Weakest possible custom wizard?

[Torin]

Sorry for necro this but its not easy to find a forum to discuss strategy of this game. Ive played from back then and ive played in the original patch.
In the original patch the game always crashed on my computer when wraiths attack so i had to kill them with ranged units. It also crashed at other instances. And yes, some picks costed less and some picks were different. Runemaster made your spells harder to dispel instead of stenghting your own dispel spells.

So the point I want to make to the OP. Ive used almost a similar wizard as the video and I know why they called the ultimate mage. Its not weak at all. I use right now

Agressive Build

Alchemy
Warlord
Famous
Charismatic
Node mastery
1Life (or 1 death wich is more difficult) 1Chaos 1Nature 1Sorcery

Lizardmen/Klackon

I use this build and no summon hero/champion because they are cheesy also no wraiths.
Its very fast and you need no extra buildings. Simply swordmen can conquer any indy city. Lizards get more HP. Klackon more defense. A lizard javelineer is very strong as are the turtle and beetle. Alchemy gives magic weapons to the primitive races. I try to make a strng stack fast to get extra books from ruins. Charismatic and the varied books makes me more able to get a lot of spells from the other wizards.

This other build I call Amigo wich is similar but weaker

Warlord
Charismatic
Node mastery

1 life 2 sorc 2 fire 2 nature

Barbarian

This build is very challenging because its weak but getting 2 books gives you more trading choices. After I recently read prima strategy guide, a pdf of an old guide that explains at detail EVERITHNG i learned that life magic gives a bonus to relations similar to charismatic and death a minus.
barbarian are the race thats gets the least unrest in you other races cities.
The goal of this build is to archieve the ultimate wizard. That is having "ALL" the spells. First trade to all of the other wizard spells. (you need to have 3 spellbooks in a magic to get the good ones) Maybe 4 books to the really rare such as move fortress, time stop, etc. You really dont need to give spells at all you just do spell brokering. And after that get the rest of the books to get the spells you have missing. Save and reload if needed to get acually books insted of other stuff. Life and death books are found in ruins. You will be missing death spells ofcourse.
Imagine having:
Healing-Call ligthning-Flame strike-Invisibility-Magic immunity-Invulnability-Wind Walking-Spell Lock-Earth Gate-Flight
Torin-Warrax-Malleus-Markus-Alorra-Roland Maybe Yramarag or elana replacing someone. The rest of the stack made of Sky drakes. Of course its an overkill but the goal is getting the ultimate stack of units.

Prima strategy guide:
http://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/master-of-magic/docs/

Some Cheesy builds

All death, summon wraiths
(from several guys in youtube)

Runemaster-Artificer 5 sorc 2 life 2 nature
(from this guy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtQBxdAo6JM

Channeler-Conjurer-Nature mastery-Node Mastery
4Nature 1sorc 1fire
(my cheesy build, summon sprites, then profit)

You definitely needs to try 4Sorc 1Nature 1Chaos + Conjurer + Sorcery Master + Node Mastery + Archmage + Alchemy.
Pick Phantom warrior, Confusion, Word of recall (or Psyonic blast), Human/Halfman. This is almost the fastest build! Just spam magic spirits and Phatom warrior. Once you have conquered some nodes, the build is going exponentially fast.

In fact, this is similar to your last strategy (Channeler-Conjurer-Nature mastery-Node Mastery 4Nature 1sorc 1fire). I think Archmage + Alchemy combo is better than Channeler.

Yes, I didnt try to abuse phantom warriors. That can be fast. Channeler its not there for the battlemagic bonus. Its for the discounts in mantaining many summons and enchantments. Summonner + channeler you pay only 25% of the mana upkeep.

[Anthony]

Yes, I didnt try to abuse phantom warriors. That can be fast. Channeler its not there for the battlemagic bonus. Its for the discounts in mantaining many summons and enchantments. Summonner + channeler you pay only 25% of the mana upkeep.

No you don't, due to oddities in how these things are calculated. What it actually does is:
Summoner: for each summoned unit, reduce its upkeep cost by 25%. Round down, so it does absolutely nothing for units with an upkeep of 3 or less.
Channeler: after computing the upkeep cost for all your spells and creatures, combined, halve it.

[Torin]

Yes, I didnt try to abuse phantom warriors. That can be fast. Channeler its not there for the battlemagic bonus. Its for the discounts in mantaining many summons and enchantments. Summonner + channeler you pay only 25% of the mana upkeep.

No you don't, due to oddities in how these things are calculated. What it actually does is:
Summoner: for each summoned unit, reduce its upkeep cost by 25%. Round down, so it does absolutely nothing for units with an upkeep of 3 or less.
Channeler: after computing the upkeep cost for all your spells and creatures, combined, halve it.

