Hall of Doh!

[Forrest]

You want duh?

I am in the middle of the ocean. Atlantis or one of the stupid water nations. No magic on my imprisoned pretender. Turn two a earthquake takes out my lab and I have no mage to rebuild.

Game over.

[Sombre]

An imprisoned pretender with no magic? Your scales must be [censored] hot.

[Wrana]

Well, with such hot scales you probably could make enough troops to take somebody's province with lab... Or buy Dagan the Renegade Sage's services.

[Zenzei]

While in theory that's possible it will still take several turns to find and conquer such a province and it's highly unlikely Dagan will be as an available merc when you need him for this kind of job.

[Sombre]

There are plenty of magic using mercs though.

[Zeldor]

And you have plenty of money when you are not recruiting mages

[Edratman2]

I'm voting for Twan.

Mine involved teleporting a bunch of mages and a fully equipped rainbow crone to my main army deep in enemy territory. Than as my last action before "end turn", I read the messages again, saw that the main army was starving and had them move into a farm province instead of staying put as intended. Damn fliers attacked, then "Quit without saving", "Start New Game".

[lch]

Sombre said:
There are plenty of magic using mercs though.

That Starspawn guy might be the only usable merc in the case described. Otherwise it's a bit of a chicken and-egg-problem: You'll need to outfit a mage with underwater breathing items to build a laboratory underwater. For that, you'll need a laboratory and research and the right magic paths. So your aquatic nation has to learn how to get mages with lungs real quick if they want to see any magic.

[IndyPendant]

MP game deep in late game, the sort of stage where dozens of mages accompany armies and gems are downed like candy to power massive battle spells.

1) Attack an opponent's capital with my most powerful mage-buffed army. Win and start sieging. Forget to transfer to my battlecasters the 60 or so extra gems I had brought along on stealthed units for just that purpose. Watch many of my most powerful mages and army units slaughtered when my opponent sallies forth.

2) Get counterattacked, and now playing against two opponents. Send out one particular caster to support the defenses. He gets killed. The global he had cast previously goes poof.

3) Opponent is sieging my castle. Bring leaders and units from many directions to oust him. Forget to set the heavy spellcasters on "Move and Patrol". Army gets slaughtered while the heavies sit in the castle playing with their purdy gems.

All in the same game. All within five turns of each other.