I like being a super powerful solo summoner who summons super powerful monsters and have it kill everyone. But so few games have summoning gameplay so I looked towards 4x games to satisfy me. The benefit of playing summoners in 4x games is that my summons could kill entire nations instead of just random monsters but the downside is mana is a resource generated by your nation and not you. So I wasn't a super powerful solo summoner. I was instead a mana accountant merchant trading gold for labor with an entire city to generate mana to buy summons and I got the gold by engaging in capitalism.

Then I found this game. Not only does this game have a fantastic summoning system but it also lets you play without founding a single city! And add in all the quests stuff and I could legitimately play as a super powerful solo summoner (emphasis on SOLO) who summons super powerful monsters and have it kill the world! Much more satisfying than killing a dragon in Skyrim with summons.

So anyways after playing this game a LOT I finally found a way to beat the hardest AI (Insane difficulty) on the hardest settings (Insane world difficulty) and thought I'd celebrate by sharing with everyone. Well, sort of. I figured all this out 7 years ago and only just got into making steam guides.

So anyways, if you're like me and you want to play as a super powerful solo summoner who kills the world with his super powerful monsters instead of playing as a leader of a nation then give this guide a try!

If you have any questions or comments about my guide post here: https://steamproxy.net/app/228260/discussions/0/4413046385619063783/

The overall strategy is as follows
1. Summon a Shadow Warg and get to level 5 killing only weak mobs as soon as you can.
2. Grab 3 Lost Libraries to research the Training and Drills technologies for +2 army size.
3. Rush the Raise Skeleton Horde spell and use it to start killing medium strength mobs alongside your Shadow Warg to get to level 11 as soon as you can.
4. Spam Cull the Weak with both your Sovereign and your familiar on your raised skeletons to generate all the mana you need to win the game.
5. Rush the Air and Fire Elemental spells
6. Summon 2 Air Elementals and 2 Fire Elementals. One pair with your Sovereign and one pair with your Familiar.
7. Roflstomp the Insane AI with your 2 Air Elementals, 2 Fire Elementals, 1 Shadow Warg, and 20 Skeletons.

Pretty easy right?

Rebels- Since we will be founding 0 cities unrest is completely irrelevant so this "weakness" translates to a completely free trait point.

Flesh Bound Tome - The most essential faction trait as it gives the Cull the Weak spell which is responsible for fueling the entire thing. Pretty much 100% of your Sovereign and Familiar's actions in combat will be spamming Cull the Weak for mana.

Lucky - Hitting more and getting hit less is super good.

Quick - More turns and going first is super good.

Master Scouts - Lets you ignore terrain. Trying to navigate through rivers makes me wanna tear my hair out.

The only other good faction trait is tough which gives +10% hp but Master Scouts is just such a quality of life improvement that I just can't stop myself from taking it over this.

The Decalon allows you to summon outposts which enables Flesh Bound Tome to consume shards for 200 mana making your early game a lot easier but I don't think it's worth sacrificing Lucky, Quick, or Master Scouts for.

Every other Faction Trait is useless for us as it gives us useless spells, useless equipment, benefits only trained units, etc.

Race doesn't matter. Any race is fine. I personally go undead because banshees in this game look cool to me.

Cruel - Since we will be founding 0 cities unrest is completely irrelevant so this "weakness" translates to not only a completely free trait point but also a completely free +1 to attack.

Summoner - Gives access to the Shadow Warg which is the 3rd best damage dealing summon in the game and I don't think it's possible to survive the early game without it. And the +2 levels REALLY make a difference.

Procipinee's Crown - Makes all summons you cast have no upkeep. Benefit does NOT extend to your familiar so this essentially translate to +3 mana per turn.

Sovereign Bond - Doubles the number of summons you can have. This alone makes it the best trait you can get but in addition to that it also doubles the number of Raise Skeleton Horde you can cast in a fight which is absolutely bonkers AND it also doubles the number of Cull the Weaks you can cast in a fight which is a massive quality of life improvement. Hands down best trait in the game at least for summoners.

