Looking for a temporary replacement for the Greeks in PB64— I'm leaving on a week's vacation tomorrow and want to help maintain the turnpace in PB64. 
I have a build order and worker planning done for several turns and will be available to answer any questions on the forums.

This is not necessarily a ranking of how powerful a spell is, but how likely I am to use these spells in a game. It's also a little odd, because I'm treating different types of spells differently. For example, global enchantments are generally only cast once, but I may give a global enchantment a 3 or 4, meaning that if I get the spell I am very likely to cast it. However for stuff like combat spells, its more about how often I use that spell in combat during a game.

There are some spells, like Disjunction, that are obviously very situational, but can be critically important when needed. This doesn't do a good job of reflecting that type of value.

   

   

Clearly, Life and Sorcery have the strongest overall suite of Common spells. Almost everything you get from them is quite useful. I know a lot of people don't like Nagas, but I use them a lot and think they are worth it. Usually only 1 or 3 units a game, but they are quite potent at taking neutral towns in the early game, which is what I use them for. Chaos has the fewest useful spells, but ironically Chaos still has a very strong opening because the few good spells it has are so good that they make up for the fact that most of the other spells suck.

I'd say that Chaos in general is a sort of odd duck, in that it has a lot of spells that just aren't that good, but by the same token, it has a few standout spells that are extremely effective. It's also a bit strange because I'd say that overall Chaos has the best Conjuration game, even though most of its summons are lackluster. It really rides on Hell Hounds and Chimera, and even Chimera aren't that great. But, what makes Chaos good is the synergy of Chaos Channels, Warp Reality, and Chaos Surge. The hit and miss nature of Chaos also makes it more reliant than most on using all 10 books or at least 9 books to ensure that you get the critical spells. Honestly, masses of Hell Hounds and Chimera when combined with Warp Reality and Chaos Surge are extremely effective, especially when you throw in Chaos Channeled Paladins, Elven Lords, Golems, Barbarians or Draconians. It makes for a very interesting buildup, because the later spells actually boost the effectiveness of units you have been accumulating throughout the game and give "new life" to old units.

I know a lot of people like the many Global Enchantments of Chaos, but really all that matters IMO is Chaos Surge. The Great Drake can be useful, but nothing else is really game changing for the human player from the Very Rare spells. While cool, Armageddon isn't really worth casting. On the other hand, allowing the AI to get Very Rare Chaos spells can be a disaster. Almost all of the Very Rare Chaos spells are not fun to play against and can allow a high level Chaos wizard to be quite a threat.

Life starts out very strong, but the Uncommon Life spells are lackluster, other than Prayer and Raise Dead. True Sight is one of those spells that can be critical, but is sometimes not needed.

Sorcery is like Life, in that it's Common spells are almost universally useful, but its Uncommon spells are quite lacking. However, IMO, Flight is one of the most important spells in the game given the critical effects of Flight on combat and how useful it is for increased movement. This is especially true in 1.4+, where Flying creatures won't suicide themselves, meaning that unless you can hit flyers you can't win battles, even if you have the most powerful non-flying unit imaginable vs Sprites. This, of course, is very frustrating. Phantom Beasts are obviously extremely powerful. Spell Blast is one of those spells that you may not need to use often, but there are times when its game changing. I've found that the better I get at the game, however, the less often I need to use it.

But of course Life and Sorcery come back on strong with Rare spells, both having what I would consider to be the strongest sets of Rare spells by far. Lionheart, Incarnation and Invulnerability are all insanely powerful. Any one of those spells can pretty much win you most games. Alter of Battle and Stream of Life can also be very effective, especially in setting up a new town on Adamantium or something. I really like getting Draconians on Adamantium in the mid-game with Life, because with Stream of Life and Alter of Battle pretty much the only things you need to build in the town are the base production buildings, an Alchemist Guild, and then a Stable and possibly a Shipyard to crank out Doom Drakes and Air Ships. No need to even build an Armory and no need for any religious buildings, though you may want a Shrine for Shamen.

In terms of the late game, High Prayer rules everything, and you will probably cast any of the unit buffing Global Enchantments you get, but of them all Crusade is by far the best value.

