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After more attempts than I care to remember, I have finally managed to win Caster of Magic on Expert difficulty level, with no reloads or other forms of cheating.
The strategy I used was the Draconian Magicians Rush. I wanted to make a short writeup describing it, but it turned into a major brain dump on this strategy and related tactics.
Setup: 8 opponent wizards, normal game size, and no special options.
My build: Alchemy, Myrran, Astrologer, Archmage, 4 nature books, 4 sorcery books, Draconian race.
Initial spells chosen: Nature spells: Nature's Eye, Web, Earth Lore. Sorcery spells: Aether Sparks, Confusion, Nagas.
This setup gives 3 very rare sorcery spells and 3 very rare nature spells, so which you get is very random. But it is possible to win without using very rare spells.
All Draconian units can fly. This means that if you enter a battlefield where the enemy units have no range attacks, no breath, gaze, or thrown attacks, and cannot fly, then they cannot attack you, and you can simply wait out the 25 turns until the battle is over. Usually, the flee button becomes green after a few turns, allowing you to retreat without loss. Against other flying units, Web turns those into ground units, harmless if they don't have a ranged/breath/gaze/thrown attack, and subject to the effects of earth-to-mud if you cast that spell on the battlefield.
In defense, if the attacker can't attack your flying units, then they cannot take your city or node, because they are forced to retreat after 25 turns.
The ability to go in and out of battles without losses allows you to cast combat spells each battle for multiple battles, or replenish ranged ammo and mana each time after these run out.
This synergizes well with the Confusion spell. If you cast confusion on an enemy unit, and it doesn't have illusion immunity or true sight, it must resist at -2 or get confused: Each turn there is a 25% chance for the affected unit to be under enemy control/under your control/move randomly/be unable to move. At the end of combat, if the unit was still confused, it dies irrecoverably. Confusion can be dispelled before turn 25 if the enemy has such ability, but that doesn't happen often. If a Confused enemy unit with regeneration dies due to combat damage, it is still irrecoverably dead.
For confusion to hit, look at the enemy resistance. Make sure that after subtracting 2, the enemy resistance is below 10. An effective resistance of 10 or higher means its chance to resist is 100%. Any point below 10 lowers the chance to resist by 10%.
Suppose you find a nature node defended by 9 Great Lizards. These are very strong in melee, they regenerate, and cannot attack air, but with Confusion, they can be killed irrecoverably. 9 Great Lizards have a monster budget of 9x290 = 2610, allowing potentially for 2 nature books and/or other treasure. Plus you can meld the node afterwards.
With a -2 penalty and +2 node resistance bonus, a confusion cast on a Great Lizard in a nature node has a 30% chance of success. So for 9 Great Lizards, you need to cast Confusion an average of (9 / 0.30) = 30 times. At 18 skill points per cast, that is 540 mana, multiplied by the distance penalty (max 3.0). While you can just fly in again and again with a Draconian spearman or other flying unit, and cast Confusion until all the Great Lizards are gone, the total mana cost is high, especially in the early game. Luckily Draconian Magicians can also cast Confusion, but they bring their own mana each combat, saving you your own. This saves you an enormous amount of mana in the long run if you have a large number of Magicians. Plus they are immune to arrows, and have 4 ranged magic shots. So the core of my rush strategy is to use my gold/mana (interchangeable with the Alchemy retort) to build up a city for the production of Magicians, and mass-produce magicians, as soon as possible, before doing serious lair/node hunting.
Magicians can also use Petrify, which has an even better -3 penalty, and doesn't get countered by illusion immunity, but by stoning immunity instead.
Petrify however kills per figure not per unit, so with multi-figure units, Confusion might still be preferable situationally if you want to fight multiple times on the same battlefield in a row.
Magicians can also cast Earth to Mud, which helps them stay away from ground units that have breath, gaze, or thrown attacks and thus can attack flying units. They can also cast Web, which turns enemy flying units into ground units, and neutralizes them for 1 or more turns (depending on its melee stat), and various direct damage spells like Aether Sparks, which does both damage and lowers the target's mana and magical ranged ammo, and can always cast Fireball, which is best used against many-figure units. They can also summon Phantom Warriors or Wild Boars to do their fighting for them.
Max-level magicians (or those buffed with Focus Magic) can also cast Blur or Crack's call.
The key point of the Draconian Magician Rush strategy: a group of 9 veteran draconian magicians in the early game can take out an estimated 60% of lairs without losses, including some with Very Rare creatures, and 80% of lairs if you are willing to take some losses. A group of Draconian Magicians is also quite capable of taking an enemy city in the early and mid-game. Or even some towers, if you want to break into the other plane early. Given that you can take on some very valuable nodes and dungeons early in the game, this strategy should give you a relatively high chance of finding additional books and retorts.
