Overarching Magic Strategies

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Seems to me you can go to several discrete extremes, or mix it up. Not sure of all the pros and cons.... Seems to me it would be more fun to go extreme instead of mixing them up.

1. Go for gear. Cheap commanders outfitted with magic items can be powerful forces. Ice Pebble Wand or Staff of Corosion, plus Luck Pendant, and your cheapie commander is better than most mages--has more hits, much better armor, etc. etc. E.g. Myrmidon Commander has (I think) AC17, HP 12. Add an Ice Pebble Wand, a Luck Pendant, and whatever else you have lying around (maybe a girdle of might for +3 reinvigoration) and you have a cheap artillery unit that can survive most arrow storms. In this case, you want to steer forforging items like Dwarven Hammers and Hammer of the Gods (name?), and Global Enchantments like Earth Forge (name?)

2. Go for summonings. Cheap powerful units. Corpse Man construction is cheap as heck (1air, 1death; 1 air gem). Use a lightning rod to quadruple construction. Use a Staff of Storms to octuple it. Use the Tome of Eno Glick (name) to double it again. With the Staff and the Tome you can make 16/turn with just one cheap mage and one air gem. If you like Earth mages instead, Clockwork Horrors are great early units that can kick Heavy Infantry's butts. Mechanical Men are a good easy step up, still cheap, but with far better arrow survivability, and without the pesky fatigue problem. Living Statues are a small step up from MM, and are twice as good as heavy infantry. All of these have heavy resistances. Nature mages have great early summonings with Poisonous Serpents. They get Dragon Mastery later on, and can produce prodigious numbers of fairly powerful units from then on--not to mention Tarasques, Treelords, etc.. Astral summonings/constructions include the powerful sacred dragon Sirroco (name), the Golem, and more. Death has perhaps the widest selection of cheap to powerful summonings, with perhaps the best "summon army of X" spells in the game. Having several mages perform Pale Riders every turn creates cheap powerful armies of light cavalry that can run down archers, mow down mages, and generally sweep the battlefield.

3. Armies of cheap mages. Instead of archers, use cheap mages with your armies. E.g. 2 commanders (stay behind troops), 80 heavy infantry (wait then attack closest), and 10 mages (attack spells). The sheer mass of the mages can do prodigious damage, even with cruddy spells like earth shard, and it is unlikely that they will get hurt in turn. 10 Mages each doing earth shard with 4 shards gets you 40 shards, half of which will hit, probably get 4 turns of clear shots, so 80 hits before battle is joined with your heavy infantry. Pump it up with a real spell or two, and you start wiping out armies 4 times as big as yours. Skel-Spamming, lightning orb spamming, etc.

4. Debuff. Keep an small army of mages at home, scry your enemy's castles out, and cast baleful star over and over. Hurricane. Death and destruction. Ruin production. Decrease cash. Put poison in their wells. Have disease creatures hide in their main provinces.

5. Buff. Go the good wizard route. Increase your province's growth, resources, riches, taxes, happiness. Globals would include Riches from Beneath, Province Protection, Invisible Hands, Nature's Bounty.... Preach in every province, temples everywhere. Telestic Statues. 11+ PD everywhere.

Ideas?

[Epaminondas]

I agree that the Staff of Corrosion is a nasty item on a cheap commander. Further, it also appears that a commander equipped such a way likely has more utility (in terms of damage potential and survivability) than most low level mages in the early game. Nonetheless, I am not sure if they do "survive most arrow storms." In fact, their relative vulnerability is why I've stopped equipping them with two-handed staffs or bows and have opted for a shield and one-handed wands instead (like the Scepter of Authority or the Wand of Wild Fire or something like that). You get slightly less damage but far better survivability with a shield. Of course, all this seems to me early game talk; once you get decent self-protection buff spells and nasty AoE-type of spells on your mages, the latter ought to outdamage and even outlast a conventional commander.

[HoneyBadger]

When playing Aboleths, I definitely think a LOT about what my magic strategy is going to be for that game. Currently, I've got my pretender plus 20something Mind Lords racing for early game Wish, but I pay very close attention to what I've got them researching at any given time, to make sure that my Mind Lords are able to provide as much long-range artillery as possible. Another good strategy is fever-fetish spamming on indep commanders. For the low-low-low price of 30 gold you can usually wring 3-4 firegems out of them before they turn into quivering pustulescent bloodjelly, beyond covering your base cost. Not a bad profit. Hard on his kids though, but then, to make a great omelette...

