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4X Best MoM mod: Caster of Magic
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Average Manatee
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In one game as a Nature major/Sorcery minor split I had +100% resistance to dispel from the sorcery enchantment along with spell lock and it definitely helped, but only to a point. I did find that spamming enchants constantly in order to get the AI to dispel rather than cast a damaging spell was a workable strategy. My main rival was a death wizard spamming Wave of Despair, but if I spammed Magic Immunity every turn they'd instead go for dispel most of the time (~50% success), and if they didn't then my monsters would be immune to the damaging spells.
Currently in a life game where I think I can overwhelm AIs game with just ultra elite unit spam, since unit experience isn't dispellable and I can use buffs circumstantially for hard fights. Trying to layer on 5 buffs across multiple units is definitely not a great idea, especially if the enemy has sorcery magic for extra dispelling. In the nature game I tried using 8 Behemoths with full life/sorcery line buffs and in my first battale against a sorcery wizard Dispelling Wave cast twice basically killed ~2500 mana worth of buffs. It can kinda work if you are trying to gear up to snipe the capital in one go though, you'll lose a lot but be able to win one essential battle.
One thing I am still a bit weak on is how to gear and use heroes well. Seems like most of the time it's suicidal to throw them into battle without tons of buffs. On the other hand their equipment buffs are undispellable, so if you do invest heavily into one they are actually durable. But that's like... thousands of mana, generally.
Average Manatee
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Some tips I've learned:
- Always settle minerals that give income first, then high pop places. But throw down your initial cites anywhere that isn't complete shit, you don't have time to scout much.
- Most important building to rush is Marketplace, ideally have 160 gold to do so the first turn a city is finished buiding. 8 gold per turn equates to 4 production per turn, except that you don't normally get production while building housing while you do get gold. After that build housing to about 4-6 pops. I've done the math and it varies slightly depending on the settlements population cap (higher it is the higher you want to build housing), along with base terrain and pop production (higher your production is the sooner you want to stop since production is lost while building housing), but generally 4 is pretty optimal and even numbers are more optimal in general since even ones give you a worker rather than a farmer. By that point the marketplace has basically paid for itself, so it was a "free" purchase. You *can* rush build Granary and Library in new settlements but you probably don't have the cash to do this often unless you either have tons of starting gold from minerals or are really good at fighting lairs. Libraries are in fact almost twice as good as Marketplaces if you value 1 research = 1 production and want to rush some important spell. But if you aren't researching something that will snowball you economically hold off on them and just get the marketplaces. I wouldn't rush magic marketplace since you generally have enough mana early game, don't care much about skill, and if you put anything into research its basically just a more expensive library.
- Once you're done with housing you want to build Sawmill first. Not Granary, Granary actually takes a long time to pay off since you're only gaining 1.5 production upgrading a farmer to a worker and it takes 20 turns to produce a new pop. What to produce once you've got Sawmill/Granary/Library/Magic Marketplace (aside from Granary they all have an RoI time of 10-20 turns) is up to you. Miner's Guild is usually the next best economic building (especially with mineral bonuses) and then Forester's Guild/University/Mechanican's Guild/Sage's Guild are all reasonaby viable with 25-35 turn RoIs. Other advanced economic buildings tend to be pretty bad early on, you get them when you run out of things to build or need their secondary effects (unrest reduction or units). Banks/Merchant Guild are very bad unless you either have huge pop or can maintain a high tax rate. Farmer's Market takes a long, long time to pay off, but... you do need growth and pop is multiplied by all these things eventually, so hard to judge. Generally though if you can build settlers and settle decent city spots then you should do so before progressing past the Sawmill/Granary/Library/Magic Marketplace stage
- Early game you really want to use your mana for taking lairs and defense as much as possible so production can go to cities. Either use fantastic creatures or buff basic units and use as few of them as possible. If you are buffing units its usually best to use cavalry since their movement speed lets them be flexible in hitting lairs or defending multiple settlements, and worst case they can drag out most fights that can't be won. Having a city pillaged for 20 turns is still way better than it destroyed. Stables also aren't terribly awful to have lying around, their RoI is comparable to those advanced economic buildings I said to hold off on, but rushing out a cavalry in 1 turn to save a city is priceless so generally consider getting them on cities next to lairs that you can't destroy. You can also always decide to war someone and quickly amass a full stack of cav from across your cities and hopefully swamp them. Walls are also a good idea to get since they'll improve your unit defense by 3 inside them along with giving you more vision so you have a turn of warning before being attacked usually.