Attunement - Your familiar's summons don't benefit from Procipinee's Crown and since he's gonna be maintaining an Air Elemental and Fire Elemental you are going to be losing 2 mana per turn. This trait completely negates that by giving you 2 mana per turn. In addition this trait is the only way you're gonna be able to afford a replacement Shadow Warg early in the game and if you're playing on Insane World Difficulty then you're gonna need that replacement Shadow Warg.

Cautious - If a strong mob attacks you you're dead without this. This also enables you to farm infinite mana off of a weak archer but that's wholly unnecessary unless you're planning on spamming Blood Rage and Celerity.

Brilliant - +10% experience to reach level 5, 8, and 11 quicker. The spell mastery bonus is irrelevant.

Tactician - +1 to initiative. What's not to like?

Discipline - Just seemed preferable to Hardy. Feel free to switch this out for literally anything.

If you don't do this every Lost Library you grab will be wasted. For the longest time I thought without founding a city you can't benefit from the Lost Libraries and I was livid when I found out.

Click the compass icon next to your current Gildar at the top left corner in the screen. Then switch to the warfare tab and double click drills.

1 Lost Library gets you training (+1 army size) and a 2nd Lost Library almost gets you Drills. A 3rd Lost Library will get you Drills (+1 army size) but I guess it's possible to go the final distance by buying warfare research from the AI.

Then you're completely done with research as the additional army size techs are way too expensive and too deep in the tech tree to grab.

This is the hardest part of the game. If there are no weak mobs in your vicinity just keep moving. This has the added benefit of scouting the map and eventually weak mobs will spawn and you can kill them.

Your Shadow Warg is the MVP of this phase and you need to keep it alive as best you can. Sacrifice your 2 starting skeletons if you have to. Cull the Weak one of your starting skeletons to summon a replacement Shadow Warg if you have to.

In fact give your Sovereign a weapon and throw her into the fray as well.

You only need to win a handful of battles so feel free to sacrifice one of your 2 Skeletons to win a fight, or even your Shadow Warg. Use your judgement. This kind of decision making can only come from experience so just keep trying and failing until you get a sense of what mobs you can kill and whether you should lose a unit or not.

Just in case you are brand new to the game.

Raise Skeleton is free so casting Cull the Weak on him is a free 20 mana every fight. With your Familiar doing that too that's 40 mana every fight, more than enough to summon a new Shadow Warg after every fight.

You could try farming a weak mob (kill everyone except an archer, summon and consume all your skeletons, run, and repeat) but in my experience level 4 is over really quick to the point I don't have to resort to this. In fact I often hit level 5 before I get enough mana for a familiar. But in cases where I'm struggling because my entire army died in the fight before I'm mentioning this strategy here.

You could get a 2nd Shadow Warg with your Familiar but personally I don't bother. He spawns at level 1 and there's literally nothing you can do to change that and level 1 Shadow Wargs die in one hit having only 9 hp and all so I don't bother with him.

Shadow Warg can kill everything but he can't take a beating. Raise Skeleton Horde changes that. Raise Skeleton Horde summons 9 skeletons which a lot of the enemy units, especially the ranged ones, seem to prioritize over the Shadow Warg. And this is why you can start killing medium strength enemies. Most will ignore your Shadow Warg to beat these 9 skeletons letting your Shadow Warg kill every last one of them.

Immediately start casting Cull the Weak every turn with your Sovereign. Fights do not last long enough for you to require waiting strategically until the fight is won before culling your skeletons. Prioritize the ones that got hit because they're not surviving a second strike. Then the ones that are unlikely to reach an enemy on their next turn. All of your mana problems are now officially over and you no longer have to keep your Shadow Warg alive every fight. In fact summoning a new Shadow Warg after grabbing the Summon II and III traits gets you a higher level Shadow Warg faster than keeping your existing one alive.

At this stage I intentionally prolong the fights by not killing the last guy just to cull every skeleton on the map until I reach 500 mana. Afterwards I just end fights as quickly as I can and consume however many skeletons I happen to consume by that time.

Ice Elementals are very strong against medium strength enemies. They deal nice damage, they are decently tanky, and they slow the guy they're beating making them worth summoning even late in the game. And unlike Shadow Warg the lower level Ice Elemental summoned by your familiar can hold its own. So cast Summon Ice Elemental, move your familiar out of your current army, cast a second Summon Ice Elemental with your familiar selected, and then move both of them back in with your main army.

