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Tried a speed Mastery strategy...

I've long thought about trying to basically cast the Spell of Mastery as fast as possible. I tried it once and had a really hard campaign and ended up giving up. I just tried it again and got basically an ideal game for it, but it still wasn't great.

I took Alchemy, Sage Master, Runemaster, Node Mastery and Conjurer, with 2 books of each of the elemental magics. I took Hell Hounds, Phantom Warriors and Water Walking as my starting spells. High Elves as starting race.

This was on 1.51 Hard difficulty.

I was able to take a weak sorcery node very quickly, and then found two neutral High Men towns that I took with Hell Hounds. Then I found an enemy wizard, who also built a settlement near the High Men towns. Soon as it turned into a town I took it with a Magic Spirit, and then got a full stack of Hell Hounds and took the enemy Wizard's capital and proceeded to take all his other towns and defeat him all pretty fast. Then I found about 6 more High Men towns that I was able to take, and saw that another Wizard was kind of blocked off from my continent on a small area, because there was a narrow land bridge to the mainland, but it was blocked by a high powered encounter with Death Knights. So he was kind of stuck.

I pretty much Sim Citied all of my towns up to maximum production and research, using only a couple of towns to make units and send them out to others. I also got Word of Recall, which helped a lot. I was able to take lots of nodes. I had 15 by 1416. None of the other Wizards have done much. I have 20 towns. Pretty much every every town I have is either High Men, High Elves, or Nomads, so pretty optimal. I did just take some neutral Trolls and Dwarves, but still a lot of advanced races with Universities.

I forget exactly when I got to the Spell of Mastery, but it must have been 1300 something. As of 1416, I have 334 Power Base with 94 Casting Skill and with almost all Power to Research (over 500 research) I have 74 turns left to research the SoM. So, to me this seems like a pretty optimal situation and even still, it seems like winning by quickly getting to the SoM is not really doable.

In terms of offensive power, in case I actually needed, this setup isn't great. Its ok. I do have 6 heroes including two Campions (using Summon Champion), so that's something, but I don't have any of the high powered spells needed to really protect them and use them against Wizards if I really needed to. I get luck into Storm Giants, which I'm not even using, but I could if I needed to, so that's one possible to route to late game offensive power. I don't have great mobility spells and have had to rely on Rangers to get around. The way this game is, I can still probably destroy all enemy wizard towns before casting the SoM.

Seems to me like the SoM shouldn't take quite so long to research and cast.
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I've got 2 games of 0 Spell Book Wizzes going and one is already researching the SoM in the early game. Since you only need to learn arcane spells you get to the big one fast. You don't get much of a discount of course. The research time is pretty high at this moment, almost 300 turns but that is decreasing quickly as cities build stuff and nodes get taken.
"I think most people posting on a MOO/MOM forum in 2020 BC probably count as Time Travelers." : )
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Ok, I completed research on the SoM at 1422, and I'm castign it now and it will take 36 turns to complete casting, with my current 104 SP, but now I have everything to skill, so its at 549 SP, so we'll if that comes down much.
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Ok, so I finished casting the spell of Mastery in 1424. Let me know when you cast it. Yeah, with no books you will have fewer spells to research before SoM, but I wonder if doing it the way I did, with Runemaster is ultimately better or not.

I started a new game with Alchemy, Warlord, Channeler, Famous, Myrran and Artificier. For one thing, you start with 0 Casting Skill, which is odd. I'm Draconian. I got pretty lucky in that there are lot of nearby Bestmen towns and I got Gunther and the Thief as early heroes. I made Gunther a Shield to start and took a town with the starting Swordsman a Doom Drake and Gunther, then I got lucky again and hired a Troll Halberdier and made a +3+3 sword for the Thief and was able to take two more towns. I'll see how it goes.
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Interesting, I chose as the 1 pick retorts Alchemy and Charismatic in both games. I'd planned on trying out other combos later. I can see the plus of Artificer now, something to cast other than endless spirits and it meshes well with Famous giving you more heroes while Fam+Char is kinda duplicative. I suppose the main thing is that Char. lets you have peace with the AI.

Yeah 0 casting skill also surprised me. At start you actually need to put almost all mana into skill but due to the progressive formula it goes up super fast and once you get to a usable level you can throttle back.

The game where I'm researching SoM is in 1418 and has 276 turns left. It's a normal diff. game with Beastmen. On the power graph I already have 2-3 times the power of the AI so I could technically crush them militarily. It would be the faster option I suspect.

Amusingly I gained a single sorcery book after starting research. Of course I traded in order to get some sorc. spells in spite of being tied up researching.
"I think most people posting on a MOO/MOM forum in 2020 BC probably count as Time Travelers." : )
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Hmm my game is going kind of crappy. I did have a decent start, but I think I would have been better off taking Charismatic and a Life book instead of Channeler, which is really useless. With 1 Life book you get only 4 Spells to research, so it shouldn't delay revealing the SoM very much and almost anything you get would be helpful. If you got Just Cause, Heroism, Healing, or Holy Armor, any of those would be worthwhile and it would open the door for finding and trading for spells.

BUt yeah, Artificer is super helpful, I can't imagine trying this without it. I'm doing Hard on 1.51. I may start over though. But I still kinda think that the way I did it the first time is better. I'm having a very hard time taking nodes with this setup and with zero magic to cast in battle, taking on Wizards is difficult, though I have taken one capital. Right now its 1416 already and with all my Power to research the SoM still has over 400 turns to go. So I think for sure my prior game was faster than this could be, and a lot of it is that I haven't been able to take many nodes.

