So, how do you play this game?

[SlipperyJim]

Taqwus said:
Trying a Cardinal of El in the 'Empire' age might also be easier; more high-population, high-congregation squares should let you boost your Congregation value rapidly. Once it's fairly high, you get to bless your troops, get free paladins and saints, get the inquisitors and their troops running around on your behalf...

Yes, indeedy. That was my first highly-successful game. Cardinals of El rock hard once they get rolling, and it's easy to get rolling quickly with loads of potential worshippers around every corner.

The key to being a Cardinal of El seems to be maximizing your income. Bless every settlement, farm, town ... everything you can bless. When your congregation is large enough, build temples. By that point, the gold is pouring into your coffers at a ridiculous pace, and you can simply outbuild anyone. Economic warfare, baby!

Taqwus said:
I have stomped around as a Necromancer, but it does take finding at least a graveyard before somebody else is ready to stomp you, and pref. getting a Flesh Heap.

Bah. My current game is a Necromancer in the Fallen Empire, and I'm not thrilled so far. 90% or more of your uncroaked summons are worthless chaff. Only a handful of the beasties are any good at all. Now, that handful are pretty darned good....

My biggest problem with the Necromancer is the limited supply of bodies. Reanimate once, and the graveyard is practically empty! Okay, so keep moving and reanimate the corpses of your enemies, right? The problem with that strategy is that your poor apprentice is too insane to follow your armies after only a few reanimations.

If insanity wasn't a problem, I could reanimate on the road. If graveyards had a limitless (or nearly so) supply of corpses, then I could stay in one spot and summon the zombie hordes.
Unfortunately, with limited graveyards and the threat of insanity, my reanimation options are very limited. The cool feature of my class becomes something that I can't use very often.

I'm diligently saving my Hands of Glory. When I make the transition to Lich, hopefully this game will become more fun. But WOW, that will require a lot of Hands of Glory! Meanwhile, most of my expansion is being done with conventional armies. Cavalry, crossbows, and archers ... yawn.

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By the way, try playing as a Dragon Lord. That was a blast!

[capnq]

My first win was with a Cardinal of El.

Had an amusing encounter in my current game as an Elf King. I've had a number of immobile Clackers spawn in my forests. One of them was attacked by a computer player's (a Demonologist, I think) Spirit of Fear. I lost count of how many rounds the battle ran, as they just kept throwing fear spells at each other without effect.