After reading the description of the spell and realizing my cloud people were immune I realized this could be game winning. I then saved up money to have my last oracle learn a level 3 spells, it was earthquake. Knowing that the magic defenders would rip through my cloud people I decided I had nothing else to lose and the battle killed all 3-6 troops, only like 1 of my 3 oracles survived. Not being too familiar with the game I didn't realize how game changing it could be, but seeing as it was so heavily guarded I figured it must be important somehow. Then I realized the baron had used one of his doom stacks *almost* clearing out that academy of magic. It was this constant push and pull where the barons troops would get so close to getting my underground fortress only to be just saved by the new cloud people wave I had just created. Now, I still thought I was going to lose, but I was having so much fun killing armies 2-3 times my size. The barons troops are almost all mundane and can't do magic damage so the ethereal troops are ridiculously tanky against them. Then I suddenly got the idea to try the cloud people archers (Once I finally decided to look up the stats of the slingers) and omg did I finally realize how important building against your opponent is in this game. Once one of the barons killed the other I realized he would have the whole rest of the map to himself and eventually he would be sending his entire forces towards me. my initial plan was build up an olm army, but I just couldn't get the sapphires for it. They kept sending in these doom stacks of spearmen and knights and I somehow got it in my head that pale one slingers were good (for some reason I just assumed they did far more damage). To summarize the most important details, I started on a peninsular that provided a fair natural choke point, on my peninsular there was an academy of magic(i think that was what it was called, level 3 library) as well as a cloud peak that led to a castle where I could recruit cloud people, it was the agricultural era.ΔΆ of my opponents were barons, I never found out what the 3rd one was and I was having a rough time. My plan was to make my starting mage explore the underworld while the king explored the overworld.
I decided to try Pale Ones for I think, the 3rd time? I remember liking them a lot in Dominions and after I figured out how to tunnel in the underground they seemed potentially fun. I got into a series of frustrating games, either I would win without doing anything, got almost imminently attacked by some creature I couldn't possibly defeat or something like hell invading would happen and the game would become unfun. So I picked this game up about a week ago, I have never played another game in the series but I did play dominions in the past.