Confusion is also useful as a "parting gift". Suppose your explorer unit, reinforcement unit in transit, or engineer is attacked by a large enemy army. You can cast Confusion on the enemy with the lowest resistance, right-click on it to see if it can be used to attack with this combat round, then press Flee. The affected enemy unit vanishes after battle. It might even be useful to leave obsolete units scattered around your empire, as tripwires for hostile armies, to thin them out with parting gifts. However, don't waste mana on far-away battles involving your explorers in the first half of the game.
At game start, set your capital to produce Marketplace, then multiple settlers. In the power screen, set all power to increase mana, and keep it that way until you start producing magicians. Alchemy half your starting gold into mana.
Send out your initial swordsmen units to explore. There is usually no need to defend your capital in the first year or so because usually there is no threat. Set tax to 1 level higher.
Use your spellcasting to only cast Earth Lores until you have found the best locations for your initial settlers. Prioritize casts that may make you change your mind. For example, if the land to the west looks promising but you are not sure about the land to the east, then cast Earth Lore on the east, and then decide where to send your settlers. As a general rule, first move explorers and cast earth lores, and move your settlers last. Most of the time, exploring units are best sent in the diagonal direction, since they travel 1.4 times as far in that case and thus uncover more terrain.
Use F1 often to check on neutral cities. The area around your cities is darkened within 3 tiles, so if you see a darkened tile that is not caused by your city or a dungeon or node, then that means there is an unknown city nearby. Find it asap, preferably with a Draconian swordsman unit, to see if you can conquer it.
Once you have decided on locations for your initial settlers, start casting any possible Nature's eyes on your cities, then more than half a dozen Ghosts, and send them in all directions, to make contact with other magicians, and explore the map.
tip: if you cast city spells, and have to pick a target city, the Z-key cycles through all available cities that don't have that city spell yet.
I typically don't send ghosts into lairs and nodes for exploration, because that gives only 1 of potentially 2 types of monsters there, and with Draconian magicians being glass cannons that can easily be destroyed by the wrong monsters, I prefer to explore the contents of all lairs and nodes with Earth Lore. Earth lore gives both of the potential 2 monster types. And because I can't be bothered to remember which lairs and nodes I have Earth Lored, and which explored with a unit, I don't send units into lairs but exclusively use Earth Lore.
Once I contact another wizard and we share book colors, I try to trade any and all spells, with the hard exception of Web. Web negates my most powerful ability, the ability to fly, so giving it away in trade is non-negotiable.
Once I have a bunch of ghosts flying around finding wizards, I switch to summoning defense units. I prefer War Bears over Nagas for city defense because War Bears are cheaper in casting and upkeep.
War Bears is easy to trade for, or research if you have it in your book, but in the rare case you don't acquire it, you can still cast Nagas which I chose as an initial spell. Giant spiders are even more cost-efficient for their better strength but are harder to get.
Side note: in the early game, the combat summon Wild Boars is in most regular cases superior to Phantom Warriors. However, phantom warriors improve in the mid-game against high-armor opponents due to their ability to bypass armor.
Do remember that Phantom Warriors and Wild Boars get bonuses (+2 to all stats except hitpoints) in respectively Sorcery and Nature nodes, and in the auras around these nodes. Since these bonuses are per figure, this bonus is especially relevant for phantom warriors.
Between casting the occasional Nature's Eye, and the occasional necessary Earth Lore, I try to summon as many defensive units (war bears) as possible and spread them over my cities: since enemies tend to target your worst-defended city first, always summon one more War Bear in your currently worst defended city. This may not be exciting, but once enemies start showing up, having several war bears in all your cities often means the difference between losing the city or not. Make sure to have at least 1 flying unit (even if just a draconian swordsmen) in each city, in case the enemy comes in overwhelming numbers but can't attack air. However, I don't like to build too many swordsmen as garrisons, because they cost food to upkeep, which requires me to change citizens from workers to farmers.
Don't get completionist when it comes to Nature's Eye, Earth lore, or Change Terrain: once the game becomes more dangerous, your primary worry is to make sure your cities are defended by enough war bears before completing casting these other spells.
Tactical tip: if you have a city wall (which you should, once city combat becomes likely) and the enemy cannot attack air, a flying unit in the doorway of the wall prevents the enemy from entering the city, protecting the more vulnerable ground units and preventing loss of population and buildings after the battle. Enemy armies tend to prefer targeting units in the doorway, so if the enemy has ranged/thrown/gaze/breath weapons, I prefer to move my flying unit into the back area, put a summoned unit (e.g. wild boars) in the doorway until the danger for my flying units is gone, then move my flying unit on the doorway.
