January 31, 2011

Master of Magic -- I HATE AIR ELEMENTALS!!

There are all kinds of summons in this game, ranging from the miserable (e.g. skeletons) to the astounding (death knights). There are three elemental summons, too: earth elementals (green), fire elementals (red), and air elementals (blue).

Earth and fire elementals are decent units, but air elementals are absurdly dangerous. They're flying speed 5, and they're invisible, and they have poison immunity, stoning immunity, weapon immunity, and immunity to death magic.

I'd rather fight a Djinn or a Storm Giant, I tell you. I've had no end of grief with them the last couple of games. In one of those games I simply gave up, and any blue node guarded by them stayed unclaimed.

This last game I got stubborn. There was one Myrran blue node guarded by fully four of the bastards. It was the last Myrran node I hadn't conquered. I lost something like three stacks trying to take it.

I was playing Draconians again, but I had captured a Dark Elf city, and had it fully developed. My problem was that I didn't have any blue magic, so no True Sight, which meant no range strikes, which meant that even Warlocks would have been helpless. I ended up building the Dark Elf city up to a fantastic stable, then building 8 nightmares, then cast Eldritch Weapon, Flaming Weapon, Holy Weapon, and Invulnerability on every one of them. And I seriously considered juicing them even further. (I also had Holy Armor and Stone Flesh.)

That stack finally won, but I still lost one of the 8 nightmares and several others were badly wounded. Air Elementals aren't supposed to be that high; that summon spell is the same level as Earth Elementals, which are nowhere near as tough!

I also hate fighting Great Wyrms, but those really are supposed to be tough; it's the same level as Great Drakes, Archangels, and Demon Lords.

I think that Air Elementals are a case where Barcia loused up his play balance.

This game I played Myrran, 2 Green (so I can get Wall of Stone), 2 White (Guardian Spirit), and 4 Red, and over the course of the game I found three more Red, plus a retort of Nature Mastery. What with 7 red books, I ended up with a couple of the "totally foul up an enemy's city" spells that Red magic specializes in, and really ruined Jafar's day.

I think next time I'll try 2 white, 2 green, and 4 blue. Should be interesting. And man, I do like the Draconians.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 06:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 Air elementals suck.  One solution is to play blue and summon your own.  Another is to throw the spell that eliminates summoned creatures (forget what color it is); of course your front-line troops have to last long enough to cast it a few times.  I know I've got another method that deals with them fairly well, but I don't remember for sure. I think it's a mass of veteran or better slingers (with magic or better weapons) at point blank range.  I'll lose most of them, but they're relatively cheap by the late game when I start after nodes with air elementals.

Posted by: ubu at January 31, 2011 06:48 PM (GfCSm)

2 I actually go in a different direction altogether... I don't take nodes early on unless they have fairly easy guardians.  I focus instead on expanding economically, and shift cash-mana later in the game when I need mana.

I'm probably missing out on a bit by doing so, but it allows me to explore faster and hit neutral cities sooner, because I didn't lose stacks trying to take nodes.

The one thing that will end my game in a hurry is a high-level wandering monster sacking my lightly-defended capitol or major cities; I just don't defend them well enough until late-game.  Myrran is actually kinda worse about this, because a monster can hop on a road square in the middle of nowhere, and then hit *any* city on the chain.

Posted by: BigD at January 31, 2011 07:13 PM (LjWr8)

3

That's one of the reasons I like the draconians and green magic. Wall of Stone gets city walls up fast, and if the entrance is held by a flying creature, any ground-crawler that comes in just stands and looks at the city and doesn't do anything. (Unless they're missile users.)

Meanwhile, if you get corporeal fliers, that's what the "web" spell is for. Once they recover from the web, they're ground-pounders and they just look.

Nine times out of ten, when my capital gets attacked, I just hit the auto button.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 31, 2011 10:32 PM (+rSRq)

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