Apprentices - potential substitute for old game magic spirit spam?

[occasionalplayer]

I was wondering whether apprentices could substitute the magic spirit node cracking strategy which was, I think:
Node Mastery, Alchemy, Archmage, Sorcery Mastery - Magic spirit, and then trying to conquer nodes with phantom warriors (at the time at cost 10 - cheaper with conjurer/sorcery mastery). I think with skill 24, you could have a serious chance at wearing down nodes. 

Apprentices could be a successor. Phantoms cost 14 now, but with 8 apprentices, you can cast them 8 times - plus the one the wizard can cast. 


I once suggested an apprentice-focus magic combo, but it could be more cost-efficient without it. Pick for instance phantoms, web and (depending on your focus) some of the following: Life Drain, Weakness, Warp Creature, Aether Sparks, Firebolt. Or pick focus magic for stronger nodes and psionic blast - illusionary hits higher tier targets hard. So, you can wear down weaker nodes with phantoms, stronger ones when you cast focus magic on your apprentices. If you are worried about dying the first turn, pick resist magic (large shield does ensure some survivalability, though) - and they only need one figure to be able to cast. No use obviously against spiders, but there you might use other options.

They are also versatile against many types of city garrisons. If need be, combine with ghouls (even without focus magic) - warp creature can be efficient. 

Not sure about the workabilty. But even 14 MP gives you some nice options at first glance.
Any thoughts?

[robinh3123]

IMHO, it should work in some cases. However, it's far less effective than old day's magic spirit spam.

First of all, in old days, 1 magic spirit can threat many kinds of troupes, while you need to collect some number of apprentices.

Secondly, magic spirits can be summoned, as long as you have cities! For apprentices, you need at least some buildings, and turns. You may conquer enemy/neutral cities to use as a summon base for spirits. However, only when the enemy/neutral city is a dark-elf city, can you build apprentices.

Thirdly, magic spirits walks faster than apprentices. They can also walk on water.

Apprentices spam is definitely a good strategy, but not an all-time winning strategy.

Yet generally speaking, dark elf is a good race choice. Not just apprentice spam but also night blade spam and warlock spam.

For those magics helping this strategy, you can not pick them all. Otherwise you won't have a focus in a specific realm, which may make you a hard time in the late game. Remember not like good old days, few lairs/towers/nodes provide retorts or books.

Since you need at least magic focus, phantom warrior, and possibly Aether sparks/Psionic blast, I would suggest sorcery to be your focus realm. And you should pick only two other realms with 2 books each. (for the focus reason). Myrran, astrologer are musts. Specialist + conjurer for phantoms, since your (wizard's) phantom is far more effective (no limitations on apprentice's global slow walking speed, and it helps for all combats not just apprentice spam combats). Specialist + conjurer is far more effective than those helping magics in other realms. That's why I said to pick at most 2 other realms for 2 books each.

Now for the two other realms, what are the most effective? 1st place: web, since it works best with your phantom. This leaves you only one other choice. Possible options to work with the spam objective are:
Star fire, Life drain, Warp creature, Firebolt, Fairy dust, Call Centaurs (If you pick 3~4 green books, i.e. the two-other-realms happens to be a same realm). Note: weakness does not directly help the spam scenario in most cases.

Applying the elimination method, we check from the last place (6th place, the worst choice):

(6) Call Centaurs: Doesn't make sense: you already have shooters, the apprentices.
(5) Warp creature: C/P value too low, due to it's randomness. You certainly want the no-resistance effect, but you get only 1/3 chances.
(4,3, 2, 1) Firebolt, star fire, Fairy dust, Life drain: They should have almost the same C/P value.
Fireball almost == star fire. Star fire on monster only, but for city guards, you have too many other options.
Fairy dust is a little bit weaker. However, it saves you a pick in other realms (3 greens), making your main realm one book stronger, i.e. + 1 more pick in sorcery.
Life drain helps push-up skills.

Among all, I think star fire is a little bit better than all others, since your 2 white books will give you lots of useful low-level white magics. (Compare to others, white has best numbers of good spells in its low-level spells).