However, hellhounds are weak units but dangerous in large numbers in the early stages of the game due to their speed and breath attack. If they attack your cities as wandering monsters in the early game, it may be one of the very few times it is better to NOT defend the entrance in your city wall, but place your units so that you get to attack first and thus negate their breath attack. If you expect to lose the battle, and you have a flying unit left (draconian swordsmen?) you can also put your flying unit near the back side of your city wall and hop back and forth over it, forcing the hellhounds to run around the edge of your city until round 25.
So once random monsters show up, I make sure to build city walls everywhere, force-buy it if necessary. Besides that, I usually go marketplace -> sawmill -> Forrester's guild
The secondary function of spamming War Bears is to suppress discontent (1 less unhappy citizen per two garrison units). If at any time, all of your citizens are content (see the cities overview button), experiment with increasing your tax rate. Once you have a full 9 units in each city, you should have the highest, or near highest tax rate. Add a shrine or Oracle as needed.
After using my overland spellcasting, I transmute all excess mana to gold and use that gold to buy multiple settlers in my capital (assuming I can use them) as soon as money permits. New cities build Housing until size 4, and my capital, too, if the population drops below 4. I buy settlers (not necessarily only in the capital) until all good locations are settled.
Draconians can build merchant guilds, so coastal locations are preferred. Coastal tiles also give a 10% trade bonus and settling on river tiles gives a 20% trade bonus. I prefer to cover as many land tiles as possible while not leaving gaps and ends in F1 that the AI can sneak a settler into.
As a nature mage, you'll likely gain either Gaia's Blessing or Change Terrain, both of which can turn swamp and desert into grassland. Abundance increases the base maximal population of the enchanted city to 18 but by a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 9. So cities will be useful in any location, eventually. Change Terrain can also add a forest, which is necessary for the Forester's guild and animist guild. Transmute can change bonus tiles to other ones.
However, in the beginning, stick to locations that are naturally valuable. These will be the most sought after by the AI, also.
Orichalcon ore benefits your magicians quite nicely, so it might be nice to have 2 cities overlap a spot with it.
Coal and Iron give 20% and 10% discount on unit production, respectively and a miner's guild adds 1/4th to that. This discount is capped at 50%, which means that 2 coal, or 1 coal + 2 iron will give the maximum discount.
It may be that you are in a settler race with a neighboring wizard to settle good locations. Note that 3 ghosts and/or flying swordsmen can form a mobile wall that can block enemy settlers from moving to an attractive site, giving you more time to settle it yourself. Sometimes by using chokepoints on the map, only 2 are needed to block. If necessary, temporarily use one of the free swordsmen that you get for free from settling a new city, as a blocker.
The biggest risk in this phase is overexpansion: building too many cities without adequate defenses, and you can only summon so many war bears. While there is no official penalty for overexpansion, building too many cities spreads your defense armies thin and drains your resources building settlers. Once rampaging monsters start attacking, you run the risk of losing underdefended cities. And I suspect that having weakly defended cities tend to invite aggression from other wizards. And once you are at war, it tends to attract more enemy armies.
I play on normal-sized maps, which means limited space to expand. Note: the actual size of the map depends mostly on the number of wizards; the option called map size determines the amount of map space per wizard. Since cities cannot be built within 3 tiles of another city, some city location areas only have 1-2 map squares to settle on. Often it is better to just occupy such squares with cheap ghosts, to prevent enemy settlers from entering the square, and settle the locations later, once you have more military. Don't settle crappy city locations in the early game, they add to overexpansion, and even if the AI takes a crappy location, it won't do the AI much good.
So to summarize, rush colonize as many good city locations (preferably on the same continent) as you think you can get away with, then turtle (build defenses).
As you explore and expand, you'll likely run into various neutral cities:
-cities with any unit that can't attack air: fly in with your draconian swordsman or other flying unit (ghosts don't fly), cast Confusion, and if successful see if you can use the Confused unit to attack another enemy each round, and sit out the 25 rounds. It is convenient to right-click on a confused unit at the beginning of the combat round, and if it doesn't select, press D for done for all your other units. Repeat until the defense is gone and you own the city. Alternatively, if you have other combat spells, like wild boars, use those to thin out the enemies round after round until the city is yours. Note that for Troll cities, killing enemies with confusion is mandatory unless you can take the city this combat turn.
-Dark Elf cities: the defenders deal ranged damage. Avoid, unless it's only a couple of spearmen and you bring more than one unit.
-cities with magic ranged units, like shamans: avoid. These neutralize your flight tactical advantage. Later in the game, these and dark elf cities are best taken if you have Magicians units with elemental resistance, or sufficient non-draconian units that can take a punch. Or use a flying, invisible unit and spam combat spells.
-Dwarven cities with lots of steam cannons: avoid until you have magicians. Steam cannons are exceptionally vulnerable to mass Web spells from Magicians because they have zero melee and thus can't free themselves. So send in 9 magicians, lose a couple of them, then neutralize all the steam cannons with Web. Use the magicians in melee if necessary to finish them off.
