February 03, 2012
Master of Magic -- two out of four
Am I the only one who has noticed that on average about half the nodes are blue? Probably a code bug, but typically about a quarter green and a quarter red, with some random jitter.
My usual game lately has been to get Mortu, stack him to the ceiling with the best gear I can create, let him take out lairs to gain experience points, and then use him alone to wipe out all the nodes on Myrror, resulting in an obscene power base.
Today I tried something a bit different. Instead of Mortu, I decided to try Alorra.
I can't figure out whether Alorra is supposed to be a he or a she. Given the pink frilly shirt, something stuck in the hair, and big poofy lips, I've been assuming "she", but maybe that's just what elves are like, even the men. I've never met an elf; how would I know?
Anyway, it became apparent pretty early that the big problem was that Alorra only had 8 arrows, and for some battles that just wasn't enough.
So I got Mortu after all, and equipped him, and then let the two of the hunt together. And they are most impressive, I must say, laying a bloody swath through everything in their path. Even at "impossible" level, I don't remember anything that was too much of a challenge. For instance, when facing a stack of 8 Great Drakes, the plan was simple: Alorra puts an arrow into one Drake, doing about 25 points of damage, and then Mortu kills it. (Mortu has first strike and armor piercing.) Repeat until all the Drakes are gone. (Did I mention that Mortu and Alorra were both invisible and flying? The Drakes just float there, waiting to be killed.)
The only real problem with this plan is that it takes a hell of a long time to set it up. Between summoning two champions, and then creating a bow, a sword, two plate mails and two magic rings, you're looking at upwards of fifty turns.
But once you've got them...
UPDATE: I've run into another bug a few times recently: if an enemy wizard is banished, and casting the spell of return, and you're merrily marching around destroying his towns in order to defeat him, and he's down to one, and it's an outpost, then when you attack it the game crashes.
You have to leave it long enough for it to turn into a village, with one villager, before you take it out. Or better yet, be more careful about scouting the bastard before you embark on your genocide campaign, and make sure the last one you go after isn't an outpost.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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I've been reading your entries about MoM with some interest. I work for a company that has been doing a lot of work on games for a while, but has never produced a game on its own. But we might start making games of our own soon. If it were up to me to decide what is fun I think I would do a bad job- my definition would be an enemy that played very well, but didn't cheat.
I've come to understand that my definition of fun is not the normal definition. I am thinking that I ought to spend more time thinking about how to present people with the illusion of a challenge, and making it fun for them to defeat that illusion.
Posted by: tds at February 04, 2012 09:28 PM (A1JNP)
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Some people do like really good AI's. Stardock is legendary for making really excellent AI's in their 4X games. They're tough -- and they don't cheat.
Making the computer AI's cheat is the easy way to make the game more difficult, of course.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 04, 2012 09:46 PM (+rSRq)
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And the medium way is making the game something that computers are very good at and humans aren't.
Which is why I've never found a real-time strategy game that I think is worth playing; I can control one unit at a time and can only skip between them if they can be on-screen at the same time. The computer has no such limitations, and if it makes use of that, the game is Not Fun, even if the computer isn't using cheats like "more resources" and "no fog of war" and other stuff that MoM does.
Posted by: Mikeski at February 05, 2012 08:54 PM (1bPWv)
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January 04, 2012
Master of Magic -- cheating
I'm a cheater. I cheat massively at Master of Magic. Since it's a single-player game, no one else is harmed by it. But I thought I ought to confess.
When I play, I set the game up to Hard, four opponents, small land size, powerful magic.
I choose a custom wizard and use Tlaloc's image, rather arbitrarily.
Setting up the wizard, I go with 4 black books, 1 red, 1 green, 1 blue. Then I add Node Mastery, Artificer, Archmage, and Alchemy. For my initial spells, I choose Ghouls, Darkness, Mana Leak.
For my race, I choose the Nomads. (Why? Nomads can build Animist's Guilds and Merchant Guilds, and I really like rangers and griffins.) And I always use the blue flag.
So far, so good. This is the point where the cheating happens:
Once I'm in the game, I save the file and then use a program called MOMSaveEditor to modify it.
