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The actual fundamentals of the game (keys to success) |
Posted by: rgp151 - July 1st, 2022, 07:34 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (6)
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The funny thing about this game is that its been around for so long, but I still feel like there is a poor understanding of the fundamentals of the game. I think in part this is because it doesn't follow the intuitive basics of many 4X games. The reason for that is because in MoM conquest is king, making unit acquisition actually the key to economic development, as opposed to core economic traits. In games like Civilization, or even MoO, economic traits lead to superior economic development, which can lead to military advantages. In MoM, however, that is turned on its head, where military advantages lead to economic gains. So while in most 4X games its all about economy first, in MoM its all about military first. And IMO, this is what makes MoM so fun, because fighting and conquest is fun.
So, what is the key to success in MoM? Fielding a death stack ASAP, or at the very least, being able to take neutral encounters/towns ASAP.
How do you do that? You need to be able to acquire useful units as quickly as possible. How do you get units in MoM? There are three ways:
1) You can build Normal units in your towns.
2) You can summon Fantastic units.
3) You can hire heroes and Normal units.
Building Normal units is the most obvious and direct way to acquire units, and its what most people rely heavily on. The problem with building units, however, is that this is extremely costly early on and slows down your economic development. So relying on building Normal units is the slowest possible way to field an army in MoM. I think the biggest flaw in many people's approach to the game is relying far too heavily on building units.
So we come to #2, summoning units. This is by far the fastest and most direct way to build your army. This, then, makes Conjuration the overall best retort in the game and strategies that revolve around early conjuration as the core most fundamentally viable strategies. That doesn't mean Conjuration strats are necessarily the absolute most powerful, but in general terms, Conjuration is a fundamentally sound strategy.
I personally don't like 11 book strategies at all, and never play with 11 books, as I view that as pretty much broken and ruins the game. Yes, obviously 11 books is always the most powerful strat, and of course 11 books relies on summoning. But, barring 11 books, summoning is still the way to go. With the elemental schools, Chaos, Sorcery and Nature, the best approach is Conjuration + X Mastery and 9 books. This will give you the cheapest possible summoned units, allowing you to summon a death stack quickly to begin taking towns and nodes ASAP, while your capital focuses on economic development and building toward the ability to produce your best possible Normal units ASAP. Sorcery is a little different, you don't need a death stack with Sorcery because you can summon so many units during battle, so with Sorcery you can start conquest with as little as a single unit of Nagas, or even just a Magic Spirit. Yes, Nagas are worth it with this setup.
As for Death, with Death all you need is just Conjuration and 10 books. Focus on taking neutral towns with Ghouls and Sorcery nodes with Skeletons. Throws masses of waves of Skeletons at Sorcery nodes until you take them. The power they provide can be vital.
With Life, however, while you can use Guardian Spirits, they really aren't good enough to use a Conjuration based strategy with, so I'd say Life is the only school for which early summoning is not a key to success.
You still want to rely heavily on summoned units into the Uncommon level of spells. Getting your powerful Uncommon Summon ASAP can be the key to the mid-game in any Conjuration strategy.
The key to all of this is that you are able to field armies early in the game without having to build any units in your towns. This allows you to focus on economic development in your towns and getting your town to the point where they can build powerful Normal units as fast as possible. The other great thing about Conjuration is that you can move your summoning circle, so that you can produce your most powerful early units in any town you want, you don't need to wait on those towns to develop economically.
But now for hiring. This is the other key way to acquire units without building them. The most commonly hired units are Heroes, but you can hire any type of Normal unit as a Mercenary. People really overlook this a lot IMO. The Retorts that boost hiring are Famous and Charismatic. Whether Charismatic is really worth it is a matter of debate, but it can be. Another complement to Famous is Warlord, which also affects your hired units, as well as your Normal units. With this strategy, you can want to skip building Normal units early on and rely instead of hiring units. This can be tricky because it is much more up to chance than summoning. However, there can be big payoffs as well. Its a sort of higher risk, higher potential reward type approach. I've had Famous games where I quickly acquired powerful heroes like Fang, Morgana, Shin-Bo, and Shalla, leading to rapid facerolls, and games using Famous where I didn't get a single hero or mercenary offer until way late in the game. Yes, being Famous usually works out, but its not a sure thing. Famous + Charismatic can be very powerful, especially as you start getting good offers of gear to go along with your heroes. Even getting early offers of Normal units like Doom Drakes, Trolls of any kind, Nightmares, etc. can also be game changers and offer the opportunity to take an enemy capital quickly.
The key here is recognizing Famous as an economic tool. Try to rely on it as a means of acquiring units instead of building units and to develop your strategy around this perspective. You need to generate gold, keep gold stockpiles on hand, and focus on economic development and not be tempted to build units. Focus on raising your Fame as much as you can as fast as you can. Here, of course, Life magic shines, making Life the best school to complement this strategy. Of course, Sorcery is also good, and a mix of both Life and Sorcery and work very will with Fame based strategies. With this, its all about getting your Fame to 40+ ASAP and keeping it there.
