Creon vs Illohir

The map? Aibel's Seaport. Spoiler: I don't win.

First off, yes, I am new here. I've played the campaigns and all that, but that was a long time ago.

Second, yes, I'm probably terrible at this game. Feel free to explain what I did wrong.

Third, despite the above, I've come to conclusion that the Illohir race (at least the version I have), is terribly overpowered.

Now. Here we go.

So, an AI free for all with me as Creon. Aibel's Seaport allows four players so I went with that, however the other two (Zhon and Taros) didn't have the luxury of lasting very long. Nor would I have, had I been against an actual person instead of an AI.

To make a long prelude short, I tried playing this twice before the game lasted very long. Each time I was quickly overrun by faster and stronger Illohirim units, then the fliers came in and finished me off. I'll give the tortoise tanks and bomb sprinklers credit, they held the line for a decent amount of time, but the fliers made an end of that.

Third time's a charm as they say. By this point I had had enough; I am simply not used to having my head handed to me by the AI! It isn't supposed to happen! But I came to accept that, no, I was not capable of defeating the Illohir race. Not on land, not quite yet.

So, I started by setting up a quick base. Two smithies which produced automatons and tortoise tanks, gattling crossbows, and a bomb sprinkler or two. But this time I built a shipyard too. Creon has, in my experience, some of the best and toughest ships around so I figured they might provide me with a chance. During this I had made some barnstormers, which I used to find out exactly where the Illohirim were. I promptly discouvered that the demonesque race had it's main position to the northwest of me, somewhat in the middle of the map. I also discouvered that they were already constructing their god.

I scoffed at this. "Not five or so minutes into the game, and they were already building their god? And I've been beaten by this AI twice already? How pathetic am I with this game? Surely their economy must be suffering terribly! A good attack should halt that and give me a material advantage, right?"

Wrong. The inevitable began to happen. I was attacked soon afterwards and found myself unable to launch an effective counter attack, and in any case, I quickly forgot about their god unit. My base slowly (this time) became only so much rubble and I had to flee the scene with Sage, a mechanic and some stern wheelers. I built a mana refinery on the sacred stone on the small island to the South of the map before making my way up to the larger island in the northwest corner. This island had a sacred stone too and would act as a bare bones base of operations.

Except our good friends the Illohirim were already there. In some ways this explained their early starting advantage. They already had a lodestone up and running. How? This was one hell of a way to learn that their first tier builders could walk on water. Ah. What was more, I unloaded my mechanic and Sage only to find thaaaat... they also had towers built there. I lost the mechanic but managed to clear the island. I built a mana refinery, smithy, and shipyard. I then put my stern wheelers between the island and the mainland in order to act as a kind of buffer. I saved the game.

I then hit my next problem; a counterattack. With ship production under way I noticed enemies approaching my stern wheelers. "Inconceivable!" I thought, just like the Sicilian in The Princess Bride, "how are they closing without taking casualties?" The offending units turned out to be: "Gorgons" medusa-like creatures, part snake part human, armed with wicked looking swords. They could also swim. As the snakey things smashed at my fleeing stern wheelers I had what could be termed a Grand-Moff-Tarkin-on-Death-Star-Moment. They were so small they were evading my turbo lase--- ahem, stern wheeler cannons. They also had decent luck against the prismatic mirrors as well, as it would turn out. But my salvation was at hand! An Iron Clad came out of the shipyard and it just turned out that, well, the big gun on the Iron Clad actually made a big enough boom to damage the Gorgons. Problem solved, just like that, and I returned my ships to their place between island and mainland. I saved my game again.

Good thing too. By the time I got some prismatic mirrors up and had them blazing away at the little dots on the mini-map I noticed they were targeting a little red dot named "Ashtaroth". That is correct, ladies and gentlemen, the Illohirim had finished their god and I was royally... in deep trouble. He proceeded to destroy my base. I'm dead. I could have given up there too. But nooo. I came back for more and reloaded the game. First thing I did was resolve to be more careful with the prismatic mirrors and the ships. Ashy (as I shall call the god) wasn't as aggressive as I had expected and so he seemed to take some provoking to get him on the rampage. Thank goodness I was dealing with an AI.

