Amurite fun

[brucedecatz]

I have read a lot of Amurite-bashing on the forum, claim they are either weak/difficult to play/not fun.

I can somehow agree with the weak part, since they have no toys to guarantee early survival (unlike the Ljosofars/Hippus/Elohims with their world spells) but then very fews civs can have a good strategy against a determined axeman/horseman rush. If the opponent has catapults and you have no catapults/assassins/cheap fodder it is game over.

Now come to the "not fun" part. I disagree.

The trick is with Govannon. Their world hero.

He appears late. He is expensive. Doesn't matter. He is among the strongest. It does not even matter whether he learns any tie 3 spells or twin cast or not. He does not need to.

The lowest warriors (even workers and great persons!!) can learn haste, summon skeleton, blaze, blur and dance of blaze. The first two are probably the most useful in wars.

But it does not stop here. The priests start with channeling 2 so can learn any of the five arcane spells. So after arcane lore, one should get priesthood if not already so. Spectre and fireball stand out, although mutation and regeneration are not shabby either. Mutation works great with Law 1, so it is perhaps useful to found Order, build the shrine, but not follow it (yet).

And still more to come. You think I am going to research Strength of Will to finally get the archmages? Wrong. I will go down the recon line to get Druids, who start with Channeling 3 so can learn wraith, flesh golem, wonder, fire elemental and mistform. I like wonder a lot, but other spells have its uses.

Not to mention that firebows are also versatile mages. They have to fight to get some xps, but they can be the bulk of the army and farm barbarians.

I read somewhere that the OO is a good religion for the Amurites, since they get an extra archmage, plus Govannon + 4 + 4 liches, that is 10. But they forgot to count in the 4 druids (that's why it is not good to follow Order or AV before the druids are built, but you can switch during the time that you want to build the druids). And disciple heroes like Sphener start with Channeling 3 as well, so there is really no need to stick to Hemah. Of course, the 4 high priests can learn tier 3 spells as well.

Imagine this: an army led by no less than 17 tier 3 spell casters, with tons of tier 2 spell casters (firebows, priests of all sorts of religions, and paladins upgrades from priests), and countless champions and chanters, each with a skeleton companion. Before they depart, the workers send them a haste boost...

It is invincible.

The problem is how to get to arcane lore without being killed, also the micro-manage of Govannon is a real pain. But I cannot describe this as not "fun".

 

[Munken]

Haha, Amurites are my favourite civilization simply because of Govannon and his spellcasting champions...

 

[PotatoOverdose]

What you describe is true, having 17 tier 3 spell casters is awesome. But you know what's better? Surpassing the equivalent of 17 tier 3 spell casters and a good early game. Several civs have just that.
Keelyn of Balseraphs:
For late game magic they have 4 archmages and 4 liches with 3 puppets a piece at any one time (who are also expendable). That alone gives them 24 tier 3 spell casters, effectively. Throw in an archmage from a religion and you get an effective 27 tier 3 spell casters. But wait, there's more. The balseraphs also have the ability to get druids with spells from chaos and mind, in addition to nature. Now, this is a whopping 31 tier 3 spell casters. Most of those casters, the puppets, can be easily replaced so the real casters don't have to be in any real danger. Ever. Oh, and each of those tier 3 spell casting puppets can maintain 3 of their own summons at any given time. 18*3=54 potential tier 3 summons at any given time.

17 tier 3 spell casters doesn't seem so invincible anymore, does it? The coup de grace of this is that the Balseraphs have a great early game as well. Loki, The Arena, A free Golden age, Freaks, and a little later they can get mimcs and harlequins. Oh, and mimcs have the odd chance (though it is a small one) to become additional tier 3 "spellcasters". And don't forget, we haven't even mentioned the hordes of tier 2 mages and puppets yet.

And the funny thing is, the Balseraphs are not the only ones that outclass the Amurites, the "masters of magic", so horribly in their own field. The Sheaim get the Eater of Dreams, who can cast multiple times per turn through sacrificing city population. So in the lategame, each captured city could mean an entire new army that sticks around for a while thanks to the summoner trait. You capture that nice 30 pop FoL Ljosalfar city and the elves can kiss their tree hugging days goodbye. And again, their tier 2 casters can maintain 3 summons at a time as well, and they can get many expendable tier 2 casters and a host of other units via planar gates. In addition to this, the Sheaim also get one of the most dreaded early and mid game units of all time, the pyre zombie.

