Insane level play

Insane level is truly insane after v1.3 hit the streets. Of the top 20 players on Metarealm, only one has posted a score on the insane level using version 1.3.

I am number four on Metarealm, but doubt that I will make any further progress. No matter what I do (I have started five games on insane in the past two weeks and am totally destroyed before I am even at the mid-game) I cannot figure out how to win on this level anymore. Whether I choose to start a game with few, normal, or many shards, the Sorcerer King destroys so many shards that are so far out of my reach, that the SK armies are generating 20 or more armies per turn by mid-game. Three maxed out armies of mine have no hope of keeping up.

This extremely aggressive v1.3 programming of SK to enable such rapid destruction of shards on the insane level has broken the game for me. I cannot play on this level anymore.

Also, buffing Xii has been made much more difficult. Varda's dodge skills have been reduced by more than an order of magnitude. Strong weapons (such as swords that produce mana or healing after kills) that were once dropped by enemies after tough battles never show up for the entire game in insane.

Later on, I will try a game one step below insane, but I do that wish version 1.3 was just a little bit easier.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

The_Biz

Join Date 11/2009

the metarealm is really just a measure of how long people's games were. the scoring doesn't make any sense

have you tried kayla with rapid outpost spam / shard-grabbing + paladins + cloud walk?

the last time I played (1.0), that strategy could win any layout without much difficulty

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thank you for the reply. I'll give that strategy a go the next time that I play and let you know how it goes in v1.3. Buffed Varda and buffed Xii were my "go-to" heroes for most of my games over the past six weeks but v1.3 took a lot of wind out of those two sails.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Following 1.3, it seems to me that the best strategy to go with is a "bottle the SK in with outposts" strat, meaning that close proximity to him is generally a good thing. If you let him do whatever he wants for very long, he'll rack up doomsday ridiculously quickly, so you have to make sure that the bulk of his armies can't even leave his home base.

Of course, then you have to worry about the armies spawned from the lieutenants, but those generally aren't as threatening.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The "Bottle the SK in with Outposts Strategy" worked really well in v1.1 and v1.2 In v1.3 it works pretty well on normal, and sort of OK on hard, but I still cannot find a way to do this on insane. By the time I can send out maybe ten pioneers to make outposts and pop out an archer or two, and two or three paladins or similar strong units, the SK is on a roll.

On insane, I have had not even a glimmer of success on larger maps, and can barely hold my on on the smaller ones. By spamming outposts to capture shards, I soon run out of logistics and have to waste city growth to build logistics enhancements.

Varda was my one hope, but she gets hammered in v1.3. Nothing I can do will help her dodge skills very much, even when she goes at it in solo mode after she has gained a lot of experience. In the past, she might take some damage from melees attacks, and a little more from magic attacks, but she now seems to dodge attacks only 1/4th of the time (sometimes losing half her health from one blow) and is completely unable to face the strong forces that she could in earlier versions.

The SK armies and the other wandering (grey) armies are also stronger than they were in V1.2 when playing on insane. Swamp giants, dwarves, etc. gobble up town site before I can even reach the sites, much less fight off the units in the area. This means even less chance to grow logistics, as mentioned above.

I think that I have about 230 hours of playing time on SK and about 150 on GalCivIII. Sins of a Solar Empire (with all updates and DLCs) has been on my hard drive for a long time. I think I will give the game a try. I feel too frustrated with SK to continue.

I have no complaints...over 200 hours for a game that cost me $30! I like the RPG and 4X blend. I also like the text. I found it fun, not so stuffy as some game texts can be.

Successfully updated karma reason!