Oh and Cull the Weak your starting skeletons if they're still alive at this point. They are now fully obsolete.

They're summoned at a higher level than your current ones.

Air Elementals are the strongest summons in the game. They are so ridiculously more powerful than everything else in the game at this stage that at this point in the game you are now the most powerful player controlled entity in the game. Along with the two castings of Summon Skeleton Horde every fight you can roflstomp all the AI. No really, if all the AI got 100% of their armies together into a city and you fight that city you will win because Air Elementals are that ridiculous and you have two of them.

I mean it. You can end the game right now if you want to. So do that. Kill everyone and win the game. Yay!

The level 5 Air Elemental summoned by your familiar is strong but not THAT strong until he gets some levels on him so keep that in mind.

At this point you exhausted every +levels for summons in the game so you don't have to do this again.

Fire Elementals are inferior to Air Elementals in every way but not by much so they're still worth getting. They're by far the second strongest summon in the game. And it helps that they're a different element from Air Elementals because Air Elementals have trouble against earth and air enemies while Fire Elementals don't and Fire Elementals have trouble against water and fire enemies while Air Elementals don't. So the two cover each other's weaknesses very well.

With 2 Air Elementals, 2 Fire Elementals, 1 Shadow Warg, and your Sovereign + Familiar summoning 20 skeletons in a fight you are going to be the most powerful entity in the game for a really long while. Like really, really, really long while except for maybe those master quest mobs. All regular epic mobs in the game should fall to you. The AI has to start bringing out their endgame units to start challenging you so you have until then to kill everyone.

You've now peaked. This is as strong as you're gonna get. In-combat summoned Grave Elemental for the 5 turn Death Wards on your high level Air and Fire Elementals is pretty much the only additional thing you can get. Everything else is useless. So win the game right now. Spend 100% of your effort winning the game right now because you're not gonna get stronger from here while the AI will.



And that's it! Last time I tried this I won by year 9 on the Clash map. I could've won earlier if I remembered I could've demanded surrender.

If you failed to win for whatever reason and you can't take on the AI's armies then there's only one way you can turn it around. Farming mana off a weak archer and spamming Blood Rage and Celerity on yourself until you can kill everything.

Blood Rage is a high level Death magic spell that boosts one unit's attack permanently for 100 mana and Celerity is a high level Air magic spell that boosts one unit's initiative permanently for 250 mana. So you need to find a way to get access to these spells first. Some methods include trading out some of the less important sovereign traits to start with Death/Air magic, recruiting champions, etc.

I would not recommend this as it's just way too grindly. By farming off a weak archer you and your familiar can generate 300 mana per fight. 2 free skeletons + two castings of Raise Skeleton Horde = 20 skeletons. Which equals 400 mana. But Raise Skeleton Horde costs 40 mana when cast by you and 60 mana when cast by your familiar which totals 100 mana meaning you make a 300 mana profit per fight.

Blood Rage costs 100 mana to permanently increase your attack by 1 and Celerity costs 250 mana to permanently increase your agility by 1 so needless to say if you decide to do this then you're gonna have to farm that weak archer a bajillion times and cast Blood Rage and Celerity on yourself a bajillion times. Emphasis on BAJILLION. This is not a fun way to play the game. I'd rather lose than spend my life doing this so I don't recommend this at all but if you want to spend a hundred hours making a super unit that can kill everything on the map before anyone else gets their first turn then by all means do so.

It's my understanding that a monster with 40 initiative will have exactly twice as many turns as a monster with 20 initiative. So with that in mind, if we set the amount of turns Air Elementals get as 1

The familiar summons have such low starting levels that you're better off using the Sovereign summons' table because they're gonna level really quickly. But if you're looking for in combat summon stats for elementals summoned by your familiar then you should use this table instead.

If you don't want to rush the AI and beat them before they even get started, then don't do that and do other things.

You could put in a lot of AIs so you can't win before they get strong enough to challenge you, then ally yourself with one AI and feed him all your stuff so he wins the game for you.

Or something like that iunno. Your imagination is the limit here.

And that's it! Hope you have as much fun playing this game as I have!