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.
Luckily, I soon researched Lycanthropy, which allowed me to convert spearmen to werewolves. Werewolves are an interesting unit, being essentially souped up halberdiers with fewer immunities than other Death summons, but capable of regenerating themselves out of most wounds, including the complete destruction of their unit! Further, they also gained attack power as they took damage. Sadly these units were not capable of fighting Merlin's stronger forces, but they stopped any further incursions. And with my wizard's ally, Kali, declaring war on him, his resources were exhausted, and he sued for peace.
With peace came the time to rebuild, and also to seek a solution to Merlin's stronger armies. This is a common downside of Death - towards the mid game it starts to fall off in power, as Ghouls become outdated thanks to their early game-y stats, and Werewolves aren't great for going on the offensive against well defended cities. I tried to find a solution for this by creating another band of heroes and making them hunt lairs alongside werewolves.
Sadly, aside from two Sorcery nodes, every other lair was too potentially dangerous to risk attacking. Nodes are interesting though, because they're a very unique kind of lair. They are attuned to one of the three elemental realms, Sorcery, Chaos and Nature, and they randomly block spells that aren't from their realm. They also boost the stats of the units belonging to those realms, making them considerably harder to fight. As such, they tend to be tougher than most regular lairs. In exchange though, they provide a solid source of power, with tougher nodes giving considerably more power.
However, harnessing this is not as straightforward as simply clearing the node. It has to be assigned a spirit that melds with it, channeling its power to the wizard's reserves. This is an irreversible process, and as such, the spirit is destroyed and can't be reassigned to do anything else. Furthermore, once the node is cleared, it becomes a "free" tile which any unit can step into. This means any wizard can claim the node for their own if it's undefended. Thus, nodes require guards, which can add considerably to micromanagement demands and put additional strain on an empire. In most cases, though, the power generated is worthwhile, and offsets the upkeep and clearing demands.
Research on new spells continued steady progress, unlocking this powerful defensive spell! Not only did it put a magic countering field in the enchanted city, it also provided a decent bit of gold and boosted my wizard's combat casting skill! And that wasn't all; trade provided him with Spell Lock, a powerful spell for protecting enchantments and summons, as well as a few Life Commons. He also got to meet another wizard, Druk'gyalpo, through exploration, though sadly this wizard was too far to meaningfully establish relations with.
At long last, I finally found something strong enough to mount another offensive, albeit a smaller scaled one. Wyvern riders are normally considered to be subpar flying units, as by the time they're unlocked, many units have too much resistance to be affected by their poisonous strikes, which is their main defining feature. However, this was certainly not the case for Merlin or Ariel's troops, and so preparations were made to attack the former again.
Well, it was a pretty tough battle, but as you can see, I succeeded! Black Prayer, a spell that knocks down all stats except resistance and HP by 1, and resistance specifically by 2, had been researched by this point, and proved to be a great help in conjunction with Cloak of Fear. The werewolves were a bit blunted against his Prayer boosted units, but were still strong enough frontliners, and thanks to their regeneration, all of their fallen resurrected themselves back after the fight. The wyvern riders definitely proved effective, with Black Prayer making their poison outright deadly, and Cloak of Fear stopping them from ever landing a good hit!
Sadly I did lose two heroes, but with time, they will be replaced, and with the continent now finally in my wizard's hands, with one corner occupied by his ally, I feel a lot more confident. Here's to hoping for continued success, and a permanent solution to the current stalemate. Until next time!
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