-neutral draconian cities guarded by swordsmen: you only need 1-2 more swordsmen to win if you place your line of swordsmen so that you will attack them first. Draconian swordsmen have a breath attack, and breath attacks only benefit the attacker, not the defender. If necessary, temporarily pull out every swordsman you have from your newly settled cities to get a majority.
-neutral cities guarded by draconian bowmen: draconian bowmen suck, other than their ability to fly. Your 6 Draconian swordsmen can win against 9 draconian bowmen: just move your swordsman back to increase the enemy range penalty, and once the bowmen are out of arrows, hunt them down. If necessary, temporarily use the free swordsmen units you get from city settling. Draconian magicians are immune to arrows so they get a very easy win if you attack with them.
-neutral cities guarded by Draconian magicians: avoid until you have a stack of magicians yourself, all pre-buffed with Resist Elements. That should let enough survive to win, but have a second army close by in case you fail to win, to mop up the enemy survivors immediately. Alternatively, soften up the city with multiple Blizzards first, if you have that. A full stack of Doom Drakes might also work but have a reserve army ready just in case.
Early wars: during the initial settler rush phase, you may run into the initial enemy settlers with your scouting swordsman, because of a very close enemy capital. You may consider a very early war (first few turns). If the enemy has white books and a race that can't attack air, it's safe to kill their settlers before they settle, because early Life Magic doesn't have a combat summon or direct damage spell against your swordsmen. Patrol near his capital, kill any and all settlers, and keep him small. Any other type of mage on the same continent is probably too dangerous, and you are likely better off building mobile walls with units to block him from taking your favorite colony spots. If the enemy comes from overseas off the coast of your starting continent, and he doesn't have a direct damage spell, you can gamble that he can't move enough units across the water before the war is over. Remember that in the case of Troll settlers, you must not only kill them but also win the whole battle, or the settler will regenerate. You may need to kill them with Confusion if they for example persistently summon Wild Boars or Zombies.
If the enemy is of an engineer-building race, and you have no other engineer production options, you may consider allowing 1 settler over, wait until the outpost has matured into a city, then take it immediately before defenses become too strong.
Unless the enemy is on the same continent as you, early wars tend to be not as dangerous, as the enemy tends to offer peace before he grows strong enough to really threaten you, keeping most of his units on his own continent. Wait for him to offer peace, as spamming peace offers to the AI (if he rejects them) will lower his willingness-for-peace value, and will prolong the war.
After the settler rush phase, choose a Draconian city you want to build up to your first main Magicians military production city. Choose a city with both high population and high production bonus, and consider bonus tiles as well, like orichalcon, and coal/iron. Adamantium is still useful for the defense bonus (shields) but not as much as for melee units.
However, don't choose exclusively for the bonus tiles if there is a chaos wizard around, as there is a good chance he will volcano them away. It may be worth it to wizard pact or ally all chaos wizards if you can.
Using the S key (Sort) in the city screen allows you to sort by production, to aid in choosing. Large cities with low production bonus from surroundings are better reserved for food and the occasional settler production, since the production bonus from surrounding terrain doesn't affect food production.
After the initial settler phase, the plan is to use any and all spare money (use alchemy to change excess mana to gold) to develop your selected Magicians military production city at the fastest possible rate: build/buy all production buildings, all food buildings (except Animist's guild for now because that one is expensive for its limited worth in the early game). Also, all money buildings, including merchant's guild for coastal cities, as I consider money buildings production buildings also, due to the ability to buy production with money. Then wizards' guild, war academy (for veteran magicians) optional alchemist guild if you have military bonus resources near your city. And then mass-produce magicians, using gold to produce one unit every turn. Once you start mass-producing magicians, set your power-to-mana slider to zero and use your power income for research and/or casting skill.
If after buying magicians each turn, and buying needed mana through alchemy, you still have excess money, start developing your 2nd best military city in the same way. Then the 3rd, Etc. Produce ever more magicians until you have won the game.
From now on, add magicians to city garrisons and alternate that with building new magicians armies for offense. Once cities are full of units, move the older units to guard nearby owned nodes to make room for more magicians defenders.
I tend to skip research buildings other than the cheap library, since most of my research comes from power and the higher research buildings are relatively expensive for their benefit, especially if you have the alchemy retort (buying mana with money leaves more power to research with). In low-production bonus cities, once they have built all the economic buildings, I build the Animist guild last, then set the workers to farmers. Non-draconian cities typically become food production cities plus basic economy unless it is a particularly good military production city. I push their food production to maximum then lower food production in Draconian cities to speed up their development. The end goal is to have as many Draconian cities producing Magicians as possible.
I like to add a few Troll magicians defending each city since they are a lot tougher and regenerate, and they free up draconian magicians for attack armies. Also, conquered cities that I decide to use for food production usually have some military buildings that can be sold for cash and lower upkeep.