Sorcery, of course, excels in the mid-game, with a lot of powerful spells. This is when you make virtually indestructible heroes. Mind Storm and Banish are very good combat spells, although Mind Storm won't work on Undead, but BANISH WILL! This is great because its one of the very few spells in the Sorcery arsenal that works on Undead, and its quite powerful.

When it comes to the Very Rare spells, IMO, the only ones I really care about are Mass Invisibility, Sky Drake, and Suppress Magic. Yeah, Time Stop is powerful in theory, but it just not a good spell IMO. Its very costly to use, often not needed, and seems weird when you use it. I don't bother with it. Suppress Magic, however, can be great, though I do find that I don't often really need it these days as most of the AIs aren't a threat by this point. However, if you are behind in a game, this is one of those spells that can be a real game changer and turn it around for you. I'll almost always cast it when I get it, unless the game is pretty much over anyway.

As for Nature: Nature has some generally useful Common spells, but few of them are really game changers. Web is the most important of them. I use a lot of the spells when I play Nature because that's all you have to work with, but they are all somewhat middling in their effects. As for Uncommon spells, you really kind of need Basilisks to save you, and maybe you can get some utility out of Cracks Call by taking Behemoths or something, but without Basilisks at this point Nature fells like a very weak version of Life. I may have overrated Pathfinding, because often you'll have either Rangers or heroes with Pathfinding. Still, Nature's sort of ultimate combo is Pathfinding Water Walking Basilisks paired with Gorgons, until of course you can get a Great Wyrm. I feel like Nature is a school that doesn't really come into its own until the late game. The Very Rare spells of Nature are really sort of a final payoff. If you can get there, Nature has a really powerful late game. Entangle and Call Lighting is a broken combo in more ways than one. Its literally buggy in most versions of the game. In whatever version of 1.5x I'm using Entangle stops all creatures, including flyers, and it seems to stop them all entirely after the first round. Call Lightning sometimes causes the game to crash. The biggest problem with Entangle + Call Lighting, however, is that it will almost always prompt the enemy wizard to cast Disenchant Area, and unless you have Nature Mastery, they will likely get removed.  But still, when in place, this is an essentially unstoppable combo that can win just about any battle, except against Magic Immunity. The Great Wyrm is of course terrifying, but the lack of ability to hit flying units is a problem. By the late game, the capitals of most enemy wizards will be filled with flying units, so this is a challenge, even if you have Web. But, with Regeneration you can now finally make use of heroes against enemy wizards, so another strategy with Nature is to build up heroes throughout the game on safe encounters, and then once you get Regeneration, put that on them and go after the wizards. I'll add that Gia's Blessing is a good spell, but for the cost I often don't need it. I'll typically have already fixed any terrain issues with Change Terrain. I do use it from time to time, though, either to speed up development of a critical town, like a new town on Adamantium, or to suppress rebels in a town with bad relations, like Klackons or Dark Elves or something.

And finally we get to Death. Death has a pretty weak opening. Most of its Common spells aren't that good. Nevertheless I do end up utilizing most of them. Skeletons and Ghouls in Darkness is the best thing to use early on. I find myself using Weakness more than Black Sleep just due to the cost, although later in the game, once you get Black Payer and more mana, Black Sleep will remain useful, while Weakness is only useful in the early game. Mana Leak can be ok, but when you are the attacker the enemy still gets 3 rounds of shots. On defense it works better, but is less often needed. Cloak of Fear is decent in the early game when going against low Resistance units, but by the mid-game its utility falls away.

Black Prayer and Shadow Demons is really when Death starts to develop. Shadow Demons are slow and clunky to use, but can be insanely powerful. I often use them in pairs, and they can take virtually any neutral town, except maybe Slinger or Doom Drake filled towns, they can win most battles against wizards on their own, and can take many lairs. If you get a stack of at least 4, then there are tons of lairs they can take when you are able to cast both Darkness and Black Prayer.  Then once you get Wraiths its pretty much game over. The AI doesn't know how to really deal with Wraiths, so you can pretty much just wipe out all the enemy wizards in no time once you get them. When paired with Zombie Mastery, you basically never need to make another unit. You may need to use Wrack, especially on defense when you may not have Wraiths or Shadow Demons on hand. But for the most part, when playing Death you really only need and handful of spells. You have to utilize several Common spells to get started, but then its just a matter of using Black Prayer, Darkness, Shadow Demons, Wraiths, and maybe Death Knights if you even need them. Wrack and Death Spell to fill in gaps. If you're using heroes then Wraithform and if you both with Trolls then Black Channels, but for the most part, its all about Shadow Demons and Wraiths fighting in Darkness. In theory, Eternal Night is a good Global Enchantment, but I just rarely need it.

