Funny, but I've never paid attention to how long my games last in terms of #s of turns. All I can offer in answer to your question is, too long when I win, and not nearly long enough when I lose.

I usually have a game lasting around four hours. I never checked turns. I'll agree that quick games are always losses, though. At least you know before wasting too much time.

It's those close ones that bug me. I think I'm going to prevail, and then another wizard starts pounding me and takes away my edge. I've had games that were like WW1, where everything I built was destroyed holding off AI hordes. I know that I'm losing slowly, but can't get a leg up. The tension is fun, but the time spent for outcome is not.

i get irritated as heck when i waste what little lead i have defending myself from random mobs. then, when i finally rebuild my cities and get my first decent hero, some fool starts casting armageddon or great wasting.

i also hate when i have a "perfect" starting island (enough for maybe 4-5 cities, each one spaced for max production, building availability, and access to water) and the computer players either build colonies there or have their own cities just close enough so that i can't build.

as far as I know, there's only 1 honest "blitz" strat (11 life, stream of life.) i've cheated a number of times and eliminated everybody with summoned creatures and such, but there just doesn't seem to be a way to get around building a ton of crap in the early game.

The latest FAQ has a very convincing writeup on using guardian spirits with invulnerability, bless, plane shift, and endurance.

I'd say my games take fewer turns, but a lot more real time, than others are reporting. One of the handicaps I give myself is not to use enchant item or create artifact, so I have to rely on lots of regular units instead of clearing the map with an uber-hero.

yeah that might be my problem: i love my heroes too much.

But I have tried it with buff units, and it also takes a super long time, turn-wise, assuming you only have 3-5 moderately built up cities, 1-2 of which are actually producing units and the others are farming.

The problem with that strat is getting the mana to support even 1 stack of spelled-up units. With heroes, I can use one buff dude to clear a node, use the node to support another hero, etc.

It seems like a catch-22: you can't put more spells on units unless you take nodes, and you can't take nodes unless you have many buff units.

When i say "long time" in MoM terms, that means when any of the computer players have SoM, or one of the crappy global ultra-rare spells that spoil the game, like armageddon. Maybe I am being unrealistic in my expectations.

Try buffing your units without spells - by Warlord, Adamantium weapons and Experience. Cast heroism on an arms master hero or try to make him gain levels. Stack the newly produced units with the arms master until they become ultra elite. Very good way to do the same is if you have the Altar of Battle, but you may not be lucky to have it.

8 ultra elite adamantium troops with a leadership hero can take over almost everything without much effort.

the new mom faq has some very interesting strats. i did the guardian spirit thing for a little bit last night...works pretty good, although i dunno how they got enough mana to support 2 gs's, 2 endurance, and 2 invulnerability.

i think i'm going to try the pathfinding basilisk strat, that sounds way more interesting.

I read the strat - It sounds good ; the only possible problem may be if you encounter a wizard with many books in sorcery like Jafar. For sure he'll try to dispel your invulnerability and will have a pretty good chance of success with "dispel magic true". Btw what version are you playing? If you are playing 1.31 then the 11 life books should generate 11 mana per turn for you, if you pick elves, you will have 13 - that should be enough.

My games are usually complete in acouple of hours.

ACK!

He was asking how much game turns does they take ... Look at your Historian and see which Year and Month it is when you are finishing the game ;-)

there are 12 months in a year, so year alone is a good estimate. the guy in the faq said he could finish the game in 5 game years (@60 turns).

i tried the basilisk strat. those guys are pretty weak.

i think with the GS strat you have to stockpile some mana first, and then send them out.

for some reason, the computer busts out great wasting, armageddon, or SoM by y30 or so. usually by that point, i just got summon champion and maybe outfitted 1 of them with artifacts.

i think i need to try more extreme tactics.

Hm, for speed purpose you shouldn't ... Play elves for the extra mana, put all of your power into mana to get 13 per turn, raise your taxes, put your city to make trade goods and use alchemy each turn to get more mana. Your mana probably will be enough to pump out 2 spirits. Look for undefended locations as they could often yield 50 free mana. Taking over a weakly defended node can solve your problems too. After banishing a wizard you will probably take a lot of mana from him.

This tactics probably will bring the fastest possible win but it is a very risky because there is a high possibility to meet something that you cannot beat with an invulnerable guardian spirit. The invulnerability is like adding ~7 defence (7*0.3 = 2.1, invulnerability blocks 2), so you should keep from creatures with high attack and many to hit bonusses.

If you are getting the summon champion so late then you must be doing something wrong. I personally like to start with 4 life books and then to go multi-colored by getting some books from those heavily defended nodes on Myrror. If you are multi colored you have far greater potential for trading spells with the other wizards. You can even get great spells like Summon Champion for a stupid cantrip like Star Fires for example.

The question always is how to get those nodes, and according to my experience the fastest way to do so is to make some very tough normal units - with adamantium, experience and warlord. Try making 2 or 3 cities to share the same spot of adamantium if you do not have so much patches of it around. Summon heroes until you find an Arms master and cast heroism oh him. Stack with him all of the newly produced units until they become ultra elite. Once they become stack them with a leadership hero and send them to fight those nasty beasties. Once your machine for ultra elite adamantium troops is started no one will be match for you. And if by any chance you get the Crusade spell then you can make your normal troops champions which is one level higher than ultra elite and they will become really insane.