Now, of course, there are still viable strategies that rely on early unit building and of course there is Artificier + Runemage, which is its own separate thing. Artificier + Runemage is sort of like a mix between a Famous Strategy and a Conjuration strategy, without using either of those retorts. It works best when you take 2 Chaos books and make use of Hell Hounds early on, while you wait for heroes that can make use of your Artifacts. Again, the key is not building units, but rather developing economically while you rely on summoned and hired units.
Then we have the cases of strats that do rely on early build Normal units. IMO, these are the most challenging strats to pull off. The best for this is of course Life, using races like Barbarians, Halflings, Darconians, or Nomads. For this you obviously want Warlord and possibly also Archmage and/or Alchemy.
Here you want to go for something like a few Barbarian Cavalry and focus on buffing the heck out of them. You'll need to be able to put Heroism, Endurance, Holy Weapon, etc. on them.
A start with something like 2 Cavalry and 1 Hero can work and you can often take capitals early with as few as 3 Barbarian Cavalry that are heavily buffed. Nomads can also work really well, though they are riskier than Barbarians. But still, you can start with Horsebowmen, work up to Rangers, defend with some Pikemen, and then when you get Griffins you are set. But the key will be the Horsebowmen rush, which isn't as good as Barb Cavalry, but is still decent and can be worth it for the Ranger + Griffin payoff. Again, the key here is that if you are going to use Normal units, you need to rush to some moderately powerful early Normal unit and then rely on buffing the heck out of them, to make use of your magic. Allow your magic to provide value instead of relying on building out a lot of Normal units, which delays your economic development.
So the real key to all of this is, developing strategies around fielding stacks capable of acquiring resources as early as possible in the game, while not slowing down your economic development. They key to this is being able to acquire units without having to build them in your towns at all. Conjuring and hiring are the keys. If you are going to rely on built units, at least use magic that can make just a few built units as powerful as possible.
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New Races possible? |
Posted by: Malekron - July 1st, 2022, 01:55 - Forum: Caster of Magic
- Replies (2)
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I was wondering if new races would be possible to add to the game.
Perhaps Goblins that use poison on most of their units to win easily against low resistance armies, maximum figures possible and economic prowess to crave a greenskin niche. They have an -10 unrest with orcs and trolls when conquering them and vice versa that encourages a orc-troll-goblin mixture with goblins as the head of the snake.
Nazghul (Darlocks for Master of Orion) can have invisibility on most if not all their units and intense interracial unrest akin to dark elves and klackons. Illusions immunity can be devastating to this race.
Ratmen can be a high tech (multishot lightning guns) low resistance race that myrrors the dwarves and has a intense hatred for dwarves and likewise.
Vampires can be a race with their units all being of the life draining undead trait with a lot of specialized casters that can summon skeletons, wraiths and death knights.
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A few things on Diplomacy |
Posted by: Thomasagray - June 30th, 2022, 01:15 - Forum: Caster of Magic
- Replies (2)
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I was thinking of a few changes I'd suggest for diplomacy in Caster of Magic:
1. The spell of mastery, when at 1500+ MP progress, will set relations of even wizards you are at war with to -100 and keep it that way until the spell is disrupted or cancelled.
2. Peace Treaty is now a new real diplomatic treaty status, indicated by a bird icon. It is an agreement to end the war and lasts 10 turns, during that time a promise is made not to attack each other or use hostile overland spells against each other. The AI will adhere to a peace treaty, regardless of relations or personality, but the player is not necessarily bound to it. Peace treaties cannot be broken; instead use of hostile overland spells on their units or within their city territory or an attack on their units or city triggers Violated Peace War (AI is guaranteed to declare war); violating a peace treaty also lowers relations all other wizards as well, especially their allies but less so their enemies. This makes "faking" a peace before stabbing the enemy in the back less forgiving.
3. If a wizard you are not at war with casts a hostile overland spell against you, relations between you and that said wizard will worsen; he or she may be trying to provoke a hostile response.
4. Permanent war is a special war status that can escalate from a war and is based on previously broken treaties, indicated by a skull icon. Every time a treaty is broken or violated or a spell of mastery is started, a number is added to that threshold; once that threshold reaches 100 or above, the wizard may be inclined to declare a perpetual state of war.
Permanent war threshold decays at 2 per turn if you aren't at war. Actions that increase that threshold:
Break Wizard Pact: 15-35
Violate Peace Treaty 20-60
Break Alliance 15-65
Attack w/ Wizard Pact 30-70
Attack w/ Alliance 45-100
Begin Spell of Mastery 50-100
Note that peaceful wizards aren't affected by permanent war threshold and lawful wizards don't count beginning spell of mastery, while maniacal wizards decay more slowly and have a 2x min threshold effect, and Ruthless Wizards whose peace was violated have a threshold increase of 25-100.
