MoM: What your favorite Magic type

[Tuberski]

I always take the picture of someone who should be opposed to me. For instance, I'll take Merlin or Ariel if I'm going to use death magic.

Or, if I take Myrran as an ability, I'll take Ssysra's(sp) portrait. That cuts down on one opponent who is almost sure to show up.

[Rex Little]

Whenever I start on Myrror, one other wizard starts there with me (assuming 4 opponent wizards). If I don't take Sss'ra, it'll be him, but if I do, the computer picks someone else and tacks the Myrran ability onto him.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Rex Little
Whenever I start on Myrror, one other wizard starts there with me (assuming 4 opponent wizards). If I don't take Sss'ra, it'll be him, but if I do, the computer picks someone else and tacks the Myrran ability onto him.

True, but they can also that second wizard even WITH sss'ra being there.

[MattyBoy]

I tried all black books and wraiths last night (4 opponents, impossible).
It is surprisingly easy to make a strong start and capture neutral cities.
Terror is also handy for avoiding battles by running away until time runs out.

[Markus The Mighty]

Usually I go for a death or death/chaos mix.

But last time I played, I got life/nature with Alchemist and High Elves.
Well I (unwillingly) left 1 of my cities defended with only 1 magician unit, and won 3 or 4 times against 7-9 stacks with Lionheart, Stoneskin and sometimes Web.


And, of course, I summoned the all-beloved Torin, but that was just for 'mopping up' those rather unsuccessful AI warmongers...

[MattyBoy]

MoM is such a cool game.
I'm currently trying many life books with artificer (first time) as gnolls. Wierd combination is new to me and the whole game plays so differently.
The game feels fresh even though I've played it for years.

[NeOmega]

Sorcery..... I couldn't play without it, cuz once Tauron cast Great Wasting the game was over, so I always had to use spell blast and a good deal of mana to stop it from happening.



AHHHHHHH!!!!! THAT GAME WAS THE COOLEST EVER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

[Rex Little]

Update on my Node Mastery challenge game: I lost the first one with Barbarians, then lost another one with Gnolls. But it looks like third time's the charm: I started another with Halflings and I've reached the point where a win is all but inevitable. One opponent has been banished twice and has just a couple of cities left. The other two are still powerful, and it'll take a long time to wear them down, but it will happen. The only way I can lose is if Ss'sra gets powerful enough to cast Great Wasting or Armageddon.

[MattyBoy]

Well done, Rex.
I found that tough and have not won a game like that.

[MariOne]

I kinda had fossilized in my typical setup over the years, and as I kept coming back at MoM from time to time I stucked with it.
Mind, I DO like it mainly because of the incredibly wide variety it offers you, but when you just want to spend a couple of hours making time run, you tread the known path.
So my standard approach was
Warlord+NodeMastery (NM)
LLLCCNSS
Barbarians
I might have even renounced to more books to take Famous and/or Charismatic.
Sometimes I took Myrran, renouncing to Warlord (and to Barbarians).
Later, I began to appreciate Alchemy (magical weapons for free) somewhat replacing and making for Warlord, freeing 1 pick.
I could get up to 4Life, or 3 in another domain.
I juggled a bit with the other books, but rarely going with less than 4 realms covered.

I have to say that 3-4 years ago I could win on Impossible (and Powerful, of course) with those settings, not everytime, but enough to avoid getting discouraged.
Rekindling my passion 2 years ago after a hiatus, I hardly could manage it again.

So, maybe it requires some knack and dedication, more than a just occasional player can achieve, but I don't see why it should be a particularly hard challenge over any other, apart the hands-down ones.

Strictly speaking, NM locks 1 pick for the retort itself, and 3 for the required CNS books.
You are left with 7 picks to distribute between other retorts or books.
These can be 7 books in L/D, or get to 8 in one of the 3 node realms. True, this way you'll have no retort other than NM itself. Is that the main difficulty you find in it?