Next I established a secondary area down in the Southern most part of the map. I built a bomb sprinkler on the sea-berm near the mainland and prismatic mirrors behind it. I moved some ships up to guard it as well. I found my mana refinery on the nearby island had actually survived. All in all, I managed to do fairly well down there, including replacing my mana refineries with mana amplifiers. From then on out it was a constant struggle to keep both bases defended from fliers, swimmers, and enemy builders (who all seemed to walk on water!).

This would have been easier without the Efreets. Nasty firey, slow moving, things with a magma boulder chucking range almost, if not equal to, that of a prismatic mirror. Did I mention they also float over water? They do. It was a godsend too. They would target a ship, which I would then move behind the island. The efreet would follow the ship and bring it's red dot within range of the prismatic mirror battery I had set up. Dangerous, but worth it. I'm nothing if not vindictive and I wanted to kill those things good!

Then I turned my attention to killing a god. Or super demon thing, whatever. "Aha!" I thought. "I don't think anything can take an entire fleet of Creon's ships shooting at it!" I proceeded to build up the fleet. Then, with enough Iron Clads and Stern Wheelers to make a mountain go "BOOM!" I provoked the giant demon god thing. I did, of course, save the game before that. I'm not a complete moron. I really should have predicted the results. Not only does the entire fleet and my base go up in flames; but, I fail to even hurt Ashy. Not. A. Scratch.

I reload. That wasn't working so I had to think of something. Anything. I wasn't about to let this end so simply! What could I do? Juggernaut? I did build one eventually, but it played no real role at all. Neo-Dragons? Built them and they proved to be fairly effective, but not against Ashy. "Darn it." Then, a ray of nearly divine inspiration. "Waitaminute. I'm going about this all wrong! They've got a god? I've got Garacaius! I'll build Garacaius and crush them like insects!" I normally prefer not to resort to gods, but these were desperate times. I'd build Ghostie.

I proceeded to do this, but by this time it was over two hours into the game and quite late at night. I was resolved, but I wanted to do it as fast as possible. Sure, I'll admit that I could have simply shut down all my other efforts and just built Ghostie, but no. I decided to do the old +atm to keep my economy going. First time I did it in the match and I was, frankly, too tired to care at the time. I also saved constantly and had to load once when I accidentally provoked Ashy to one of his rampages.

But in the end I built Ghostie and decided it was now time for a reckoning. But I would do it carefully. Ghostie isn't invincible and I wanted to keep some of my pride. In addition to Ghostie's power I now was able to see most of the map, and so were the prismatic mirrors. Ah. Made everything easier. So, I strafed the coastline with Ghostie and then completely cleared the South of the mainland. I managed to avoid a serious confrontation between Ashy and Ghostie, though they did smash each other with their wave attack things a couple of times. I then set up shop on the South of the mainland and began producing Shock Troopers and Tortoises. Shock troopers came in handy to a degree, but the tortoises could now use their long range to full effect. I also constructed prismatic mirrors and the like. By this point I owned the bottom half of the mainland.

Attacking the rest of the island with Ghostie was effective. I wiped out most of their units except their monarch, Ashy and some support troops. The monarch, named Anharat, proved invulnerable to Garacaius (both the wave attack thing and the smashing with the staff) when he reached a quarter of his health. Now I brought in the tortoises and shock troopers, and they had much better luck! Anharat finally died. Clearing everything else was easy, and it came down to Garacaius and Ashtaroth.

Garacaius, just like my ships, turned out not to be able to actually hit Ashtaroth. It wasn't a matter of not doing damage, it was a matter of actually hitting it! The target location must have been too small! Prismatic mirrors couldn't hurt him, Iron Clads couldn't hurt him, shock troopers, beast rider cannons couldn't hurt him, etc. The only things that could appear to be actually hitting him? Automaton and beast rider melee. I actually saw blood. But I could never get enough to attack him at once to do damage.

But did I lose? No. I simply didn't win. I controlled everything, the only enemy unit left was the invincible god unit! What happened? Ashy's target area must have been so small that he actually got stuck inside Garacaius. This caused Ahsy to freeze, and was rarely able to attack and when he did Garacaius would always have time to regenerate when Ashy froze again. Stalemate.

