So today I tried creating a custom mage. I haven't yet ventured into black, red, or blue magic; I'm still getting used to green and white. I had been playing Merlin, who has 5 white, 5 green, and the Sagemaster skill. My general frustration with it has been: too much white, not enough green.

So I created a wizard today with 2 white, 8 green, and Nature Mastery. With 2 white books I was able to guarantee that I'd get the Guardian Spirit spell. Next time I'm considering going for 3 white so that I can also guarantee myself the Healing spell, but maybe not.

By the end of the game I had found 2 more green books, one blue book, and a couple more retorts. It wasn't too bad.

Some of the races make good ones to conquer and add to your empire, but they aren't good ones to begin with. I tried one game using High Men, and it didn't go well. They have some excellent units, but you have to build a ridiculous number of buildings before you can create mages, priests, or paladins. Much better to capture High Men.

One of the reasons I like the Halflings as a starting race is that their slingers are not only really good, but also they can be created very early. Of course, having an Alchemist's guild makes them better (it makes all units better) but they're OK without that. So all you need is an armory, and you can create them.

The Halflings also have good morale; they'll put up with more taxation without rioting. And they're really productive, and have a good supply of buildings.

The booby prize race is Gnolls. When I find an opposing mage and see that his starting race is Gnolls, I know I don't have to worry much about him.

Lizardmen are another race I like to conquer. But as a starting race, they're just too limited. Too many important building types they can't create. But I love conquering them, because I love dragon turtles. And you get those as soon as you build a stable. I love dragon turtles because they move speed 2, they're amphibious, and they're tough as hell.

Slingers and Dragon Turtles aren't necessarily better than High Men mages etc but they're earlier and easier and not really any worse. And that's a huge advantage.

I finally found a way to fight against air elementals. You need the green "Call Lightning" spell, and once that's going it'll hit the elementals even if you can't see where they are. I managed to get that going in a blue node one time, which was lucky. But they still scare me more than anything else I've run into so far.

I fought a demon lord. I was using a very advanced stack, and in fact it wasn't all that hard to take him out. He summoned one demon before I nailed him, but a web took care of that.

I have fought invisible stalkers. I have fought against shadow demons. I have fought against doom bats. I have fought against fire giants (five at once!). I have fought against a colossus. None of them have given me anything like the kind of trouble that air elementals invariably do.

And when I finally get tired of green magic and move on to blue, the ability to summon air elementals will definitely be something I make sure is in my spell book!

In the mean time I have found that summoning earth elementals is a really good way to defend a city that doesn't have a lot of conventional units.

...but Call Lightning is even better. It's one of my favorite spells.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 10:08 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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