You know that with the patch, the Spell Ranks table reported in the manual is no longer valid.
Up to 10 books in a single realm, you'll just have to pick N-1 discovered *Common* spells in that realm you'll start with (thus, up to 10-1=9 out of the 10 avaialble).
Only picking the maximum books, you'll get all the 10 common plus 2 Uncommon and 1 (Very?) Rare, as reported (that is D=Wraiths, L=Incarnation, name yours for the 3 "node" realms).
So, stepping down from the Realm-committed variants (11 books), I don't see that much difference in playing with 7 rather than with 10 books in one Realm (the modest research/casting discount at those levels is not determinant).
That is to say, if you regret only having NM retort, I don't see it as a real problem contenting of just 5 extra books over the CNS base, instead of 7, to accommodate for a couple pick-worth in other retorts.

But I've been just a rather ocasional player over the recent years, and as I said my skill has waned...
You might have sounder points that I'm overlooking...

___
Coming to speak of my choices, rather than merely discussing your Realm of election, it could be interesting to take a step further and tell us *how many* books you tend to pick at most, and distributed over which Realms.

For those who play Bridge (I don't really, I just know the basics), it would be something like a hand distribution classification

We can have one-suit er... realm hands, in which either you get books in only one of them, or you at most get 1-2 in a couple others (say, 7-2-1-0, or at least 6-2-2-1).
Two-realm hands, extreme ones (6-5-0-0, 7-4-0-0) or milder ones (like the one used by Rex in the challenge, 5-4-1-0). Even a 4-4-0-0 one (with 3 pick in retorts) could with some stretch be defined as a two-handed.
Balanced hands, in which a realm gets at least 3 books and no more than 4, allowing for only 3 to be covered. This allows a 4-4-3-0 for instance. Exceptionally we could consider a 3-3-3-2 balanced, but I'd rather create a new class for this kind of distribution, that I'd call...
"Spread" hands, that is you cover all 4 possible realms with 2 (or exceptionally 3) books, just to get to determine one spell in each that you haev in your hands. This makes for a 2-2-2-2 and 3-worth retort pick...
I would not know how to define a 4-3-2-2 tho...

Maybe I let me carry away too much.
My curiosity stands tho, in that I'd likeat least to know whether you consider optimal to pick at least 4 books in a real, or 6, or 8.
I rarely went for more than 4, thinking to obtain some more spells thru trades (especailly if I have Charismatic and keep peaceful), or thru threats and conquests, or from structures/nodes.
I admit I have that way overlooked the SpellRanks table, not for the last "Guaranteed Spells" colum, but for the table body, which stated how many spells of each rarity level a given Rank (i.e. books #) allows in a realm.
I didn't check if the table still held valid after the patch, and if as my impression goes trades and fidnings allow you to override those limits...

HHHHMMMMMM.... maybe a couple of issues here would have deserved a thread on their own...
Maybe later...

[MattyBoy]

Strictly speaking, NM locks 1 pick for the retort itself, and 3 for the required CNS books.
You are left with 7 picks to distribute between other retorts or books.
These can be 7 books in L/D, or get to 8 in one of the 3 node realms. True, this way you'll have no retort other than NM itself. Is that the main difficulty you find in it?

Yes, the main difficulty is having few picks and being forced to spread across magic types, which weakens the caster in each magic type. If you've ever tried using all 11 on one type, the game actually gets a lot easier.