Aside from prioritizing Magicians production, there are a few other things you can or should do after the initial settler rush phase.
Another wizard may have settled a good city spot on your continent. Aside from your future magician city, you likely have several cities capable of mass-producing swordsmen. Together with summoned war bears, you can quickly make a few attack stacks, start a war and overwhelm him with numbers. Again, early war is not as dangerous as later war, especially if the enemy capital is not on your continent.
Even if the enemy is on your continent, you can still overwhelm him with numbers and take all his cities outside of his capital.
Attacking an enemy capital is however seldom worth it, unless you outclass him, like spiders versus sprites or Draconian magicians versus ground units that can't attack flying units. Once you have reduced a wizard to his capital and made peace, he will seldom declare war on you. Later in the game, wizards with 1-3 cities have a chance to rage-quit, turning all their cities neutral and removing all heroes and summoned units. Sometimes this leads to completely undefended neutral cities that you can immediately take over with a single unit.
Pro-tip: if in the midgame, some enemies are reduced to 3 cities or less, and one or more of these cities are full of summoned units and/or heroes, park one of your units near each city. If the enemy wizard rage-quits, you can immediately take control of the city.
Another priority after the initial settler phase is building roads between all your cities on your continent, and perhaps connecting neutral and enemy cities to them, too, for the trade money bonus. For this you need engineers. On Myrror, only 2 races can build engineers: dwarfs and beastmen.
If you manage to conquer a city of one of these races, great. Otherwise, you may need to wage an early war to get one of these.
If you manage to gain a dwarf or beastmen city on a different continent, produce engineers as soon as possible: if another wizard claims the continent, then he is very much likely to declare war and attack the city. If the city is worth keeping, prioritize the defense of that city. Whatever the case, produce a few engineers as quickly as possible, and use water-walking, floating island, or triremes to move the engineers to your main continent(s).
Due to the game rules, roads barely have any financial effect in the beginning, but become very lucrative as the game progresses. And it is good to finish building roads before the map starts crawling with enemy units that target your engineers.
Between the end of the initial settler phase and getting your first military magicians production city ready, there are quite a lot of turns. If you have no other pressing matters, and there are enough easy lairs and nodes around, I found it is best to buy a barracks and a bunch of Draconian bowmen (no more than 1 stack) to take those lairs, before the AI takes them. This doesn't really slow down your race towards Magicians, as the money you get from lairs will speed that up again. Basically any lair or node with monsters that can't attack flying units and don't have too many hitpoints or regenerate, can be taken. Do use Earth Lore to scout them before attacking to prevent surprises.
You can of course add your own combat spells to the battle to speed up taking the lair, but the point of attacking low-level lairs is to benefit financially, and spending a lot of mana in combat (partially) defeats that purpose. So judge whether it is worth it to spend combat mana instead of waiting until the end, replenishing bowmen ammo, and going back the next game turn. Note that bowmen require a bit of upkeep also, and there's the opportunity cost in that your army can do only 1 attack per turn.
Bowmen are annoying as they have a range penalty over long range, so they often require that you move them close to their target for maximum damage, and auto-battle just offloads all the ammo immediately. You may have to wait until turn 25 to replenish ammo multiple times. But those are annoyances, not problems.
So suppose you have your first few Magicians units ready for attack, what nodes and dungeons should you target? As I said before, it's best to Earth Lore everything in advance to prevent surprises. Since you rely on spells a lot, the Astrologer retort (Nodes can't counter your spells) is a must-have for this strategy.
Note that the Caster of Magic manual in the game directory contains all the stats and powers of these monsters. When in doubt, look them up.
If the enemy army in the node or dungeon consists of...
-ground units, with no breath/gaze or ranged attack:
(i.e. magic spirit, wild boars, war bears, earth elemental, great wyrm, guardian spirit, unicorns, nagas, phantom warriors, phantom beast, skeletons, zombies, fire elemental)
Just go in and kill them. May take more than one turn if you need to replenish ammo and mana.
-ground units, with no breath/gaze or ranged attack, but with regeneration:
(i.e. great lizard, werewolves)
If you can't kill them in one battle, use confusion, petrify, or banish to remove them permanently at the end of combat. Especially werewolves have very low resistance.
-flying, but no anti-air attack:
(i.e. cockatrices, angel, arch angel, gargoyles)
Web them, then kill them.
-flying, but no anti-air attack, regenerating:
(i.e. Phoenix, vampire)
Web them then kill them. If you can't kill them in one battle, use confusion, petrify, or banish to remove them permanently. Vampires are immune to confusion.
-doom bat: this is a special case. These can easily be webbed and then killed, but they are so fast they can attack your Magicians first. But sometimes they are hindered by other enemy units or rocks on the battlefield, and can't reach you magicians in one round. So these lairs are either very hard or very easy. Because of this and their high treasure value, it is worth it to send in a cheap throwaway unit at the earliest opportunity to find out whether it is hard or easy. Even if the throwaway unit dies, F1 on the overland map will show you the exact number of enemies afterward.
