MOM on Impossible

[aaglo]

Harry Seldon.

Yes, I've seen on numerous occasions some competition in Myrror. They can have their additional pics to send them to Myrror.

[Harry Seldon]

I'm playing a game now that has Horus and Sss'ra on Myrrar with me. I tried a 1L/4C/3S book combo with the Myrrar pick and Conjurer. I'm having a tough time of it with no really strong spells. I'm researching Phantom Beast and have a good mana base so I'm hoping to mount a good counter offensive. Up until this point I've been struggling to stay afloat with only three cities to speak of.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
I'm playing a game now that has Horus and Sss'ra on Myrrar with me. I tried a 1L/4C/3S book combo with the Myrrar pick and Conjurer. I'm having a tough time of it with no really strong spells. I'm researching Phantom Beast and have a good mana base so I'm hoping to mount a good counter offensive. Up until this point I've been struggling to stay afloat with only three cities to speak of.

One of the most useful Sorcery spells in the early game is phantom warrior. As long as there are no ranged attackers. Even on Impossible they are effective.

And, yes, there will always be at least one other wizard on Myrror on Impossible. I only ever play against 4 other wizards so I don't know how it works out with less than 4.

ACK!

[da_hal]

i'm a little late into the discussion, but here's what i do:

11 book strats:
life: stream of life. generally only works with elves because other races (you can't pick myrrar) can't handle the upkeep.

death: that high level summon that can only move 1 square turn . you can eliminate everybody with only a few of these.

nature: griffon? the high level summon that looks like a winged cow. another one you can kill everybody with. alternately, you can go with nature's blessing and do a variation of stream of life strat. not as effective though. also works with either the money spell or the one that makes all units built start as veterans.

air: storm giant + invisibility + flight. it is possible to get by without invisibility early on if the computer doesn't have missile units. otherwise, you can just blast anything melee without taking attacks.

death2: that spell that takes 10 health. get your fastest unit and take out the ruins/temples only using this spell. helps if that unit has flight, such as draconians (take over a random town of dracs if possible, because you can't pick them with 12 books.)

air 2: invisiblity, flight. same as above but use a mortal unit, generally works best if used with high level halfling slingers or elven longbowmen.

blitz strats: these generally involve rushing cp's, random towns, and weak towers/ruins/nodes.
elven longbowmen rush
human paladin rush
berzerker rush
magician rush (human or elf, slow as hell. get a pathfinding hero or the spell.)
myrran race rush (dark elf, any unit, but nightmares work the best; troll, any unit; or draconian bowmen)
of these, i would rate zerker and draconian as the strongest. i consider the troll rush pretty cheap.

racial strats:
nomad gold strat: requires taking over a human town for engineers to get the road gold bonus. takes a while. the strat i usually used when i didn't have 12 books.

myrran gold strat: since you automatically get enchanted roads for any road built in myrra, this makes dwarves a feasible choice.

elf strat: abuse the mana bonus and unbalanced strength of elven longbowmen.

halfling food strat: similar as nomad strat, but uses excess food to generate gold surplus.

human strat: build every single building. send out engineers asap for roads, and cover every single productive square with roads. build 1-2 paladins, and jack them up with whatever unit spells you have to take out weak ruins. not a strong strat, but will result in higher scores. make a defensive stand with whatever towns you have and wait for heros.

The hero strat:
my friend and i used to do this when we found out that Brax kicks ass and why. this is my preferred road to victory. to make a long story short, get the good unit spells, cast all of them on your strongest hero, and send them out to do some damage. if you have warrax, he can generally win the game single handedly, unless they use web/cracks call (a totally cheapass spell if you ask me.) flight/invisibility/spell lock is all that you need for near-total indestructibility, anything else is an added bonus. for weps, the best are the ones that boost mana. the best heros besides warrax are the ones that use spell points for normal attack missiles. call hero and summon champion speed this process. create weapon/create artifact are also necessary for this strat, as well as the mod that gives a discount on these (artificer?)

minimal book strats:
i forget the names of most of the mods, but i generally used 1-2 nature, 1-2 air, 1-2 life. the best low level spell choices are phantom warrior, floating island, and heroism. i used the mod that gave you create weapon/create artifact off the bat with a discount, and the one that gives a bonus to mana from a node and allowed you to not be affected by a node's magical resistance. i immediately started crafting uber weapons/armor/jewelery, and started taking over nodes asap. even the early heros can rock with the right eq, especially those with bows. later heros require weps with high mana bonus, and it's a good idea to make weps/jewelry with only the mana bonus to be destroyed later for better stuff.

using this strat, many many minimal book strats are feasible. i've been successful with anywhere from 2-6 books. just remembered: the mod that allows 1:1 conversion of gold:mana also helps in this strat.

high scoring strats:
4 books, 1 each in nature, air, fire, and either life/death. farm everybody for spells, cover every possible square with towns (including the ice) and use the nature/fire spells to terraform the planet to max population. usually i did one of the rush strats and blockaded the last town. if i was desperate for books, i would save games before the tougher nodes to get more books.

taking out the hard nodes:
get warrax (or another strong spell caster, i forget what was the attack rating breakpoint, but there's a level where they can start hurting the air dragons and such) and pack every slot with +mana, + movement, +damage (not sure if +damage affected their missiles or not.) you need a minimum of 14 movement points, with or without the extra movement spell. fire, then run counter clockwise around the edge of the screen (watch out for trees which will slow you down if you aren't flying.) repeat as necessary. usually easier with only 1 hero rather than 2+, as the monsters tend to separate.

