Conquest of Elysium 3 is an old school fantasy strategy game. You explore your surroundings conquer locations that provides the resources you need. Resources needed vary much depending on what character you are, e.g. the high priestess need places where she can gather human sacrifices, the baron needs places where tax can be collected and where iron can be mined. These resources can then be used for magic rituals and troop recruitments. The main differentiator for this game is the amount of features and special abilities that can be used. The game can be played on Windows, Linux (x86 and raspberry pi) and Mac OSX (intel and powerpc).

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Enchanter at a glance (Games : Conquest of Elysium 3 : Forum : Tutorials : Enchanter at a glance) Locked
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Feb 28 2012 Anchor

Rather then a full guide, I'll just do an introductory summary split into 3 sections: The bad, The good, Tips.

Enchanter at a glance

The bad
- uses only the basic Gold & Iron with no bonus to these income. Whereas other class either gets a bonus or can supplement basic gold/iron recruitment with addition resource type such as gems, enchanters seems to get the shaft... or do they?

- The more powerful summons require you to either use up mines or geographic resource. You don't work well in teams due to your gold/iron hunger and appetite for forests and swamps. There are some interesting exceptions however (see Tips and tricks).

- Your constructs do not heal in most cases, and are made from mostly finite resources.

- Uncommon enchanter apprentice recruit, a bout of bad luck could spell trouble.

- Weak starting troops.

The good
- Necrotods. Who needs to build troops when these things steal them for you? They are your answer to your resource troubles. They should be called slaver class rather then enchanter.

- Sneaks are a resource to be harvested (via necrotods) rather then nuisance. Meaty low MR sneaks are standard fodder (ex. Elephant, Moose, Tiger, giant, mantis, bear...etc).

- You can use your inherent scorch earth abilities to your advantage.

- Incomparable logistics via portal. Excellent in larger maps.

- You're getting more power per gold / iron spent then average. Especially those that cost you permanent income (Stone/Iron/Onyx/Crystal...etc golems), though those cost far more in the long run... Even the weakest wood golem at 40 basic resource (20 gold + 20 iron) is better then 4 spearman though.

Tips

- When starting, it's critical to make some humanoid corpse and get your 1st necrotod asap, wandering bandits or weakly defended nodes are your best bet. Then look for meaty low MR sneaks (eg. animals) travelling in 1-3s. Once you get a pair of necrotod and enslave a couple meatshields you're all set to really snowball.

- It's a good idea to keep another leader together with your enchanter when roaming, they can take charge of archer units, hold back and let your enchanter attack with only necrotods for maximum enslavement where called for. When enchanter is busy crafting your lackey can run quick errands such as enslaving anything close by. Also when you attack siege units at fortified locations or other things that can hit back rank, I'd shed the enchanter during the fight. You can't risk losing any enchanters.

- Geo-free construct like animated armor, gargoyle are mostly not worth effort. They cost precious enchanter turns while giving out average gold/iron : power return at most. The gold and iron are better spent elsewhere. The only worthy geo-free construct are Necrotod and Guardian.

- Golems that use up mines are a big deal, make them only if you really need them. Most of them are simply really tough meatshields, and non-mine consuming golems can fill the same role just as well. There are exceptions like iron golem, which packs a 5 AoE poison attack. Onyx and crystal are simply huge tanks with single target hulk smash. I've never seen a gold mine so I can't comment on gold golem. For your general golem goodness stick with:

-Ice golem & Clay golem. They are a good compromise between power and cost due to no income stream lost. An enchanter can make 1 ice golem from a frozen lake per winter (cost 6 ap IIRC), turning the lake into a swamp, which can be turned into a clay golem. Ice golem have a double attack, and does ice explosion on death (3), though less resilient then the mine-consuming golems.

-Wood golems are average but shines in how plentiful forests are, while oak golem is quite decent. Again, they are purely non-healing meatshield. Definitely worth consideration if you need to do scorch earth vs a forest using enemy or if you need a quick boost to meatshield rank. Otherwise I find that my resource are better spend on necrotods and ice golem.

