Uber Mages - Grigori vs. Amurites vs. Sheaim

I'm just beginning in the game, and would like to hear a little bit about these three races regarding their possibilities for magical dominance.

So the Wiki says the Amurites have the world's best mages, while the Grigori are the best at sorcery and the Sheaim are the game's dominant summoners. It would appear to me, offhand, that the Grigori's magical horizons are focussed more towards the early game, as they are relying on Adventurers and great people gas out towards the later game. Furthermore, the Grigori are obviously not going to have divine mages, so this makes them a little less flexible (and I really want the ability to make flesh golems to get around national unit limited numbers).

Amurites seem like they will eventually have the most strong mages via their Cave, and I'm intrigued by their archer/mage as well (particularly with the Arcane trait aiding a combat unit). I'm a little bit less thrilled by their leader picks, since Organized doesn't appeal to me much but I'd definitely want Arcane for them. However, their hero's ability to turn everyone into a tiny necromancer seems exceptionally potent, so that's a trade up as far as I am concerned.

Sheaim - Well, Summoner and Arcane together are amazing, but it looks to me like the Sheaim, between their desired religious picks and exceptionally powerful high end summoner unit, are a late game dominant nation. Not that I have a problem with that, I'm just trying to sort them out from the other two.

Also - besides the ability to have Arcane, what makes the Sheaim any better summoners than the Balseraphs until their Eaters of Dreams come out?

One nice feature of the Sheaim is that they can get mage-equivalent units (Planar Gate + Mage Guild = Moebius Witch) without researching Sorcery, allowing them to go for conjurers without delaying fireballs and such. The same planar gates also give them small numbers of powerful fighting units that can guard conjurers - and once the late-game hits, an Eater of Dreams in a city can wipe out armies alone. The main weakness of the Sheaim I can see would be large forces of axemen or the like before conjurers come into play (Nightmares are most excellent defenders.)



The Grigori are, as you say, powerful in the early-game, both due to twincasting heroes and the ability to go directly for the Good Stuff (i.e. sorcery) without racing for religions. Do not, however, underestimate their late game power: Each adventurer archmage will be as powerful as two regular archmages, when it comes to pure offensive damage output. The weakness here is the fact that the heroes, while perhaps numerous, are in no way expendable. Lose one, and you'll need to pop another adventurer to fill its shoes, which means you'll have one less for other roles.

The Amurites, now... Weak leader traits, single-use UU ability of questionable utility, but the free experience makes up for it. No real weakness, here, excepting perhaps their need for many mana nodes to boost their casters.

Finally, the challengers: Keelyn makes a neat substitute for Tebryn, with easier expansion and many handy non-arcane units, Great for a game not quite so focused on summoning.

Beeri Brawl is my personal choice, with the absolutely wonderful traits of Arcane and Financial, and the fact that he can field very decent melee units at Construction - freeing up the rest of his tech prioritizing for magic, only picking up iron working when Empower V wood golems go obsolete (or barnaxus dies...)

Don't rule out the Calabim, either. Even though they don't get unique mages or summoners and none of their leaders are Arcane, vampires bridge the gap between melee and arcane units very nicely (Vampire Lords get Sorcery AND Summoning ). And unlike the Grigori, their super-mages aren't tied to GPP, they can extend their mage's XP beyond 100 and they can get a religion (flesh golems, anyone?).

Also - besides the ability to have Arcane, what makes the Sheaim any better summoners than the Balseraphs until their Eaters of Dreams come out?

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Assuming you mean Keelyn, nothing really, she is your one other choice for a summoner trait leader.
you guys pretty much have covered the basics. Amurites also get an assassain which can cast escape, and Govannon gives you one extra Archmage and a whole lot of free (limited) adepts.

ok , for an easy to read breakdown ....

grigori - mid to late game dominance as mages and archmages, the ability to twincast is hard to argue as well as thier potential for multiple realm magics (fire+twincast+staff)

shiam - far and away nothing inthe game can rival the power of the eater of souls

calabim - odds are dead on (pun?hehe) that you will have vampiric necromancers and all that that entails. calabim also have teh easiest way to replace the loss of any archmage or summoner.

kaelyn(sp) - hands down by far the best druids and decent archmages/summoners

amurites - decent mages and archmages , but the xp bonus can be difficult to achieve. they do however have the firebows which are remarkably one of the best units in the game.

barbarians - both the clan and dovellio have a HUGE advantage in mid game summoning with the chaos sphere. having peace with barbarians and the ability to summon chaos marauders ( chance of becomeing perm rampageing barbars ) is a considerable boost.

now , all that being said , for arcane power i have to mention the religions a little bit.

overlords - the single most powerful mage in the game couple with the ability to summon the kraken is fearsome.

ashen veil - fear the ritualists , these are the single most powerful unit you can find for the tiers that they command power. they command death , choas , and fire and do it in the realms of summoning and arcane . this allows them to xp faster then anything short of calabim and have 2 upgrade paths allowing for a total of 6 casters cpable of 3rd level spells. (in the hands of anyone with the summoning trait its frightening).