- Have no shame in savescumming lair fights to see what's there and whether you can fight it. The game can blatantly deceive you, sometimes it will say stuff like "sprites", which should mean 1-2 of them, but then there's also 8 war bears. Other times it says "phantom warriors", but there's actually invisible air elementals too. Losing out on 20+ turns of production or mana investment to RNG like this is bullshit and pretty much a game ender in the early game.
- By the mid game the best way to defend most cities is going to be magician spam, possibly with a single buffed unit or fantastical creature to hold the line at the front door. Their casting ability is just as useful as their ranged attack, figuring out a strategy of what they should all cast to be most effective is essential. Often you'll want to do things like just summon 9 wild boars with them on turn 1, cast blur yourself, then turn 2 is where you try to kill everything. Having maximally garrisoned cities is also where you can start bumping up taxes so it pays for itself. Spamming lots of units for defense before magicians is usually not worth it because they'll just be obsolete in 30 turns and they'll probably take 15 turns to make. Only do so if you really need to.
- Offensively Magicians are too weak and half of them die to enemy magicians since they'll get the first turn. Conduct offense with buffed cavalry early or racial unique units later. Or of course your fantastic units. Stacks of Magicians can sometimes destroy tough lairs easily though.
- The other big midgame goal is to have engineers build roads for extra income. If your race starts with them this is actually an early game goal, engineers are super cheap and roading two settlements even early game is at least as good as a bank with no maintenance cost. Sadly my favorite races (Halfling/High elf) don't start with them, and you do really need to obtain them to complete your economy.
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Cael
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You are better off spending thousands of mana creating artifacts to equip your heroes than to spend thousands enchanting them only for it to be dispelled.
Aim for magic heroes. At low levels, get +damage, +to-hit gear for your heroes. As their levels go up, you can ease off on the to-hit. Your aim is 100% to-hit (including the base 30%) for your ranged guys. Remember that magic immune gives you only 50 shields vs ranged magic attacks. That is 50*0.3=15 defence on average. That means any magical ranged attack above 15 at 100 to-hit rate will do damage on average. With 1 staff and 2 item slots, you get +14 damage just from artifacts and most magic users come with 8 base attack.. You do the math on that one.
Other powers to aim for on items:
Life - Lionheart, invulnerability
Sorcery - Phantasmal, magic immune, flight, invisibilty
Nature - Regeneration
Chaos - Flaming (+3 attack on top of the +14), lightning
Death - Wraith form
If you are playing with Sorcery, just summon a stack of Storm Drakes and go nuts. Fast, high damage, magic immune, etc.
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Average Manatee
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Well, I'm mostly just not using heroes either way. In the Nature game I was mostly using teams of 2-4 Behemoths with minimal permanent enchantments to take towns. I had a beastmaster with my biggest stack purely because he gave to-hit buffs to all fantastic creatures but that was it.
The thing is, it's thousands of mana just to get heroes to not die to random-ass spells that the AI casts or that ranged attacks will hit them with (since AI almost always focus fires them). They still can't really win battles on their own, they are about comparable to a rare monster, not even a very rare one. At least for nature if you just want a hero to be on the field for buffing purposes and to survive you merely need to cast regeneration, and if you only want 1 buff its usually better to cast it in battle (since overland casting is your main constraint) rather than investing thousands into items or permanent enchants. I'll try to test this a bit more with Torin in my life game though.
What about staying alive though? The main problem is that any random AI can just cast lightning bolt 2-3 times and your hero is dead. 36 AP damage dealing an average of 12 damage and your hero's defense is halved, so a 10 defense hero (about all you can get if you line them up with all offensive stuff) takes over 10 damage. Buffs can help a little but if you're truly blinging out on equipment to have buffs + offense stats you're looking at like 4.5k mana, and lightning is just an uncommon spell that AIs seem to spam from like turn 30.
Also at least some of these buffs don't exist in Caster of Magic, I know Magic Immune doesn't,
The thing is, it's thousands of mana just to get heroes to not die to random-ass spells that the AI casts or that ranged attacks will hit them with (since AI almost always focus fires them). They still can't really win battles on their own, they are about comparable to a rare monster, not even a very rare one. At least for nature if you just want a hero to be on the field for buffing purposes and to survive you merely need to cast regeneration, and if you only want 1 buff its usually better to cast it in battle (since overland casting is your main constraint) rather than investing thousands into items or permanent enchants. I'll try to test this a bit more with Torin in my life game though.