easy ways of taking out cities:
use 1 unit and summon a mob every turn. the best are the illusion monsters as they do a lot of damage when they are attacked (for phantom warriors, i used to not attack and just sit there and take blows until the enemy was dead.)

take out heros first. it is not a bad idea to run away if you can't kill all the heros in the first wave. it's not fun to lose warrax to a web/dispell/dispell/cracks call/cracks call/cracks call/cracks call in a single turn.

block the gate. you can put three units in front of a town's gate if it has city walls. the units will not leave the city, and only 1-2 can attack the unit standing directly in front of the gate. all three of your units, however, can attack the unit defending the gate. the nice thing about this is that they will politely move a new unit to the gate when the last one dies, so you don't need to move.

destroy the local population. if the enemy has a higher defense bonus than attack bonus, so it's better for them to die while attacking you, then trample on buildings in the town. this will force the computer to attack you to defend the city.

use the road. every town has a little road extending to your army. movement is 50% on these roads. what i do is use these either offensively or defensively. on offense, if i have greater strength, i send my slowest unit on the road and my fastest on the grass so everybody moves up at the same time. defensively, i place my strongest unit on the road, and wait. this causes a bottleneck so that my strong unit only has to face 1 unit at a time. works best when i have greater numbers but slower units.

defensive spells > offensive spells vs players, vice versa for nodes. should be self explanatory. best for defense is that one spell that makes spells fail, healing, resurrect, and summoned monsters. many many good offense spells, best probably being call lightning, death one that takes 10 hp, fire spells, and the air bolt one, although call lightning tends to crash my computer a lot.

[DaveV]

A good way to slow down the AIs is to play with Small landmass (selected when you start the game). If you're lucky, several of the AIs will end up on little 1-city islands, and their settlers will wander around vainly looking for a site to build a city.

I usually just play on Hard level, since I don't like to use exploits (breaking items for mana, stomping the empty outposts the AIs love to build, saving/reloading, etc.). Like in MOO, a Hard game playing a weak race and/or wizard can be as difficult as an Impossible game with a strong starting pick.

[Kindbud]

I scanned most of this thread so if someone else mentioned it sorry but...

Got to LOVE those halflings! Besides the food bonus, those slingers are wicked powerful early in the game, especially if you have some white books with heroism.

The food bonus is really nice and they are, IMHO, a fast out-of-the-gate race that can dominate on impossible early in the game. When I take the halfings I usually don't spend the three picks to start Myrran (though I love the enchanted roads). I always hope to find a highmen city by mid-game so I can get some paladins out eventually. The paladin is pretty tough to beat for a defender unless besieged by a large stack so even though the upkeep is a little stiff on them. One is usually good in a town to keep it safe.

[NeOmega]

Myrorr race. Choose mostly retorts as opposed to spell books. It's been a long time since I played, but I used to play at impossible only, and win almost every time.

I always chose sorcery also, for spell balst to counter great wasting, because great wasting was a game breaker.

[bakalov]

Look at my post in the best race thread or try:
LLLL Archmage Myrran Warlord with Dwarves; Last pick should be Alchemy or Nature book. This is very good strat if you know how to play. Cast Just Cause very early. Maintain tax as high as possible. Exploit the resources on Myrror and do not forget to build roads.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tuberski


One of the most useful Sorcery spells in the early game is phantom warrior. As long as there are no ranged attackers. Even on Impossible they are effective.

And, yes, there will always be at least one other wizard on Myrror on Impossible. I only ever play against 4 other wizards so I don't know how it works out with less than 4.

ACK!

If the enemy has missle troops you can still get your money's worth out of these fine troops by waiting until the enemy brings a unit close enough that you can summon these guys next to it. Then all you have to do is attack before he gets a chance to shoot them down. This doesn't work as well when the enemy is hanging back and riddling you with a lot of archers, but it is useful most of the time. Even if they merely soak up enemy arrows it might make the difference between victory and defeat.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Kindbud
I scanned most of this thread so if someone else mentioned it sorry but...

Got to LOVE those halflings! Besides the food bonus, those slingers are wicked powerful early in the game, especially if you have some white books with heroism.

The food bonus is really nice and they are, IMHO, a fast out-of-the-gate race that can dominate on impossible early in the game. When I take the halfings I usually don't spend the three picks to start Myrran (though I love the enchanted roads). I always hope to find a highmen city by mid-game so I can get some paladins out eventually. The paladin is pretty tough to beat for a defender unless besieged by a large stack so even though the upkeep is a little stiff on them. One is usually good in a town to keep it safe.

I did mention them earlier. The "Lucky" attribute is also great as it gives every roll you make an additional +1.

ACK!

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Sikander


If the enemy has missle troops you can still get your money's worth out of these fine troops by waiting until the enemy brings a unit close enough that you can summon these guys next to it. Then all you have to do is attack before he gets a chance to shoot them down. This doesn't work as well when the enemy is hanging back and riddling you with a lot of archers, but it is useful most of the time. Even if they merely soak up enemy arrows it might make the difference between victory and defeat.

They will also eat missiles that would otherwise be used to destroy your normal units.

Good point.

ACK!

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tuberski


They will also eat missiles that would otherwise be used to destroy your normal units.

Good point.

ACK!

If you have healing it is more efficient to let them shoot up your regular troops (assuming that they don't have enough firepower to destroy those units) and then heal them, as those phantom troops are really bad on defense. But in a pinch, I'll use the phantoms as arrow fodder to preserve my permanent units.

[Harry Seldon]

Any of the summons are good in a pinch. I tend to prefer Chaos over other magic classes. I drop Fire Elementals all over the board in important battles. Sometimes it's enough for my normal units to just have the enemy softened up a little before they go in for the kill.