If it is only one doom bat, and it can indeed reach you in the initial combat round, you may consider sending a full 9-magician army stack and sacrifice one magician in the process. If more doom bats, I find that the best setup is: 4 draconian swordsmen (or other melee units) and 5 draconian magicians. If I remember correctly, the placement of your units is based on (attack value) plus (defense value) minus 2*(range value). This means: melee units in the front, and ranged units in the back. This means that the doom bats will either target your frontline swordsmen first, or more likely, they will try to fly around them to reach your magicians, which means they need at least 2 combat rounds. You can then web all of them and kill them.
- ranged:
(i.e. stone giant, Colossus, water elemental, storm giant, ghouls, fire giant, sprites)
If only very few, fly in your Magicians army, take a few losses, and neutralize them with web every turn while you kill them. Alternatively, if they only have magic range, consider using Aether Sparks to remove their remaining ammo. If they have a weak magic range, you can also send in a Magicians army pre-buffed with resist elements. Elemental armor would be even better but that is more expensive. Worth it for heroes. Alternatively, if the enemy is weak (like sprites) and you have enough casting skill, send in cheap units that have enough hitpoints to survive a few rounds, and use combat spells to kill the enemy. Swordsmen have shields that give a defense bonus against ranged. Don't let a single sprite prevent you from taking an otherwise valuable dungeon just because you are scared of losses.
If there are many ranged enemies, sending a flying invisible unit (buffed by spell, or a hero with an artifact) would be the best play. Since you start with 4 sorcery books, once you have Create Artifact, you can add both flight and invisibility on an artifact. Note that Colossus and Ghouls can see through invisibility.
- Shadow demons: regenerate, can't be webbed, immune to invisibility and Confusion, but vulnerable to Petrify. If only very few, overwhelm them with a full stack of magicians or doom drakes, possibly using resist elements and/or elemental armor. If the shadow demons are in larger numbers, you'd better use overpowered heroes or high-end summons.
- spell casters:
(djinn, Efreet, demon, demon lord)
Same as ranged: in small numbers, take their damage for one round, web them (multiple times if necessary) and kill them. Aether Sparks removes their ammo and mana. Invisibility doesn't work with demons and demon lords, and jinns can teleport to melee range so invisibility might not work.
- behemoth: regenerating spell caster. Same as ranged and spell caster: take damage for one round. Then Aether sparks to neutralize its mana. Invisibility would prevent it from attacking your army. Phantom warriors/Phantom beast/psionic blast to get past its high defense. If too many behemoths to kill in one battle, you need irrecoverable damage or they will come back. Its resistance is 13 (15 in a node) so you need Mind Storm (sorcery rare spell, that lowers enemy resistance by 5) followed by confusion/petrify/banish. Outside of a node, Banish has a 10% chance of working on its own. Alternatively, use Crack's Calls and hope you get lucky. Once it is buried, kill it and it should stay dead. This used to be bugged but that was fixed in the current version. If you have found a Chaos book and have Warp Creature, and it is outside of a node, you can spam Warp creature (20% chance to work with resist 13) until resistance drops to zero, then use confusion/petrify/banish. Having a hero with minus spell save will increase the chance of success considerably if you want to risk him being hit by an enemy spell in the initial combat round.
- enemies with gaze/breath attacks:
(gorgons, hell hounds, chimeras, chaos spawn, Great drake)
If they can fly (chaos spawn, Great Drake), web them first. Chaos Spawns have a hard time escaping from Web. If you expect that you don't have enough ammo/mana to take them out in one combat turn, lay down 3-4 Earth to Muds and use 1 or 2 magicians to lure them around in the mud. Send all your other units to a far side of the map. After shooting all your ammo and remaining combat spells, every subsequent combat round, right-click on your lure unit, place it close to the remaining enemies with 1 tile in between, so the enemies will move towards your lure unit, then hold down the D key (done) to finish the rest of your movement points. Repeat until the battle is over. This saves a lot of playtime.
-giant spiders: best to send in a throwaway unit to count their numbers first. Each spider can potentially web and kill one Magicians unit, unless you bring enough firepower to win quickly. Webs can be removed by Dispel Magic (single unit) or Dispelling Wave, depending on your luck. This immediately restores flying.
To be immune to the Spider's Web, and thus not be attacked by the spiders, you need a combination of Wraith Form and flying. You can use a hero with the correct artifacts and/or buffs. Alternatively, you can cast flying on a ghost unit. If you can survive the first round of battle, you can also send in a cheap unit, summon a Phantom Warriors in a faraway corner, and the next round cast flying on the Phantom Warriors. Then use your remaining casting skill to take out the spiders.