What about staying alive though? The main problem is that any random AI can just cast lightning bolt 2-3 times and your hero is dead. 36 AP damage dealing an average of 12 damage and your hero's defense is halved, so a 10 defense hero (about all you can get if you line them up with all offensive stuff) takes over 10 damage. Buffs can help a little but if you're truly blinging out on equipment to have buffs + offense stats you're looking at like 4.5k mana, and lightning is just an uncommon spell that AIs seem to spam from like turn 30.
Also at least some of these buffs don't exist in Caster of Magic, I know Magic Immune doesn't,
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Cael
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I have never had that problem with heroes, even magic users. Survivability is never that much of an issue. It sounds like you are sending them out early and without proper support against the enemy, when you should be using them against neutrals and lairs to increase their level first, then use them to increase your casting skill to churn out a few custom artifacts.
Cael
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You have 4 slots on every item. You can buff shields also on every item. It is not ideal, of course. Give them a few levels and even Malleus can take care of an entire stack of enemy units by himself.
Average Manatee
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Have you played Caster of Magic, rather than vanilla Master of Magic?
Like I said, AI is smart and if it sees a hero it just pelts it almost constantly with attack spells, the worst being chaos wizards with lightning (36 armor piercing damage). In some battles if my hero + 8 creatures attacks an AI town then the AI will, before you get a turn, have 9 magicians all focus fire the hero + lightning bolt it. God help you if the AI decides to use those magicians to cast a simple fire bolt (24 magic damage per magician). You can survive this if you stack a ton of defensive stuff but that's about all you can do. Now granted you *can* get items that stack defense massively, but then you're not getting much combat utility except any army-wide buffs your hero might provide.
Here's me after the AI takes its first turn on this fight:
He doesn't have much defensive equipment, but he's max level. BTW, that empty spot? That was my first hero. Yeah, the AI killed 1 hero and did 3/4ths of the 2nd heroes HP in damage on turn 1. There's no way you can outheal that, Baghtru will be dead on turn 2. The other hero that died was 1 level away from max. Keep in mind this is basically midgame, I just got my first rare spell.
EDIT: Heroes also had holy armor, endurance, holy weapons and bless on, FYI. Notably Bless is +5 defense against their attacks and holy armor is +10% defense chance.
If I wanted to make a hero that could resist attacks like this I'd need to craft something like:
That's about 20 turns worth of my casting skill. I'd kind of rather have 5 Behemoths, especially considering this is just an item to get the hero to not die to ranged spells, protecting them in melee combat would require another and then some more item bonuses to get them to actually kill things. I'm sure a fully blinged-out hero could handle most fights practically alone, but that's gonna cost around 10k mana. I guess in some sense it might still be a good idea if the hero is truly unkillable vs. very rare creatures which still can die once in a while, but still, shit's expensive. Also illusion attacks ignore armor completely so if you fight a wizard with sorcery and don't have sorcery yourself to get illusion immunity you're probably boned so potentially say goodbye to that super hero.
Like I said, AI is smart and if it sees a hero it just pelts it almost constantly with attack spells, the worst being chaos wizards with lightning (36 armor piercing damage). In some battles if my hero + 8 creatures attacks an AI town then the AI will, before you get a turn, have 9 magicians all focus fire the hero + lightning bolt it. God help you if the AI decides to use those magicians to cast a simple fire bolt (24 magic damage per magician). You can survive this if you stack a ton of defensive stuff but that's about all you can do. Now granted you *can* get items that stack defense massively, but then you're not getting much combat utility except any army-wide buffs your hero might provide.
Here's me after the AI takes its first turn on this fight:
He doesn't have much defensive equipment, but he's max level. BTW, that empty spot? That was my first hero. Yeah, the AI killed 1 hero and did 3/4ths of the 2nd heroes HP in damage on turn 1. There's no way you can outheal that, Baghtru will be dead on turn 2. The other hero that died was 1 level away from max. Keep in mind this is basically midgame, I just got my first rare spell.
EDIT: Heroes also had holy armor, endurance, holy weapons and bless on, FYI. Notably Bless is +5 defense against their attacks and holy armor is +10% defense chance.
If I wanted to make a hero that could resist attacks like this I'd need to craft something like:
That's about 20 turns worth of my casting skill. I'd kind of rather have 5 Behemoths, especially considering this is just an item to get the hero to not die to ranged spells, protecting them in melee combat would require another and then some more item bonuses to get them to actually kill things. I'm sure a fully blinged-out hero could handle most fights practically alone, but that's gonna cost around 10k mana. I guess in some sense it might still be a good idea if the hero is truly unkillable vs. very rare creatures which still can die once in a while, but still, shit's expensive. Also illusion attacks ignore armor completely so if you fight a wizard with sorcery and don't have sorcery yourself to get illusion immunity you're probably boned so potentially say goodbye to that super hero.