As a final note, here are the totals of the scores I assigned by school:
Nature: 79
Chaos: 71
Life: 83
Death: 74
Sorcery: 85

This doesn't necessarily correlate directly to the overall effectiveness of those schools of magic, just the diversity of the useful spells in those schools. Chaos and Death score lowest, but they are very powerful schools that just rely heavily on a few spells. Life and Sorcery utilize the broadest range of spells, at least in my estimation.

Could someone explain this to me? I play as Life + Sorcery typically, so not sure. Thanks!

This is the bit in MoM Wiki page on Attack rolls that confused me: 

Quote:On the other hand, however, because each figure attacks separately, the actual net damage is generally much lower in practice than the direct product of the Attack Strength and figure count would indicate.

Rjak attacked my Veteran Trireme carring a 450 gold High Elf Magician mercenary with his recruit trireme. I cast a +22 mana Ice Bolt at it but only half killed it. On his turn he cast Possession and succeeded.

Misery.

Oh knock on effect: Magician was going to my stack camped outside a neutral Barb. city with 9 cavalry in it. Was counting on it.

I've noticed that the AI not only knows where your ships are but it homes in on them with a mania in the post 1.31 MoM.

Hi,

Being famous I get offered hero at high level at high prices, for example, I was offered the "Thief" at level champion for 1000, since I am going to kill her right away because I am not interested in her, I need to pay this fine of 1000 gold because I got famous retort in a node?

I have heroism anyway if I want to level up a hero.
What famous should do IMO is just increase the chance of heroes join you and not at a higher level.

Thanks.

Watching the AI snipe out all the reasons I prioritized building cities in specific places really sucks the wind out of my sails on a playthrough. I don't want to disable all curses via the "Everything Nice" option. I just want to specifically disable the resource destruction, or else have a way to recover from it that doesn't require me to also play Chaos (by raising my own volcanos until I recreate the resource, or cheese it by Corrupting my own resource until I can deal with the problematic AI). I don't enjoy playing Chaos, so that being the only counter is making this one specific problem the biggest enjoyment-killer for me. I did some research in past threads on this topic, and I do not find diplomacy or preventing enemy scouting of my territory to be viable counters to Raise Volcano resource destruction in my games, especially when I try playing with more than 4 opponents. 

I would even be fine if the volcano disallowed use of the resource in the same way corruption does, as long as I have a non-Chaos way to recover the resource (Change Terrain, Gaia's Blessing). Further, I wouldn't care if the % chance for Raise Volcano to create new minerals went away under this option, so that it doesn't become unbalanced that a Chaos/Nature human player could eventually seed all their land with resources with no way for the AI to remove them. Ideally, if it's possible, this could be a new score-reducing game mode. 

Otherwise, can anyone tell me if there is a way to remove resource destruction in the modding.ini file, or if that is not possible, how to disallow the Raise Volcano spell? I didn't see anything obvious.

After years of playing this game I've tried just about everything. This is what I view as the best possible pairings between starting Races and mono-colored Magic schools. I'm ranking from 1 to 14 and giving 1 to 5 stars on the relative value of that race compared to others for the given school of magic. I'll explain a few select ones at the end.

All of this is based on 1.5x playing on Hard difficulty and never using 11 books.

Chaos: The greatest strength of Chaos is summoning and offensive aggression. Chaos has essentially no defensive magic, though Flame Strike has some defensive utility. The weakness of Chaos is lack of any type of protection spells and little in a direct way to enhance the mobility of units. Chaos has some unit buffing utility. Where Chaos shines the best is in creating full stacks of Chaos units, using a mix of both summoned Fantastic units and Chaos Channeled Normal units combined with the spells Warp Reality and Chaos Surge. Things to look for with Chaos are the ability to support early conjuration, Normal units with inherent defensive properties, and multi-figure units that can benefit from Flame Blade.