GL , hoep it helps....

And may I say: Why is Organized considered weak? It is my favorite trait- less civic upkeep is HUGE in late game, and lets you run military state, public healers and schoolarship at half cost, half priced courthouses are nice, and you get Command Post building for Great General GPP and +2 XP.

Organized, in a vacuum, is a good trait.

Unfortunately - it is considered weak because just about every other trait is better.

In the early game - Organized does nothing, or next to nothing, and in the late game it is strong; but because all of the other traits are able to get you to the late game in such a strong position that being organized isn't necessary.

Remember: it isn't whether a trait is strong or not, it is whether it is strong relative to the other traits.

Loads of good responses. Let me try to respond to all, although if anyone posts while I'm posting don't take it personal.

TheJopa - Organized (at least in Vanilla Civ, I haven't played enough FfH to know yet) peaks a little late for me and works best when you're using high upkeep civics. That's fine, but not all high upkeep Civics are necessarily the best, or at least not the best for all things - I much preferred Spiritual and the ability to move rapidly between civics to Organized and the pressure to use high cost civics. Financial, IMO, is also helpful much earlier and allows greater flexibility. Again, though, that's Civ4 talk, and I am more than willing to believe I'm making bad assumptions.

Daladinn: I assume you're using Runes with Balseraphs to get Druids? I'd think they'd want to go Octopus to grab more slaves for their culture war (at least, it's recommended in the wiki). And what makes the Balseraph Druids so potent?

What makes the Amurite mages only decent compared to other nations?

Don't the Grigori crap out in the late game when their GPs stop coming with any frequency and you've started to build infrastructure options which reduce your chances for more adventurers when a GP does appear?

On the surface of things, I'd thing Summoner would be vastly more useful than Barbarian neutrality for the Chaos Marauders. Getting it x3 as far away from you all the time, and having it turn hostile 20% seems much better to me than 1/3 as far and neutral 20%.

Nikis-Knight: The flavor text for Sheaim seems much more Arcane heavy, while Balseraphs focus on their culture war add ons (although I missed the Planar Gate exclusivity since it's not listed under Sheaim in the wiki). If the have rough magical parity in the early-late mid game, then the wiki is a little deceptive.

Mr Underhill - I never rule out Vampires in any game (not even as LA Ulm), but you're right that I wasn't considering them as contenders for the magical big boys. Do you favor Alexis or Flauros?

I haven't played them much yet, either, and so I haven't put all the pieces together, but I am intrigued by their "endless loop" option, which seems like it could propel them rapidly into total dominance (of course, it looks like getting all those pieces together would be quite a hassle and require some non-culturally optimal pieces).

BCalchet - Luichirp is the only good nation which seems really appealing to me, and from all reports they are currently a bit hamstrung by the difficulty of their all-important hero has in healing in the early game. Tips and tricks?

Nikis-Knight said:

Amurites also get an assassain which can cast escape, and Govannon gives you one extra Archmage and a whole lot of free (limited) adepts.

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Every Amurite unit can cast escape, eventually, so Chanters are nothing special. Govannan also isn't marked as Hero (which I've never heard back if this is intentional or a bug) so is denied both Twincast and Heroic Strength. Other than his training, Hemah (available at the exact same tech level) is far better as a straight up combat unit.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Wizards yet. Their only specialness is a one time only two-casts-in-one-turn. After it's used, it needs to be restored in the same fashion any mage would.

Although I've been playing mostly Amurite, I've been silent hoping reworkings were coming.

Don't the Grigori crap out in the late game when their GPs stop coming with any frequency and you've started to build infrastructure options which reduce your chances for more adventurers when a GP does appear?

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You can only have 3 archmages and 3 summoners; it's not hard to get 6 adventurers, and with hero, they each can get twincast. I don't think you could possibly say they crap out.

Nikis-Knight: The flavor text for Sheaim seems much more Arcane heavy, while Balseraphs focus on their culture war add ons (although I missed the Planar Gate exclusivity since it's not listed under Sheaim in the wiki). If the have rough magical parity in the early-late mid game, then the wiki is a little deceptive.

