Any good resources for learning ffh2?

[Bobchillingworth]

Well, they're probably not ideal


Fire 2 is okay- that allows you to summon Fireballs, which are kind of the jack-of-all-trades of summons- they can cause collateral damage (but not as much as a pure attack spell, like Maelstrom), they can kill units (but don't hit as hard as most summons), and they can bombard city defenses (which is unique to them). Fireballs generally don't see a lot of use in RB MP, but they aren't bad by any means.


Enchantment 2 has a very specific purpose- it gives +1 strength to archery and gunpowder units. It can be useful if, for instance, you are playing as the Ljosalfar or Amurities and are building an army of their LB UU. But it isn't going to do anything for you otherwise.


Water 2 grants the casting Mage (and only the Mage) the permanent ability to walk on water tiles. This can be very useful- parking Mages with this ability + some attack spells on a small lake will make them invulnerable to anything that isn't also capable of water walking or flying. But this spell also does not do any damage on its own, so unless you have a plan that involves sticking casters on water tiles it's best to avoid it.


Fire 1 unfortunately doesn't do any damage, but it does burn away forests and jungles, albeit slowly. The spell adds a "smoke" modifier to a single jungle or forest tile; smoke reduces the tile defensive bonus and has a chance of turning into fire, which turns the forest OR jungle into a "burnt forest", which will slowly regrow into a regular forest over time. Most units cannot walk through fire tiles either, making them impassible until either the fire dies down of its own accord or you cast the Water 1 spell "Spring" next to it. Fire 1 is most useful for setting a few fires in any vast jungles the map generator produced, which will eventually burn them down, to be replaced with forests. Of course just chopping them is often faster. I wouldn't burn down the Elves' forests though- because Elven civilizations can build improvements on top of forest tiles, that makes their forests very valuable for non-Elven civilizations to capture intact.



You'll very likely need a few more mages as well- I would bring at least a couple with Maelstrom (Air 2), and one with Mutate (Chaos 2) to provide several potentially useful promotions to your line-fighting units. Any priest unit with Medic II can cure the majority of bad promotions you can receive through Mutate.

[haphazard1]

Fire 2 is okay- that allows you to summon Fireballs, which are kind of the jack-of-all-trades of summons- they can cause collateral damage (but not as much as a pure attack spell, like Maelstrom), they can kill units (but don't hit as hard as most summons), and they can bombard city defenses (which is unique to them). Fireballs generally don't see a lot of use in RB MP, but they aren't bad by any means.

Fire 2 (Fireball) can be quite useful as a replacement for siege units -- as Bobchillingworth noted above the fireball is (I think) unique as a summons that can bombard defenses. Most siege units are non-living and are not affected by Haste (Body 1), so they are often slower than the rest of your army. Having fast-moving mages that can then summon fireballs to reduce defenses can save a lot of time. And you can always throw them at stacks for splash damage to soften up enemies.

Fireball also is very important for the two elven civs, as they are unable to build standard siege units.

I find the Body mana spells extremely useful:

Body 1 (Haste) -- A single adept with Haste can boost the movement of an entire stack, at least the living members. Being able to move your forces rapidly can be extremely powerful.

Body 2 (Regeneration) -- Adds the regeneration promo to every living member of an entire stack, greatly boosting their healing rate. Have a medic unit (disciple or priest) along as well and your armies will heal incredibly fast. It's like having a super-medic GG unit.

Death magic can be powerful for spamming a bunch of summoned units (skellies and spectres). To really get the most from this you want multiple sources of Death mana, and a large number of adepts/mages with the spells so you can summon many undead.

Air 1 (Fair Winds) is really useful if you have a lot of naval units, as it boosts ship movement. If you are mostly on land, it can be ignored. The next tier spell Air 2 (Maelstrom) is a solid AoE damager, so Air 1 is not a dead end like some mana types.

Water 1 (Spring) is situationally useful if you have a lot of desert, as it permanently transforms desert tiles to plains. (Flood Plains are not affected, but oases are.) Very helpful if you have a big chunk of desert in the middle of your lands. Note that if you founded a city on desert this will remove the defense penalty for the city. Also puts out burning forests and jungles.

Sun 1 (Scorch) is a similarly situational spell, useful if you have a lot of ice tiles. Scorch will permanently transform them to tundra, which is still crummy but can be improved. With the right civics and techs, a tundra farm is actually not a bad tile. Tundra can also have a forest planted on it if you have a Priest of Leaves available, followed by a lumbermill for some hammers. It can be a big help if you have iceball cities planted to claim resources or mana nodes -- Scorch can turn them into decent cities.

Lots of other spells can be useful in the right situations. But the above are useful for pretty much anyone, if you are building some adepts and need something to do with them while waiting for passive XP to accumulate.

