with 20 casting skill and they cost 24 to cast.

I'm just pointing out that, with all those retorts, many of the effects of the retorts are a wash when you take the book count discounts into effect, and on top of that you get far fewer spells to research.

Oh, also, note that some of this may not work as expected depending on the version you are using.

In version 1.3x I believe that the Conjurer retort applies it's discount on a per-unit basis, meaning that the unit must have an upkeep cost of at least 4 mana before any discount applies, so it does nothing to reduce the cost of Hell Hounds, etc. In 1.5x this is not the case and the discount is applied to the overall pool. I believe that the Channeling discount does apply to the overall pool though.

I'm paying more up front for each overland Chaos spell I cast, but I'm able to maintain surviving summons (and any other enchantments) for far, far cheaper. Once I've added Channeler to the build, there isn't a whole lot of reason to aim for the book bonus.

As you say, your 9-book Hell Hounds will cost 16, while my 5-book HH cost 24. You save 8 mana up front, but I start seeing better mana economy starting on the 9th turn the HH is alive. When you consider the time it takes to build up a stack of HH and then add travel time to various targets, I'm coming out ahead.

Channeler makes up the difference for Fire Giants in ~20 turns, and stronger summons take even longer, but I think you get the idea. By the time we each get around to summoning Great Drakes, Archmage should have pushed my spell skill far higher than the discount the extra spell books provide.

Alchemy means that all of my gold income is available as mana. I only need half of your gold income before I can devote all of my magic power into the Skill wand (or at least out of the Mana wand), which is then boosted by Archmage. Long term, my higher spell skill means I'm summoning faster and for less maintenance than you are, though I'm paying more per cast.

It is also worth noting that I'm not paying the Spell Casting Range penalty for combat spells. If combat takes place 6-10 tiles away from our fortress, then you're paying as much as I am for every Fire Elemental summoned. At 11 or more tiles, you're paying more mana per Fire Elemental summoned, and an awful lot of combat happens far away from your fortress.

This is somewhat relevant, but less important if (generic) you are not relying on those extra spells. Dungeons, Towers of Wizardry, and opponents can all be sources of new spells.

A 20% bonus is still significantly less than a 50% bonus, especially over time. Additionally, the archmage bonus applies to all spells, not just chaos spells.

I'd forgotten about Conjurer's issue with maintenance discount, but both builds use the ability so that's a wash.

Channeling is the big on-going discount; my mana upkeep only increases for every second HH that survives.

[Edits for grammar and missing words.]

Started up a new game, with the personal restriction that I'm not allowed to send any units into the tile containing an opponent's wizard tower. There are going to be 4 opponents on the map at all times (unless one of them kills another one of them) until someone casts the Spell of Mastery.

In preparation for the long game, I roll up 11 Nature books with Change Terrain, Transmute, and Gaia's Blessing to support the High Men.

Raven and Rjak are both relatively close to me. BOTH of them started with Klackons. Figures. I'm not going to waste time eliminating their city sprawl via constructing settlers; I'll just have to have low fame this game as I burn out the bugs.

I pop an empty ruin and I get the Cockatrice spell. I pull together the mana to cast it and I send it out after some nearby neutral Orc cities. The stone skinned cockatrice is getting its butt kicked by a bunch of recruit/regular Orc swords and spears. They are sporting resistance values of 4 and 5 against my -3 stoning touch, but they regularly have figures left over after melee with my lizard chickens. The lizard chicken barely manages to eliminate the four orc units. It takes two passes at a bunch of recruit orc halberds, and I let it die when it is showing no signs of making real progress even if I kill some and retreat to heal.

What a useless unit. It needs a serious defense buff or something. I pulled together a stack of 4 war bears (for the same cost as one lizard chicken!), and the bears (with a little support from B'shan and Theira) take out the 6-8 orc halberds without taking any losses or needing any enchantments. If you have a choice between bears and lizard chickens, take the bears.

Rjak, like all death heavy AI wizards, defended his capital with a horde of ghouls. A mana short came along and he ran out of mana. I happened to be squatting in a city in striking distance, so I violated my rule and elimated such an incredibly easy and inviting target. Better luck next time, Rjak!

Raven came on hard, packing Alchemy, Warlord, and Psionic Blast. I ended up summoning large numbers of sprites just so he would blow them up instead of my more valuable heroes and pikemen, and eventually orc shamans started arriving to take one for the team and heal if they survived. B'Shan really earned his keep, and Theria continued to be an excellent help with her innate Agility. It took quite a long time, but eventually the large tide of high level klackon spears and swords started to ebb. It really turned when I finally finished Basilisk research and those started to hit the field. B'Shan gave his life to help banish Raven, and I'm working on cleaning up his empire. Taki arrived packing Super Agility and Blade Master; after several levels he's been a huge asset, rivaling Theria in defensive tanking while also pushing normal units toward Elite very quickly.

