Favorite Custom Wizard (CoM 6.01)

[ksasaki]

I like to play huge map, powerful nodes, with epic battles and trying to defeat all nodes if possible.  I've tried several races, but really like barbarians for their spellserkers and pathfinding, and lizardmen for fast settlers and waterwalking.  Halflings theoretically good for unrest, but they start really slow and are more a turtle race.

Here is the build I have so far:
2 death
2 nature
1 chaos
2 sorcery

wild boars (great for attacking neutral towns / defense), also consider sprites a close second
death (skeletons: free unrest control, not so great for defense, but good for detecting invisible units and decent at defense against poison death, and illusions)
confusion (ultimate spell for cracking nodes early)

archmage, conjurer, channeler, astrologer.  I used to not have channeler, but I find my style makes constant use of spellcasting and those 3x casting costs really start to hurt later in the game!

I'm thinking about dropping the death books (I really like skeletons but they can't kill too much alone) and adding maybe one sorcery for phantom warriors to make cracking sorcery nodes easier, maybe one in Chaos as well for fire bolt or one more in green for sprites AND wild boars

This build works great to weak / mid sized monsters but it really struggles against super beasts like drakes, archangels, demon lords etc.  Dependent on finding some good treasure from mid sized nodes.

Would love to hear other people's builds, and how they defeat those super monsters, they are really buffed up in CoM.  Or just web / cracks call cheese as before 

[Sapher]

In current version treasure hunting is the strongest strategy. So no matter what build you pick the first thing you should think about is how are you going to capture nodes.
Everything that helps with that is a good choice the rest is weak.
2 death for skeletons? A weak choice. It's not going to help with treasure hunting. 
2 nature for boars? Also not going to help. Sprites would be good(if not playing draconians, you dont need both).
1 chaos? Weak. 2chaos for flame blade and super buffed archers would be good.
2 sorcery for confusion? Strong choice and it needs a race that can build cavalry. So lizardmen and halfllings would be bad, barbarians good. Also 3rd book for phantom warrior would be good because it allows conquering an air elementals node and allows finding magic immunity as a reward.  

There are other approaches to treasure hunting like picking 8 books for shadow demons/great lizards and fighting nodes with uncommon summons but usualy that is a slower play.
Other possibility is undead creation. One chaos spawn can solo kill quite a lot of lairs. You can get one from the start of the game with warp creature + life drain combo or with buffed ghouls. 

Strongest lairs are for the heroes. Just keep in mind that if you want to kite 4 move archangel you need 6 speed. To kite wraith/death knights you need 7. Kill one at a time with fire bolts/arrows/catapults/whatever you have.

[ksasaki]

I totally agree that treasure hunting, specifically nodes for that early spike in power that you need is essential.  I like skeletons because they are free unrest control in cities (no food) and free garrison for surrounding encounter areas you can't beat yet and stop those rampaging monsters.  Also, they cost no maintenance and you can send skeleton waves to wear down a node.  (You can also just send spearmen waves, probably cheaper).  Skeletons are also great for emergency defense, and they can detet invisible units too, I really like them, they are kind of an indirect benefit in my opinion with all the food saved and great for emergency garrisoning.

Warp creature / drain life / ghouls is interesting.  I wonder what ghouls / focus magic would look like, it's pretty pricey to cast (160) and maintain (3 / turn), but I imagine it would be pretty powerful against normal units, might be great to convert raiders into undead, but unfortunately undead can't heal.

Warp creature only 1/3 chance to zero resistance, but at -5 save modifier is pretty interesting indeed!  However, you would need 28! mana to make it work with confusion, but is awesome with life drain.  I guess you could put a life drain item on a hero but you can't get heroes until turn 30 unless it is a prisoner, hope for some good rolls then!  

Assuming you pick archmage to start, realistically you probably have ~20 casting skill to start until you capture the first node

let's go over each kind of monster in nodes.

