Questions about The Capitar & General Carrodus

(Unintentionally submitted twice. Please remove this.)

Agreed, Capitar has the one of the most favored trait for me. I want to stress that to be able to have the movement of three is a very helpful.

On strategic map, it means Capitar's army can maneuver in rough terrain (forests, hills) 2 grids per turn (this is only possible for other factions until they researched Sorcery to unlock tireless march, and can only apply to one of there army).

And Capitar's pioneers can build road too. The road automatically laid down by unlock Trading is not always satisfying (most of times), and road to outpost is even later in tech tree. Consider to be able to do so very early for free is a huge advantage. For example,

• you can connect your 2nd, 3rd expansions very early to fast transport your troops;
• to be able to build road on river tiles to reduce the turns to fast cross river, even within/without your territory;
• to build road to captured town, in order to provide fast and save travel between dangerous land, or build road around a monster camp which blocking the existing road, or quick passing by the camp (otherwise risk being attacked by the monster between turns).

As for tactic battle, to be able to move further surely introducing more options maneuver between/ fast approach enemy lines. This is important especially in early game when fighting with monsters have ranged attack (spider archer) and damage over turn (poison of spider), or change the chance of first-strike from a 3 movement enemy (nasty butcherman/bear alike) to our favor, which can turn the tide of the battle.

Escape ability is my least favorite one, because it almost does not 'escape'. The only thing it does is to return you to square one of the problem.

For example, an very strong army attacked Capitar's army this turn, he managed to escape before taking much losses, but only find out that his army is still remaining on the same spot on strategy map with no movement left. So next turn, his army will gets attacked again and again. (Game version 1.3, legendary hero)

I personally always make my sovereign a Mage, as I personally think that's the most powerful choice. However, if for roleplaying reasons (or because you think it's more fun) you want to make your sovereign something else, good for you.

Commander is arguably the next most powerful after Mage, in fact, as long as you concentrate on the Commander combat traits. Accuracy bonuses and initiative bonuses can really make a big difference to your army, from the beginning to the end of the game, and Command and Battlecry (or whatever it's called) are great abilities. Warriors etc. can be a bit fragile, but a Commander can act as a force multiplier, making all the other troops in your army much more dangerous. Just don't concentrate on the unrest reducing traits for your main champion who is going to be taking part in lots of battles, as clearly -10% unrest is going to be no help at all when you're fighting a Storm Dragon.

Capitar is pretty decent. The Mancer blood trait of movement 3 is extremely powerful. Like the OP said, 'Lucky' is pretty good as well.

Also note that you can give any unit Roadbuilding for free, not just Pioneers!

This makes Capitar/Mancers the most suited race for conquering the map. Unfortunately, this doesn't synergize with their theme of 'expert traders'. All the small trade advantages are rather mediocre. Fun if you like to try and roleplay Capitar. Otherwise, rushing and crushing your opponents is probably more effective.

I'd also be a little bit cautious with roadbuilding in neutral territory if you're playing against AIs of a similar power level to you. I like road building, but once or twice I've been caught out by monsters or AIs who've been able to travel very fast to kill the unit I've been using to road build. In the worst case the AI can follow your road back to your territory and start taking your cities. If you're always the aggressor this doesn't really matter, but if you're nervous about the AI attacking you, then be careful about making a motorway for them from their territory to yours!

On Warhorses vs Horses:

They have a minor advantage over regular horses in that the first turn bonuses are 50% higher (meaning +3 attack and initiative on the first turn rather than +2 attack and initiative). But they are also nearly twice as expensive to purchase for champions, aren't any faster, and, unlike wargs, don't provide an ongoing bonus for the duration of the battle. Since by the time I'm likely to be fielding significant mounted forces I'm also unlikely to care too much about a difference of one or two attack points per figure on any given unit (especially champions), I don't find it that valuable.

Of the two bonuses granted by Legacy of Serrane, I'd say that the Bazaar is better. Even if you don't make use of the Produce Wealth option that much, the 25% rush discount is handy when you want to finish something quickly or rapidly acquire a new unit. Indestructible caravans were nice back in War of Magic when completed caravan trips improved the quality of the road and the bonus granted for the trade route; however, I don't think that that aspect of the game survived even into Fallen Enchantress, so it's kind of pointless now aside from the nuisance value of being blocked by a 0-attack 0-defense unit which cannot be attacked by your big army of knights or whatever you use.