- I'm under the impression that ancient woods and maybe forest have a chance to spawn animal sneaks. If so, you may want to save patches with convenient location for monster farming. I'd love any info anyone have on sneak generation mechanics.

- Clay golem is your only golem that heals IIRC, it in fact regenerates. That being the case, it's weaker then other golems of equivalent cost. it's like a weaker troll with better MR and immunities. Don't expect it to do too much damage (unlike trolls which hit pretty hard), thougt It's excellent as meat shield for your ranged ranks. Power wise the similarly priced iron troll handily beats clay golem in all except immunities, but hey, trolls are a trademark bonus for the troll King, just be thankful you're one of the few class that gets big regenerating meat, who so happen to synergize pretty nicely with guarding your necrotods.

- An ally combo worth considering is with a swamp using class that doesn't use much iron, like the witch. Since you are one of the only (?) class that can convert useless lakes to swamp for them to use. On the other hand, you'll have to make do without Clay golems. Oh well, less clay golem, more ice golem and necrotods.

- Stay away from the trap of terracotta soldiers, unless there's absolutely nothing your L1 enchanter could be doing and you really need them (though necrotods should solve all your meat needs). A L2 enchanter has absolutely no excuse to be raising terracottas. Also unless swamp shortage is not an issue, every swamp you deplete is one less future clay golem.

- for 20 gold + 10 iron and Geo-free, the Guardian has unbelievable price : power ratio (compared to 3 spearman or 2 Hv infantry), with the steep penalty of immobility. This doesn't change the fact that it's one of the best defenders for your high value sites like cities and mines, especially with a fortification level or two. Note they are front ranked, likely for balance reason, but works very well as tanks for archers, a squad of archers behind a guardian is pretty deadly.

- L1 enchanter are mostly useless compared to the massive utility of L2 enchanters, so upgrade them as soon as possible, then give them a pair of necrotods and a few meatshields and send them off to snowball. Every L2 enchanter thus armed is a self-expanding slave magnet.

- Having L2 enchanters run your expansion is very handy and convenient, but losing one is a huge deal. If you have had bad luck with hiring new ones, considering keeping them in secured areas to craft / enslave while expendable leaders do the expansion, despite the headache with logistics. If you have portals set up this becomes more attractive.

Edited by: finalgenesis

Feb 29 2012 Anchor

Thanks for that analysis. My first game as an Enchanter was a mess, but those tips encourage me to give it another go :)

Mar 13 2012 Anchor

Thanks very much for this guide - I left enchanter to relatively recently in my playthroughs because I anticipated it being a bit trickier to manage, and your thoughts definitely helped me.

I need to actually go through and test some of the other golems now that I've got a game going with some reasonable resource production, but a few thoughts:

(1) Necrotods - they are, indeed, the key to the class. However, their enslave ability is easily stopped by MR. My rough guess is that an MR of 4 gives you about a 1-in3 to 1-in4 chance of success, and MR 5 drops you to more like 1-in-20 or so. It's absolutely vital that you have the means to protect them as they do their work and that you pick your targets with MR in mind.

(2) Iron - early on, you need cash desperately because necrotods are 35 gp each and you can never have too many. However, the pendulum quickly swings to running short of iron as most/all of the golems cost as much iron as gold. Don't make the mistake of spending the iron you accumulate early on dancing swords just to fill out your stacks, which I did in my first game.

As you use up mines to upgrade your enchanters and/or make golems, or if you use up the non-healing golems too aggressively, you can easily end up terminally short of iron. For most of my current game, I struggled to stay in the 5-8 iron/turn range in the mid-game on a large map with only one remaining opponent. Since most golems take at least 40 gold and iron, that means I can only afford to make ~ 2 per year of iron production.

(3) Action Points - time is one of the resources you're constantly trading. Making necrotods seems to take 2 AP. Clay golems seem to take 3 AP. Then there's all the time you'll spend chasing indies around so you can enslave them. Add to this the fact that you're likely to leave one or more generators in play to spawn more indies, which will invariably take some of your sites that then need to be recaptured. The OP tip of keeping at least one other (non-enchanter) leader to swap units and handle some of these other chores is VITAL.

