First post here.
So. I was mopping up a (theoretical) victory on Expert, having wiped out all but Pariden on a medium map (Curgen's whatever). I had destroyed the bulk of her armies and she had...lol...sued for peace. She was down to about 5 cities, and was hiding all her champs in one of them (I had killed them all recently).
I have 5 full Deadly/Epic armies marching down several of her last 5 cities when suddenly BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM some combo of spell hits EVERY ONE of my armies, and over a course of three turns--during which I could do absolutely nothing, since ALL of my troops had been scattered/immobilized by Tornadoes on EVERY turn--they were utterly annihilated.
My question is, obviously, how the heck did this happen? This includes killing a 240-health dragon in two turns, with nothing but strategic spells. As far as I can tell from the descriptions, there's nothing that could possibly do that much damage, especially since she couldn't have had more than a couple of any given type of shard. I can buy that she had enough heroes to cast that many Tornadoes--which in itself is a bit OP, to be able to just spam it multiple times every turn for a mere 45 mana each--but I just can't figure the damage. And that's even assuming she had piles of mana to cast all that, which I'm guessing she did as Pariden, even though she had already pulled a less extreme (but still painful) version of the combo over two turns about ten turns earlier (my armies had recovered/been replaced by the second combo).
It's even more disturbing because there's absolutely NOTHING you can do to defend against it, other than just stay out of her land and go for a Master Quest victory, which I didn't want to do.
Thoughts?
P.S. I had Spell of Making victory disable for this match, and was going for Conquest since I've never bothered to fully complete one.
After some more games I'm starting to wonder if part of the problem is that the AI burns mana all game long on semi-worthless buffs and debuffs and simply doesn't have the pool necessary to blast away with expensive spells late-game. There also may be something funky with the way mana is "used" in auto-resolve battles, which of course all of the AI vs AI battles are.
Several times after I've won, I've looked at the mana graph and seen that none of the AI factions ever amassed much of it. Even in the scenario I wrote this post about, I went back and replayed it, and that time Pariden didn't cast any spells. And again, after it was over, it didn't seem (according to the graph) that she would have had enough mana to cast them anyway.
Mana is scarce. Saving up mana in LH is my main focus in life...
Seriously, I do not see how any faction besides Pariden can amass it.
Um, no. Anyone with a Death archmage has as much mana as they'll need for most purposes by casting Sacrifice. Magnar can get lots of mana early on by casting Consume, and almost unlimited amounts of mana by casting Cull the Weak on Skeleton Horde (although I consider the latter an exploit and think Cull the Weak should banned for summoned units (or only for Trained units, as is the case with Death Lash)).
Pariden can get a decent amount of mana, as you note. For other factions without access to Sacrifice, yes mana is scarce, but if you cast Meditation, build and upgrade shards and build enough Conclaves, I generally find I have enough for all except the most expensive spells.
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