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks guys, really useful information so far. Are there any spells or spell branches that tend to get very little (or no) use in multiplayer? If so, which ones and why?

My present alternative to spells...

(Yeah, I'll up the difficulty next time.)

[Dantski]

I suggest reading my ffh2 threads and then doing the opposite of what I did from turn 2 onwards.

[Ellimist]

(I've been busy today, but I just added more to my previous post.)

[The Black Sword]

Everyone's already given good advice but I remember writing something about the choice of magic tech for a mage army in thread for 33, so might as well paste it.

I've been doing some thinking on what path I want to go through to Sorcery. I already have Body, Chaos and Earth mana and I'll get Metamagic at Sorcery obviously. At the moment I see 5 mana nodes that should be mine. The options:

Alteration:
Enchantment(20% strength), Life (destroy Undead), Nature(meh)

Not bad for support mages, when you consider my main opponents are Pyre Zombies and Calabim spectres. But I already have the most important body mana and no summons is obviously a problem for a mage army.

Divination:
Law(Hosts of Einherjar), Mind(Inspire, Charm), Spirit(Hope), Sun(Scorch, Blinding Light), ToD

Hosts make very good summons, they beat Zombies and spectres(need 6 death nodes to tie) and Blinding Light is a great support spell. In addition, Hope would be a very nice method of popping borders. You'd think the ToD would be a big draw, but I'm not sure what I'd take with it. Inspire, Charm, Scorch are all minor boosts too, though I'm not sure what the advantage of Charm is over BL.

Elementalism:
Air(Maelstrom), Fire(Fireball), Water(Spring)

Maelstrom and Fireball is not a bad combo. Both only give collateral to 30% though. The big problem is the opponents, Fireballs will only be (S2 v S4) against zombies. They deal with spectres well enough (S4 vs S3) but it's my understanding that they disappear before they can defend, can anyone confirm this? No pillaging either.

Necromancy:
Death(skels, spectres(S8)), Entropy(Rust, Pitbeast), Shadow(meh)

Spectres are the big draw clearly. High strength, 2 base moves and can pillage. They do worse than Hosts vs Zombies and enemy spectres though. Actually Pitbeasts are probably better against those two opponents, but again they're worse than the Hosts. Rust is a good spell, and skel spam is nice as well, but I'm inclined to think Blinding Light has more flexibility than them.

[Bobchillingworth]

Are there any spells or spell branches that tend to get very little (or no) use in multiplayer? If so, which ones and why?

Yeah, a few... let's see:


The Shadow Line

None of the Shadow spells are necessarily bad, they just aren't particularly useful against human players. The first Shadow spell, Blur, gives your stack immunity to first strikes- but human players generally don't use many units with first strikes. Plus some mounted units ignore them anyway. The second Shadow spell is Shadowalk, which enables your stack to ignore city defenses from buildings. Unfortunately human players typically don't build many city-defense increasing structures, plus there aren't any buildings which give a very large city defense bonus, and you could just bombard the city with some Fireballs instead. The final Shadow spell is Summon Mistform- Mistorms are really weak T4 summons in regular FFH, but are like disposable Assassins in EitB, which would be really useful... except if you manage to get a unit capable of summoning them, you'll probably prefer to expend your limited promotions on other, even more powerful spells instead. They're also worthless as Illusions, so the Svarts (who start with Shadow mana) and Gibbon (whose Esus shrine gives Shadow mana) have no reason to bother.


The Nature Line

Nature 1 gives units a 1-turn defensive bonus in forests; this really has no use except a little extra protection when invading Elves. Nature 2 gives +1 strength to recon units, which can be really useful- although several civs won't have much reason to bother with the recon line beyond Hunters, and captured Scorpions in EitB can cast it. Nature 3 is theoretically awesome- a terraforming spell which enables you to eventually transform all of your land into grasslands and plains. Except by the time you can reach it, it's probably too late to get much benefit from tweaking your land. There is also a ritual which essentially does the same thing, except instantly for every tile you own, and some T4 units come with Nature 3 for free.


Those are the two least-seen. I would also add Spirit if you don't need units who can resist Fear, and Life if you aren't combating Hell terrain and/or undead. Spirit 3 has the dubious distinction of being the single-worst spell in the game, at least in base FFH. I forget if EitB buffed it.

[Qgqqqqq]

Spirit 3 gives +50% GPP to a city (IIRC)

[Lord Parkin]

Okay, I'm completely at a loss to explain Amelanchier's power zigzag here. Some kind of hero completion/loss? Any ideas?

(The game is long since won, but I'm enjoying playing around with the heroes. Got a Scorched Staff from an event and trying to get a ridiculous affinity bonus for Eurabatres. )

[Mardoc]

That's March of the Trees (his worldspell). That's the one that creates a Treant for every forest in his borders - but those all expire 5 turns after he casts the spell.