Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

 I am restarting the playthrough to better cover the game. It turns out that making the computer randomly pick wizards isn't great for Expert difficulty, which, despite its name, is intended to be the "default" difficulty for regular players of the game. So let's go about picking a new wizard. I pick 5 Sorcery and Death books each, and then pick the Conjurer and Cult Leader traits. Conjurer makes summons cheaper to research, cast and maintain, and given that Death is reliant on summoning, this only makes logical sense. The other trait, Cult Leader, buffs the effect of religious buildings. This is nice when used in conjunction with races capable of building a wide range of them, and also synergizes well with a Rare spell in Death that buffs them ever further! Having this ample selection of books gives my wizard 4 Common spells to start with, and 1 Uncommon spell to guarantee in the spellbook. I pick Resist Magic to offset the bad resistance of Death's summons, Floa...

 Merlin was, as you'd expect, furious at the loss of most of his territory. He marched a decently sized army to my westernmost cities on his continent, and they were quite threatened, as ghouls, who had been used to strengthen their garrison, had now firmly fallen off as combat capable units. Thankfully, I had the tools to quickly get my two heroes there, with wraithform letting them freely cross terrain, and blocking his spiders' web, to boot! Wraithform is carefully calibrated to counter a fair few effects from the Nature realm, and as such, is a huge source of frustration for Nature wizards, and a huge boon while fighting them. The heroes held for a while, but unfortunately, they were eventually done in by Merlin's own mercenaries and armorer's guild units! These units then attacked my westernmost city and mercilessly slaughtered its garrison. I was running into a serious bind, that of facing a Life wizard's regular armies without powerful summons of my own. Luck...

  Most of this session was spent consolidating, with ghouls converting rampaging monsters into undead. The campaign against Ariel was rather uneventful, because the two cities grabbed from her were poorly defended, and with the empire growing, defending it became a bigger concern. Naturally, then, attention turned to clearing out other, stronger lairs. This one was infested with boars, but thanks to a bit of trickery and a strong hero, they were easily dealt with. That hero, by the way, is a Warrior Mage. As you'd expect, he's a blend of a warrior and a wizard, having several powerful spells, casting skill, and a strong ranged attack, but also good defense and melee attack. His defenses are further boosted by Agility, a skill that grants additional defense per level. His version is a boosted variant of it, which grants 2 defense every other level instead of 1! And to top everything off, he gains mana while engaging in melee. Scary stuff! In the fight above, he helped by casting...