Now, why just focus on helping the spam strategy? You can use more than one strategy in one game right? So, instead of star fire, why not Heroism/Endurance/Just cause/weakness...? They should certainly do better (in other scenario/strategy) than star fire, since you already have direct-hit spells in sorcery (though not working for illusion immunity)

One other option is, give back the two books to focus on sorcery. (So, only pick two green books for web, all else are sorcery books).

-- Enjoy!

[occasionalplayer]

Thank you for your input; it makes sense to me. As for cost: Apprentices only require cheap libraries (which also give you research) nothing else. 
Other than that: I like warp creature because it works well, due to -5 resistance, on mid-to-higher tier enemies (even with resistance 10, you have a 50-percent-chance of success, and almost every effect is useful). Weakness of course has an even higher chance, but is useless against stronger enemies and for city garrisons, as you said, you have many options. 

Sorc only probably good for the "big picture" (long run), since apprentices compensate early sorcery weaknesses. But focus magic probably not needed on many. Sorc only weak against early death lairs that would otherwise be easy (warp creature!), but aether sparks might work fine, requiring maybe somewhat larger stacks. Life buffs for apprentices are in my opinion not necessary (dont give additional mp), but good of course for later stuff. 

Early undead you can get with life drain (and warp creature) are good against spider lairs (those you would not be getting otherwise with dark elves, not even with warlocks - send in the undead first for attrition). But I understand a "jack of all trades"-approach hurt your late game. 

Therefore, on the whole I tend to agree (sorc only probably strongest - but maybe sorc/death also), possibly sorc/nature for web. Warp Creature is very nice (one could try chaos/death, depending on how warp creature works), but phantoms are better in most situations I assume even though that may mean you have to sacrifice more apprentices for the ghouls/skeletons lair and pass up on spider lairs.

[robinh3123]

I have tested a few variations these days. A few interesting combos (dark elf, of course):
A) 3Death (zombie + weakness) + 2 Nature(web) + 5 Sorcery + Myrran + Astrology
I do get 5 spider undead served for me, in one battle (all 5 spiders become undead), no causality. Thanks to my heroes (3 castors) and 4 apprentices (All of them have wraith form + focus magic). Basically, cast 2 earth of mud, enough area to run around, and use weakness + zombie.

However, it's lucky to get wraith form spell in my books.

B) 2 Nature (web) + 6 sorcery + Myrran, Astrology, specialist, conjurer.
I would think, specialist not that good, and should trade for a book, (death ?) and perhaps 2 Nature + 5 sorcery + 2 death?

In summary, I would say this strategy is playable, and fun (due to its unpredictable path to win). However, I don't think the strategy is too powerful. I still experience late game problem, unless I get luck to have sky drake.

The more books you get from non-primary realm, the better the spam strategy will work in early game, BUT, the worse you will experience late game problem (no strong units to fight for you).

I don't think this strategy will unbalance the game.

[occasionalplayer]

I agree. Not unbalancing because unlike in the original game, there are lots of counters and finally, capable high tier summons. But still fun to play because you can actually do magic in the early game!

As for which is strongest, I am kind of inclined to think that a death-sorc-combo might actually be very strong. Maybe you only need focus magic/phantoms from sorcery and death for the rest and try to get mid-tier undead to bootstrap. Of course warp creature would help with stronger undead, but price of 2 chaos too high. Chaos otherwise not very useful, phantom warriors are almost always better than fire bolt. You could of course try chaos/death only, but then you will lose your ability to hit higher-tier units that you could hit with phantoms. So, I think death/sorc should be nice - and if you go 5/5, you might still get good late game stuff. Also, Dark Elves have as you pointed out Warlocks later on which are kind of medium to top tier.

So your strategies are: 
apprentice spam; 
then warlock spam (or perhaps nightblades); 
and then you need stuff for the late game which you won't have with two books each realm. Best probably sorcery as you pointed out.

As for life, buffs don't work particularly well on dark elves - their ranged attack remains weak and is hardly relevant (no + to hit); Mana does not grow with life buffs. Maybe I am mistaken.

