Ok, so you want to crush the Sorcerer King when things get INSANE. I understand. However, it is important for you to understand that if you want to win against a player that has INSANE numbers of units having INSANE amounts of hit points, you will need to become a little INSANE yourself. You know, quoting Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

I won my first insane map on the largest map I could select. I found that the size of the buffer-zone between the King and I, the combination of gifted units and crafting stuff from the numerous allies, and the sheer number of eventual cities, greatly contributed to the success.

There are a few crucial tactics that will allow you to rise to victorious status under the extreme circumstances of INSANE difficulty. I’ll try to touch on as many as I can below. I thought about generating this document earlier (after completion of the first INSANE win), but life responsibilities take priority over bashing the Sorcerer King; alas, we all have our own evils to fight. Thus, there may be a lot of information that is missing and/or is inaccurately stated. Try to take the advise with a grain of salt and simply apply it to becoming more effective in winning.

This is my first written official gaming guide, and it has been generated simply because I found no others. Make sure to comment and add your thoughts so I may make better guides in the future, if life and time allows.

Also, I will add, this game is a beautiful extension of an older 4X game called "Master of Magic", by Microprose, 1999-ish. This game has been a favorite of mine for 15 years, and Sorcerer King is a wonderful tribute to this prior, perfect, 4X fantasy city-based conquering game.

Initial selection of the sovereign and champion are instrumental to growing the empire as a whole. Some people will have tactics different than mine. I found sovereign skills that helped cities defend and grow to be invaluable. Further, the skills of the champion become critically important as battle ramp up.

Consider selecting skills and items to equip champions to increase experience as soon as possible. The skills of the champions will be one of your only advantages during battles against armies with an UNREAL number of hit points, especially when manna is low, spells are limited, and/or fights against BIG foes are unavoidable.

My first INSANE victory resulted using Varda the Slayer. The ability to teleport in battle with simultaneous damage) and use big damage in linear attacks were crucial to harming multiple enemies at once, reducing the obscene number of hit points of most units. Further, I recall in one attempt, the Sovereign had a skill enabling all units to attack prior to the first attacks of the enemy (which, incidentally, was not entirely guaranteed). The ability to reduce the number of hit points in many enemies quickly was the only saving grace playing at this difficulty.

To emphasize: the biggest obstacle INSANE difficulty provides is the INSANE number of hit points enemy units will have during battles, not necessarily the number of enemy units in the army. This was, by far, the most difficult condition to overcome for winning most battles. Of course, couple this with dangerous enemy types (e.g., archers, mauling units, etc.), and the ability to conquer even small numbered armies becomes very challenging.

Establish an order of execution going into each battle: mauling and quick units first, spell casters and archers second, and big guys last. This will at least give you a chance of being able to win. Ignoring highly powerful enemies with this number of hit points leads to disaster.

First things first. Your base city must not fall, and must grow and produce buildings and units quickly. In fact, this sort of applies to ALL your cities. If any of your cities end up getting sacked and/or your heroes meet the end of a sharp sword, the doomsday counter increases an amount and at a rate that will be difficult, or perhaps impossible, to compensate for. The location, expansion, and growth of your primary city is critical. Thus, a number of points of advice I found important are as follows.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO RESTART THE GAME IF YOUR STARTING LOCATION IS COMPROMISABLE

Starting in a corner of the map is preferable. This enables you to protect a single front for as long as reasonably possible. Later, as enemy armies multiply, this will likely split into two distinct fronts, one for each cardinal compass direction radiating from your home city. Other cities should be positioned to emphasize this advancing front.

Garrison units are important, and is more-or-less required. This may be avoided a little by nearby powerful armies/champions and boundaries that provide a safety buffer zone. Spells like “Cloudwalk” help immensely to get armies to friendly territories to defend, but also note, that some advancing attackers may not be stoppable by your strongest army. As the hit points of the armies increase, defending will become more and more difficult. Thus, buildings providing ZOC damage, additional outposts, and/or sacrificial armies may be required to distract, deflect, or diminish attacking armies before fully engaging.

It is critical to expand to found multiple cities quickly, and ensure all cities are growing and producing as quickly as possible. Finding places to found cities will be the largest challenge in the first leg of the upcoming struggle. Try to find and select positions that are able to expand in multiple directions, and are not directly adjacent to nasty land types, like shadowland or desert tiles. These tiles often do not offer good resource upgrades to your city when the city expands its ZOC. Ensuring cities are near shards, if possible, is also highly desirable, since attacking armies will also have to combat damage in the ZOC while advancing to the shard (and/or the city) prior to attack.

For growth, I have found it useful to pick the largest grain-yielding tiles first, then the highest essence yields next, finally, the highest hammer production last. I tended to always select grain producing spell effects as early as possible. As your Sovereign becomes more powerful and researches more spells, your cities should be able to advance even faster by using spells to greatly increase grain production to further increase the level of the city, ZOC, and damage dealt.

What this ultimately means, is pioneers become infinitely valuable early, and remain so throughout the game. I never bolstered an outpost to increase attack or defense levels. Rather, I used the pioneers to expand ZOC, capture more shards, and deliver more damage prior to units actually doing harm to armies, shards, or cities.

One important tactic is to use outposts to deal damage to units inside enemy liars. Further, using multiple outposts may help to advance your empire’s ZOC such that you can capture important tiles and shards to increase your power for future battles.