Relative to the above, The Amurites have a weak early game, a weak mid game, and a barely adequate late game. So are they fun to play? Maybe. Can they hold a candle to any of the dominant civs at any time? No. That's why many people never bother with them, their "invincible" late game is actually rather lackadaisical.

 

[MrUnderhill]

What you describe is true, having 17 tier 3 spell casters is awesome. But you know what's better? Surpassing the equivalent of 17 tier 3 spell casters and a good early game. Several civs have just that.
Keelyn of Balseraphs:
For late game magic they have 4 archmages and 4 liches with 3 puppets a piece at any one time (who are also expendable). That alone gives them 24 tier 3 spell casters, effectively. Throw in an archmage from a religion and you get an effective 27 tier 3 spell casters. But wait, there's more. The balseraphs also have the ability to get druids with spells from chaos and mind, in addition to nature. Now, this is a whopping 31 tier 3 spell casters. Most of those casters, the puppets, can be easily replaced so the real casters don't have to be in any real danger. Ever. Oh, and each of those tier 3 spell casting puppets can maintain 3 of their own summons at any given time. 18*3=54 potential tier 3 summons at any given time.

17 tier 3 spell casters doesn't seem so invincible anymore, does it? The coup de grace of this is that the Balseraphs have a great early game as well. Loki, The Arena, A free Golden age, Freaks, and a little later they can get mimcs and harlequins. Oh, and mimcs have the odd chance (though it is a small one) to become additional tier 3 "spellcasters". And don't forget, we haven't even mentioned the hordes of tier 2 mages and puppets yet.

And the funny thing is, the Balseraphs are not the only ones that outclass the Amurites, the "masters of magic", so horribly in their own field. The Sheaim get the Eater of Dreams, who can cast multiple times per turn through sacrificing city population. So in the lategame, each captured city could mean an entire new army that sticks around for a while thanks to the summoner trait. You capture that nice 30 pop FoL Ljosalfar city and the elves can kiss their tree hugging days goodbye. And again, their tier 2 casters can maintain 3 summons at a time as well, and they can get many expendable tier 2 casters and a host of other units via planar gates. In addition to this, the Sheaim also get one of the most dreaded early and mid game units of all time, the pyre zombie.

Relative to the above, The Amurites have a weak early game, a weak mid game, and a barely adequate late game. So are they fun to play? Maybe. Can they hold a candle to any of the dominant civs at any time? No. That's why many people never bother with them, their "invincible" late game is actually rather lackadaisical.

This is less of an example of how weak the Amurites are than it is how broken the Summoner trait is, especially for Keelyn. Ever since puppets were introduced it seems she has a different "I win" button for every day of the week. If they all had Arcane instead it'd be a much more even playing field.

 

[Ri-Hatz]

so how about casting the amurite worldspell: arcane lacuna?

if it would be amurite spellcasting army against sheaim or balseraphs, then that worldspell makes the difference!

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

This is less of an example of how weak the Amurites are than it is how broken the Summoner trait is, especially for Keelyn. Ever since puppets were introduced it seems she has a different "I win" button for every day of the week. If they all had Arcane instead it'd be a much more even playing field.

I always picture puppets as little evil monsters aka Puppetmasters (the movie).

Maybe it would make more sense for puppets to cast all spells with reduced power? IE summons with the weak trait and no empower?

Either way, yea, multiplying casters is pretty ridiculous.

 

[brucedecatz]

What will be truly broken, is to play with unrestricted leaders and use a summoner leader for the Amurites, which I forgot to mention in the early post.

I don't think the Amurites are particularly weak, since early game is almost always warriors defending, and when there is copper warriors are good enough for a long time. When there is no copper, a possible strategy is to beeline for firebows and forget about KoE and so on (just in theory, I have not tried this). To get Govannon, Dain's particularly useful since philosophical has great synergy with the great library, and arcane lore can be partially bulbed.

The general misconception about them being weak is more tied with the AI's inadequacy with magic than with anything else (it is very true that AI Amurites play horribly). Have anyone seen a single AI fireball? And I cannot imagine AI's Govannon running around to teach units how to raise skeletons. As I stress above, they should be fun to play, since they will have a ton of capable spell casters, if the micromanagement of Govannon can be simplified, that will be even better.

 

[nealhunt]

I started a thread to work through various Govannon combos here. You can actually have 16 Tier 4 casters before you count heroes - Druids, High Priests, Liches and Archmages. With

Basically, I think that using Govannon on disciple units is the way to go. Quick and easy Channeling II units with better strength than Mages. With Death III they can go liche like an Archmage, so you can keep cool abilities they got as a disciple unit.