Invisibility can be used too, until you are spotted by an enemy next to your unit.
-air elemental: These fly and are invisible, so even if you can see them due to a unit next to it, you can't use your ranged attacks. They can also not be webbed. Annoying because they tend to run away and are hard to track down if you send in units strong enough to take them on. Count their numbers first by sending in a throwaway unit, then view the lair or node with F1 on the overland map. If only one or two, send in a magicians army, make air elementals visible with a Wild Boars unit, then cast direct damage spells on the air elemental. If there are many, and they are in a Sorcery node, send in multiple throwaway units, and spam phantom warriors all over the combat area (preferably far away from each other). In a sorcery node, phantom warriors get a +2 bonus to attack and defense, and since it has 8 figures, this is a considerable bonus, sometimes enough to kill the air elemental in defense. If you found a death book, you can make the air elementals visible by summoning a zombies.
P.S. You can indirectly detect the location of invisible units because you can't move your own units toward that tile nor summon a unit on that tile if you mouse over the location.
-sky drake: problematic due to magic immunity. Web them and trap them in Earth to Mud areas by luring them around with a flying unit, then kill them using either a large number of (summoned) strong melee units (like Phantom Beast/Earth elemental) or an overpowered bow hero without Focus Magic.
-night stalker: dangerous due to invisibility plus gaze attack. Immune to Confusion and ice bolt, but vulnerable to web, petrification, and Banish. Count them first using a throwaway unit. If a manageable number, expose them using wild boars, then use combat spells on them.
-wraiths and death knights: they fly, can't be webbed, immune to Confusion and freezing. So they are unstoppable, and they heal by attacking you. Vulnerable to Petrify and Banish. If a small number, attack with a full Magicians stack, move away from them and quickly nuke them to death before they can reach you. If a larger number, it's time to hold the classic speech of the eternal politician addressing his troops: "Many of you will die in the coming battle, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
-Hydra: 12 resistance, 14 in a chaos node. Breath attack, many hitpoints, regeneration. A basic Magicians army can kill one. Possibly two if you have some bonuses (like elite status, focus magic, orihalcon, reinforce magic) and good casting skill. If there are more, use Earth to Muds to slow them and lure them around as described before. To kill one permanently, use Mind Storm (-5 resistance) followed by Confusion, Petrify, or Banish. Alternatively, bury with Cracks' call and kill. Alternatively, if you have found a chaos book and know Warp Creature (-5 resistance), spam Warp Creature until resistance drops to zero, then use Confusion, Petrify, or Banish. Using a hero with minus spell save helps a lot in getting Warp Creature to succeed.
Magicians are strong units, but they are somewhat expensive to produce and require a lot of city buildings. Since they have limited ammo and mana, they are best used in large numbers. Overkill limits your own losses if the enemy can attack flying units. Victory in the end comes from a steady production and accumulation of more and more Magicians, which means that you should avoid unnecessary wars. Optimally, don't go to war with other wizards, unless you have enough armies ready and placed to crush the enemy and take over most of his cities in one turn. Accept most peace offers and don't join wars or start one unless you are maximum prepared.
Since it is easy to take lairs and nodes, you might be tempted to concentrate exclusively on those. However, I found that a balance is best: use roughly half of your offensive Magician armies to increase your number of cities (it's okay to switch between periods of lair/node hunting, and conquest). But prepare your offensive wars well. Fighting multiple wars at the same time slows you down considerably, so only start wars you are confident you can finish quickly with a victory. And don't tempt the AI into attacking you by being sloppy on city defense: work towards a situation where every city has a garrison of 9 Magicians.
Using armies of Magicians, you can conquer a large number of nodes. If you leave 9 magicians in a conquered node, that is usually enough to repel all but the hardest enemy attacks. In fact, most AI wizards will avoid attacking that node.
However, 9 magicians have a lot of upkeep: together 27 gold and 9 food. Many nodes will only be worth that thanks to the node income bonus you get from the Astrologer retort, and barely so. There is also value in denying the node to other wizards. Nodes close to your home territory should only be guarded by your cheap obsolete units, with perhaps 1-2 extra Magicians. If the enemy attacks it, use combat spells to thin out their numbers, and then reconquer it with your next Magicians army, and re-garrison that node with obsolete units again.
Cities, of course, are worth garrisoning with the full 9 magicians in mid-game and later.
For far-away nodes you conquer, only leave the whole army guarding it if it is a really big valuable node. Otherwise, if it is not immediately threatened, only leave a couple of Magicians defending it. Note that due to the node income bonus from the Astrologer retort, which grows with each passing half year, every node eventually becomes worth it. But magicians don't only have upkeep but are also expensive to produce in hammers. Garrisoning every node you conquer with the full army you used on it, will suck the momentum out of your mid-game. But if the node is in the middle of enemy territory, only a few Magicians may not be enough to hold it, and you are likely to lose the node and the garrison also. So use judgment on how many defenders you should leave behind. Sometimes it may be better to leave the occasional low-value node in the middle of hostile territory to the enemy.
