Damn fine coffee! And hot!

[unicurse]

This game is absolutely brutal. I can't even handle Normal difficulty quite yet. I'm still fairly new to MoM and trying not to use wikis but I'm no 4x newbie by any stretch of the imagination. 

I fuckin' love it! Thank you so much to Seravy and contributors for making this absolute treat of a mod!

[MilesBeyond]

I've been really enjoying the difficulty myself. I'm finding it quite different from standard and even 1.5 MoM - there it often felt like if you could weather the early storm and out-rush your opponent, you had the game well in hand. Here even on lower levels it feels like the AI becomes more competitive over time, not less, and to me that provides a much more satisfying experience. The AI keeps pace with me - we're hitting Uncommon and Rare spells at roughly the same time, we're maxing out our cities at roughly the same time (race and book dependent of course) - it makes things feel a lot more intense.

It's also just neat the combos they'll send at you. In particular, Water Walking Giant Spiders have been a nasty surprise.

I used to play 1.5 on anywhere from Hard-Impossible, depending on the combo I was playing, but so far Fair in CoM is providing the perfect challenge.

[unicurse]

I've been really enjoying the difficulty myself. I'm finding it quite different from standard and even 1.5 MoM - there it often felt like if you could weather the early storm and out-rush your opponent, you had the game well in hand. Here even on lower levels it feels like the AI becomes more competitive over time, not less, and to me that provides a much more satisfying experience. The AI keeps pace with me - we're hitting Uncommon and Rare spells at roughly the same time, we're maxing out our cities at roughly the same time (race and book dependent of course) - it makes things feel a lot more intense.

It's also just neat the combos they'll send at you. In particular, Water Walking Giant Spiders have been a nasty surprise.

I used to play 1.5 on anywhere from Hard-Impossible, depending on the combo I was playing, but so far Fair in CoM is providing the perfect challenge.

That's exactly it! You're constantly having to think about what you're doing to win. That's not something I can say about most "normal" or "standard" difficulty settings on other games. To be fair, I'm still learning the ropes with this, but I can generally play 4x titles on "hard" and "harder" or equivalent and win comfortably. At no point am I feeling that the computer is just sat back doing nothing: it'll consistently test my defenses and throw things at me from an angle I hadn't expected. The AI algorithm is clearly very good in Caster of Magic. At least at this level, I feel I can win (I've been playing the game through a bit too quickly in my last couple of attempts and come unstuck, usually through not having large enough garrisons) and I'm only having to restart through my own oversight.

Now I have the fun of working through all the myriad book combinations to see what works!

[onefineday]

Hi, I can't see to find the option to create a new thread, so I'll ask here... what are the general opening strategies for Caster? I've had some success with stables and cavalry rushes when a neutral or sometimes an AI is close to me.

Love the mod, have been streaming my games on Twitch for the past couple of weeks. Now, if only I were actually good at the game...

[Seravy]

Welcome!
I think you need a post in the introduction thread or something to make new threads, don't remember exactly. Maybe just having a post anywhere is enough.
A good opening move is to pick a good creature spell as your common or 8+ book guaranteed early uncommon (in this case you have to max research to get it first) then max mana production and summon as many as you can. Building archer units and casting Flame Blade on them can be useful as well. Sprites work well for clearing early nodes and lairs for extra money.
I've watched some of your streams, starting from the first, but honestly, I gave up around the time you restarted the 20th time without finishing a single game - my patience lasted only for the first 10 or so hours of watching that. I think the very first thing to have a good opening move is to actually resist the temptation to restart and keep playing unless the starting position is really unplayable like that desert/tundra island. I've seen you abandon way too many games that looked winnable or even exceptionally good.

[Mardoc]

Welcome!
I think you need a post in the introduction thread or something to make new threads, don't remember exactly.

It's 10 posts in the forum as a whole.  Admins can override that and give you permission early if they happen to notice a request before you get to 10 posts on your own - it's just an anti-spam measure.

[onefineday]

Welcome!
I think you need a post in the introduction thread or something to make new threads, don't remember exactly. Maybe just having a post anywhere is enough.
A good opening move is to pick a good creature spell as your common or 8+ book guaranteed early uncommon (in this case you have to max research to get it first) then max mana production and summon as many as you can. Building archer units and casting Flame Blade on them can be useful as well. Sprites work well for clearing early nodes and lairs for extra money.
I've watched some of your streams, starting from the first, but honestly, I gave up around the time you restarted the 20th time without finishing a single game - my patience lasted only for the first 10 or so hours of watching that. I think the very first thing to have a good opening move is to actually resist the temptation to restart and keep playing unless the starting position is really unplayable like that desert/tundra island. I've seen you abandon way too many games that looked winnable or even exceptionally good.

Heh, well I haven't finished a game yet.  Have one going now that looks fairly good but Freya in Myrror has a huge lead and cities full of magicians, some Gorgons too.  I have one souped-up hero wth a Haste+Phantsmal bow that can singlehandedly crush a lot of AI armies but everything else I send just gets slaughtered.  Currently trying to map out Myrror so I can Drought cities but don't know how well that will work.

[unicurse]

The end-game is a different beast to the early and mid-games for sure: in the last few days I've stopped playing a couple that I'd clearly won (was just mopping up to do) in my eagerness to try out new builds but I'm forcing myself to complete this last game on Normal despite having a huge lead over the AI players. I've still not really had a proper play with all the late tier units and spells.

[onefineday]

I'm playing on Advanced, which seems to be just enough to spur the AI towards better units without being ridiculous, though whoever's on Myrror will run away with the game (had to crack a three Great Drake tower to get in last game).

There seems to be some issue which causes the game to hang so I have to restart. I've been trying out high mana / high skill and waiting until libraries / unis come online for research and that seems to work better.

[Seravy]

There seems to be some issue which causes the game to hang so I have to restart.

Please post the save file for that so I can find the bug. Also make sure you are playing on the latest version.