I think Amurites have a pretty decent early-mid game as well. They don't have a great offensive early rush synergy but they have good reason to get the archery line, so expanding with a focus on econ and archery will let them land-grab and hold what they take. Dain is especially good with Philosophical and taking Mysticism as the first tech. A specialist-powered economy with GPs popping super early gives a huge early game boost. Then consolidate and head for a mid-game rush with Firebows, which are nice self-contained siege/attack units, have good defensive bonuses and don't have any weakness to assassins and the like.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

This is less of an example of how weak the Amurites are than it is how broken the Summoner trait is, especially for Keelyn. Ever since puppets were introduced it seems she has a different "I win" button for every day of the week. If they all had Arcane instead it'd be a much more even playing field.

I have to disagree, while the summoner trait is powerful, it is only broken or overpowered when you compare it to a weak civ like the Amurites. In order to leverage summoner effectively, you need to have sorcery. By the time any civ gets sorcery, their are any number of powerful entities in play. By the time Keelyn get's her tier 2 puppet army operational, the Luchuirp get their army of fire spitting golems. The Svartalfar would have had huge cities thanks to FoL and Alazkan would be on the rampage, the Calabim could be on the cusp of acquiring vampires (if they didn't already), the grigori could have conquered half the world with their early heroes, The illians could have used their worldspell and then the deepening to freeze up the global economy.

My point is that most civs have something very powerful that can rival summoning. If it is something a little less powerful, it is probably easier to leverage or leveragable earlier which is its own advantage. The problem with the amurites is that they get none of that whatsoever. So, I would readily say that the Amurites are rather weak in their current form relative to most civs in general, not just the balseraphs or sheaim. And removing the summoning trait would also make magic particularly bland. all summons would effectiveley be turned into glorified fireballs with their 1 turn duration.

so how about casting the amurite worldspell: arcane lacuna?

If it would be amurite spellcasting army against sheaim or balseraphs, then that worldspell makes the difference!

According to my understanding of the amurites, Arcane Lacuna resets mana nodes and gives your spellcasters xp. This is all but worthless in a spellcasting war against the sheaim or balseraphs because it does not neutralize the promotions of the enemy army that is superior to yours in every conceivable way. And a few extra promotions wont help you against 3 times as many summons as you could possibly posses in addition to a hoard of pyre zombies. Actually, the world spell might help the balseraphs, when their puppets soften the amurites up, their will be more promotions for the mimics. Furthermore, it would take them a pittance of 10 turns or less to recover their mana nodes. Arcane Lacuna was good prior to the implementation of metamagic, because it effectively halved the resource requirements for the tower of mastery.

 

[rusty217]

According to my understanding of the amurites, Arcane Lacuna resets mana nodes and gives your spellcasters xp.

Actually it doesn't reset mana nodes anymore, it now prevents all other civs from casting spells for 20 turns.

 

[brucedecatz]

PotatoOverdose, it is obvious that you are not playing with the 0.34 version. For example, Luchirps' fire splitting golems are moved to sorcery, and Arcane lacuna stops any other players from using magic for a while. That certainly does help the Amurite to neutralise any Sheaim or Balsepraph summons.

 

[azzedar]

PotatoOverdose, it is obvious that you are not playing with the 0.34 version. For example, Luchirps' fire splitting golems are moved to sorcery, and Arcane lacuna stops any other players from using magic for a while. That certainly does help the Amurite to neutralise any Sheaim or Balsepraph summons.

i absolutly agree with potatoOverdose. compared to the powerful mechanics other civs have, the amurites are weak.
who cares if we're in .34 or .33? the amurites haven't changed besides the world spell (which is a one-use-thing for the whole game)
yeah. spellcasting blocked. so you don't get rushed by a puppet-army but instead by overpromoted mimics.

btw., its an error in reasoning to compare amurite spellcasting with spellcasting of other civs. you have to compare the mechanics they use for their specific gameplay, or in other words compare the things the civs are best at.
as already mentioned in this thread, nothing helps you against an axeman-rush. unfortunately, until that changes all civs that have special abilities helping with that or special units in the melee-line are better than the others and better than the amurites.

i like playing amurites. i don't "lose every game" with them. but for me they are a lot of enervating micro-management only to compare halfway to the things you do with other civs.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

PotatoOverdose, it is obvious that you are not playing with the 0.34 version. For example, Luchirps' fire splitting golems are moved to sorcery, and Arcane lacuna stops any other players from using magic for a while. That certainly does help the Amurite to neutralise any Sheaim or Balsepraph summons.

