My CoM effective strategy

[GMBarak]

It's funny how most of those strategies involve heroes, especially with high stats.
But yeah, definitely try to get them online ASAP if you're serious about lair clearing, heroes used right are very powerful.

yes, it's a hero based strategy, it's important to rush summon hero with this strategy, and create artifact to get invisibility chain mail/misc which enables to clear the remaining hard nodes.
you need to cast heroism/holy armor/holy weapon to buff the heroes so they will be strong enough to do the job and create the appropriate item for the right task +1 movement, exorcist, 3 def, 3 resist chain etc...
Also, to get the good heroes (listed above) you need to kill inadequate heroes also listed in the initial post,
The only hero I have second thoughts of is the dervish, because his +1 movement can help him clear vampires and great lizards with just two cheap artifacts: +1 movement and +1 movement and exorcise.
you can use him in start to kill some nodes and then kill him to get a better hero.
Another rule: if I already have one melee hero, like the War monk with luck (or other good random trait), I will tend to get rid of another melee hero that I got (like the assassin).
Also: if you have 2 or 3 good heroes don't kill the next heroes that come, keep them, because the chances to get another hero are too low to begin with when you have 2 heroes and above and you need to rely on summon hero or finding heroes in nodes/lairs to get more heroes.

[WhiteMage]

Thanks for your detailed report. It is very enlightening. Also, congratulations for your 50% win rate on Phantasmal with large map 13 wizards default settings.

1. Do you usually choose your starting race, books, retorts, spells?
2. Under what circumstances do you load game?
3. Do you surround the nodes, towers, and ruins with cheap units to prevent them from spawning?
4. How do you deal with the incoming AI player units so they can’t explore your cities in order to prevent devastating city spells like Earthquake? (I build a line of cheap units to defend my country’s border from all sides.)
5. By playing defaults, do you mean all score modifiers are off?
6. About how many hours it takes for you to win Phantasmal with large map 13 wizards default settings?
7. When do you declare your win? When the green win button shows up?
8. Do you accept any starting position to get your 50% win rate?
9. Do you do extensive micromanagement of cities to take advantage of the frequent and cumulative rounding bonuses/penalties?

In my games I spend most of my time to flip workers and move cheap units to protect borders which I find boring and makes my games long.

[GMBarak]

1. Do you usually choose your starting race, books, retorts, spells?
Yes, as described above, I know you always pick random so, you winning with random settings will be of course considered a considerable achievement.

2. Under what circumstances do you load game?
I never reload, even if I misclicked or make an unintentional move, I start a new game if it's a really bad start, for example 5X5 island, I don't require starting with gold or some special resource. even if I don't have any gold/silver/coal I play the game. even if I don't have the web spell in my spell-book.
but, if I don't get a decent hero after about june-dec 1503 I also restart.

3. Do you surround the nodes, towers, and ruins with cheap units to prevent them from spawning?
No I don't, but that is an interesting idea. usually I have cavalry and longbowmen to take care of them, and usually there are hardly any nodes in my territory after something like 1505-1506, because I clear them.

4. How do you deal with the incoming AI player units so they can’t explore your cities in order to prevent devastating city spells like Earthquake? (I build a line of cheap units to defend my country’s border from all sides.)
yes, I also use cheap units to block them, but since the pace of the game is so quick (in my last game all nodes towers and ruins clear by jan 1509) , I usually just eliminate them if they are a real nuisance. but the best strategy is just to ignore them, let them do the damage and continue to clear high value nodes. I can allocate one or max two heroes to take care of them if it's too much trouble. but as I said best is just to let them do their damage and focus on nodes/towers etc...

5. By playing defaults, do you mean all score modifiers are off?
Yes.

6. About how many hours it takes for you to win Phantasmal with large map 13 wizards default settings?
Many many, I spend something like 3-12 minutes on a turn and do elaborate calculations and planning.
every hero must have a plan for his next turn before I finish his turn, so I leave 1 movement for my heroes, and do allocation of artifacts to each hero before end of turn.

7. When do you declare your win? When the green win button shows up?
usually when I can eliminate whoever I feel like and have most population and cities for me it's a win usually it's around 1511-1512 with about 600 SP and about 80% of rare spells learned from 3-4 different realms.

8. Do you accept any starting position to get your 50% win rate?
definitely not, if it's on a peak or on an Island, or really unfriendly without any nodes I can take, I restart.

