Weakest possible custom wizard?

[Tiltowait]

I always hate taking too many advantages in wizard creation. I always feel like I'm cheating the game, even though it's all nice and legal. Life books + halflings, for example. Or Alchemy, period. I was reading about Mana Focusing and wondered what the weakest wizard could be, using all 11 picks.

Myrran, but using an Arcanus race. 3 picks.
Conjurer, 1 pick.
Charismatic, 1 pick.
2 nature spellbooks
2 sorcery spellbooks
2 chaos spellbooks

How's that? Maybe substitute Artificer for one of the spellbooks. How about a wizard that doesn't use Myrran?

[Catwalk]

Myrran - Klackons
4x Death
Infernal Power
Charismatic
Mana Focusing

[Tlaloc]

Yes, Myrran with Klackons or Gnolls, 4x death and Infernal Power is about the worst.

I definitely agree the game is too easy when picking the strongest custom settings. That's why I created a program to generate random custom wizards to create more fun and challenging games. Try it out if you have the chance and let me know what you think. I've also been toying with the idea of adding a difficulty setting to the game generator, where the hardest setting would generate custom wizards like those given above.

Tlaloc

[Tiltowait]

Myrran with Gnolls would actually be kind of interesting, seeing that the gnolls are intended to conquer other races quickly. It would all depend on which neutral cities you got near you. Trolls would be great, Dark Elves would be a death sentence because they'd range attack your troops before they got close.

Why is 4x death so bad? You can still end up with Wraiths, which is the most broken strategy in the game. It seems like having only 2 spellbooks of death and 2 of another color would be weaker. But then we'd lose Mana Focusing, easily the weakest retort in the game.

For an Arcanus wizard, I suppose we would add Archmage, Artificer, and one other.

Here's a link to a list of all the retorts, for your convenience.

[Asfex]

myrran +charismatic+famos +1 nature +1 death +sagemaster + conjurer +artificier. (or chaneller?).start with gnolls on myrran, hope no giant spiders to study.
But if i want challenge, i just mark "monsters gone wild" and "revolting raiders" checkbox in my mod at the start of the game.

[Tiltowait]

Charismatic + Famous is a good combo, though. You'll get heroes and magic items all the time, and they'll all be half price. The extra 10 fame helps a lot, too, especially in the beginning.

[Tlaloc]

Why is 4x death so bad? You can still end up with Wraiths, which is the most broken strategy in the game. It seems like having only 2 spellbooks of death and 2 of another color would be weaker. But then we'd lose Mana Focusing, easily the weakest retort in the game.

4x death let's you pick Infernal Power which costs 2 picks and is weak with a race that can't build temples, parthenons, cathedrals. Yes you can can get Wraiths, but the probability is pretty low.

[Hadriex]

Having one book in a school gives you the ability to trade for spells in that school. I think it's more limiting to be locked into just one.


Tlitowait has a good point about the gnolls. I'd argue the same point for Klackons.

They aren't nearly as aggressive as gnolls. But their early units have high defense and poison. And workers with a production of 3. Since they don't take that unrest penalty if your Capital is Klackon you really shouldn't have any problems powering out enough units to take a better city.


But what if you played a slow race? One you had to spend time building up before you could start conquering?

Not nomads, they get some good early units like horsebowmen. And high elves get longbowmen.

But orcs. What do they have going for them early game?


So I'm guessing the worst wizard is Myrran, famous, mana focusing, conjurer, sagemaster. 3 death. -Famous is 2 picks right? If not toss another retort like node mastery one the heap (Node mastery is only good if you can take a node. This build is designed to give you the worst start possible.)


In the near future I might attempt this build on impossible, so if you can think of any way to make this build worse let me know. And if you 'vote' that Klackons are still worse, or that 1 book in each school is still worse then 3 death, then I'll defer to the majority opinion on those points.


Also when do I play this, I'll offer up the save file on turn 1. Myrran still give a strong advantage: The fact that there's only 1 enemy wizard on your plane. This might even give me enough time to build up a real army while unchallenged. We can't have that. So I'd want at least 3 enemy wizards to start on the Myrran Plane with me.

[Tiltowait]

There's no way to do that. I seem to remember starting on Myrror and there were two other wizards on the plane, leaving only two on Arcanus. But maybe I'm not remembering correctly. The official strategy guide says that when wizards are rolled up, there's a chance Myrran will be randomly chosen, but it's a very small chance.

[Hadriex]

You can't just use a save editor to give each of the wizards a city on the Myrran plane?