I knew of the luchuirp sorcery nerf, and I did consider that when I cited them in my post. Also, the reason I said "according to my understanding" was that I had not played as the Amurites for a while, that is true. I do play .34, as shown by my citing the illians in my original post.

But here's a question: Does anyone think that the arcane lacuna world spell makes them comparable in power to the Balseraphs and Sheaim? I ask because I have played both of the former extensively and I fully understand their power, but I cannot say the same of the Amurites, at least not in .34. My initial guess would be that they are still far weaker, but maybe I am mistaken.

 

[brucedecatz]

Before this turns into another "But the Amurites are really weak" thread I want to maintain that I think they are fun to play, because they have a lot of capable spell casters. I did not mean to say they are strong or weak, but they are definitely really weak in the hands of the AI. And all I have said are for single-player games. MP games between players probably end at the axeman/horseman/catapult stage before any of the real fun parts kick in.

A side-point on axeman rush: it all depends on copper. A warrior with copper defeats an axeman without when it defends a city. If it is the other way round, it is not much of a fight. So whether it is successful is situational, and no strategy apart from active scouting and building a lot of warriors help. Almost any civ can axeman rush another, and if it is copper against without copper then it is game over. So using it as an example to prove that the Amurites are weak is not valid.

 

[MrUnderhill]

My point was just that it's a little unfair to call the Amurites weak by citing two of the strongest civs in the game, arcane or not.
I stand by what I said about Summoner. Because of that trait, any summon spell that benefits the Amurites (or any other civ) gives about 3 times the benefit to the Sheaim, and 9 times the benefit to the Balseraphs. That makes an even bigger difference than Arcane. With the Arcane trait, sure you get new spells slightly faster, but Summoner makes certain spells 3 times as strong. It's like having all your spellcasters start with Twincast.

I agree the Amurites could be a bit more flavorful (not to mention stronger in the early game), but I would also like to see the Summoner trait dampened a bit. Comparatively, that would make the Amurites a more viable option.

 

[Ajidica]

I agree. For a civ that has possibly the most potential to do something cool, they seem quite bland and ignored.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

I don't think the problem is the fact that Summoner is overpowered, but ever since the sorcery/summoning merge, there have been far fewer effective direct damage or direct effect spells. One could go as far as to say that the sorcery/summoning "merge" was more of a removal of the sorcery line than anything else. There was a time, not too long ago, when arcane was the trait to have. Back in the good 'ol days when meteors where a flying, pyre zombies didn't explode, and keelyn was considered the weakling of the two balseraph leaders. What changed? Most of the sorcery line was scrapped. Look at the tier 3 spells, most of them are summons. At one point there was a summon and a direct affect spell for every mana type. Now summons are all that remain. Of course summoning is going to seem overpowered. But the solution isn't to nerf a flavorful feature, but to put some direct effect spells back in the game. When charm was a mind I spell, adepts could actually hold the line. This gave the amurites more life in the early game. What I would suggest is to bring back some of those spells. Maybe make meteor an amurite-only spell, like summon sand-lion for the malakim. That would add flavor, for why shouldn't the masters of magic have one of the most powerful spells available to them?

Also, about axemen rushes, it is not situational for: The Grigori, The Hippus, The Sheaim, the Doviello, the Sidar(a hidden stack of 10 warriors can take 1-3 cities on Deity if used correctly), or aggressive civs in general. That is what the amurites have to survive until they can start cranking out mages, and even then they are not the top of the food chain. This is not to say that Amurites do not have strengths, but that they need to be augmented in order to be brought up to par with other civs. Before the nerf of charm Amurites had something with which to defend themselves, potentially. Now they do not.

 

[Tyrs]

I like the idea of Meteor being an Amurite only spell.

 

[Ekolite]

I don't like the idea.

Iirc, the amurites are not, really ''the masters of magic'' and that they aren;t in effect much better at it then everyone else. Their strength is actually in the sheer amount of the people that have any skill in magic what-so-ever. This is represented by their caves of ancestors allowing them tyo pump out shed-loads of mages and their hero who can teach no arcane types spells.

 

[FireBlaze]

I don't like the idea.

Iirc, the amurites are not, really ''the masters of magic'' and that they aren;t in effect much better at it then everyone else. Their strength is actually in the sheer amount of the people that have any skill in magic what-so-ever. This is represented by their caves of ancestors allowing them tyo pump out shed-loads of mages and their hero who can teach no arcane types spells.

You could always represent that by removing the archmage cap for the Amurites. An army of Arch Mages would show those Balseraph what for