9. Do you do extensive micromanagement of cities to take advantage of the frequent and cumulative rounding bonuses/penalties?
that I don't do. I do heavy micromanagement, but that is just too far for me.

[GMBarak]

I exaggerated the 50% win rate at phantasmal, for me it's more like 15%-20%, the idea is that if you have good luck at start and use the strategy mentioned above, you can snowball to a clearing all nodes/lairs/towers at about 1509 and eliminating whoever you like at about 10 turns from year 1509 an on...

[WhiteMage]

1. Do you usually choose your starting race, books, retorts, spells?
Yes, as described above, I know you always pick random so, you winning with random settings will be of course considered a considerable achievement.
In my estimate going fully random (where offered) is roughly equivalent to going 1 AI difficulty higher. So Lunatic becomes Phantasmal, etc. Also, Undeveloped Start, Plane of Water, No Trading, Monsters Gone Wild, Final War, and strictly random starting spells make the game about +1 more level harder. So in my estimate if you would play on Master with such settings that would be roughly equivalent to playing Phantasmal with your settings.
This is not in any way criticism of your excellent report, your amazing playing skills, or your personal preferences how you enjoy playing your games.
But maybe you can go down to Lunatic (or Master) and play with my rules a few times to see if you enjoy it and compare your win rates to your earlier reported rates.

2. Under what circumstances do you load game?
I never reload, even if I misclicked or make an unintentional move, I start a new game if it's a really bad start, for example 5X5 island, I don't require starting with gold or some special resource. even if I don't have any gold/silver/coal I play the game. even if I don't have the web spell in my spell-book. but, if I don't get a decent hero after about june-dec 1503 I also restart.
OK. Just don't forget to include all cases into your win rate calculation. I just noticed you lowered your earlier 50% win rate to 15%-20%. Thanks for the correction. I suspected it.

3. Do you surround the nodes, towers, and ruins with cheap units to prevent them from spawning?
No I don't, but that is an interesting idea. usually I have cavalry and longbowmen to take care of them, and usually there are hardly any nodes in my territory after something like 1505-1506, because I clear them.
I do that on Monsters gone wild. It works well together with the 8 spearmen defending most of my cities and my country border defense line, so I can usually keep them safe. Note that even nodes I own can spawn hostiles if Call of the Wild AI spell is in effect.

4. How do you deal with the incoming AI player units so they can’t explore your cities in order to prevent devastating city spells like Earthquake? (I build a line of cheap units to defend my country’s border from all sides.)
yes, I also use cheap units to block them, but since the pace of the game is so quick (in my last game all nodes towers and ruins clear by jan 1509) , I usually just eliminate them if they are a real nuisance. but the best strategy is just to ignore them, let them do the damage and continue to clear high value nodes. I can allocate one or max two heroes to take care of them if it's too much trouble. but as I said best is just to let them do their damage and focus on nodes/towers etc...
I can't use cheap units to block them individually since they come fast from all directions and sometimes detected late, invisible, or they are way too strong/many to defeat them each. I think their hostile anti-city spells are so strong that it is best to not let them explore my cities.

6. About how many hours it takes for you to win Phantasmal with large map 13 wizards default settings?
Many many, I spend something like 3-12 minutes on a turn and do elaborate calculations and planning.
every hero must have a plan for his next turn before I finish his turn, so I leave 1 movement for my heroes, and do allocation of artifacts to each hero before end of turn.
My turns take >1 hour by mid game.
In addition to playing, I also take careful notes in Excel and Word to collect data and report bugs and other findings here in the forum.

9. Do you do extensive micromanagement of cities to take advantage of the frequent and cumulative rounding bonuses/penalties?
that I don't do. I do heavy micromanagement, but that is just too far for me.
OK. I do that. I found it so annoying that I made my own files for that where the rounding error is always on [0,1) interval, hence the bias is minimized.
I uploaded it here in a City Production and Gold Output thread on 2022 Oct 20.

[GMBarak]

1. Do you usually choose your starting race, books, retorts, spells?
Yes, as described above, I know you always pick random so, you winning with random settings will be of course considered a considerable achievement.
In my estimate going fully random (where offered) is roughly equivalent to going 1 AI difficulty higher. So Lunatic becomes Phantasmal, etc. Also, Undeveloped Start, Plane of Water, No Trading, Monsters Gone Wild, Final War, and strictly random starting spells make the game about +1 more level harder. So in my estimate if you would play on Master with such settings that would be roughly equivalent to playing Phantasmal with your settings.
This is not in any way criticism of your excellent report, your amazing playing skills, or your personal preferences how you enjoy playing your games.
But maybe you can go down to Lunatic (or Master) and play with my rules a few times to see if you enjoy it and compare your win rates to your earlier reported rates.