On the Lucky Trait:

I'd say that Lucky isn't really the best fit for Capitar, as they don't really need the accuracy bonus, and the dodge bonus is somewhat wasted on them. Dodge-based units are very heavily dependent on starting off with lots of dodge, because the difference between accuracy and dodge is, in the best case scenario, only going to remain constant as the unit levels increase (this, of course, is assuming that the AI actually manages to preserve some of its troops to get them to a decently high level, similar to that of dodge troops). Plus, if someone starts stacking the Accuracy bonus repeatable tech you'll rapidly see your chosen defense become meaningless as, unlike attack vs defense, there is no repeatable dodge bonus tech, and moreover since the bonuses are percentage based you'd be outscaled anyways since basic units start with about twice the accuracy that the best dodge-centric units start with (which requires Wraith Blood, and since Capitar is not a Wraith faction, you're looking at something closer to accuracy numbers roughly three times better than your starting dodge). As a result, dodge is exceptionally unreliable at higher difficulties, and tends to be more of an early to mid game toy even at lower difficulties.

Civics is also a bit of an odd one, as it's just a slight head start in research and doesn't provide any ongoing bonus (unlike Scholars, which gives Knowledge and a 10% research bonus).

Escape isn't a bad ability as long as no members of the army were immobilized during the engagement and as long as you had sufficient movement points to attack the monster and move afterwards. It's more of a hit-and-run type ability than an escape ability, though.

Honestly, I'd sooner have a Commander sovereign than a Warrior, Defender, or Assassin sovereign, because when specialized for field command, the bonuses are quite useful. Carrodus even has a head-start here - he doesn't need to wade through the Leadership traits to get to the Tactician traits, which means that he can get to Battle Cry relatively easily (although I think that one is level-restricted, so it isn't exactly coming early); moreover, the Tactician traits provide a bonus to the initiative of your whole army. You thought Fast was good for your units? How about Fast on all of your units free of charge? Because that's essentially what Tactician I + II gets you, and you can have that by your third level. Beyond that, Command and Battle Cry are amazingly useful abilities, particularly for a high-initiative sovereign.

Carrodus himself also isn't that much of a Mage, since his starting magics are Air I and Life I, neither of which gains that much from the bonuses present in the Mage tree since Life and Air are more defensive support schools than offensive support or offensive damage schools. Two curses, two damage spells, and two healing spells - that's all that Carrodus can get that has a direct benefit from Path of the Mage; everything else is blessings and strategic spells, and while tactical blessings benefit from the mana discount, strategic spells do not. Plus, Air Magic tactical spells tend to be relatively cheap to cast (especially Haste, which is nearly free and is in my opinion the best tactical spell available at the first level of any magic, and one of the best tactical blessings in the game).

My opinion on champion classes is "if it doesn't make a good mage, make it a commander, because I can fill all the Warrior/Assassin/Defender type roles I need in most situations with trained troops, and commanders additionally have better noncombat bonuses even if you don't work up the Governor side of the tree". Warriors/Assassins/Defenders tend to be outclassed fairly heavily by mid-to-late game trained units unless you found enough good equipment to share around (or unless you're only using one or maybe two such champions); however, since I tend to play slower, longer games with big empires, it's the mid-to-late game troops that I'm concerned about my champions facing, not monsters and early-game garbage units. If you like faster games, or get into wars earlier, then it's possible that Warriors/Assassins/Defenders will serve you better than a Commander, or even perhaps a Mage, would.

Advice for playing Capitar: use your Pioneers to build roads to the city you're using them to found as they wander towards the city - it doesn't cost you much time, and it gets a road there quickly and along a good route (assuming you plan ahead). If you want, edit the Scout design (or a different basic unit, or create a custom design) so that it has the Road Building trait, and use those to rapidly survey the map and pave the way for your armies of conquest and hordes of pioneers to come out to take over the map - but remember that roads in neutral territory provide the benefit to anyone who comes by, and roads that you build in hostile territory don't give you any bonus until it becomes friendly territory.