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Not really; in addition to summoning, the Sheaim get they mobius witches, and late game, as was said, Eaters can totally rule. (Capture a city, destroy the population with summoning Pit Beasts, and the Pit Beasts can probably make it to the next enemy city before expiring.) And Keelyn does get the other Balseraph's culture special abilities.

xAlephx said:

Mr Underhill - I never rule out Vampires in any game (not even as LA Ulm), but you're right that I wasn't considering them as contenders for the magical big boys. Do you favor Alexis or Flauros?

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They both have their strong points, but I've been favoring Alexis lately.

xAlephx said:

The flavor text for Sheaim seems much more Arcane heavy, while Balseraphs focus on their culture war add ons (although I missed the Planar Gate exclusivity since it's not listed under Sheaim in the wiki). If the have rough magical parity in the early-late mid game, then the wiki is a little deceptive.

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Ah, I think that's partly my fault, as I wrote the original Balseraph wiki entry (which eventually made it into the game; thanks, Kael! ) and didn't consider the Balseraphs as magic users when I wrote it. I don't think Keelyn was even a leader at the time.

xAlephx said:

On the surface of things, I'd thing Summoner would be vastly more useful than Barbarian neutrality for the Chaos Marauders. Getting it x3 as far away from you all the time, and having it turn hostile 20% seems much better to me than 1/3 as far and neutral 20%.

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Ah, but you see that (AFAIK) that the chaos marauder will stay around until they die or become barb. Thus for the barb nations they are permanent summons with an infinite amount for most porpuses. (except controlled by your ally)

ok some points that i thought i would not have to spell out to people...

grigori -
first off necromancy is a common choice for your 4-6th mages and HIGHLY reccomended, this allows you to have 6 archmage heros
2nd , have you counted the number of meteors that 1 well trained grigori hero archmage can drop on you at 1 time? every normal casting gives your 3 , a twincast gives you 6 , if you get the magestaff promo , you can get 12 every other turn, 12 typically levels a city. (another reason i asked for change on the fireball/meteor model).
3rd , the grigori never really crap out late game , the heros you have just keep getting better (much more so if they are mages) and they slowly get mroe and more. what i would advise is also looking at all the buildings that they can get that add either generically to the GPP percentage or to adventurers specifically. and NEVER build wonders , they are NEVER worth it with grigori.

as for the balseraphs(sp)...
please look into the upgrade paths to get to druids and the types of magic taht they gain , you would be pleasently supprised.

as for the barbarians .....
lets keep in mind that summoners are not limited to 3 per civ , so pumping out and intense stream of them so taht every city keeps increasing the number available and casting just to let out wandering chaos mauraders is a REALLY fun tactic. and i have to mention with embers it works GREAT as a supplement to barrows.

as far as vampires .....
currently vampires are completely broken as a civ , they are totally unstoppable and honestly need to be reworked for viability. i think currently keal and co has had no one playtesting the corect strats to point this out. once you get used to playing as the vamps it becomes painfully obvious who the stonger leader is ... odds are its not the one you have been playing.

the only and best advise i can give for the gnomes or dwarfs is simple .... overwhelm them with numbers. for the luchurp , you can field any number of golems for free. honestly both are very straight forward.

Correct me if I a wrong because this is coming back from some time ago but can't you disband summoned units so long as its not the last turn? That would mean its hands down better to be a summoner and bring in Chaos Marauders since you get them for 2x as along and 0% chance of revolt.

ok, let me try this from different perepective ...

when it comes to chaos mauraders , both summoning AND peace with the barbarians are very good traits to have.

with summoning you can get your chaos mauraders a total move of 12 from where you cast them ... and i highly recomend keeping them moving forward. the nice thing about this also is that each and every conjurer you have can have 3 in play at any one time.the trick here is in logistics , you need them far enough away so that they dont turn on your conjurors and you can use your next set to kill the rogues.

with the peace with barbarians, you can stay at "peace" with your enemies and still cause considerable damage. think if you have a small stack of 10 in your capitol. this gives you good odds to get 2 barbarian mauraders every turn. these will of course "pop" outside your cultural borders and proceed to wreck havok on the unwary.

for both techniques its all a matter of timing

the 2nd part of the barbarian strat is taht it synergizes very well with the roving dead from the barrows and everyting involved in that tactic.

daladinn said:

ok some points that i thought i would not have to spell out to people...