2. Under what circumstances do you load game?
I never reload, even if I misclicked or make an unintentional move, I start a new game if it's a really bad start, for example 5X5 island, I don't require starting with gold or some special resource. even if I don't have any gold/silver/coal I play the game. even if I don't have the web spell in my spell-book. but, if I don't get a decent hero after about june-dec 1503 I also restart.
OK. Just don't forget to include all cases into your win rate calculation. I just noticed you lowered your earlier 50% win rate to 15%-20%. Thanks for the correction. I suspected it.

3. Do you surround the nodes, towers, and ruins with cheap units to prevent them from spawning?
No I don't, but that is an interesting idea. usually I have cavalry and longbowmen to take care of them, and usually there are hardly any nodes in my territory after something like 1505-1506, because I clear them.
I do that on Monsters gone wild. It works well together with the 8 spearmen defending most of my cities and my country border defense line, so I can usually keep them safe. Note that even nodes I own can spawn hostiles if Call of the Wild AI spell is in effect.

4. How do you deal with the incoming AI player units so they can’t explore your cities in order to prevent devastating city spells like Earthquake? (I build a line of cheap units to defend my country’s border from all sides.)
yes, I also use cheap units to block them, but since the pace of the game is so quick (in my last game all nodes towers and ruins clear by jan 1509) , I usually just eliminate them if they are a real nuisance. but the best strategy is just to ignore them, let them do the damage and continue to clear high value nodes. I can allocate one or max two heroes to take care of them if it's too much trouble. but as I said best is just to let them do their damage and focus on nodes/towers etc...
I can't use cheap units to block them individually since they come fast from all directions and sometimes detected late, invisible, or they are way too strong/many to defeat them each. I think their hostile anti-city spells are so strong that it is best to not let them explore my cities.

6. About how many hours it takes for you to win Phantasmal with large map 13 wizards default settings?
Many many, I spend something like 3-12 minutes on a turn and do elaborate calculations and planning.
every hero must have a plan for his next turn before I finish his turn, so I leave 1 movement for my heroes, and do allocation of artifacts to each hero before end of turn.
My turns take >1 hour by mid game.
In addition to playing, I also take careful notes in Excel and Word to collect data and report bugs and other findings here in the forum.

9. Do you do extensive micromanagement of cities to take advantage of the frequent and cumulative rounding bonuses/penalties?
that I don't do. I do heavy micromanagement, but that is just too far for me.
OK. I do that. I found it so annoying that I made my own files for that where the rounding error is always on [0,1) interval, hence the bias is minimized.
I uploaded it here in a City Production and Gold Output thread on 2022 Oct 20.

Thanks for your reply I agree with everything you wrote.

[GMBarak]

WhiteMage, if you had to win in Lunatic, 13 wizards, large map default settings, your life would depend on it, what would be the build you would use? which books and retorts will you pick?

[WhiteMage]

WhiteMage, if you had to win in Lunatic, 13 wizards, large map default settings, your life would depend on it, what would be the build you would use? which books and retorts will you pick?

Even though I consider myself an expert COM II player, to answer your question, I would need to do a lot of research and careful reading of my notes that are hundreds of pages long. I am a generalist. Not a specialist. But here are some heuristics that give you a strong draft answer, not my final answer.
Channeler, Conjurer, Charismatic. Then life and sorcery books in equal numbers, break tie in favor of life.

[GMBarak]

why in your opinion Charismatic is so strong?

[WhiteMage]

WhiteMage, if you had to win in Lunatic, 13 wizards, large map default settings, your life would depend on it, what would be the build you would use? which books and retorts will you pick?

Even though I consider myself an expert COM II player, to answer your question, I would need to do a lot of research and careful reading of my notes that are hundreds of pages long. I am a generalist. Not a specialist. But here are some heuristics that give you a strong draft answer, not my final answer.
Channeler, Conjurer, Charismatic. Then life and sorcery books in equal numbers, break tie in favor of life.

Or rather add a single Chaos, Death, and Nature book too since there will be a lot of spell trading.