Race ranking:
1. High Elves - 5
2. High Men - 4
3. Halflings - 4
4. Nomads - 3
5. Barbarians - 3
6. Dwarves - 3
7. Draconians - 3
8. Lizardmen - 3
9. Beastmen -  2
10. Trolls - 2
11. Orcs - 2
12. Dark Elves - 1
13. Gnolls - 1
14. Klackons - 1

Sorcery: Sorcery has a strong early Conjuration game, but unlike Chaos, Sorcery excels defensively and at unit protection. Sorcery provides a lot of enhancements for unit mobility as well, but lacks any direct buffs to unit damage. Thus, Sorcery works well with Races that produce inherently powerful units that don't need buffs to their attack in order to be effective. And of course Sorcery is also very powerful at protecting heroes, allowing heroes to become very powerful and useful against enemy wizards. Key unit spells for Sorcery are Resist Magic, Guardian Wind, Flight, Magic Immunity and Invisibility.

Race ranking:
1. Gnolls - 5
2. High Men - 5
3. Dwarves - 4
4. Beastmen - 4
5. High Elves - 3
6. Draconians - 3
7. Barbarians- 3
8. Trolls - 3
9. Halflings - 3
10. Orcs - 2
11. Nomads - 2
12. Dark Elves - 1
13. Lizardmen - 1
14. Klackons - 1

Nature: I do consider Nature to generally be the weakest pure school of magic in the game, but it can still be quite powerful and has its perks. The defining characteristic of Nature, IMO, is Nature's lack of buffs to resistance paired with the fact that many of Nature's summoned units also have relatively low resistances as well, making Nature very difficult to play against Death, Sorcery, and even Chaos magic. As such, Nature works best with Races that have inherently high resistance. Like Chaos and Sorcery, Nature can make use of an early conjuration game, though it is a little more difficult due to the high cost of Sprites and the greater difficulty of taking Nature Nodes.


Race ranking:
1. High Elves - 5
2. Dwarves - 5
3. Draconians - 4
4. Barbarians - 4
5. High Men - 4
6. Halflings - 4
7. Trolls - 3
8. Beastmen - 3
9. Gnolls -  2
10. Nomads - 2
11. Dark Elves - 2 
12. Orcs - 1
13. Lizardmen - 1
14. Klackons - 1

Life: Life is quite a unique school in that it has the weakest conjuration game and by far provides the strongest support for Normal units. As such, getting a good start with Life often relies on the building of Normal units, which can significantly delay offensive activity. Thus, races that can produce strong units quickly are highly valued for Life magic. Life magic also provides no means by which to allow non-flying melee units to hit flying units, making units with an inherent ability to hit flying units greatly valued for Life wizards.


Race ranking:
1. Draconians - 5
2. Barbarians - 5
3. Halflings - 4
4. Nomads - 4
5. High Elves- 4
6. Lizardmen - 4
7. High Men - 3
8. Dwarves - 3
9. Dark Elves - 3
10. Beastmen - 2
11. Gnolls - 2
12. Orcs - 1
13. Trolls - 1
14. Klackons - 1

Death: Death is perhaps the most unique school of magic. Generally speaking, the strongest tool for a Death wizard is conjuration. Fantastic creatures from the Death realm of an Uncommon level and greater are quite powerful indeed. Shadow Demons, Wraiths and Death Knights are pretty much the best in class summons of the game and can allow a player to dominate enemy wizards once they are obtained, with little need to rely on anything else. When combined with Zombie Mastery, the need to build Normal units goes away almost entirely. Yet, without 11 books, establishing a foothold can be challenging for a Death wizard. Still, a Death Wizard should generally rely heavily on conjuration in the early game. As with Nature and Chaos, Death provides little in the way of unit protections, though Wall of Darkness can be very useful defensively and Black Channels and Lycanthropy have niche utility. Just as a Chaos wizard can take powerful advantage of Warp Realty and Chaos Surge with full stacks of Chaos units, so too a Death wizard is encouraged to use full stacks of Death units in Darkness.