I start the game with 60 casting skill. My initial mana is 5000 and my initial gold is 5000. I give myself the following spells:
KNOWN (can be cast immediately) :
Summon Champion
Call Lightning
Pathfinding
Change Terrain
Transmute
Web
Corruption
Wraiths
Shadow Demons
LEARNABLE (can eventually be researched):
Regeneration
Iron Skin
Nature's Cures
Flight
Spell Lock
Pestilence
Warp Node
WraithForm
Black Prayer
And then kick in with playing. The result is fun but not particularly challenging, which I suspect is obvious. Initial exploration is done with Shadow Demons and Wraiths, who also take out all lairs and nodes on my initial landmass. All nodes get a Ghoul as garrison.
Once things have slowed, and I have the leisure to do a big summon, I start Summon Champion. I monitor its progress and when there's only one turn to go, I save the game.
If I don't get Mortu, I reload and try again. It tosses a random number each time, so you don't necessarily get the same one. If I get Ravashack, I keep him and cast Summon Champion again.
Once I get Mortu, I create a sword for him: +3 Attack, +3 Defense, +3 To Hit, Death. Cost is 1050 mana. Then I create armor: Plate, +6 Defense, +4 Movement, +6 Resistance, Wraithform. Cost is 1950. Usually I have to do some alchemy to get enough mana for that.
Then he gets Pathfinding, and off he goes to start conquering the world. As soon as they become available, he gets Iron Skin, Regeneration, Flight, and Spell Lock. And once my bank account recovers, he gets a ring: +4 Defense, +2 To Hit, +3 Movement, +6 Resistance, cost 2375.
If I find black spell books, then I create a sword which adds Vampiric. And if I get any blue books, sometimes I create a ring that substitutes Flight for +2 To Hit.
So I'm a terrible cheater. (Or maybe it might be more correct to say that I'm really good at cheating.) But who is harmed?
I think I might try this at "Impossible" some time just to see what it's like.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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I never played MoM myself, but I often find that when I play strategy games where a single round lasts very long, I simply don't want to play the (usually very slow) first stage every time. Or I want to play my battles with huge armies against extremely strong AI, but I can never keep up with how fast the AI builds up its economy at the start of the game.
I also recently used a memory editing program on Terraria, because I lost my character and world files, and didn't feel like investing another 100+ hours into getting back where I was before I lost them.
So I do enjoy occassional cheating in games, but only ever in single player. At times it just makes it more enjoyable.
Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at January 04, 2012 03:08 PM (AJZdn)
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I used to do that a lot back in the Doom II days, just for fun, and not until I'd played the game all the way through without it. In MOM, I tend to backup to an earlier save point if my game goes south, but that's about it for cheating. Everything else is as the game rolls it. And who doesn't do that?
I've been playing a lot of HOI3 lately, and in that I use one cheat code only: "noneutrality", which lowers neutrality to zero and makes it possible to declare war immediately. Of course, other nations are still hampered, and can't declare war for a while, but I don't do it with major countries; instead I play a minor country and use the head start to build up. The time I conquered most of the world with Czechoslovakia was pretty cool. Currently, I'm playing the Random player mod, which creates fictionalized countries/borders, etc across the world.
Posted by: ubu at January 04, 2012 07:30 PM (GfCSm)
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What does "HOI" stand for?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2012 07:36 PM (+rSRq)
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Hearts of Iron 3 Sorry, it's a WWII grand strategy game in which you can micromanage global campaigns at the divisional level, research technology, deal with internal politics and foreign policy, and managed your economy. Not for the faint of heart, a game can take weeks to play.. I've been thinking about doing a post on it, but haven't recovered all my posting tools yet.
Posted by: ubu at January 04, 2012 07:46 PM (GfCSm)
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Hmm, sounds almost like
War in Europe.
(We used to play that at USMA in the late '70s.)
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at January 04, 2012 07:56 PM (Lbkvv)
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Yeah, Hearts of Iron is for people who take their WW2 wargaming quite seriously. Lots of detail and, frankly, a learning curve up there with Dwarf Fortress.
Sounds like you've got the recipe for a fun romp in Master of Magic. For some games, there's very little space between "computer is smart enough I don't feel like I'm picking on special-education kids" and "computer cheats so much that taking it on from scratch is just punishing".
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 04, 2012 09:42 PM (pWQz4)
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I used to play
Diablo II all the time with a trainer to enable god mode, before I got into WoW.