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Cael
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You keep talking about Chaos wizards and one spell makes me wonder if you are adaptable enough to have an actual discussion on a tactical or strategic game. I seem to recall a similar argument we have in the HBS Turd game thread where you fixated on one thing and went psycho over it instead of adapting your playstyle vs that one thing.Have you played Caster of Magic, rather than vanilla Master of Magic?
Like I said, AI is smart and if it sees a hero it just pelts it almost constantly with attack spells, the worst being chaos wizards with lightning (36 armor piercing damage). In some battles if my hero + 8 creatures attacks an AI town then the AI will, before you get a turn, have 9 magicians all focus fire the hero + lightning bolt it. God help you if the AI decides to use those magicians to cast a simple fire bolt (24 magic damage per magician). You can survive this if you stack a ton of defensive stuff but that's about all you can do. Now granted you *can* get items that stack defense massively, but then you're not getting much combat utility except any army-wide buffs your hero might provide.
Here's me after the AI takes its first turn on this fight:
He doesn't have much defensive equipment, but he's max level. BTW, that empty spot? That was my first hero. Yeah, the AI killed 1 hero and did 3/4ths of the 2nd heroes HP in damage on turn 1. There's no way you can outheal that, Baghtru will be dead on turn 2. The other hero that died was 1 level away from max. Keep in mind this is basically midgame, I just got my first rare spell.
EDIT: Heroes also had holy armor, endurance, holy weapons and bless on, FYI. Notably Bless is +5 defense against their attacks and holy armor is +10% defense chance.
If I wanted to make a hero that could resist attacks like this I'd need to craft something like:
That's about 20 turns worth of my casting skill. I'd kind of rather have 5 Behemoths, especially considering this is just an item to get the hero to not die to ranged spells, protecting them in melee combat would require another and then some more item bonuses to get them to actually kill things. I'm sure a fully blinged-out hero could handle most fights practically alone, but that's gonna cost around 10k mana. I guess in some sense it might still be a good idea if the hero is truly unkillable vs. very rare creatures which still can die once in a while, but still, shit's expensive. Also illusion attacks ignore armor completely so if you fight a wizard with sorcery and don't have sorcery yourself to get illusion immunity you're probably boned so potentially say goodbye to that super hero.
Cael
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You are a Sorcery mage. If you don't know the defence vs Magician spam, you are not worth talking to.
Average Manatee
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No, in that screenshot I was a pure life mage. In the game I was referencing previously I was 9 nature/4 sorcery. Please learn to read and/or use your eyes. Sorcery wizard enchantments would be blue, not white.
Even as I said earlier, if you use mass buffs like Magic Immunity across a whole army the AI (if a sorcerer) will use dispelling wave to dispel the whole combat battlefield. If you use it on one character either the enemy wizard will dispel it or the magicians will spam dispel at it and even if their chance is 1 in 3 they have like 4-8 shots at it. Magic immunity is also a very rare spell that you won't get until like turn 250, if at all (not all very rares are guaranteed unless you literally max book one realm).
Incidentally I can highly recommend taking a minor amount of sorcery books with basically any wizard. It's fairly easy to trade for Philosopher's Stone/Counter Magic/Spell Lock/Aura of Majesty. First two are pretty OP at cutting down enemy spell casting in battle, 3rd for protecting enchantments a bit, final one really keeps your relations high for most of the game, at least until you get big enough that all wizards get jealous over you having too many cities. Flight is also useful and you can get invisibility on an item. Also managed to pick up Uranus' Blessing that game which is a fairly awesome city buff.
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Cael
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How about this, you fucking retard:
Cast Invisibility overland on your heroes. Do NOT enchant any other unit in the stack. Give the enemy no reason to think about dispelling anything, until at least your heroes had one go.
And I will NOT acknowledge you shifting goalposts in the middle of an argument, you leftard cunt.
Cast Invisibility overland on your heroes. Do NOT enchant any other unit in the stack. Give the enemy no reason to think about dispelling anything, until at least your heroes had one go.
And I will NOT acknowledge you shifting goalposts in the middle of an argument, you leftard cunt.