Get non-Mancer champions that you're using as army commanders mounted as quickly as possible, or they'll really slow your army movement (alternatively, focus on getting Mancer champions for army leadership). Warhorse-mounted Mancer units lead by a (War)Horse-mounted Mancer champion constitute the fastest army in the game, particularly if you put Tireless March on that champion, while Warg-mounted Mancer units can keep pace with (War)Horse-mounted non-Mancer champions, and Mancer infantry can keep pace with Warg-mounted non-Mancer champions. You're highly mobile, put that to use running down enemies or avoiding big armies, raiding, and striking deep into the heart of enemy territory.

Legacy of Serrane + a sovereign with Air I practically begs for at least one high-essence Town that built only the gold-production improvements and spends most of its time producing wealth. Doing this will allow you to support much larger armies early on if your capitol or some of your early cities happen to be Towns of that type, and once you have one or two of those you're probably all set for gold production until much later in the game (meaning you can skip the Merchants in other cities, and skip out on making more Towns aside from Wonderville and New Wonderville for the rest of the early and part of the mid game). Merchants and Markets are all you really need for gold production, and getting a Grocer and a Well or Inn if you want them won't take that long; besides which, gold income is unaffected by unrest and production, so you need not build workshop/lumber camp and cleric/bell tower line buildings in Towns until you want to start getting high level improvements or unless you've built a large enough empire to have very poor construction rates without such buildings.

Mancers have an enormous advantage in the early game with their extra movement and road building, as they can explore and expand more rapidly than any other faction save perhaps Tarth, which lets them find other factions while they are relatively weak, and also permits a hit-and-run raiding style to kill off weak armies or force an enemy to spend lots of time rebuilding world resources (or cities, if you want to take a city but don't really feel like holding it - you can raze improvements to cripple the city even if you can't raze the city or don't want to, and the 'recently conquered' unrest penalty will hit the faction that takes the city back the same way it hits you). Later in the game as mounted units (and start-of-battle movement traits) start coming into play, the movement bonus begins to degrade from a relative utility perspective, but it still keeps your infantry relatively more useful than the infantry of other races simply due to the mobility, and it can allow you to delay Mounted Warfare/Warg Riding research and Stable/Kennel construction longer because you simply don't get as much out of it.

Say what? That sounds like a bug. 

Yes! High essence towns are the best for gildar factories! Bazaar makes them even better

Commander heroes are great if you make a good army. Ever seen 2-3 commanders spamming battle cry with ranged units? Yeah, the AI units doesn't seem to move at all with them.

If you're referring to the part about having units immobilized, it's been reported as a bug before, so I'm not going to put up a post about it. If I recall correctly, it would occur when you used Escape while at least one of your units was immobilized by, for instance, a Spider's Web or the Obsidian Golem's ability. I don't usually have it because I don't usually see much point in running up to an enemy army that I don't think I can beat with the army I've got, and I also try to make certain I don't park armies next to monsters at the end of my turn.

Anyways, Capitar's very much a money faction, especially with how Carrodus was designed. The Blood bonus is great for moving troops around, both on the strategic level and on the tactical level, but it isn't as good offensively as, say, Urxen Blood, and the faction traits aren't really made for a particularly strong military.

Very much in agreement here. Depending on exactly what you're facing and what you have, the AI might not even get to act at all. This is also one reason why, at the high difficulty levels, Commanders tend to be at least equal to Mages in terms of usefulness, especially if you put Mages with Commanders (on the other hand, with the right army you don't really need the mage if you have the commanders). The reason for this is that the really good damage spells tend not to be instant-castable (alright, you can make Fireball become instant-cast, but Blizzard and Horrific Wail still have a 1-turn delay after that trait). Since Mages tend to be soft targets, this leaves the AI a window in which to have all of its ranged troops and any casters of its own hammer your Mage. Commanders get access to somewhat better armor, making them slightly less soft than mages; they get access to the Trainer traits, which essentially reduces the experience penalty when stacking champions; and they're almost as good at casting tactical blessing and curse spells as regular Mages are (less so on the curses than the blessings, though), and several of the good blessings and curses are both mana-efficient and easy to acquire (i.e., they're near or at the bottom of the magic tree you find them in - Haste and Slow being the main examples, and Heal isn't shoddy for a second-level spell either), which gives them a cheap job for when they aren't using Command and Battle Cry (alternatively, you could stack up on Blizzard Scrolls, but if you're going to do that you may as well any high-initiative champion and ignore the existence of trained units - and Capitar is perhaps the best faction for stacking up scrolls, since it should be the faction best able to afford scrolls due to its money production bonus from the Bazaar, if everything else is equal).