[Rex Little]

Full disclosure: one of the things helping me to win that challenge game is a bug in the game. I'm sure everyone who's played MOM much knows that sometimes, parts of the game get corrupted at random. At times this will crash the game, but not always; it can simply cause garbled messages or city names or other effects. Well, my game barfed all over the hero attributes. I loaded it up one day and found that Rakir (my only hero) had Leadership +3, Armsmaster, Super Armsmaster, and about three more experience levels than he'd had when I saved the game. (He also had Arcane Power, although that didn't help any because he'd lost his spell points.) A bit later, I took over a node and picked up another hero, Theria. Only she wasn't the wimpy little thief I've always known her as. This was Theria on steroids. She had all the abilities Rakir had picked up, plus Grand Lord experience (2 gold circles) and 192 spell points! Since I have the Disintegrate and Doom Bolt spells, she can basically run around kicking the crap out of anything she bumps into, single-handed. She went up a level and now has 220 points, which lets her throw four Disintegrates or five Doom Bolts, whichever suits the situation best.

Later I picked up a couple more heros, and they both started out as Grand Lords with more spell points than any hero can ever have in a normal game. Strangely enough, none of the enemy heros I've run into have been enhanced.

I think I'd be winning even without this advantage--I was doing pretty well before it happened--but it certainly does help seal the deal.

[Tuberski]

Do you remember enemy heroes ever having magic items?

[NeOmega]

Every now and then an enemy hero might have a weapon, or two, but hte fact is the AI was incredibly careless with it's heros. It never even tried to nurture them into any great status.

[Tuberski]

I remember in the earlier versions they seemed to carry them occasionally, but after 1.31 came out, I NEVER saw an AI hero with a magic item.

[moomin]

One of the sad developments in 1.31, indeed. Still the game is unplayable without and on the balance it's a minor thing.

[MattyBoy]

Things would get very interesting indeed if the AI did a better job with its heroes.

[Bosh]

Never played with the 1.31 version, but I always liked life magic with trolls the best not only is it nice an ironic but I just love my regenerating trolls so much that I have a hard time bringing myself to spend a lot of points on any kind of magic that will do anything besides make my beautiful trolls even more trollicious

[aaglo]

Has it ever accured to you, that propably the AI hero items cannot be seen?

Sometimes the AI hero seems to have extraordinary abilities...

[NeOmega]

Nah, cuz when you kill a hero you get it's stuff. Too bad it was one of the worst AI's ever, prolly the game was ahead of it's time, and the depth was well beyond the capabilities of an affordable AI.

[aaglo]

Hmmm... I've only played the latest version (was it 1.3 or 1.31), so I don't know about the AI behaviour in the earlier versions.

[Rex Little]

The challenge game is over. The end was anticlimactic; I had dozens of slingers, paladins and magicians streaming toward Sss'ra's castle, but a single airship got there ahead of them and finished him off. Since he had no magic points and I could throw around things like Call Chaos and Disintegrate, it was no contest.

[moomin]

MOM is pretty much too easy on any difficulty level if you go tower-hunting. Much too easy. A house rule I've had for years is that you can't go for the towers unless all the players other towns have already been taken over/eradicated - it makes it much more interesting, since the AI can use pretty nasty global spells against you.

[MattyBoy]

Rex, I expected the end to be anticlimactic with node mastery. The early game is where I struggle.

Moomin, that is a tough rule to set for yourself. I only get through because I go after the towers at every opportunity. Looks like my MoM playing needs some improving.

[NeOmega]

I always used to play the take all cities first rule. But, even then it sucked, because the AI rarely defends it's cities.

[Rex Little]

Node mastery didn't really have a whole lot to do with the game. It helped me pick up a couple of nodes earlier than I might have otherwise (particularly the sorcery nodes where I webbed the Sky Drakes), but all that really did was give me a huge mana surplus (over 5000 at the end).

[MariOne]

Well, it was a "surplus" because you didn't find (or bother to...) ways to put it to use and win faster...

[aaglo]

Try to pick node mastery and chaos/nature/sorcery mastery. From the mastered nodes you'll get tons of additional mana

[moomin]

Megamana games are somewhat boring though. Unless it's a SCC, of course.

BTW, can anybody confirm that 255 is the largest number of cities you can have? I seem to have run into that limit in a current game.

[MattyBoy]

Don't know the limit sorry, Moomin.
What do you mean by SCC, btw?