Race ranking:
1. Halflings - 5
2. High Elves - 5
3. High Men - 4
4. Trolls - 4
5. Nomads- 4
6. Draconians - 3
7. Barbarians - 3
8. Orcs - 3
9. Gnolls- 2
10. Beastmen - 2
11. Dwarves - 2
12. Dark Elves- 1
13. Lizardmen - 1
14. Klackons - 1


Commentary:
I'd say High Elves are far and away the best starting race for Chaos. Any strategy that relies on early summoning works best when starting on Arcanus, where its easier to get your first Node and you have more picks to make use of to help lower summoning costs. High Elves give you the most starting mana on Arcanus. The inherent Forestry of High Elf units can be combined with the Mountaineering of the cheap Fire Giant for guaranteed Pathfinding. Flame Blade is a powerful enhancement for both the Longbowmen and the Elven Lords. The inherently high resistance of High Elf units provides needed protection against Death and Sorcery magic. The relatively fast route to Elven Lords ensures that a Chaos wizard can apply early pressure with a powerful unit. I think High Elf + Chaos is one of the overall most powerful combinations in the game. 

High Men can also be very good with Chaos too, however. The weak early game of High Men can be offset by the use of early conjuration, allowing you to build straight for Paladins without wasting time to build other Normal units. The Magic Immunity of Paladins provides much needed protection for a Chaos wizard, who will other wise lack ways to defend their units against enemy magic.

Though many people don't like Gnolls, I really like using Gnolls with Sorcery. Gnolls have two main weaknesses: 1) low resistance and 2) lack of ability to hit flying units. Sorcery remedies both of these problems. Sorcery is very strong for conjuration in the very early game with both Phantom Warriors and Nagas, but the lack of an Uncommon overland summon creates a early-mid game weakness for Sorcery. Wolf Riders come out just in time to fill this gap, allowing a Sorcery wizard to transition from conjuration to the use of Wolf Riders for the late early game and mid-game. Gnolls also have decent relations, especially with Trolls, which can be especially useful for a Sorcery wizard. High Men are also very good with Sorcery, because, again, the strong early conjuration game of Sorcery can allow the player to focus on building for Paladins ASAP, with minimal need to divert production along the way. Once Paladins are obtained, the combination of Flight and Guardian Wind produces units that are practically unstoppable. Dwarves and Beastmen also produce powerful units that benefit greatly from Flight and Guardian Wind. I give Barbarians 3 stars, in spite of the Invisible Flying Warships, because IMO Invisible Flying Warships are an exploit and I don't think its that great of a strategy anyway, as it can be quite tedious to use and provides no early-game benefit.

High Elves are again a good race to pair with Nature in order to make use of an early conjuration game. Their additional mana is especially helpful for the more costly Sprites and the high inherent resistance of High Elf units can provide critical defense against Death and Sorcery wizards. Dwarves can also be powerful when paired with Nature. Web can help them hit most flying units and the inherent Mountaineering of Dwarven units can be paired with Sprites or War Bears for early Pathfinding. In the early game, combined stacks of Dwarven Swordsmen and Sprites can be surprisingly effective and relatively affordable. Dwarves also benefit more than most races from Nature's terrain changing abilities. Draconians, Barbarians and Halflings can all do well paired with Nature too, though none of them offer quite the benefits that High Elves or Dwarves do.

When it comes to Life, I think that Draconians are a race that provide a clear advantage over everyone else. IMO, Draconians are really the strongest overall race in the game, but it really takes Life magic, with its focus on buffing Normal units, to make them truly shine. Draconian Normal units are by far the best Normal units in the game, in spite of Paladins. They move fast, they fly, they have fire breath, and they have generally high armor and resistance -- oh and their best unit is produced from only a Stable. If you want a race that can quickly produce units worth buffing with Life magic, look no further than Draconians. Even in the very early game, you can take action with just Draconain Spearmen buffed with Heroism. In the mid to late game, Draconian Bowmen with Adamantium and Lionheart can be devastating. Stacks of 4 Doom Drakes with Endurance and Holy Armor paired with 4 or 5 Air Ships are fast and very powerful. Given that rocks are the ultimate weapon in the game, against which there is no defense, fast flying catapults are capable of taking down pretty much anything and are one of the best counters to Paladins. They are also one of the best ways to defeat Great Worms.

Still, the Barbarians aren't far behind, and I'd say that Life Barbarians are still strong enough to be given 5 stars along with Draconains, in spite of Draconians being so good. Most importantly, Barbarian Cavalry provide the units necessary to expand in the early game. Barbarian Cavalry are one of the few early units that moves at a speed of more than 1, can hit flying units, and does reasonable damage. When using Warlord and Heroism, Barbarian Cavalry are quite capable indeed and can be used to take down relatively strong encounters as well as wizard capitals. Once Berserkers are obtained a Life wizard can take on almost anything. Berserkers with Lionheart are insanely powerful and can one-shot pretty much all units in the game. 