(4) Enchanter upgrades - as the OP stated, you need/want more enchanters but each apprentice requires an upgrade to be useful - at the permanent expenditure of a coal mine! An apprentice can only make a few lower-level constructs, such as dancing swords, animated armor, gargoyles, and terracotta soldiers - none of which you'll probably be wanting to build. No necrotods or wood/oak/ice/clay golems for him!

(5) Resource denial/scorched earth - as the OP mentioned, esp. given points 2 and 4, you may want to try denying key resources to your enemies in disputed territory where you may not be able to hold for long. Turn Ancient Forests into oak golems if the enemy uses them (druid, troll king, etc). but otherwise leave them there to spawn more independents that will harass him, recapture sites, and feed your necrotods. If you capture one of his mines, consider using it to upgrade your enchanter/apprentice or buy a golem.

On the other hand, once you've upgraded from apprentice to enchanter, you may not care to upgrade to great enchanter (cost: 150 gold + destroy an iron mine). I believe all that does is give you third level spells and (iirc) the 'Animate Statues' power, which I have yet to come across a site where it can be used.

(6) Swamps and lakes - as you stated, clay golems are valuable because they regenerate and have enough hit points to withstand a few rounds of punishment while your necrotods do their thing. It may take a bit of mental adjustment to get used to seeing these as resources - I've wasted several turns backtracking to return to swamps I walked right past. (Also, note in case you're worried - the frozen lake transforms to swamp the moment you buy the ice golem. So even if you're going into AP-deficit and it's late winter, your enchanter won't simply drown!)

(7) Guardian vs. Wood Golem - Underscoring the OP's comment, I'd urge careful thought on guardian deployment. They are a nice way to beef up the front line in important citadels, but imho posting them out to mines and such in penny-packets with a few archers as support is inefficient. This may boil down to personal preference and playstyle. Early on, I exuberantly slapped a guardian down to garrison a number of my sites. This was a departure from my normal practice of keeping a patrol stack in the area. I found that my guardians tended to get chipped away or even beaten outright fairly quickly and I could never pick my battles. The wood golem costs 10 more iron but at least I can put it into a patrol stack.

Edited by: MorlacRowan

Mar 13 2012 Anchor

TACTIC (which is not the same as a Strategy).
In one of my Enchanter games I had an Ancient Forest near me at start which I took rather easily. But I couldnt own it. I was tempted to convert it to an Oak Golem so I would not have the wandering animals being generated behind me.
However, Necrotods do very well against animals. Placing a guardian or regular wood golem there with a few necrotods worked really well. It became a recruitment site for me instead. And when the golem got worn down there was plenty of front line troops. Later when my portals were up I found it very handy to round out my troops abit and to get cheap guards.

I did the same with a town that was near bandit campsite with less results but still worth a thought.

jsv
jsv
Mar 13 2012 Anchor

MorlacRowan wrote: (1) Necrotods - they are, indeed, the key to the class. However, their enslave ability is easily stopped by MR. My rough guess is that an MR of 4 gives you about a 1-in3 to 1-in4 chance of success, and MR 5 drops you to more like 1-in-20 or so. It's absolutely vital that you have the means to protect them as they do their work and that you pick your targets with MR in mind.

It's probably open-ended so you still can get lucky. In my current game I tried to eliminate the Enchanter early by attacking his small army with a Witch who had a nice selection of offensive spells and a Creeping Doom to provide cover. The Enchanter had nothing capable of harming the Doom and I thought his few necrotods will never get through Witch's MR 10. Yet she was enslaved on the first battle turn and then used her nice selection of spells to kill the Doom in no time. :D

Mar 13 2012 Anchor

Yes with enough Necrotods Im willing to attack some really big monsters. That is a lot of dice rolls after the monster gets one shot

Edited by: gp1628

Mar 13 2012 Anchor

gp1628 - thanks for your comment on farming ancient forests and brigand campsites - I'd actually meant to include that as one of my points :D

In particular, one extremely handy thing about farming brigand campsites is that you will quickly end up with plenty of scouts that can be distributed across your stacks and garrisons. That, in turn, helps save cash (always nice but essential early on when you're always short of necrotods) as well as allowing you to make more informed decisions on where to go/which stacks to attack. Once I have enough scouts the campsites can go!