Even if you leave the towers alone, the AI will always break towers after turn 200. Which is August of the year 1516. So it is best to attack the towers that contain easy but valuable monsters slightly before that, for the loot. Being the first to contact the other plane and exchange spells before the other wizards is valuable, too. I usually keep my conquest army on the tower if it is close to my own cities, but leave the towers open if near other wizards on my plane. This is to promote war between those wizards and the wizards on the other plane. A capstone army can move away from the tower, let another army through, and go back to the tower in the same turn.
Note that you can scout the other plane with Earth Lore before breaking towers. And if you find yourself isolated on your plane, and it is still early in the game, you might take a quick look on the other plane if you have easy towers near your core cities. With 8 wizards, only 2 are on the Arcanus plane, and sometimes they leave a whole continent empty for you, to colonize with ease. Sometimes even with neutral cities to conquer.
During mid-game, when you start mass-exploring the map with Earth Lore, and you mass-produce Magician armies, tracking all the dungeons, nodes, and towers to conquer may become overwhelming. I usually bring up the cartographer (F2), screenshot the map with the prt scr (print screen) key, paste it into Microsoft Paint, and number the continents with big red numbers. I then open a notepad and list all the remaining nodes and towers per numbered continent, with the monsters guarding it, and plan out which nodes and towers I will conquer, based on easiness.
Tip: The combination Sorcery books/Nature books/draconian fits well with the drowning tactic: thanks to the large visual range of your units, and spamming Nature's eye in all your cities, you can usually view a lot of water tiles. If the enemy uses water walking or wraith form to move his units over the water, sometimes you can drown powerful enemy armies by spamming Dispelling Wave on them on the overland map. This removes water walking/wraith form, leaving the enemies to drown instantly, apparently with little or no diplomatic repercussion.
The Draconian magicians rush strategy doesn't mix well with heroes in the beginning, so I usually leave my heroes guarding the capital, until I have flying heroes (with the Flying spell, found item, or created artifact), then I send out 3 flying heroes with a bunch of buffed Magicians to crack the harder targets.
Doom drakes are mediocre melee units, but they are fast, often allowing them to hit the enemy in the 2nd combat round. The fact that they have more hitpoints than magicians, plus they can do fast scouting and quickly reinforce trouble spots, makes them situationally useful, so it's useful to have a stack or two of them in the late game, but they are seldom better than Magicians, and quite expensive in upkeep. Hunting for enemy ships carrying armies is a good pass-time for doom drakes, thanks to their speed.
There are some wars where an enemy has a hard counter to magicians (not in my last game), and then it makes sense to focus on doom drakes, but most of the time, magicians are the better choice.
Draconian Halberdiers are good on paper, but they are slow, and require an expensive building. So I usually prepare my cities for building Magicians instead.
A Draconian airship is good for moving armies of ground units of other races around but otherwise isn't exceptionally useful compared to Magicians. So build a few as needed for this purpose.
Other random tricks I found out:
if an enemy army, e.g. a wandering monster army, is about to attack one of your cities, let's call it city A, and your defense is inadequate, and you have a 2nd city (city B) very close that is adequately defended, but not so close to ANY enemy army, that that army can attack the city within one turn, then move your entire garrison out of city B, leaving it defenseless. If close enough, the problematic enemy army will likely move to attack City B instead. Next turn, move the garrison back. The enemy will likely resume moving to city A, but you'll have gained 2 additional turns to buy and/or summon a better defense.
If the AI takes a node, it often keeps the conquering army sitting on it until a node garrison arrives, and then the conquering army will move on. If you see the future garrison moving towards the node, and you are able to block its movement with a line of cheap units, then the conquering army often moves away eventually anyway, leaving the node free for you to occupy and meld. Do watch out for invisible garrisons, though, if you see an apparently unguarded node.
By the time only the Spell of Mastery was left to research, I had the biggest economy but not the biggest army. I stopped research, put all my Power into mana, then got into a war with my two closest rivals. It's best to fight one wizard at a time but the 2nd enemy was not my choice. What followed was endless attacks on my cities, but the standard 9 magician garrisons typically held, and that was even easier after the enemy ran out of mana. Especially the Life mage couldn't even hurt me: he would send in 9 arch angels, which in most situations is a respectable army. I webbed them, killed some, buried some with Cracks' Call, and laughed when he was forced to leave after 25 turns, having done no damage to me whatsoever, but losing many of his arch angels. I conquered a few cities with sky drakes but I would've won with only mass-produced Draconian magicians plus many giant turtles produced in conquered cities. These wars continued until their military score was reduced enough to give me the win.
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