(also, the tactical side of this is a general response, not something specifically directed at you, sjaminei)

 

That brings up a point I perhaps should have mentioned - Capitar, with the focus given to money production in its faction traits, should be the best faction for rushing production, equipping champions, or purchasing scrolls. You don't need to find a Blizzard Scroll in random loot - you can get a Conclave to level 3, put up a Scroll Scribe, and suddenly you've obtained access to Blizzard Scrolls whenever you want them (sort of - it's only available through the shop, I'm pretty sure there's a maximum range away from the city that has the Scroll Scribe that you can be if you want to buy scrolls, and it costs ~100 gold per scroll - but Capitar should be the faction most able to afford scroll purchases). Blizzard, in case you're wondering, is one of the best area-of-effect tactical damage spells in the game, the others being Horrific Wail cast by a high-level Mage and Dirge of Ceresa backed by lots of Death Shards. Getting access to it from a level 3 city for about 100 gold per cast is an excellent deal for any champion who lacks Water IV (and even champions with Water IV benefit from the scrolls, because the scroll version is instant-cast, unlike the spell book version), and if I'm reading the XML correctly you don't even have to spend any mana on it (sorry, I don't recall what it is in game - I pay more attention to whether or not I can do something than to what it costs to do it, though casting something like Blizzard - from scroll or from spellbook - is something I only usually do against powerful opponents, and I try to avoid having to fight strong enemies until I have a bit of a mana reserve for emergency spellcasting, not that that's always possible or sufficient on higher difficulties).

Yeah, Blizzard scrolls are OP. I use them to beat the Insane AI stacks of doom all the time Consulates are awesome to speed up this process at epic speed at least.

 

With full leather armor at least (mage robes etc. later) and the dodge vs ranged trinket/spell mages can take some ranged damage. I find Command/Battle Cry only useful on instant spells from mages, since it doesn't seem to affect casting time in progress. (unless you cast it during said action) Tactician of course helps you get actions before the ranged of the AI can do anything. 

I didn't mean that Mages aren't able to protect themselves from ranged fire, just that of the champions you can have, the mages you have are usually the most vulnerable to it (unless you for some reason have champions wandering around without armor, or with certain things that might as well not be armor). The main reason I suggested the Mage/Commander pairing was to hasten the mage's actions - Battle Cry and Command may not help the Blizzard or other delayed cast spell go off quicker, but it does allow your mage to start casting it sooner, or as you said to fling around instant-cast spells that lack cooldowns, and Tactician will help the spell go off more quickly because the spell cast time is based on the caster's initiative (Command and Battle Cry can also be used to allow the mage to cast a blessing spell like Focus or Guardian Wind on its regular turn and then immediately start casting a Blizzard or Fireballs or other things like that, although whether or not it's better than just opening with the offensive spells is questionable, especially if you already have most or all of the Evoker traits when thinking about using Focus).

Besides that, if the AI were training its troops out of decent fortresses (which it should but doesn't usually) or researching lots of Refined Accuracy, those dodge bonuses start to become less worthwhile. It still depends on how big the disparity is, though, and a Mage relying only on leather armor against four large archer units is not in a good spot. I tend to disagree that the robes out of the magic tree are a decent way to go with Mages, though, unless you're looking at the one that has Defense and Dodge (Robes of the Aegis, I think they're called), because of how poorly dodge scales compared to accuracy. It annoys me a bit that Stardock never really developed leather/chain/plate armor into lines of light/medium/heavy armor rather than the armors you use in the early/mid/late game, and left magical armor with just the robes and the one set of enchanted plate that doesn't even require you to know how to make normal plate. I mean, really, what good is a Wizard without the pointy hat (wide brim and pipe optional)? (mostly kidding there)

I've only had the accuracy problem when AI's started researching the %accuracy repeatable tech. Before that, dodge from ranged and Guardian wind can handle most ranged damage. (it reduces it a lot, though not removing it completely, but it stacks well with leather armor)

I've never found focus worth it, since it needs 4+ spells to make it worthwhile, and the combat decision should be over by then. 