I also had a lot of fun editing magic items to make them do ludicrous things, like the charm that gave whatever character carried it +461% experience for each kill. Then I'd take a 1st level character, give him a weapon that could do some serious damage, and let him loose in "Hell" mode with that charm.
I'd go up 3-4-5 levels the first time I killed
anything. It was hilarious.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at January 04, 2012 09:49 PM (bRi+J)
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ubu, that sounds rather useful--my first game, I played as the US (natch), and while I was able to pull out of the Depression, I despaired at getting anybody to attack me so that I could actually go to war. Japan somehow shrugged off every provocation, and my pacifist citizens hog-tied me.
I finally gave up around 1946, and started over as Germany, where the only problem was in trying to grab as much land and resources as possible before the Allies wised up and declared war on me.
The one unrealistic moment came when my invasion forces broke out of Newfoundland and swept through New England and the Great Plains. The US should have a dramatically higher partisan rating to account for the 2nd Amendment.
As for cheating in MOM, I have done some save-scumming, but I don't really bother anymore. I can generally win with a custom wizard on Impossible/Large; if I'm going to fail, it's going to be within the first 50 turns or so, and more often than not, I'll just start over. Ditto with MOO2; if I don't like the starting position, or space monsters/Guardian eat my scouts too soon, it's restart time.
Posted by: BigD at January 04, 2012 11:05 PM (u0/7E)
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Yikes. I usually play on Hard, but I don't think I've ever taken on MOM in Impossible. Well, not more than once...
Posted by: ubu at January 05, 2012 02:33 AM (GfCSm)
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December 27, 2011
3 Slices
Ready for a major-league time sink? 3 Slices is a flash-based puzzle game, and it's really well done!
UPDATE: I'm stuck on #14. Still working on it, though.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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Made it through the first 20 levels.
Posted by: Don at December 27, 2011 06:53 PM (8Um8t)
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The physics model is very impressive considering it's implemented in flash.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 27, 2011 07:00 PM (+rSRq)
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I've unlocked the "2 Slice Mode," and that's enough for tonight.
Posted by: Don at December 27, 2011 07:17 PM (8Um8t)
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I lost it on #13. I then realized that I was wasting time on a Flash game when I could be playing
Skyrim, so I quit.
Posted by: Wonderduck at December 27, 2011 08:42 PM (f/6aJ)
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14 is tricky. I solved it, but I can't remember exactly how.
Managed to get 1900% and unlock 2 Slices, but that's enough; I have cyan after-images already...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 28, 2011 06:58 AM (PiXy!)
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To make the physics modeling absolutely perfect, you should be able to tap the edges of the window to jar stuck pieces loose.
Posted by: Don at December 28, 2011 07:26 AM (M0Ixe)
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December 22, 2011
MOM -- A new record!
I think this is the most expensive item, by far, I've ever been offered in Master of Magic.
I didn't buy it. I didn't have any need. By that point I had completely pacified both planes, and the only opponent left was stuck in a single town, completely surrounded by my units (8 stacks of 3 griffins each), with his town under four curses (famine, cursed lands, pestilence, evil presence) and every square around his town hit with corruption. I sometimes do that to an opponent so they stay out of trouble, and out of my way while I conquer everything else and work on the Spell of Mastery.
What's frustrating is that even with all of that, he still had substantial mana income. I hate the way that the computer players cheat at the "Hard" level, you know that?
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December 07, 2011
Master of Magic -- You want me to fight what?
Mortu actually breezed right through this fight and took hardly any damage. But he was juiced to the gills with magic items and spells. (Including Regeneration.)
His weapon was something I bought from a salesman for about 3400 gold, and it included Vampiric and Haste.
His shield I also bought and it included Invulnerability. He himself is Magic Immune, though that didn't figure into this battle.
Between items and him being a Super Hero, he had 34 attacks (doubled, because of Haste), armor piercing, first strike, and was +7 to hit. And since he was flying, he was able to obliterate each Wyrm in turn.
Torin couldn't have done it better. Of course, Mortu was costing me 10 gold and 24 mana per turn, but since he cleared the entire Myrran plane all by himself, it was worth it. Of course, he started slow, taking the easy stuff first, and worked up to taking out the hardest ones. This was just about the last battle he fought.
And the treasure? A retort of Node Mastery. But I already had 13 books and 5 retorts.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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I was thinking "splat" until I saw the 34 attack strength and huge stockpile of magic points. But enh,
I've seen worse.