The AI did that "Alliance every other turn with the other AI" thing, so Jafar got pulled into the war. He has been mostly a non-issue aside from some skirmishes. Sss'ra also got pulled into the war, but our only combat interaction was him murdering a magic spirit that was scouting Myrror.

Reading up on Cockatrices, it turns out I made a mistake. Stoning Touch is based on the number of figures in the stoning unit; it is Stoning Gaze (Basilisks) that depends on the number of units in the receiving unit. I was using them wrong; they were never going to petrify more than 4 figures in a given combat exchange. I'm thinking a few cockatrices will make for some really nasty bombs to throw at single figure units, since they have to make all 4 saves (at -3!) or perish. Should be a good way to clean up Behemoths and possibly even Great Wyrms for comparatively cheap. Add some regeneration and I have a roving nuke stack to test.

The AI in this game is a treasure. Apparently fantastic units are Recruits. XD

Yeah Cockatrices are definitely among the worst summons in the game. Their only real purpose is trying to suicide bomb powerful summons but they're expensive enough that it's a cost-prohibitive strategy, not only eating up a ton of mana but incurring an even bigger opportunity cost by keeping you from casting something more useful.

Been a while.

I started another for funsies run: I'm going to run nothing but klackon cities. Everything and everyone gets burned; these worlds are destined for the bugs! To support this, I'm running Alchemy, Warlord, 7 Nature, and Nature Mastery for some Change Terrain goodness. Magic Spirits are the only summons allowed in Tlaloc's Bug Empire.

It has actually worked surprisingly well, but I suspect my opponents mostly weren't setup to attack the Klackon weakness (resistance). Nary a Death book in the lot of them (Hard difficulty).

Stag Beetles everywhere and for everyone! Large stacks of beetles running around with Pathfinding and stomping on heads all over the place. You know what has been scary though? Those blasted Cockatrices. Just one of those can snuff a couple of beetles before finally going down. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

It is just as well that I wasn't planning to go magic heavy, because this run has very strongly confirmed that these bugs are NOT magic friendly. Not in research, not in mana, not in power, nothing. If you want magic, you definitely want some other race as your primary race. On the bright side, their production bonus does quite well in off-setting the increased cost of their units, and their low city tech tree means you turn toward producing Beetles a lot sooner than most other races get moving on it. Their production bonus also means your "expensive" Beetles are expendable in ways that other race's high end units are not; once Beetles start producing, they get churned out quite fast. Having enough food to feed all the Beetles was the surprising choke point.

Another surprising part of running a Klackon empire is just how high you can set the taxes before they get angry. Klackons were content at tax rates that had Gnolls, Barbarians, and even Orcs starving from lack of farmers (I accepted the first few neutral cities on reflex, but used settlers to remove them eventually). At a standard 2g tax rate, with significant periods at 2.5g and occasionally 3g early, money has NOT been a problem this entire game. This is in spite of basically having no fame for burning all non-Klackon cities I've been capturing.

Beetles chew up normal units pretty easily, but Great Wyrms are still a bit beyond them. Granted, it was a node and the wyrm had several sprites for backup (killed a beetle), but it ate nearly a full stack of beetles by itself without dying; I needed a full strength Ice Bolt to secure the kill, and it was still dicey.

[Edits for clarity and to correct a few incorrect statements]

Interestingly, a stack of Stag Beetles were able to kill a single Sky Drake (and its Phantom Warrior back up) in a node. Fire Breath lets them initiate on the Drake (so no Lightning Breath), cutting the Drake's damage quite a bit. I'm certain the Alchemy and Warlord retorts also helped, though I don't recall whether I sent Ultra Elite Beetles or not. It wouldn't have worked so well if there had been more than one Drake rushing forward and thus occupying some of the squares used to attack.

The single Great Wyrm did a better job at wiping out a stack of Beetles. I suppose that makes sense considering that without the Lightning Breath, the Wyrm has more attack, defense, a lot more hp, and Poison might push some damage through even on retaliation if the Beetles don't reach Resist 10. Also Sprites participate in a fight earlier than Phantom Warriors. :D

Thanks for sharing the report - this is interesting to hear, but I'm afraid nothing will keep me from hating Klackons. Seeing nothing but them I think I'd tear my hair out. Not rational, obviously.

I'd noticed their love of taxes (with a Klackon capital city of course), yet as you show, that's really only a help if you raze everything else. Instead of the usual strategy of razing all the Klackons!

After the first few games where I chose my side randomly, I eventually just started re-rolling if it came up "Klackon". Something about them rubs me the wrong way - the chitin, I suppose. Scratchy!