Mod it in. Stuff like that is easily moddable. 

Most of this is good advice, but I disagree with this particular point. I guess it just goes to show how many ways there are to play the game, but see ny Insane post for how I beat the game using Titan's Breath and Cloudwalk (level 4 Air) with Spell Mastery Mage path bonuses + Savant (-1 casting time). Titan's Breath in one turn with high mastery basically equals "entire enemy army misses go while your other units kill their prone troops". It's cheap, as well.

Air magic is rare among champions, and high essence Grace of Air or whatever it's called is sick for troop creation. Air is one of the best sovereign magics, since the rest are fairly easy to get from fame. I would count Beastlord+Titan's breath abusive, since it can't be countered by AI, but that's just me (I think Parrothmath made a mod to fix it as well, get that for a more Balanced game if you want to use Bears and Beastlord)

Well, Beastlord + Titan's Breath may be abusive, but that's what they gave one of the standard factions, i.e. Umber. People get worried about custom factions, and one of the standard factions has one of the best combinations of traits?

Also I've been asking since whenever for them to fix Maul on prone unit = certain kill, but to date this has not been done. Even if the chance of a hit went down by 3% per time at least you wouldn't get 150 hits till death. But anyway it's not been changed, so that's one of the things I used to beat Insane. It would probably have been possible without, but Mauling prone troops certainly made it easier (if slightly tedious as Bears Mauled prone Insane AI units with 300 hitpoints, two hitpoints at a time).

Yeah, don't expect Stardock to fix abusive stuff. I abused Paragon for my first Insane win as well, and they did not fix that until LH. (and overnerfed it and DG tbh)

Try to beat the AI's at their own game, and you will get the challenge you need. Not to take away your insane win by all means, but there is still challenge left in the AI's

I said that Air and Life don't gain that much benefit, not that they don't gain a benefit. Besides which, by the time you can have Air 4 and Savant, you should be fairly close to level 10 even if you only took the minimum number of traits required for it, and by level 10 the only things your champions should have trouble getting spells to stick to are similar or higher level opponents, or units specialized for spell resistance, regardless of whether or not you have spell mastery bonuses.

Beyond that - what spells in Life and Air gain a direct benefit from Path of the Mage traits?

1. Titan's Breath (Air 4) - it's a curse, spell mastery helps make it stick; also has a one-turn casting time, so it benefits from Savant
2. Storm (Air 2) - it's a damage spell, it benefits from Evoker and spell mastery. Good damage, but you can't choose the target
3. Thunderstrike (Air 3) - it's a utility spell with a bit of damage, so it benefits from Evoker; it's also not resistible, so spell mastery matters not at all
4. Shrink (Life 3) - it's a curse, spell mastery helps make it stick
5. Heal (Life 2) - it's a healing spell, so it benefits from Compassion (+50% healing); aside from the lower mana cost (on a spell which is already fairly cheap, mind you), it doesn't gain anything else, and it's reasonably powerful even without Compassion
6. Wellspring (Life 4) - another healing spell, so it benefits from Compassion; as with Heal, it's already cheap for what it gives you (especially if you can keep the damage dealt to your army spread around somewhat evenly amongst your units rather than piled up on one of them); this one has a casting time of 1, so it benefits from Savant

Anything that comes at (Magic) 3+ comes late enough that you shouldn't really have problems getting it to stick unless the target is close to or higher than your caster's level, unless perhaps you're taking it absolutely as soon as you can, or unless you're facing something designed with spell resistance in mind (and if you have enough of a level advantage, that doesn't matter much, either). Heal and Wellspring do enough that Compassion isn't necessary, you can't choose the target for Storm so there are better choices of damage spell, and the damage on Thunderstrike is, at best, a secondary consideration to the ability to move your spellcaster around the map without considering movement points. Shrink and Titan's Breath are the only two spells in Air and Life Magic that I'd go Path of the Mage for, and they come out fairly late - especially Titan's Breath.