(Not without being bugged though; best I've ever done legit was 31 strength--and Bagtru didn't have near that level of defense!)
Posted by: ubu at December 07, 2011 05:02 PM (GfCSm)
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Mortu (the Black Knight) is a "Champion" rather than a "Hero" and everything is amplified.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 07, 2011 08:38 PM (+rSRq)
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November 12, 2011
MOM -- an interesting bug
If you put a Magic Spirit in a stack of Shadow Demons, the stack moves speed 2. Of course, you have to be careful not to take the Magic Spirit with you into any battles, because it'll be the target-of-choice for all range strikes, and it doesn't regenerate. But it's easy enough to leave it outside, and bring it in afterwards.
That can't have been intentional. It makes Shadow Demons unreasonably powerful as a board-clearer if you're playing a quick-game strategy, which so far as I can tell is the best way to get a really high score. When they move speed 2, and have scouting 2, they can locate enemy wizards pretty easily, and a stack of three or four of them can win any city battle in the early game, and of course without taking any losses as long as they win.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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If memory serves, Magic Spirits have Pathfinding. Since I can't find a reference online for some reason: Pathfinding units use half a movement point to move over any terrain, and they also share this benefit with every unit in the stack. Magic Spirits only have one movement point as well, but they can move two spaces a turn. However, Pathfinding is buggy, so although it seems weird that it lets Shadow Demons move an extra space, that is one of the few places where it's actually working properly (perhaps because the Shadow Demons fly?).
Posted by: John at November 17, 2011 09:43 PM (LfW1t)
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They don't have pathfinding. They're incorporeal, which gives them the ability to cross terrain at half-a-move per square. Wraiths do the same, and anything with the Wraithform spell does, too.
That's why Great Wyrms with Wraithform move 6 on the strategic map.
But where pathfinding even on one unit affects the whole stack, Wraithform doesn't. If any unit in the stack is not incorporeal, the entire stack moves at the slower speed.
Shadow Demons are not incorporeal; that's why when a stack is made up exclusively of Shadow Demons it moves speed 1. If you added a pathfinding unit to that, it would double the speed. I haven't tested it, but if you put the pathfinding spell on any one of them, it should, too.
And presumably if you did Wraithform on all of them, it would, too. But adding a Magic Spirit to the stack shouldn't.
I've got a save game where I can test that. I'll do it in the morning.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 17, 2011 10:28 PM (+rSRq)
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Here's what I found:
Shadow Demons are noncorporeal. They have a movement of 1, and that should mean they cover two spaces per turn, but they actually move one.
If you put pathfinding on a Shadow Demon, it has no effect. Still moves one.
If you have Shadow Demons and a Ranger in the same stack, it moves two.
Magic Spirits are noncorporeal. With a listed movement of one, they move two because of the noncorporeal bonus.
Magic Spirits are not pathfinders. A stack consisting of a Magic Spirit and a Settler moves one, not two. A stack of a Settler and a Ranger moves two.
You can't put Wraithform on a Shadow Demon. It tells you that it already has it.
Conclusion: I think that in the name of game balance, an exception was made for Shadow Demons to slow them down, but there's a bug in the code which kicks in when Shadow Demons are stacked with Magic Spirits.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 18, 2011 03:39 PM (+rSRq)
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Interesting! I was so sure Magic Spirits were pathfinders, but it has been quite a while since I played a game of MoM. Maybe I'll get around to one tomorrow.
Posted by: John at November 18, 2011 10:56 PM (LfW1t)
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November 10, 2011
Steaming
It's been reported that
Steam's database got cracked. If you're on it, change your password. If they have your credit card, keep a close eye out for unauthorized activity.
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 10, 2011 05:16 PM (PiXy!)
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I have dodged multi-million breakin after multi-million breakin, but I've finally been nailed. Alas. 'Twas only a matter of time.
Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at November 10, 2011 05:31 PM (Btke9)
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Made me glad I didn't have a credit card attached to my Steam account. And that I never saw any point in signing up for the forums.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at November 10, 2011 05:50 PM (fpXGN)
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According to the e-mail, the database included "hashed and salted" passwords and "encrypted credit card information". Sounds like they took the appropriate security measures so that this kind of thing wouldn't result in a Sony-style all-your-base event. Good for them!