But why do I give Halflings only 4 stars? Due to their unit movement speed. An inherent speed of just 1 on all their units is pretty devastating and can make Halflings simply too slow to use to make timely attacks on enemy wizard capitals, especially in the early game. They are also slow to try to use to expand into neutral cities. Obviously Slingers with Lionheart and insanely powerful, yet that combo comes quite late in the game without the Halflings providing much else for a Life wizard in the meantime. Still, Halflings are very good with Life. More overlooked, however, are the Nomads. Nomads have a lot to offer a Life wizard, they are just a bit slow in getting there, so they only get 4 stars instead of 5. Life doesn't provide flight or ways to allow non-flying melee units to hit flyers. Thus, the inherent flight of Griffins is very useful for Life. In addition, Endurance does wonders for Griffins. While the Horsebowmen of the Nomads aren't quite as good as Barbarian Calvary, they can still be used in the same way for early game offense. But the combination of Rangers and Griffins creates an especially powerful and fast moving stack. With Endurance the whole stack can move at a speed of 6 over land. Griffins, Rangers and Heroes can be a powerful force. I'll also call out Lizardmen here and say that about the only way Lizardmen are even remotely playable is with Life, with which they can actually be powerful in spite of their pathetic economy.

Lastly we have Death. Halflings may seem like an odd choice, but I think that death works best when you focus almost exclusively on the use of Fantastic units, even in the early game. As such, no race has much real advantage for Death in terms of units, because the units don't matter much. But they still do mater some, and Halflings are very strong defensively, especially in the early game. But importantly Halflings also have the best relations in the game, which I think is very helpful for a Death wizard, who will want the lowest levels of unrest possible in order to make use of Dark Rituals. This is also key for obtaining Trolls. So I give Halflings the nod there. And Halflings hiding behind a Wall of Darkness are pretty terrifying. High Elves are still also very good with the additional starting mana and Longbowmen that can hide behind the Wall of Darkness. High Elves also have high resistance, which is good since Death can't buff resistance and the Elven Lords can make use of Berserk if needed. Again Paladins are quite useful and Death's early summoning can help High Men focus on obtaining Paladins faster, though Ghouls and Skeletons aren't quite so reliable. I reluctantly gave Trolls a 4. Yes, Black Channeled War Trolls are super-units, but the Troll economy is horrible. Trolls are generally a terrible starting race. I think you are still better off taking Halflings and trying to acquire Trolls instead of starting as Trolls. Also, Myrran is a poor starting plain for Death because Ghouls and Skeletons just aren't good enough to be able to take much of anything on Myrran, while they can be reasonably successful on Arcanus. Nomad Rangers can help Death units get around faster and Griffins aren't terrible to use with Death. I'd say the remaining races have little to offer for Death. 

Yeah, Dark Elves and Klackons are consistently at the bottom. They both have terrible race relations and when playing on Hard+, the key to the game is conquest of other towns, not building your own. Dark Elves grow slowly and aren't particularly strong. Their main power is defeated by Paladins and Sky Drakes and they just don't have any really good offensive unit. Klackons are just Klackons. Yes, Beetles are quite good, and if I have a chance to take a single Klackon town to make Beetles out of I'll do it, but they are horrible as a starting race.

Earlier this year the FreeCol team finally came out with a brand new stable FreeCol 0.12.0 release which was a big deal as while there have been many test nightly releases over the last few years this was the first official stable release since good old 0.11.6 back 2015! Mike and the gang were slowly building towards this release and then original FreeCol admin Stian returned along with some new helpers resulting in things really getting busy and before we knew it FreeCol 0.12.0 was here!

I forgot to post about it here however that doesn't matter now as now we've got a new FreeCol 0.13.0 release! Stian & the team have added lots of new features including music, a new interface and animating rivers to go with the recently added animating oceans! The full list of changes and the downloads can be found here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol...ol-0.13.0/



I made a video about Freecol around 6 months ago if people want to see how it plays, however it was right before these new version releases (great timing I know lol) so sadly it doesn't have all the new interface, music and animation stuff!

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.