What do you get that's independent of the direct benefits from Path of the Mage traits (tactical spells only - I'm not considering strategic spells because none of those benefit from Path of the Mage or its traits)?

1. Haste (Air 1) - one of the best blessings in the game, and dirt cheap to cast
2. Guardian Wind (Air 2) - dodge vs range; it comes early enough that you probably won't have much of a use for it immediately, but it can be situationally useful
3. Thunderstrike (Air 3) - I don't know about you, but I usually only use this to get the caster away from enemies rather than to get into the middle of a bunch of them, so the damage bonus from Evoker isn't that useful, and 
4. Growth (Life 3) - useful unit blessing, but Giant Form is better and doesn't have the downsides that Growth does; Growth is also very cheap

So, of what's available, the only particularly useful spells that significantly benefits from Path of the Mage or its traits are Titan's Breath and Wellspring, and given the level your champion will be by the time you start thinking about getting Titan's Breath, the only particularly significant bonus is the casting time reduction; Wellspring is good enough that Compassion is unnecessary, though useful, so the main benefit to Path of the Mage is the casting time reduction (besides which, if your units can reasonably expect to survive the 24 damage that the unbonused Wellspring can heal, they're either high level, large units, or both, which means that battles probably aren't going to last long enough for the tactical version of Wellspring to be an issue; if your units are sustaining enough damage rapidly enough to make Compassion useful on Wellspring, either Wellspring isn't going to help that much or you're fighting right at your army's limit, or you might be managing enemy attacks poorly - rotate units next to a single strong enemy, keep enemy melee lines spread out so there isn't a big clump next to one of your units and a bunch of one-on-one duels elsehwere unless said unit is really good at tanking, etc). The same argument that goes for Wellspring and Compassion works for Heal and Compassion, too - if any one unit is sustaining more than 16 damage in a battle within a timeframe that you could expect to heal it before the end of the battle and it can still reasonably be expected to survive the battle, it's either high level, a large unit, or both; besides which, if it does survive the battle and is still low on health you can put Regeneration on it for 26 mana and have it at full strength on the next turn (this does cost more than two casts of Heal, though). Healing spells are sufficiently strong and sufficiently cheap that the benefits from Path of the Mage are kind of unnecessary, Storm's a bad damage spell because you can't choose its target, Thunderstrike might as well not benefit from Path of the Mage because there's no good reason to teleport a Mage champion into a bunch of enemy units instead of using some other spell (I can understand using that aspect on a melee-focused champion, but Mages have crap for armor and most of the good spells don't need you to be at melee range to use them, so why would you want to be in melee range as a primary spellcaster?), and Shrink only benefits from spell mastery, which you'll have plenty of for most circumstances by about level 10 even if you aren't using a Mage. Now, I will admit that I'm making the assumption with the healing spells that you're waiting until you can make use of most of the healing effect before you cast them, but if you're using the healing spells to keep units in peak fighting condition rather than just alive, you need a lot of mana regardless of whether or not you have Path of the Mage discounts.

That, of couse, is my opinion - I certainly agree that Titan's Breath with a virtually guaranteed knockdown against non-immune enemies is nice, I just don't think that Air and Life Magic represent a set of magics that benefit sufficiently from Path of the Mage to be worth going down.

N/A

I agree with pretty much all of your discussion about the different schools of magic, but my point is that getting a 1 turn Titan's Breath with a 97% knockdown is not "nice", it's an "I win" spell for almost any battle, certainly against the AI (which tends to have lots of troops which can be knocked prone), which means it's an "I win" spell for the entire game. As I say, it was one of the cornerstones of my to date one and only Insane win. So I would take the Mage path for Savant and spell mastery for that reason alone with Air. If you're less ruthlessly focused on winning as efficiently as possible then certainly there are other possible strategies.

The thing is I don't think doing extra damage with Maul to prone units is abusive. It makes sense that you'd be able to do more damage to a prone unit. And if you have Titan's Breath and Bears, which you will do if you play as Umber, what are you supposed to do to the prone troops? Not attack them with your Bears? That seems crazy. The only stupid thing is that your chance of hitting stays at 100%, even if you hit 150 times. If, say, only the first hit was 100%, and then it was based on accuracy as if it was the first Maul attack, with the prone unit having zero dodge, then it would work fine. You'd get a lot of hits, one, maybe two more hits than normal (because of zero dodge); but it wouldn't be a guaranteed kill regardless of hitpoints.

