MOM Hint II

[Rex Little]

An interesting approach; I'll have to try something like it. I don't agree with all his choices; I'd certainly forget about "charismatic", since the enemy wizards always attack you before long anyway. (Granted, that special ability has other advantages.) I'd probably also dump "artificer"; I almost never make magic items, preferring to find them in nodes, towers, etc. I'd probably take a chaos book and a sorcery book with the leftover picks.

[Father Beast]

Ahh...... But the whole point of having only one book is that you have few spells to research and the Spell Of Mastery is available very quickly.

add more spellbooks and you have to research more before Spell Of Mastery comes up.

Charismatic also helps deal with merchants, halving cost of artifacts bought, coupled with artificer allows you to outfit your heroes with great things, neccesary since you don't have that many great spells.

anyway, with only one book, you have 3 common and 1 uncommon spells from your field, plus 12 arcane spells, making a total of 16 spells before spell of mastery. since you have 6 (or was it 8) to choose from, it actually comes up faster than that.

to each their own, I guess.

[Jack the Bodiless]

IIRC, the research points you've spent on all your other spells are offset against the research cost of Spell Of Mastery. So getting the chance to research SOM early isn't an advantage, it will cost more.

Still an interesting strategy though, because you get to use all those specials while you're researching.

[Jack the Bodiless]

A few things I've tried:

Undead trolls (e.g. Black Channels). Undead units don't heal, but regeneration doesn't count as normal healing (it's Nature magic, not Life). Undead trolls regenerate, negating the biggest disadvantage of being undead.

For a challenge, try Lizardmen, Gnolls etc with Node Mastery. You're very limited in the buildings you can construct, but you get some decent units for early capture of Nodes. I had a very satisfying victory on Impossible with Lizardmen once (I was lucky, I got Armageddon and my magical power skyrocketed).

Pikemen are VERY powerful if you can give them more than 1 hit point per figure: they get Armor Piercing, and there's 8 in a unit rather than 6 for Swordsmen. With boosted hit points, even Great Wyrms will get badly hurt chewing through them. When I'm playing Humans, I generally use them instead of Swordsmen as basic city guards, then cast Heroism and Lionheart (if possible) on them when they're attacked. With 32 hit points per unit and all combat bonuses multiplied by 8, they're awesome.

[Rex Little]

Jack is right: research of other spells counts against the cost of Mastery, so having it come up sooner is no help.

I agree about pikemen. When the computer uses them, I have a lot of trouble taking them out unless I have good ranged attackers.

[Father Beast]

I just started a game with the one book strategy. when selecting, I discovered that the rules have been modified in 1.31, so myrran is 3 picks and chaneller is 2. I wonder if I can have a wizard with no books at all?!!
the spell of mastery came up pretty fast. but it says it'll take 3600 turns to research

I suppose I can cut that down with libraries, parthenons, etc. found a few more cities and continue. would also help if I managed to get hold of that node nearby, but my doom drakes are no match for the fire drakes protecting it. Dang.

[Father Beast]

I tried it again, and started a game with no books at all. Spell of mastery comes up really fast, but it takes 9600 truns to research!!

I really don't need the mana and skill, anyway, since I don't have any decent spells. maybe I should try some specials that don't take spells to take advantage of them.

I've sort of turned this into a civ survival game. the goal is to survive long enough to cas the spell of mastery. wonder if it'll work.

[Father Beast]

Spell of mastery researcher

OK, so I got trashed badly in my "no books" game. got banished twice before I was permanently trashed the third time. lack of spell really cripples you.

But I went back and tried it this way:
2 nature
2 sorcery
2 chaos
Runelord
Sage Master
Myrran

Runelord increases the speed at which you research arcane spells, and sage master increase the speed at researching all spells. I took Myrran and Sss'ra's picture to be alone on the Myrran plane. Turns out that Runelord also gives a discount in casting arcane spells. When I got spell of mastery finally researched (which only took 140 turns), it only cost 3750 mana to cast, as opposed to 5,000 like the spellbook says. I guess Runelord is like arcane mastery.