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Epaminondas, I think you make some good points. However, mid game, you might have a handful of great mages; late game, a double handful. Instead of that you could have 10 times that number of weak mages and/or well-equipped commanders acting as artillery. The massed mages strategy is awesome, but upkeep is a big drawback--100 mages at 150gp each means ~1,500gp/turn in upkeep. 100 massed commanders would cost 150gp/turn. Massed mages would cost initially 15,000gp. 100 well-equipped massed Commanders would cost 1,000gp plus 15gemsX100=1,500gems.

The loss of a mighty mage can be devastating. To protect itself, the mage has to expend the first 2-3 rounds of combat doing defensive spells. Then he can attack maybe 1-2 times before he has to rest, then he can attack maybe a third time before combat is over.

Compare this to 10 weak mages, spread out to avoid being shotgunned, spamming attack spells. 5-6 attack spells times 10 mages=a LOT of damage.

Compare this to 10 well-equipped commanders doing 5 attack spells of corrosion or numbness or fireball. The commanders are better armored, have more hitpoints, and can dish out the damage....

Of course, if you combine a great mage with great equipment, you have an even more powerful mage. Chainmail of displacement, Amulet of Reinvigoration, Luck Pendant; s/he can concentrate on attack, and get off a lot of powerful spells before s/he fatigues. Expensive though. And you are puttting all your eggs in one basket. (Caveat, this is what I usually do, just playing devil's advocate.)

There's plusses and minuses to each strategy.

[dirtywick]

I prefer the Thunder Bow whenever possible. For it's effect, it's a steal at 5 gems.

I understand there's different ways to go about it, but Construction is a must for every nation at some point. Even just to level 2 will give your commanders something to do instead of standing behind their troops dodging arrows. For most nations, sending a regular commander into battle naked is going to kill him sooner rather than later, and making a small investment of 5 gems to give him a ranged weapon is a good idea. You don't have to kit him out, just a cheap ranged weapon allows him to contribute and stay in relative safety.

So I think that however you want to play it, Const to 2 early to forge some cheap bows/wands is a smart move.

[Frostmourne27]

Most vaguely, I think you could say that there are three paths to magical victory: hordes, SCs/Thugs, or battle magic.

Hordes would be things like ivy crowns, vine ogres and the above metioned corpsemen. Spells that produce fairly good units, cost few gems and can be cast over and over by weak mages. Devil spamming counts, but only since slaves are cheap. Obviously, you need less devils than vine men, but it's the same concept.

SCs and Thugs would be high powered summons, with or without items, operating singly or in small groups. Anything costing more that about 10 gems per summoned creature probably falls into this group (I'm including things that probably wouldn't normally be called thugs, just as I put devils into the horde section - really, another catagory might be good)

Battle Magic is what Caelum does. Lots of mages, fighting with your troops, casting spells from lightning bolt to wrathful skies. This is pretty nation specific. E.g. Mictlan is going to have a harder ime at this than Caelum. Note that I haven't distinguished between buffs and killing spels.

Going along with these three groups would be magical support. This would be things like using summons and lucky randoms to diversify your magic, forging skull mentors/lightless lanterns, arming commanders with cheap magical trinket-esque items, casting helpful globals (the weaker, non game changing ones, like riches from beneath - this IS a game about magic, unless you play ulm)

P.S. Obviously, thats fairly rough and generic, and my three groups are in urgent need of subgroups, but it's late at night and I want to get some sleep.

[UninspiredName]

I'm a big fan of Global Enchantments, if you can find something that meshes well with your choice of nation. Even after Utterdark is dispelled, I find non-undead nations will be absolutely crippled by the population dive. Lure of the Deep and Dark Skies are also nice choices if you have a high-magic pretender with nothing better to do. Also, unless you're a superpower, many people don't bother dispelling a gem-spawner. At least not before you get a return on the spell's cost.

...But yeah, I love my Utterdark.

[Agrajag]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
Epaminondas, I think you make some good points. However, mid game, you might have a handful of great mages; late game, a double handful. Instead of that you could have 10 times that number of weak mages and/or well-equipped commanders acting as artillery. The massed mages strategy is awesome, but upkeep is a big drawback--100 mages at 150gp each means ~1,500gp/turn in upkeep. 100 massed commanders would cost 150gp/turn. Massed mages would cost initially 15,000gp. 100 well-equipped massed Commanders would cost 1,000gp plus 15gemsX100=1,500gems.

Your math is off, upkeep is IIRC 1/15 of unit cost (Which is probably why you made the mages cost 150), which would make a 100 of them cost 1,000 upkeep per turn.
Furthermore 1,500 gems are far more valuable than 15,000 gold. For one thing, you could get 22,500 gold just alchemizing (assuming correct gems), and you could probably put those gems to much better use in other places (150 tartarians come to mind, though obviously quite a bit harder to get.)