Or if they really want Maul to be that powerful on prone units, then skip to the chase, i.e. show the kill animation and kill the prone unit, don't make me sit through 150 attacks.

merlinme, the biggest thing you had making Titan's Breath as potent as it was is that you had a bunch of units that can Maul, because you had tame. Moreover, since your army included large numbers of animal units, it was a relatively fragile army that can't afford to take hits (granted, on Insane even regular units can't really afford to take too many hits, but it's worse for most beast units). Besides which, Tame on its own is something that I think makes Path of the Mage worthwhile regardless of what else your sovereign may have, because you only have so many opportunities to get the critters, and having them can be a big advantage, and if Tame fails that's a lot of mana wasted in the early game. I do agree that if they really meant for Maul to be a guaranteed kill on prone units they should have just cut to the chase.

Regardless, it's not something Carrodus has access to - he's not a Beastlord, none of his trained troops can Maul, he's rather unlikely to gain a champion with Tame at a stage of the game where Tame is useful, and Maul items are kind of rare so Mauling champions are, too (yes, you could theoretically put a single champion with a Maul ability into the army and stun-lock the enemy while that champion slowly kills everything, but talk about boring - at least if you have four bears going through the 150 maul animations each you'll only need to watch half the enemy army get back up after the first round of mauls [assuming a nearly full strength army]; with a single Mauling unit, repeatedly watching the enemies slowly get back up could nearly be a fate worse than death, though with some mitigation as I'd assume you would keep additional army units present to help kill things). On the other hand, he is a decent army commander, and he could be a decent scroll bomber (purchase/find a few Blizzard/Fireball/Despair etc. scrolls, attack an enemy army, use scrolls, retreat when you take too much damage, heal, repeat) if you have the income or the loot to support such activities. If you do send Carrodus down Path of the Mage, you kind of have to make him a summoner after picking up the spell mastery traits, because there's nothing that he has that's really great for Evoker, but the summons aren't really going to be that useful - you're stuck using Titan's Breath in battle, and Cloud Walk as an emergency teleport, and the levels you had to throw into getting to Air 4 and the prodigy traits mean that you're really far behind on the summon line, which makes it rather less useful (especially since you don't really want to be spending mana on summons anyways, aside from perhaps the Air Elemental for a second Titan's Breath caster).

Sorry, this is a misunderstanding. What makes Titan's Breath with -1 casting time so potent is not Maul. Having Maul is nice, but I assure you I would have won the battles fine without it, if not quite as quickly.

The battle goes something like this:

High initiative sovereign with Titan's Breath -1 casting time and very high spell mastery casts Titan's Breath. Generally all except one or two AI army units are knocked prone; I have a 97% success rate, except perhaps against Gilden, and the AI rarely has more than two units in its army which can't be knocked prone.

My high initiative army swarms any units which are not prone.

My Commander uses Command on my sovereign, who now casts Mass Curse with 97% success rate.

AI units start getting up. Maybe one of the non-prone units actually has a chance to attack me.

My high initative army kills non-prone units which are now zero armour.

High initiative sovereign casts Titan's Breath again. Entire AI army is now prone.

My army hits the prone units with 100% accuracy, 0 defense. Any time they get up, I cast Titan's Breath again.

It's not subtle, but I assure you it works fine. With a 1 turn Titan's Breath with 97% success rate, 90% of the AI army never gets an attack. And if that's the case, if you can do any damage at all (and have enough mana to keep casting Titan's Breath) then you will eventually win, regardless of how long it takes. If you don't have Mass Curse then maybe you'll need some staff troops, but that's about the only difference.

Maul, Command, Battle Cry and Mass Curse make the process faster, but they don't change the outcome; casting Titan's Breath every turn the AI has units standing is what wins the battle. As I say, I describe it as an "I win" spell, the AI doesn't have a chance.