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at November 10, 2011 05:55 PM (pWQz4)
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Steam say that the credit card details are encrypted with AES256. In that case, they're secure even if they've been stolen; cracking it is one of those longer-than-the-expected-lifespan-of-the-Universe things.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 11, 2011 05:05 AM (PiXy!)
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But I believe the hackers did get names and emails? I've got a Steam account, and I'm expecting a bunch of phishing emails very soon.
Posted by: Boviate at November 11, 2011 01:42 PM (RPpft)
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October 22, 2011
MOM -- a puzzle
You might be surprised to learn that I won this fight without losing anyone.
How? Notice that my Death Knights are all glowing? They all have Wraithform on them, which makes them incorporeal, which means they can't be webbed.
So the spiders just sat there the whole fight. The Knights move forward, take one shot at a Great Wyrm, do damage and take damage, then eat a spider to recharge. What with 7 spiders there, not only did the Knights manage to knock off both Wyrms, they came out of the battle with hardly any damage at all.
There isn't any other advantage to doing this, but this is enough to make it worthwhile. I routinely put Wraithform on my Death Knights now.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
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A nice solution to the problem. And I like the mental image of the spiders as little power-up snacks.
Posted by: haphazard1 at October 23, 2011 03:22 PM (9yBYR)
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Fire elementals are like that, too. I think of them as "batteries".
Things that life stealers love to eat:
bears, sprites, basilisk, spiders, cockatrices, stone giants
guardian spirits, unicorns, angels
hell hounds, fire elementals, chimera, doom bats, fire giants
nagas
Black fantastic creatures have no nourishment (there's no life to steal). Gorgons and storm giants are too dangerous. Phantom warriors and beasts have no meat.
Death knights love to eat air elementals and earth elementals, but they're too dangerous for wraiths. (Cockatrices and basilisks can be dangerous for wraiths, too.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 23, 2011 03:47 PM (+rSRq)
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September 29, 2011
MOM -- To dream the impossible dream
Here's how.
UPDATE: By the way, at least under Win 7 it has the weirdest installation program I've ever seen. It unpacks itself into a Windows temp directory and then auto-runs it from there. It does that every time you invoke it, using the only obvious file that permits invocation.
I ended up using the task manager to find out the real name of the executable ("MoMSaveEditor.exe") and then searched my entire C: drive to find it, which took about an hour.
Then I copied the entire contents of that temp directory to a real directory in "F:\Program Files (x86)", which is probably where it should have gone in the first place (or "C:\..." except I'm trying not to overuse C: because Windows makes that partition relatively small, after which it tries to put everything in it).
Except for the obvious audience (wimps) it strikes me that what this could be useful for is someone who wants the action to be hot and heavy without getting pulped. So you play at "impossible" but you give yourself 10,000 gold and 10,000 mana and a couple of good summons at the beginning of the game. And make your starting city big and put lots of buildings into it.
Well, another audience is for people who want to try loony stuff, like Invulnerability on Shadow Demons, or Wraithform on Archangels.
Or putting a war college and an alchemist's guild into a Troll village.
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I'm not sure. Would a generous supply of Elite Adamantine Trolls be broken?
Posted by: metaphysician at September 30, 2011 12:23 PM (3GCAl)
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I can't see why. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work just fine.
You get get them to elite anyway, you just have to grow them into it. Or be white and use Altar of Battle.
And if you start with the Alchemy retort, they can have alchemical weapons (though not adamantium).
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 30, 2011 01:42 PM (+rSRq)
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Here they are:
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 30, 2011 04:43 PM (+rSRq)
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And then I did this to them:
One unit like this took out a Sky Drake in a blue node in one turn, and two of the four war trolls were still standing afterwards.
And if I wanted to be really insane, I could give them all Iron Skin. Or Invulnerability. Or Magic Immunity. Or all three.
But they're already overwhelming. I've got 8 units like this in a stack and I haven't run into anything yet they can't defeat easily.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 30, 2011 05:21 PM (+rSRq)
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Does Wraithform grant the ability to see invisible? Because these guys can see Air Elementals.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 30, 2011 05:28 PM (+rSRq)
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"Undead" are immune to illusions by default, that's probably why they see air elementals. (It's also why depending on a pile of phantom warriors to defend a city doesn't work when a group of black-magic-dungeon marauders shows up.)