[robinh3123]

Thank you for your input; it makes sense to me. As for cost: Apprentices only require cheap libraries (which also give you research) nothing else. 
Other than that: I like warp creature because it works well, due to -5 resistance, on mid-to-higher tier enemies (even with resistance 10, you have a 50-percent-chance of success, and almost every effect is useful). Weakness of course has an even higher chance, but is useless against stronger enemies and for city garrisons, as you said, you have many options. 

Sorc only probably good for the "big picture" (long run), since apprentices compensate early sorcery weaknesses. But focus magic probably not needed on many. Sorc only weak against early death lairs that would otherwise be easy (warp creature!), but aether sparks might work fine, requiring maybe somewhat larger stacks. Life buffs for apprentices are in my opinion not necessary (dont give additional mp), but good of course for later stuff. 

Early undead you can get with life drain (and warp creature) are good against spider lairs (those you would not be getting otherwise with dark elves, not even with warlocks - send in the undead first for attrition). But I understand a "jack of all trades"-approach hurt your late game. 

Therefore, on the whole I tend to agree (sorc only probably strongest - but maybe sorc/death also), possibly sorc/nature for web. Warp Creature is very nice (one could try chaos/death, depending on how warp creature works), but phantoms are better in most situations I assume even though that may mean you have to sacrifice more apprentices for the ghouls/skeletons lair and pass up on spider lairs.

Sorry, I was not aware that Warp creature is now 10pt to cast.  Yes, warp creature could be useful in this scheme.

[robinh3123]

Note if you are not aware that I am the first to use/point out the magic spirit spam, in original master of magic.

Though I was enlightened by some one's post:
Archmage + Sorcery master + conjurer + many sorcery + white combo.

With some adjustment I finally get the fast resource strategy
4 sorcery 1 nature 1 chaos Archmage + Sorcery master + conjurer + node mastery + alchemy
and with early game of spam magic spirits and phantom warrior.

Normally just magic spirits, phantom warrior and confusion can banish 2~3 wizards.

Now in castor of magic, I would really like to see if rainbow type wizard can stand in the late game.

BTW: I am playing Fair level now... Not like original master of magic, I always play impossible level... The AI is too good (and rules limits many loopholes) in castor of magic.

[robinh3123]

I did more experiments on variations. This time, I think I get the idea of what is strongest combinations for dark elf apprentice spam...

As guessed by @occasionalplayer, Blue + Black should be the strongest.

Black's Wraith form spell is a loophole. Wraith form + ship = Wind Walking!

Here's my combinations:
4 Blues, take Phantom warrior (Best C/P value), focus magic, and confusion.
3 Black, take Zombie (perhaps Ghouls, but I think Zombie is more suitable, to make best use of the apprentices),
and Wraith form (Best C/P value)
3 Green: take web and earth to mud
Retorts: Of course, Myrran + Astrology

All the spell really work together! for fast monster, earth to mud help you survive your apprentice (with Wraith form, you move faster in mud than those corporeal monster), Even flyer, since we have web. Phantom warrior is non-corporeal, also good in mud!) Also, you may hope to have some research-able helping spells in black (life drain, weakness, ghouls), in Green (fairy dust, ice bolt), and in Blue (Pyonic blast, ethereal blast)

You think the pick has a weakness of no direct hit spell? Don't forget the apprentice can cast fireball!

For city guards, I always cast zombie and web. (zombie is too slow, has to cast web or earth to mud), and tries to make as many undead as possible.

If not for the capital's thunder-bolt setting, apprentice spam should really take enemies' capital.

As for Red's Wrap creature, it does not work as tightly as my picks. It has potential to kill a little bit higher rank monster than my settings, but not as practical. I mean, compared to Warp creature, in most cases, there are other easier way to kill or even get undead (kill + increase our army). For those higher rank monster, focus magic is a must for warp creature (since you may need multiple cast of warp creature) . Now you must decide to have green or black but not both. Drop green: you don't have web, no good for flyers or fast monsters, Drop Black: no cheap Wind walking, slow!

I get back my word of realm focus: Rainbow is OK! Since we make 4-3-3 rainbow, each realms still has good possibilities to give you good spells, including Sky drake!