Sorcery:
phantom warriors, naga: phantom beast or sprites work great too, probably need 1 sprite + phantom warriors ideally
air elementals: can be beaten by phantom warriors (preferably two for nagas, but usually you can do it)
phantom beast: confusion works reasonably well at 40% effectiveness.
water elemental: really tough, 30% confusion isn't bad, but you would take heavy attrition trying to confuse, maybe cavalry can work but they are really tough and +2 to hit
djinn: really hard to beat until you have more spell power maybe to fire bolt / psionic blast him down, really don't see any way to beat it early
storm giant: 10% chance to confuse, probably not happening, plus they hit hard
sky drake: ouch, no chance

Chaos:
Hell hounds, fire elementals: boars work OK, confusion can also work
gargoyles: 10% chance to confuse really bad probability, feel they are really tough to crack early
chimeras: 20% chance to confuse, can be "waved" down, not great but not terrible
fire giant: need to survive, but probably confusion is your best bet here though 30% isn't great
chaos spawn: not confusable, not enough fire bolt casting power early to take them out, maybe ghouls + focus magic but it would be SLOW to cast
doom bat: these guys got a big buff and can hit you immediately!  guaranteed doom damage and high resistance, I don't really have an answer early for them.  Maybe halberdiers but you would need to sac probably 9
efreet: yeah these guys not possible to kill early
great drake: nope lol
hydra: nope regen 7 can't be cracked early, cracks call works well because they can't regenerate it but that's mid game by the time you've taken a couple nodes and boosted your spell power hopefully

Nature:
boars and war bears: sprites best here
giant spiders: I find these guys really tough to beat early, they web your guys and then move super fast, and have poison, maybe halberdiers?
sprites: these guys are awful in a node, but if you survive maybe you can fire bolt them down
cockatrices: confusion at 30% chance is best bet
earth elemental: can arrow cheese, or confuse at 20%, 2-3 sprites can easily whittle them down provided they don't have other guys with them
gorgons: 10% confuse, not terrible but tough
great lizard: confuse 30% is decent, so probably best also kills regenerate
stone giant: super ouch, they can't be confused and hit HARD
colossus, behemoth, great wyrm, forget it, maybe 9 sprites if great wyrm?  really hard to get 9 sprites early but would be worth killing a great wyrm node

So basically hoping for a crackable nature or sorcery node without the super hard stuff (I find chaos pretty tough to crack early in general), then hopefully get an uncommon summon to crack the others.

I think early gnoll halberdiers might be a way to crack giant spiders, I don't really build halberdiers at all but I've used horde before and they hit HARD.  Halberdiers might be the answer to early ranged nodes, I might give it a try sometime.

[massone]

I only play on Huge maps.

My "favourite" is High Men Life-Sorcery taking Incarnation as guaranteed, because it's fun. It's just immensely satisfying to have an invincible Chosen with a team of fully buffed Paladins and Crusaders destroying everything, with Sorcery needed to provide Flying capabilities and deal with other Life Wizards with Dispelling Wave. I like to play Guardian as well to raze everything and rebuild with HM cities to roleplay religious fanatics, but objectively it's a pretty terrible choice compared to conquest, even with the unrest penalties.

My "best" is Halfing Life-Sorcery, or full Sorcery. But it's not as fun--with just 10 cities, you can get Very Rare spells by 1409/1410, which means you have a year or two lead over the post 6.0 Lunatic other-plane AI which got AI bonuses nerfed, and you'll have 3-4 VRs by the time the AI researches their first. It's really just a long slog to certain victory from there. Early treasure hunting is weak, but you can easily hunt all the strongest nodes that have Rare and Very Rare summons using Elite Slingers. But early treasure hunting is irrelevant for this build as you don't get any good artifacts from the weak lairs before Slingers are available, and you don't need the nodes for Power.

[Sapher]

My "best" is Halfing Life-Sorcery, or full Sorcery. But it's not as fun--with just 10 cities, you can get Very Rare spells by 1409/1410, which means you have a year or two lead over the post 6.0 Lunatic other-plane AI which got AI bonuses nerfed, and you'll have 3-4 VRs by the time the AI researches their first. It's really just a long slog to certain victory from there. Early treasure hunting is weak, but you can easily hunt all the strongest nodes that have Rare and Very Rare summons using Elite Slingers. But early treasure hunting is irrelevant for this build as you don't get any good artifacts from the weak lairs before Slingers are available, and you don't need the nodes for Power.