Also, in my prior game I started on Arcanus, which has easier nodes to take. It seems to me like getting Power with this setup is too difficult. The one cool thing was that I got to Summon Champion quickly - the second spell I researched. So I hired 3 normal heroes, then summoned 2 champions so far, and have made gear for them. All my mana is going to getting and equipping heroes. I could see something like a 2 Life spell book strategy where the goal is to get a full stable of champions early on by quickly getting to Summon Champion.
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Yeah, the no spell book start can be very difficult. I tried half a dozen games with Trolls, all abandoned until I finally went to the _Easy_ level, 1 opponent level for them! That's the other no spellbook game, the beastman one is at normal and 3-4 opponents.

Channeler is one of the least useful retorts I had to pick for 0 spell books. At least I can cast disenchant area at a discount and summon twice as many spirits... oooh exciting... heh. 2 picks for that. Ow. : )

Myrran also makes it harder since you have no spells/conjures to help beat those tough myrror things.
"I think most people posting on a MOO/MOM forum in 2020 BC probably count as Time Travelers." : )
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I think Draconians are way better than Trolls as a starting race, indeed I'd say Draconians are the best overall race in the game, so using them can make it better, but even still... Yeah, I think for fast Mastery, Runemaster + Sage Master + Node Mastery is the way to go.
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I'm doing a slightly different version now that's really good. It combines Runemaster + Artificier with Speed Mastery. The picks are Sage Master, Node Mastery, Conjurer, Runemaster, Artificier, with 2 Nature, 2 Sorcery and 2 Chaos.

This gives you very few spells to research and a boost to all research, with a double bonus to research of Arcane spells and you start with 2 Arcane Spells already known, so you get to the SoM pretty quickly. Not only that, but you have everything needed for really strong start. I picked Hell Hounds, Phantom Warriors and Web to start, with High Elves. The game I'm trying it in is a little odd, in that I used my typical Large landmasses, but somehow I ended up with a bunch of relatively modest sized islands. Each wizard started on their own island. On my island I was able to crack a Sorcery node right way, and there was another on a nearby island I was able to get to. Luckily I had Water Walking in my initial list of spells and researched that first. Took a neutral town on that island and summoned Hell Hounds there after researching Summoning Circle. I got Saldron the Mage to start, which is ok.

I quickly got Summon Hero and summoned some more moderate heroes. I did get Fang, but he was the worst possible, with Noble and Charmed, but still took him. Then got Summon Champion pretty quickly and summoned Deth Stryke and Warrax to fill out the set.

Funny enough Sss'Ra started on Myrran and quickly cast Planar Seal. I haven't even been to Myrran but am almost ready to cast the SoM, just a few more turns to complete the research.

Its actually a pretty fun setup, because it lets you quickly get heroes and make your own items, but you can't make the uber items of the typical setup. You get Water Walking, but not Flight, and the best protection effect you get is Resist Elements. You do get Flaming of course, so lots of Flaming weapons, Water Walking and Resist Elements rings for everyone, and Heavy Armor all the way around. But its not so much about making totally untouchable heroes as with the typical R&A setup. I did takeover Nomads on my own island, which was lucky, so I've had Water Waling Rangers all game, with Griffins supported by Deth Stryke.

The other nice thing is that by getting setup to cast the SoM quickly, it gives you a nice way to play a relatively quick game a doesn't end in the tedious need to destroy every town.

I remember when I played MoM years ago I ended many games by casting the SoM, but they were epic games that took weeks to finish, etc. I thought casting the SoM was the way to go, and destroying all cities seemed impossible. as I got better, though I hardly ever cast the SoM because I was able to destroy all cities much faster than I could ever get to the SoM, usually ending games befor the SoM was even researchable. But with this setup, you kind of get the best of both worlds. Its maybe not the absolute strongest setup possible, but it does make for faster games. You get to the SoM pretty fast and you have a strong opening with Conjuration, Heroes, power from Nodes, and the ability to make you own artifacts. To top it off, you get to finish games in a reasonable manner, without having to hunt down every last village. Plus, with only 2 books of each school, its a bit more random and makes the games more different. This time I got really lucky and was able to get Phantom Beasts, Basilisks, Chimera, and Gorgons, all of which go well with the Conjuration retort.
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Lol, well in this game it ended up that Sss.Ra beat me by casting the SoM before me. He finished it in 1428. He had somehow cast Planar Seal very early in the game, like I was shocked by it. He cast it before other wizards had cast Just Cause. And knowing my strat, I just let him have it. By the end of the game he must have had over 50 cities, the whole of Myrran was covered in cities. I never broke the seal. I figured I would be able to cast the SoM before him. When I started casting it, then he complained and on the next turn he started casting it also, so all along he already knew the spell he was just not casting it. I figured I could still beat him to it since I had Runemaster and he didn't. He did have more Spell Power than me, but not a lot more and once I finished the research I put everything into Spell Power, like 800+ power, so mine started going up rapidly. Right before he completed it I checked and my Spell Power was just a hair behind his. But I figured the 25% discount I had would make up the difference. He cast it when I had 6 turns left on my casting.

Oh well, a funny game, and I haven't lost one in a while. Still, I think its an overall fun strategy to play. I guess next time I'd need to dispel his seal if that happened again.
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