Frustrating, but I'll take it I suppose. Moral of the story? You guys feel like a challenge from the AI? Give the Illohir race a try! (Did that rhyme? I think so!)

And I've written a short story. Kudos if you actually read it. Also, I may go back and get pictures from the saved games if anyone is interested. I also copied this before attempting to post because the first posting seems to have failed and I had to log in again. Hopefully this doesn't double post!

Interesting game! However, I personally prefer a battle between the 5 core races of Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (Aramon, Taros, Veruna, Zhon, Creon) because I can't trust the balance thing of 3rd party races. By the way, welcome to our community, Canuovea! We hope you will like it! Long live TA:K!!!!

Thank you. Sometimes I find playing against an unbalanced race can be a good amount of fun. After all, an AI may have the better race but chances are the human has the better brains. If it forces you to think, then all the better!

And I've found the improved version of the Illohir, with most of the bugs fixed. I might play another game with them like that. If I can get them to work!

Lol, haven't had a good laugh like that in some time!

So. I got myself the updated version of the Illohir, the one where the god is actually killable. Yes, I'll get to that soon. Basically, it has been balanced fairly well, but it may or may not be underpowered. Still fun though. Also, they managed to show me up again.

Basically I decided to play a game on Islands of the Mer Warriors (or whatnot). I played as Creon (again, yes, I was out for revenge! Revenge I say!) and my opponents were Veruna, Zhon, and Illohir.

This won't be a full fledged battle report, but I'll go over some basics.

First thing I did was to get some ships out and get the neo dragons going. I did it fairly quickly I should say, rather proud of myself too. But, why the neo dragons? Well, I figured (correctly as it turned out) that the Illohirim builders could probably still walk on water and would be going for the islands with the mana stone things on them asap.

Neo dragons also have great "radar" and as such made decent scouts for my ships. I had to contend with some fliers from Zhon and Illohir, but nothing the stern wheelers couldn't handle. And on the plus side, most of those water walking Illohirim builders? They're freezable. The neo dragon pilots got plenty of practice with their "frozen death ray" and there was much rejoicing. Illohir still got the two small islands near their main island, but I managed to stop further expansion.

Before tackling the Illohirim (who were diagonally opposite from me, the farthest away) I wanted to clear out Veruna and Zhon. Veruna would, perhaps ironically, prove the toughest nut to crack and they were up first. Still, it was inevitable. Their fleet had nothing on Creon's and the Iron Clads made a mess of everything. Add to that enough prismatic mirrors built onto the surrounding islands to make Chuck Norris blink and constant attacks by neo dragons that froze all their builders and killed their structures, and it was a matter of time.

I almost thought I had a use for automatons, but they wouldn't unload from the Juggernaut fast enough. "Distractions for while my Juggernaut bombards the bastions!" I thought. "Brilliant!" Nope. If anything they just provided easy experience to the \"****\" towers, but I got em in the end.

Zhon. Most of their units are freezable. Seemed easy. Prismatic mirrors and repeat. Problem. Veruna had their Bastions and Zhon had their Stone Giants. Ye gads! Took some pummeling but I took them down too.

Finally. The moment of vengeance was at hand. (I did, of course, save my game). I took the Illohir island bases and built my prismatic mirrors. Wasn't as easy as I thought it would be though. There was constant harassment. Oh and the efreets still walked on water, but didn't always throw their basalt bombs so darn far. I moved my fleet in and brought the neo dragons in with their freeze wave. Darn do I love those things.

I made a wonderful discovery too. They HAD built their god. Long story short? I tricked him, but first I saved the game. I lured him out into the open waters to the South of the island and sent in the ships. And. Oh boy, let me tell you, this time something actually happened.

This:



Then This:



Hopefully that works...

Then I attacked the island again and it crashed. "Huh. Good thing I saved before attacking the god thing." So I killed it again. I'll spare you the pictures though, because it is basically the neo dragons swarming the poor fellow while the prismatic mirrors make him look like an ant under about thirty large magnifying glasses. Next screenshot Ashy is dead and so are a lot of the neo dragons.