Posted by: Mikeski at October 01, 2011 12:42 PM (GbSQF)
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So what you're saying is that it was actually Black Channels that made it so they could see invisible.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 01, 2011 05:09 PM (+rSRq)
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September 21, 2011
Master of Magic, the weird way
So comments in the previous thread got me curious, and I tried a low-book game: 2 red, 2 green, 2 blue, Warlord, Alchemist, Conjurer, Node Mastery. And just to be safe I played High Men.
First observation: your initial mana income is one per book, so mine was just 6 a turn. That hurt a lot. Only having one node on my starting island hurt even more.
But I had some luck. I had a tower, and it connected to a moderate sized island on the other side which had two nodes. Once I got to the point where I could make paladins, it didn't take long to conquer them both. And since Node Mastery doubles your mana income from nodes, just those three plus my four developing towns ended up being a comfortable power base.
Second observation: Conjurer was a waste of time. Given what I had for magic, it turned out I had to do my fighting with the aforesaid paladins. The few summons I did were temporary, except for a couple of sprites I used for scouting. I'd have been much better served by an additional spell book.
I also had some luck in the spells I got. In particular I got Flight.
Folks, Ultra-elite flying Paladins with mithril weapons are overwhelming. Eight of those allowed me to conquer and take out both of the wizards I was up against, with little difficulty.
They started Elite because the town that had the mithril deposit also had a War College. So they were instantly formidable.
I also had some luck in spell trading. Kali gave me Spell Lock. Lo Pan gave me Flame Strike, which I used to good effect against him while wiping out all his towns except one. And taking all his nodes. And wiping out all his mobile forces.
Beetles are good units, but they are not able to handle flying ultra-elite paladins with mithril weapons.
Between Alchemy and Warlord, every unit I built was much better than average coming off the line. Alchemy also helped my mana-flow a lot. By the time I was involved in major wars and doing a lot of 3x flame strikes, my empire was producing about 200 gold a turn, and the 1:1 alchemical conversion to mana is really, really nice.
When I first started playing the game, my reaction was, "What in hell am I supposed to do?" Because I was used to playing a mana-rich, summon-rich game, and that wasn't in the cards. But once I got into the swing of this alternate way of doing things, it didn't end up being too bad.
I might try it again, except trading Conjurer for a white book.
UPDATE: I tried again. Alchemy, Warlord, Node mastery, 2 green, 2 red, 3 blue, 2 opponents.
It wasn't a high scoring game, but it was fun. It included a hunt for new spell books, something I'd largely stopped doing when playing all black. Before it was all over I had ended up with something like 7 blue books, and had a stack of 8 flying, invisible ultra-elite paladins zooming around on Myrror crushing everything in sight.
Between finding a retort of Charisma, and having an Aura of Majesty spell running for most of the game, I ended up with Shari and Tauron both well up the "like" scale, and had alliances with both of them.
So much so, that even casting the Spell of Mastery didn't make them hate me or declare war. That was surprising. The alliances were still on right to the end.
The toughest single fight was five Great Drakes in a Myrran node. At which point I learned that Mindstorm is a really handy spell against high level critters. I was able to cast it three times, and made short work of the first three Great Drakes. The last two I had to slug it out, but I made it through that battle without losing any of the paladins.
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Yeah, Warlord and Alchemy are my favorites. They reward my usual tech/eco rush strategy and give me the curb-stomper stacks the fastest.
There's something to be said for Divine/Infernal mastery, too, especially on Hard/Impossible. I never really fiddle with the elemental specializations--just not worth it, that I can see--and most of the others are kinda meh (except for Myrran, of course).
On my old, un-patched 3.5" copy of the game, I used to enjoy the item creation spells, and would sometimes run with that retort as well. On my current copy, item creation feels like it's been nerfed (for starters, you can no longer apply the Flaming quality to weapons), and the considerable expense pushes effective item creation too far into the late game, even with Alchemy.
I'm trying my first All-Black game now. I've never really played book-heavy builds, and it's a very different game--but, you're right about wraiths. On Hard, they can't seem to solo most nodes (which sport Basilisks, Great Wyrms, etc.), but they still clobber towns in the early game, yielding free zero-upkeep units (and you don't even need Pliers).
Posted by: BigD at September 22, 2011 09:02 AM (u0/7E)
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