It's so powerful it's arguably an exploit, although it would be much less so if the AI made more units which couldn't be knocked prone. Boots of the Spider (I think that's what they're called) would be all that's required. Alternatively you could give it a one turn cooldown time.

It is certainly powerful to use titans breath and might be overpowered in some sense. Stardock does fix abusive behavior if there is a fun alternative. It is fun to knock the AI to the floor and smack them and an alternative would have to be presented to fix that problem.

I did produce a fix to the infinite maul to prone troops, (one gets more like 10 hits or less to a prone unit). I found it rather necessary after I watched my juggernaut with a staff beat to a pulp a level 10 bone ogre that was knocked prone. It was a very fun game of clink for 100 hits. First it is fun that you can stomp them when they are down, but the amount of time needed to continue to stomp them when they are down is a draw. So, my fix prevents this situation on Maul.

As to Titans breath what would you suggest as a solution?

Other than making the AI train more troops which can't be knocked prone, the most obvious way to at least let the AI maybe get an attack is to give Titan's Breath a one turn cooldown. Titan's Breath would still be powerful, but not quite so much "I win" as it currently is against troops which can be knocked prone.

Late to this party but I have a few points about Capitar that haven't been touched on yet.

 

Basically, the whole concept with Capitar is they're the merchant lords. They are to the world of Elemental what Venice was to medieval Europe. They make lots of money and use it to buy quality troops and expensive equipment. Their greatest weakness is if all their neighbours are hostile - they're diplomats and traders, not warmongers, and will want to stay on friendly terms... until they've grown more powerful than everybody else. Their strongest victory condition to aim for is likely Alliance; they want to ally all the other Kingdoms and trade, trade, trade with them until they can crush the Empires in the late game.

 

- They benefit more than any other faction from making their capital a Town type city because of the Legacy of Serrane trait. The bigger the map and the more diplomatic relations you're going to have the more important this becomes. Capitar is a much better faction if the game will last a very long. Legacy of Serrane means that unlike other factions your caravans will never get destroyed and therefore produce much more income over a long game - the other factions will regularly lose their caravans to monsters and wars which resets the gold bonus each time so it doesn't increase like Capitar's does. These caravans could potentially make your capital extremely wealthy (the caravans boost income in your capital). Ideally your capital should therefore be focused on producing as much gildar as possible with buildings that enhance gildar production. Use the money to buy the best equipment available (including their expensive, unique cavalry unit) for your heroes and to bribe other factions to go to war with each other instead of you while you continue to build.

 

- The Merchantcross Bazaar world achievement is a a Capitar wonder and benefits them more than anybody else. You already start with the 'Civics' technology which puts you in the lead towards unlocking the 'Trading' technology and get started building it. Again, the bigger the map, the more important this becomes. Make sure *you* build the superbazaar if the game is going to last long.

 

- Mancer blood is really good. It provides a scouting, combat and expansion advantage. Everything gets where it needs to go, faster. Because their Pioneers (and custom units) will also build roads, this gets amplified even more. Capitar are going to have a trade network up and running long before anybody else. If there aren't too many monsters around Capitar can expand incredibly fast.

 

- Carrodus makes an excellent commander, StarDock intended him to become precisely that. I don't necessarily agree that he must then be focused on combat traits - it's all situationally dependent. If you are in a relatively peaceful world with non-hostile neighbours and weak monsters then he could even get the Merchant or Loremaster traits. Even if he won't be an as powerful combatant directly he will then make your empire more powerful over time, getting your empire access to better spells and equipment earlier or being able to buy more of it.

 

- The Bazaar is a very good unique improvement but like everything else Capitar it only really works for the long game. What it does is it allows you to rushbuy at a much better ratio than the other factions and since you're most likely swimming in gold the savings will be immense over a long game. Unlocking the level 5 Town and getting 2000 gildar instantly - and Capitar will most likely have lots of Towns - will get you a gigantic amount of rushbuying production, a good deal more than what the other factions get. The downside to this whole deal is rushbuying generally isn't very efficient and it's better to have strong production rather than strong gildar, but with Capitar's Bazaar the conversion ratio gets at least slightly more decent.

 

In short, how to play Capitar: Focus gildar and trade. Avoid wars for as long as possible because you're much better in the late game.