I was on a large continent with 5 neutral beastmen cities, which I took early on. that's probably what gave me my leg up on the game. I looked around and couldn't find any adamantium, but did find some silver I could transmute to mithril, and the cities there became my Unit machines. With mithril slingers and Minotaurs, I was able to take most of the ruins and nodes and become fairly stong before I met another wizard.

I actually cast spell of mastery and won without ever going to the arcanus plane at all!!

[Jack the Bodiless]

The Runelord discount also stacks with the Artificer discount for creating magic items. With 50% off for Artificer and 25% off for Runelord, you can make items at 25% of the usual cost!

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
The Runelord discount also stacks with the Artificer discount for creating magic items. With 50% off for Artificer and 25% off for Runelord, you can make items at 25% of the usual cost!

Good heavens! it make me wonder just how many combinations there are available at startup to combine for absurd discounts. the guy who chose conjuror and sorcery mastery for a ridiculous discount on summoning sorcery creatures. then he got a couple more sorcery books and it got really absurd.

most of these things are availble to all players, so it's really not that unbalancing, I guess.
On another subject, I decided to try the life supertactic #1 (with torin), and I foundmyself picking up a few specials from ruins and nodes. I got a sorcery and a nature book, but then I managed to get Node Mastery and Nature mastery. Apparently the game doesn't worry if you have the preqs in giving these specials (ie, 4 nature books for nature mastery, etc)

Funny thing is, the computer gave me the nature mastery (doubling power from nature nodes) and node mastery (doubling all node power), meaning that I get 4 TIMES as much power from nature nodes!!

[Father Beast]

Just trying out some of these strategies. Life supertactic #2 (stream of life) is good in that you can set your tax to 3 per person and never have any cash flow problems.

It's also good for building new cities. remember waiting forever for an outpost to become a hamlet? being ticked off that you couldn't rush build anything as an outpost? cast stream of life on the outpost and watch it boom. I once had an outpost grow into a hamlet in 4 turns!!

running a little short on mana? a little alchemy from your vast treasury can take care of that. temporarily at least.

the downside to the stream of life tactic is that you don't have a quick win. you have to build up to it.

[Ecthy]

Never achieved such a quick win anyway, so I should be fine with that... I'll have to play that game again, haven't played in months... Shadowstriek and I used to be the Aplyton MOM Kings

I shall try one of those extreme strategies

[Father Beast]

Extreme strategies listing

Let's see, if I define the extreme strategies as having 11 books in one field, which gives you an uncommon and a rare spell to start with....

Life #1 choose incarnation as the rare spell. summon Torin the Chosen and kick butt everywhere.

Life #2 choose stream of life. cast it on your cities and max the tax. grow and get rich fast.

Death #1 choose Wraiths. summon a wraith and take the nearby cities

Death #2 Choose Zombie Mastery. has anyone tried this?

Chaos Chaos Spawn

Nature Stone Giants

Sorcery either Sky Drakes or Storm Giants


what Am I missing?

[Jack the Bodiless]

Life #3: Lionheart, use boosted Pikemen.

Chaos #2: Doom Bats. Not as powerful as Chaos Spawn, but a LOT faster.

Nature #2: Gorgons.

Sorcery: Sky Drakes are Very Rare, you can't begin with them. Phantom Beasts are powerful (though they can only be conjured in combat, you'll need to push up your Skill).

[Jack the Bodiless]

I'm currently doing well with a one-book strategy (it should have been a zero-book strategy, but I had one point left). I chose Beastmen, and didn't expand at all until my capital was fully developed. My first settlers were accompanied by elite Minotaurs (War College and Warlord), which have successfully defended all my colonies against attacks. I've nearly conquered Myrror, and I don't think the wizards on Arcanus can stop me.

Lack of spells was a problem, but Alchemy let me use that Beastman magic to help build my cities quickly, and Minotaurs are tough enough to put up a good fight without magical assistance.