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Well, you gotta spell them out to me, because I've just started to play the game several days ago and have no idea what half the techs do, much less any recommended upgrade paths, etc. I mean, you obviously don't HAVE to spell them out, but you can't really expect me to know them. It's cool if you think I should play more and ask questions less - I'd do so, but the wiki, while nicely put together, still /= a manual.

That said - can't anyone with the right religion pick up unlimited archmages through flesh golems? I mean, they aren't archmages anymore, but they have all the same promotions of an archmage + those of whatever other unit you blend in (another spellcaster, presumably). If you have 6 flesh golems / 3 archmages / 3 liches you're better off than 6 twincasting Grigori because you can cast 12 different spells/round rather than 6 spells doubled, and after that you're just getting better and better.

I'm partial to a vampiric Hemah.

And unlike the Grigori, their super-mages aren't tied to GPP, they can extend their mage's XP beyond 100 and they can get a religion (flesh golems, anyone?).

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Death magic casting, lycanthropy enducing, population eating Flesh Golems created by vampiric Overlords High Priests tearing down cities while a vampiric Baron Duin Halfmorn goes prowling the countryside for more recruits. Off course, with only a few Longbowmen to chomp on at this time in any of the enemies cities.

sorry aleph , not meaning to be harsh

as far as flesh golems go ... they are a toy , play arond with them for a while . your going to find that for the time involved they are not truely worth the cost.

xAlephx said:

I'm just beginning in the game, and would like to hear a little bit about these three races regarding their possibilities for magical dominance.

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Fine but why exclude all other civs beforehand ?

So the Wiki says the Amurites have the world's best mages, while the Grigori are the best at sorcery and the Sheaim are the game's dominant summoners. It would appear to me, offhand, that the Grigori's magical horizons are focussed more towards the early game, as they are relying on Adventurers and great people gas out towards the later game

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.

The later game, magic-wise, would be literally dominated by the twin-cast Grigori Archmages and Summoners. There wouldn't really any civ that has the slightest chance to compete with them. The conditional is due to their starting mana (of which I will talk later).

Furthermore, the Grigori are obviously not going to have divine mages, so this makes them a little less flexible (and I really want the ability to make flesh golems to get around national unit limited numbers).

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Well, the title is "Uber Mages", so this should exclude Divine Spellcasters, right ?

Amurites seem like they will eventually have the most strong mages via their Cave, and I'm intrigued by their archer/mage as well (particularly with the Arcane trait aiding a combat unit). I'm a little bit less thrilled by their leader picks, since Organized doesn't appeal to me much but I'd definitely want Arcane for them. However, their hero's ability to turn everyone into a tiny necromancer seems exceptionally potent, so that's a trade up as far as I am concerned.

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What about all your Civ's units being able to cast Haste, and your Firebows being able to cast Regeneration, all thanks to Govannon ? But you need death mana for the summon skeleton, and I don't advise it as more often than not, it's more advisable that the unit attacks than summon a skeleton.

Sheaim - Well, Summoner and Arcane together are amazing, but it looks to me like the Sheaim, between their desired religious picks and exceptionally powerful high end summoner unit, are a late game dominant nation. Not that I have a problem with that, I'm just trying to sort them out from the other two.

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Honestly, I think that Sheaim are a never-dominant nation. Their features depend on too many "ifs" and "buts" IMHO, they were never dominant before FFH 0.20 and they still are not dominant now. Eater of Dreams... nice, but 1) late -too late- and 2) Vampires are better.


All in all, I think the dominant mages are those that have good starting manas, because let's face it, most of the times you can't really count on improved mana nodes, or not as much. You may even end up with 1 or no mana nodes. I rely more on holy-wonders mana than mana nodes.
Anyways, my thought is that there isn't really a trait or civ-feature that is as strong as starting mana. This excludes from this "competition" all or almost all the good-aligned civs (still IMHO), which mostly have questionably useful mana types and very rarely an inclination toward arcane magic.
Personally the civs I prefer for a magic-dominant game are Svartalfar and Amurites, as the mana type I consider by far the best are Mind (very powerful even right from the start as Adept) Enchantment and Body (powerful from the start and onwards). Of course, Fire is also neat.

Saien said:

Every Amurite unit can cast escape, eventually, so Chanters are nothing special.

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Ok I would really like to discuss about the fact that you'd waste a mana node with Dimensional Mana only to have your units be able to cast Escape ?

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Wizards yet. Their only specialness is a one time only two-casts-in-one-turn. After it's used, it needs to be restored in the same fashion any mage would.

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I agree with you here...