Maybe im mistaken but what i saw in my games is that the total upkeep of all of the summoned units is taken into acount. Then the discount is made. So you would get mostly the full of it.

Ok ran a quick test summoning 4 magic spirits. channeler works with all of the magic upkeep together then discounted 50%.
summoner seems to work as you said, no discount on the magic spirits it seems.
So it kicks when summoning the sprites discounting exactly 25 mana form the cost and so speeding it casting but no effect un their upkeep. It would kick in with more expensive creatures such as the gorgons.

The conjurer+nature mastery bonuses are added in the casting cost so sprites cost 60 mana instead of 100.

Since conjurer costs one pick you can replace it with alchemy i guess. That would get you more mana. Its not clear which is better.

Ran another test. Conjurer+channeler. Summoned one chimera (upkeep 10) and upkeep was 4.
So its not -75% rounded up or down because that would be either 2 or 3
They are not both rounded down as advertised, because the result would be 3.

Nevermind. You made a typo. You meant conjurer is rounded up. So thats consistant with the wiki and the results.
By the way summoning one magic spirit with channeler is 0 upkeep.

[Torin]

Made a new design I will test

*Alchemy, Warlord, Nature Mastery, Channeler, Archmage
*Gnolls

Basically I will recruit a gnoll spearmen and enchant them with stone skin and giant strength

Will get a discount on the mana upkeep of those enchants and both archmage and nature mastery make those enchants twice as hard to dispel. I ignore how much that would result. Maybe 4 times as had to dispel?

[robinh3123]

Yes, I didnt try to abuse phantom warriors. That can be fast. Channeler its not there for the battlemagic bonus. Its for the discounts in mantaining many summons and enchantments. Summonner + channeler you pay only 25% of the mana upkeep.

No you don't, due to oddities in how these things are calculated. What it actually does is:
Summoner: for each summoned unit, reduce its upkeep cost by 25%. Round down, so it does absolutely nothing for units with an upkeep of 3 or less.
Channeler: after computing the upkeep cost for all your spells and creatures, combined, halve it.

That's why alchemy+archmage is a lot better than channeler:

Comparison of alchemy +archmage vs. Channeler when spamming magic spirits + Phantom warriors
* channeler reduces the upkeep of magic spirits (half), but the alchemy money-mana conversion saving is almost the same effectiveness as channeler.
* channeler helps far-distance combat casting mana: However, this effects is big only when the magic spirits explores at the far-distance (2.5x or 3x) area, i.e. farther than 20 to 25 squares away. In early stage, the effects are not that big, and could be easily compensated a least more than half of the effect by alchemy money-mana conversion. In late stage, when cities generates lots of money, alchemy's saving also increases a lot.
* archmage is important because you spent fewer waves of your magic spirits to win a combat. (like in a node) This not only saves the initial casting cost of magic spirits, but also save the traveling time (distance) of the magic spirits. (If a magic spirits die in a far distance, you may need to summon another and wait for it to travel to that distance).
* archmage is also important for your magic to pass Dijinn's counter magic. It's quite easy for 24 to 30 casting skill (4 to 5 phantom warrrior) to kill a Dijinn, when the node is defended by one Dijinn and other lesser units, with arghmage:
Your phantom warrior (casting cost 6), has an effective counter-magic resistance point of 40, since
phantom warrior's original cast cost is 10, and archmage + sorcery mastery gives you 4x stronger resistance to the dispel power of counter magic.
=> if you can conquer a node defended by Dijinn, your 4x node mana benefit (sorcery mastery + node mastery) will give you fast development.


Another interesting alternative combination are:
Take off the node mastery, drop 1 nature and 1 chaos book, and (possibly drop alchemy). This leaves you 3 to 4 picks.
For 3 picks, choose 3 Life books.
For 4 picks, choose 2 Life books + war lord.

You still have your phantom warrior with 40 power resistance to the node 50 power dispel. So, even in node other than sorcery node, your phantom warrior still have a little bit less than 1/2 chance to get through.
Yet it trades off the 2x node mana benefits.

[robinh3123]

Made a new design I will test

*Alchemy, Warlord, Nature Mastery, Channeler, Archmage
*Gnolls

Basically I will recruit a gnoll spearmen and enchant them with stone skin and giant strength

Will get a discount on the mana upkeep of those enchants and both archmage and nature mastery make those enchants twice as hard to dispel. I ignore how much that would result. Maybe 4 times as had to dispel?

Yes. it's 4 times as hard to dispel.
I have played two settings: Sorcery mastery with and without archmage.
When it combines archmage, my phantom warriors seems easier to pass Dijinn's counter magic in a sorcery node.