Try to avoid sacrificing grain for logistics too early. That is, don’t build logistic stuff until you see the upcoming need. Early, this will be unavoidable, but as the number of your armies grow, the logistics should be easier to gauge 5-6 turns in advance. Some spells and skills greatly enhance logistics, so erecting buildings that sacrifice grain are not always a good idea, especially when you have enough logistics to continue to build powerful units.

The bottom line here is to establish as many cities as quickly as possible, and not stopping. Limit excess logistics until needed. Build the strongest units you can, and get them experience as quickly as possible.

You may also gain control of shards and resources that are within an enemy (or future ally) ZOC by using pioneers, strategically placed. Keep this in mind when you come across resources that are within the ZOC of enemy lairs and other races.

Many of the battles are better fought with micro control of every unit during the battle. Other battles are inevitably more damaging when even allowing the enemy units to perform actions even once. It is usually best to save your game prior to fighting in case the battle goes so bad that the remainder of the game will be impossible to recover. The auto-resolve function becomes handy when powerful enemy units are destroyed in battle and a (huge) number of units having crazy hit points remain. Some battles will be initially loses using auto-resolve, but after vanquishing some foes within, become winnable with minimal damage. Generally, complete losses on the battlefield are unacceptable, but some damage is acceptable. Experiment and use auto-resolve when your units are overpowering but will end up taking significant damage as fighting occurs.

Some races will declare war on you for being allied with (or even talking to) other races. Thus, try to increase favor with all races at roughly the same speed, until a race alliance is “one quest away”. Then, stop performing quests for that race until all (or almost all) other races are found and their favor is likewise increased. Once favor increases with all the races, get the final quests, but do not complete them (and become allied), until an alliance with every race can be obtained without any more communication. This also avoids conflict with passerby units of enemy races.

If it comes to war, crush them and settle a city where they were. Another city is part of the plan, right? Be aware, though, that allies may provide units during the struggle, units during the final fight, and resources along the way. It is much better to be allied than to rid yourself of a potential helping hand.

Never build a weak unit. I know this sounds stupid, but it’s easy to generate many units that are worthless in battle. Restrict building battle units to ones that will survive when engaged.

Use the falcon unit to explore the world while remaining safe by stopping every turn on a mountain. Gather chests when possible. The falcon can also talk to newly found race units, so maximize diplomacy efforts so you can complete quests for each race as equally as possible.

Many of the units you find as a result of quest choices (save the girl, rid the town, get the item, etc.) can become the most powerful units in your arsenal. I remember a “crazed librarian” and some “thankful villagers” (or something like that) that were far stronger than many of the top-end and even champion units.

Also, it may be best to keep multiple heroes in the same army for a considerable amount of time until they are powerful enough to impact their entire army to be victorious (or kill everything themselves while all others watch). This also greatly increases experience for all units within the army, even when they don’t deal damage in the fight. As a general rule, I equipped my more powerful units with armor, etc., but very few of the weaker units ever got armor or devices until they became powerful enough to actually participate. A single powerful unit with a bunch of weak units is typically more valuable than an army of medium power units.

Seek out hero statues early, if possible, and obtain them before dealing with other challenges. As units increase in experience, trade items between units to maximize the gaining of experience of the strongest units. Again, obtain sovereign and champion skills that impact all units of the empire and/or all units of an army.

I have not experimented excessively with gaining CRUEL and INTIMIDATING attribute points. I have found the HONOR and COURAGE attribute values to be very valuable. This is generally easy, and may cause less valuable items to be immediately gained, but the long term advantages are hard to ignore. HONOR and COURAGE can cause units to join your cause, items to be granted for free, and other important perks, like reduction of the doomsday counter.

In addition to gaining champions/heroes when becoming allied, the races can provide units, items, crafting supplies, armor, etc. I have found it best to always request fighting units. This may also help with garrisoning your cities which (hopefully) have grown significantly in number by this stage.

At lower levels of threat, monster lairs and attacking armies, while still brutal, are far less threatening. At higher threat levels, the lairs and units within can become overwhelming and difficult to deal with, even with powerful armies of your own.

This includes dealing with the Sorcerer King for items, crafting supplies, units, and logisticians. Avoid giving the King anything, and refuse all offers, if possible. A properly conducted game will reduce the doomsday counter sufficiently as a result of honor and other stuff. Dealing with the King increases the counter too much to be worth the incremental gains obtained by these lop-sided deals.

This also generally includes leaving the King’s fortresses alone (and key-keepers) until all of them can be sacked in a single turn, by one super powerful army, or multiple armies. The use of potions to replenish army movement on the big map is super valuable for this. Craft 10-20 of these potions, use Cloudwalk (or pure movement) and go on a rampage. Also, kill the key-keepers at the same time. The threat level will go maximum all at once; that’s ok. You should be about ready to wipe the entire map slate clean at this point with one, two, or even three, super powerful armies, leaving only the main King fortress and breeding grounds open for cleansing.

Once everything is wiped out, the final fight remains and the region around the final fight will be spitting out weaker fighting army units. Split (or keep split) your armies building experience for each of them until you decide you are ready to try and win against the Sorcerer King. Construct a SUPER army from all your armies using only the biggest and best units. If you have allies, other units may also join the fight on your behalf. The last fight is not that bad, at least, it wasn’t in my experience. It’s time for some of your guys to charge Valhalla! Charge in and kill, again, using your established kill-priority: e.g., Sorcerer King first, archers and spell casters next, and the big and brawny units last. This has always worked for me.

Good luck, and leave comments so I can improve this guide for others. Perhaps I will modify it once I have had a chance to actually read it, LOL! Let me know what you think, and what tactics you used that may work better than mine!

Kill With Power, Die, Die!