That's fast, i would watch that game ^_^

[ksasaki]

My "best" is Halfing Life-Sorcery, or full Sorcery. But it's not as fun--with just 10 cities, you can get Very Rare spells by 1409/1410, which means you have a year or two lead over the post 6.0 Lunatic other-plane AI which got AI bonuses nerfed, and you'll have 3-4 VRs by the time the AI researches their first. It's really just a long slog to certain victory from there. Early treasure hunting is weak, but you can easily hunt all the strongest nodes that have Rare and Very Rare summons using Elite Slingers. But early treasure hunting is irrelevant for this build as you don't get any good artifacts from the weak lairs before Slingers are available, and you don't need the nodes for Power.

Can you go into more detail for full sorcery?  I assume 10 books + specialist + ?  sage master perhaps, or conjurer?

Also, I play with monsters gone wild and revolting raiders for full challenge, and I find it hard to defend my border towns when a stack of 9 werewolves or gargoyles probably the worst come and ruin my towns.

How do you defend your fringe cities in the early going?  Phantom warriors and nagas seem like they would be toast against an undead stack.  Or do you just expand conservatively and have an early slinger town?

Can you describe your early build order for your early towns as well?  Let's play also would be informative, or just a brief description.

Thanks!

[massone]

My "best" is Halfing Life-Sorcery, or full Sorcery. But it's not as fun--with just 10 cities, you can get Very Rare spells by 1409/1410, which means you have a year or two lead over the post 6.0 Lunatic other-plane AI which got AI bonuses nerfed, and you'll have 3-4 VRs by the time the AI researches their first. It's really just a long slog to certain victory from there. Early treasure hunting is weak, but you can easily hunt all the strongest nodes that have Rare and Very Rare summons using Elite Slingers. But early treasure hunting is irrelevant for this build as you don't get any good artifacts from the weak lairs before Slingers are available, and you don't need the nodes for Power.

Can you go into more detail for full sorcery?  I assume 10 books + specialist + ?  sage master perhaps, or conjurer?

Also, I play with monsters gone wild and revolting raiders for full challenge, and I find it hard to defend my border towns when a stack of 9 werewolves or gargoyles probably the worst come and ruin my towns.

How do you defend your fringe cities in the early going?  Phantom warriors and nagas seem like they would be toast against an undead stack.  Or do you just expand conservatively and have an early slinger town?

Can you describe your early build order for your early towns as well?  Let's play also would be informative, or just a brief description.

Thanks!

The core of the build is taking advantage of Halfling's racial city research output. Since Omniscience was added to the game, it provides +16% for the first and +3.5% to city RP per additional Sorcery book, and it stacks with Sage Master's 25% multiplicatively. You also need Alchemy to take advantage of Halfling's gold economy (can build most buildings, and has 3 food/pop without having to build Animist's Guild) so you can put all your Power into casting skill (or more RP, at various times, but definitely minimize direct mana generation). That means you can have 9 Sorcery books maximum, but 4 Sorcery minimum for the Very Rare spells. Any choices in between depend on your own preferences. 8 books with Specialist is the probably better full Sorcery, as you don't want too many books that'll clog up your spellbook with Uncommon/Rare spells before you reach VRs. However, the Life-Sorcery version is more consistent overall.

Early game defense is very difficult for a full Sorcery Halfling build. You have to turtle and avoid Death Wizards, especially the Ghouls, at all costs. It's quite risky because of that, and Halflings don't get access to barracks so your Slinger treasure hunting is going to suffer too. You can use the Focus Magic + Nagas combo to use poison at range, but realistically, unless you get lucky and conquer a military race neutral, your early game will suck.

The Life-Sorcery version has fewer late-game Sorcery spells, so you might not get Magic Immunity/Sky Drakes/Power Link, which can win games by themselves, but you will instead get a much better early game. Heroism and other buffs on the early Halfling swordsmen is really strong, and there is Stream of Life for the pop synergy. Still going to be tough if you're playing MGW though, the lack of decent cheap ranged units really hurts, and Slingers aren't all that impressive for the build cost without Heroism. You definitely need Heavenly Light at least for defense.

I usually build Sawmill -> Magic Market/Granary -> Library -> Builder's Hall -> University -> Mechanician's Guild -> Wizard's Guild. After that it doesn't matter that much, just filling out all the rest of the economy buildings, building Amplifying Towers whenever gold can support the extra maintenance. The Slinger towns get Fighter's Guild after Granary or Library and add other buildings later when convenient.