jsv wrote:
It's probably open-ended so you still can get lucky. In my current game I tried to eliminate the Enchanter early by attacking his small army with a Witch who had a nice selection of offensive spells and a Creeping Doom to provide cover. The Enchanter had nothing capable of harming the Doom and I thought his few necrotods will never get through Witch's MR 10. Yet she was enslaved on the first battle turn and then used her nice selection of spells to kill the Doom in no time. :D


Check out Edirr's updated v3.03 manual, section 7.7 (Resistance) - yay, there's finally an explanation of how it works!

v3.03 wrote: Magic resistance checks come in three varieties:
Easy, normal and hard. They are often referred to respectively as easymr, mr and hardmr when discussing different kinds of checks.
All MR checks are rolled against the target’s magic resistance. If the roll is equal to or greater than the magic resistance, the target fails to
resist and the effect is applied. MR checks use semi-open ended dice rolls.

Easy MR 1d5 < MR = resisted
Normal MR 2d4 < MR = resisted
Hard MR 2d6 < MR = resisted


IIRC, the necrotod enslave is 'easily resisted' - that would match my observations that once a critter hits MR 5, it becomes dramatically more difficult to enslave. Basically, you have to roll that first 5 and then roll higher than a 1. (Although that sounds like the chance would be 20% * 80%, which would be 16%, which sounds much more frequent than what I was seeing for MR5s.)

Trying for someone with MR 10, you'd need to roll a 5, then another 5, and then anything on the 3rd roll. That would be 20% * 20% * 100%, for odds of 4% on each attempt. If I'm remembering how to do the math correctly, that would mean you'd need 17 attempts to have an overall ~50% chance of at least one success, and taking it all the way up to 40 attempts brings you up to ~80%. The problem with charm/enslave attempts on many of the big monsters (esp. demon lords) comes when they dilute your efforts by summoning fresh flunkies each round!

On a related note - what's the highest MR you've seen? One of the demon lords I summoned as the demonologist had a 12 MR.

Edited by: MorlacRowan

Feb 27 2013 Anchor

I am loving the Team feature of CoE3. Even if its an AI team member.
On large maps the Enchanter can be a great partner with some nations. The first obvious pairing would nations that interested mostly in resources like trees, swamps, ancient forests. Barbarian works well to give you lots of early exploration and area coverage while you build up. Also Troll King. Witch and Druid are ok but they are early weak and late strong like you are. But a very surprising pairing was with Baron or Dwarf Queen. Both of those have a tendency to create really large armies at their capital which is not much use on large maps. But they will make good use of your portals!

Edited by: gp1628

May 8 2013 Anchor

MorlacRowan wrote: Trying for someone with MR 10, you'd need to roll a 5, then another 5, and then anything on the 3rd roll. That would be 20% * 20% * 100%, for odds of 4% on each attempt. If I'm remembering how to do the math correctly, that would mean you'd need 17 attempts to have an overall ~50% chance of at least one success, and taking it all the way up to 40 attempts brings you up to ~80%. The problem with charm/enslave attempts on many of the big monsters (esp. demon lords) comes when they dilute your efforts by summoning fresh flunkies each round!

Great thread guys, thanks for the advice. I'm just trying the enchanter now. I've found that it's slow to get going--being too aggressive with your first couple of necrotods is a good way to lose all your meat shields--but is a lot of fun once you get going. Looking forward to trying out portals.

Note on the witch fight: MR is open-ended, so beating MR 10 would require 5, then 5, then 5, then anything: 5 + (5 + 5) = 10. That's 1 in 125 attacks, not 1 in 25. Even forty attempts would give you only a 28% chance of capturing her. ((124/125)^40 = 72% chance of making all forty checks.) The witch was very unlucky.

-Max

Edited by: wilsonmax

May 8 2013 Anchor

If you pair up with an AI then it helps a lot. Troll King likes to stomp everything. And the Baron tends to clear an area pretty well. You can go along behind them creating necrotods after each of their fights until you feel strong enough to kick ass on your own. :)

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