The rest of the battle was somewhat anti-climactic. (Gee I wonder why?). But Anharat was actually more difficult to kill than Ashy (though, to be fair, I had killed him about three times before, but the Illohirim can build their monarch). Still, mirrors, ships, and neo dragons worked their magic. In fact, the Illohir island was the easiest of the three to clear. This could have been because Ashy had used his wave attack in the middle of the base and caused a massive amount of friendly fire damage. I even managed to use ground troops effectively! I just dropped in some tortoises to take out the last towers.

Then I brought in Sage to kill the last unit producing facility. Yes, I'm aware being a jerk to an AI is rather pointless, and I'd never actually do that to a player, but my hunger for revenge destroyed my human decency for that one moment.

Here. Feel the wrath of Sage! (Though it took such a terrifyingly long time to accomplish the damage done with his Blue Flame attack I think I got humiliated. Again):



Yet, Illohir still got the last laugh. Why? The game didn't end.

"What? Is there some kind of error that doesn't acknowledge the obvious defeat of this AI? Is this happening to me AGAIN! NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo........"

Well... No. It wasn't happening again. In fact, a quick search by the neo dragons found that one of the water walking builders had escaped to the nearby island (the one not inhabited by prismatic mirrors) and had begun building stuff. At this point I sure felt like an idiot. I wasted no more time and immolated the impertinent iconoclast. Robbing me of my symbolic victory. Hurmph.

Still, there it is:

Now that's what I call a nice sweet vengeance against the pure evil AI, lols! Truly nice battle logs, Canuovea, however for a nice AI challenge I still suggest a 1 Vs 7 AI match on a 8-players map, or 1 Vs 3 AI on a small 4-players map. Probably, the most difficult match against AI is on Mountain Temple map against 7 AI opponents. Mountain Temple is a small sized map, yet it can have 8 players at the same time, so you will find really challenging being attacked by 7 AI opponents early in the game. However, if you manage to build a decent defense early in the game, the game will be probably yours.

cool screenshots...

in the end, can anyone play ta:k on windowed mode? would be rly great (windows)

Hmm. I'm not sure. As you can tell, I'm not using windows... I'm using Linux. In fact, I'm using the program "Wine" to make this work! But, the thing here is that for Kingdoms to work in Wine, Wine must be run in a window.

As such, I don't know at the moment, but I'll look into it.

I played with Illhoir against ffa ais on maze, and it was really funny,
Astaroth is the most badass god, its impossible to kill it from what i saw, cuz he can walk over anything

Many fire demons started to attack my astaroth, and the fire balls just, transpassed him, and spinned over him, as if he could badassly control the fireballs, also knights and mage archers attacks seem to have no effect on him

Maybe a couple of Garacaius can kill him

I spoetted a bug while playing with Illohir, if u use a gold Driad to use hellfire and succesfully destroy a cabal, the screen will flash and the game will crash, maybe its only on my computer, but i did it twice and both times it happened.
I used a un-gold driad to destroy a cabal and nothing happened, it was really sad when this happened cuz i didnt save the game, and had to start all over

Testing races makes me so excited to make my own one
But i dont know even how to make a single unit

But i know how to edit units, and know the basics of using the scripts, I know how to make the race, cuz i have made a test race, which its mon is a Spirit Wolf, and it makes Black Gold Sea and Ancient Dragons as T1 Units

The only thing I dunno how to do is the f*cking unit
But no problem ill spend more time working on a better-latency-and-anti-multiplayer-speedjack-mod
Which ill probably fail but yeah

Canuovea wrote:

Hmm. I'm not sure. As you can tell, I'm not using windows... I'm using Linux. In fact, I'm using the program "Wine" to make this work! But, the thing here is that for Kingdoms to work in Wine, Wine must be run in a window.

As such, I don't know at the moment, but I'll look into it.

Thanks, man.

Spagg...

Illohir is pretty neat, but I think you have an older version. The newer version definitely fixes the "invincible" Asteroth bug. I don't know about the golden driad vs Cabal bug though...

If you want the newer version for the Illohir, you can get it from the Illohir bug testing entry in the forum. It might be under strategies, but I'm not sure. Either way, the first post should lead you to the most recent update.

As for making races... I hear that there is some kind of program available, don't remember it now though.

This was pure awesome. I love 3rd party races and units.