Average Manatee
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#1 How am I supposed to do that as a life wizard. That's a rare-level sorcery spell. At no point have I indicated I am a sorcery wizard or capable of casting invisibility.
#2 Are you retarded? Let me try and spell it out for you:
Stupid nigger. Nevermind the fact that playing without buffs on normal units is the stupidest fucking idea ever.
Cael
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You started the conversation with Sorcery and so you will stay with Sorcery, you cunt. The fact you keep ducking and jiving and bring up other things is testament as to the fact you are not here to learn, but are merely here to complain because you just cannot conceive that you are a lousy player is plain. You did the exact same thing in the HBS Tranny game thread.#1 How am I supposed to do that as a life wizard. That's a rare-level sorcery spell. At no point have I indicated I am a sorcery wizard or capable of casting invisibility.
#2 Are you retarded? Let me try and spell it out for you:
Stupid nigger. Nevermind the fact that playing without buffs on normal units is the stupidest fucking idea ever.
InspectorRumpole
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Stop derailing the thread you fuckers. This is not about Caster of Magic, whether you like it or not.
Average Manatee
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Bitch faggot nigger, quote me then where I started it.
Wasn't aware we had one, only searched for MoM threads.
Average Manatee
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Update on the life game. Torin is definitely strong enough to survive most things when buffed with life magic, and heroes in general are pretty usable as life since you can res them. Also scored Reywind the warrior mage who rolled super Agility, meaning he has 36 defense, and they travel together with Jaer the Wind Mage who lets them all fly but dies every other battle and needs raising. That said I was lucky and found fire/lightning resist items, without those Torin would still be pretty vulnerable to spells. Runemaster + Ruler of Heaven also seems to make the AI not even try to dispel your buffs much, it is +250% dispel resistance after all. The one serious exception being that Dark Elf AIs are fucking insufferable. You don't know pain until you've seen 7 warlocks all cast Doombolt on turn 1.
Also Destiny is sadly a bit underwhelming, 400 mana/10 upkeep for making a unit supernatural and giving it double attacks, health, and +4 defense and resistance. But losing unit XP (and you're gonna have Altar of Battle and Crusade up) offsets most of these bonuses, and you also invalidate a few normal unit only buffs.
Base stats are a bit better, but ranged damage output is down due to lower hit chance. Supernatural feels like its something only useful to the AI since its basically an anti-hero sniping tool for super high defense enemies. It's still probably better overall, especially if you cast Supreme Light in turn 1 of combat since they'll be affected as a life creature. But the problem is that Supreme Light is the only way to res them in battle through regeneration, if they die turn 1 before you can act you can't cast raise dead on them. And 400 mana per unit is harsh, you could just cast a lot of other buffs with that. Would be useful on defense of course since you get first turn, but if you're at this level you're probably not defending much and defending all of your cities like this would be excessive.
Also Destiny is sadly a bit underwhelming, 400 mana/10 upkeep for making a unit supernatural and giving it double attacks, health, and +4 defense and resistance. But losing unit XP (and you're gonna have Altar of Battle and Crusade up) offsets most of these bonuses, and you also invalidate a few normal unit only buffs.
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Average Manatee
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Finished life game. Was really mostly cleanup by the time I reached very rare life spells. Groups of 9 Pegasi could take most settlements with only a few casualties that could be raised. I think in the end Runemaster wasn't really needed, buffs were good but in the end you could take most settlements without them, just spamming pure numbers. Its not like the AI ever seems to really dispel your buffs on your cities or your global enchantments, and that's all life really needs You can always spend a few turns casting buffs before hitting an enemy capital.
Highest score so far. Difficulty was only advanced, not Expert, but Final War added a lot and it ended up coming so late that it didn't matter at all. Rjak on Myrror was a runaway leader and getting to the final war stage required beating him into submission for so long that I was vastly dominant anyway. Of course if you really want to go for score you just have to play on the largest map with the most AIs, that greatly inflates your score. My settings were 10 enemies/small game size. Game size scale per player so there's still a big map, just less land per player.
Highest score so far. Difficulty was only advanced, not Expert, but Final War added a lot and it ended up coming so late that it didn't matter at all. Rjak on Myrror was a runaway leader and getting to the final war stage required beating him into submission for so long that I was vastly dominant anyway. Of course if you really want to go for score you just have to play on the largest map with the most AIs, that greatly inflates your score. My settings were 10 enemies/small game size. Game size scale per player so there's still a big map, just less land per player.
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Arcane
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Cheers! I've been letting the Master of Magic fan communities know the news but completely forgot about this thread lol!
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