If you are at war with the threshold over 100, the wizard, instead of being willing to talk, announces he/she has escalated the war with you and will never forgive you. Permanent War may set the wizard's hostility to alternate between Warlike and Jihad (most likely if the wizards has a leading edge); and will permanently set relations to -100 and cause audiences with the said wizard to no longer to be possible, ever. Other wizards, however, will merely see a permanent war as just another regular war and treat it like so.
Example Dialogue of Permanent War declared:
Enough of these small skirmishes and disputes, (player wizard)! Me and my followers are going to take you down once and for all!
You should have begged for mercy when you had the chance. Now I will see to it you get none!
No more talk. No more holding back. This war will be taken to the next level… into a perpetual war!
Any chance of peace we've once had is now gone for good, (player wizard)! We now are at war to the bitter end!
I, (AI wizard), have decided to escalate this conflict and step up my efforts to destroy you and your entire empire… utterly!
I will never forgive you! I will not stop until you and all of your followers are completely wiped from the face of Arcanus and Myrror!
Your existence is no longer welcome on Arcanus and Myrror… only your complete and utter destruction!
I no longer desire peace talks with you, (player wizard)… only to see that your severed head is added to my collection!
You had plenty of chances for reconciliation, but you wasted them all! Now I shall declare permanent war on you and deliver you a most painful death, (player name)!
I've been patient with you even as an opponent, but that patience is completely exhausted! We are now sworn enemies and we will remain that way… forever!
I will not tolerate your empire’s existence anymore! You will regret the day you crossed paths with (AI wizard)!
Negotiations are now out of the question. You should realize this means total war!
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I am reviewing hero ability and specific heroes |
Posted by: muxecoid2 - June 28th, 2022, 16:10 - Forum: Caster of Magic for Windows (CoM II)
- Replies (12)
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Hello. I decided to write down my impressions on all hero's. Not all of them I had the chance to use in CoM, so some is purely theoretical.
I will split it in 5 parts with 7 heroes and their hero abilities in each part.
Armsmaster. With heroism it gives 8xp per turn to 8 units max so it is 64 total per turn in best case. So it is like having free undispellable heroism every 3 turns. But often you do not have the good normal heroes to utilize him fully.
Constitution. HP is nice. Especially in CoM with AI often targeting heroes.
Might. If your hero is going to attack in melee you want it. Usually slightly less impactful, than blade master. And not every warrior type hero want to attack in melee.
Sage. Good economic ability, but does not help you in combat directly. Getting a key spell a couple of turns earlier may be very helpful. Good in early game.
Noble. Great in early game, not so impactful later.
Logistics. Combat skill is important. A really good ability.
Soul linker. Incredible bonus once you get enough levels, but not every wizard can utilize it.
Leadership. Needs many levels that you won't have in time to be impactful. On a weaker side.
Supply commander. More often than not you won't need the extra ammo. When you need you often can just attack next turn. Not impressed.
1.Dwarf.
Not too special. Lots of HP and armsmaster. HP is good for soaking damage that would kill others. Mountaineer is mostly for flavour. Mostly unremarkable.
2.Barbarian
Decent damage with his might and can attack air units, but not very useful. Will die unless you heavily invest in him and usually not worth the investment.
3. Sage
Hero named after his signature ability. Also has decent manapool as for low tier hero. Can help in combat, but often used just for economy.
4. Dervish
Not only helps you with early economy, but also boosts your armies in combat. Deceptively good hero.
5. Beatmaster
Boosts fantastic creatures significantly. To defend bonus is a rare and valuable stat. The spells and mana pool are not impressive. Best early game companion for stacks of fantastic creatures.
6. Bard.
Great companion for your armies. Best early companion for normal units. While holy bonus is amazing Leadership is much less important. Also good impactful spell. I take it when I see it.
7. Orc archer.
Unremarkable hero. Situations where you need more ammo are not too common. If he gets lucky with his random ability can be decent, but usually unremarkable.
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Invisibility and strategic AI |
Posted by: teelaurila - June 27th, 2022, 07:10 - Forum: Caster of Magic for Windows (CoM II)
- Replies (2)
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Just had a stack with 1 spellserker and 5 nightblades be hit with a firestorm. While bigger magician-rich stacks stood nearby. Now those nightblades do pose a serious threat to my blue-red enemy, as they can seriously help soften up the fortress before my big hitter. But I do find myself baffled, that the AI cheated to see through the invisibility to deduce that the invisibility was a threat, and then hit there?
So how does the strategic AI deal with invisibility? Can it always see through, or do I need to have a fully invis stack for them not to see, or something else?
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