A little bit of help for magic.....

[Guybrush!]

Whenever I play FFH, and I have mana nodes, I can never decide what to upgrade them to. So I thought i would consult the community for help!
I thought to make a list with every civ on it and what mana is good for them, so I dont always ending spamming archmages with wonder
So....can people help make the list?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

What civ you are actually doesn't matter that much for what mana types are good. There's only 2 real exceptions that I'll cover: Death and Earth.

Every civ likes enchantment, water and body early. All 3 provide very useful 1st level spells, and enchantment's passive bonus is a nice little boon too, while Body also has a useful level 2 spell. Just make sure to check whether or not you start out with these types, as there's not much point to having more than 1 of any of these besides enchantment (and even that, I skip)

Spirit's crucial for any empire that needs to face enemies that cause fear - dragons, high level demons, and many undead. If you aren't facing these kinds of enemies and you don't plan to go dragonslaying, though, it's useless.

Mind is a solid sphere throughout. All 3 spells are useful but not broken, and the passive bonus isn't much, but it's there. Entropy's the same way, except that it causes harsh diplomatic penalties with all good civs and a couple neutral ones, so watch out for that.

Fire's useless for adept level magic but a great offensive sphere for when you get mages, and stays good once archmages come around.

Nature eats dick for most of the game but becomes really awesome once you get archmages. Project sphere.

Death mana can be awesome if you hoard it. But only if! Either build a summoning strategy based on making all your nodes death nodes + chasing the wonder that provides more death mana for free, or skip death altogether. Death without the bonuses it gets from being stacked sucks. Best done with a civ that starts with some, or a summoner trait leader. The Sheaim leaders combine both.

Earth's also one that benefits from being stacked, except instead of providing spells that power way up with multiple sources, it provides a serious passive boost that scales up that way. Again, if your civ starts with some, you're better off here. Khazad are best for doing this since they get a free earth mana, and they can't even get mages or archmages, so they have less reason to diversify their mana for spells.

Metamagic is useful if you want to switch your manas around. You probably do not.

 

[Mailbox]

Death and Ice are my two personal favorites. Like Monkeyfinger said though, Death is best if stacked because of the 2nd and 3rd level summons having affinity, however it can still be good because of Lichdom giving you four extra Archmages even if you don't spam it.

Ice is only obtainable via Letum Frigus if you're not the Illians but it's a great sphere. Slow forces stacks of units to stop and be vulnerable instead of marching straight to your cities. Ice elementals are decent enough, although they have Ice affinity which isn't really helpful unless you're the Illians and have Letum Frigus. The real jewel of the Ice sphere is the archmage spell, Snowfall. This spell both causes serious economic and military harm with its ability to blanket an area in ice tiles and cause cities with huge garrisons to take lots of cold damage, although you must take care to protect your archmages. The best part is that the snow isn't permanent, which is nice for the non Illians who use it.

 

[avalonnn]

Also, some civs need different strategies depending on the religion they choose (Calabim AV vs. Calabim Order vs. Calabim RoK are very different).

If you have desert tiles, water is useful.

If your armies are slow, you may want to use haste.

If you have a holy city with free mana, use that mana.

Personally, I like Spirit, Life, and Law, both for their spells and for the effect they have on my economy. But if you're AV, you do want fire and RoK can use earth and nature.

And Monkeyfinger's right: enchantment is very valuable.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Never build an earth node unless you want to build the tower of elements. The effect it grants is called 'the placebo' effect.

Law is quite good as it stacks nicely towards the awesome goal of zero maintenance in all your cities.

At least one enchantment node early on is quite awesome. Happy bonus' are the best passive buff of a spell, and the enchanted blade spell is also pretty decent.

If you really want to go crazy with summons (If you are a summoner leader especially) then make them all death nodes. 4 or 5, and your spectre's become summonable, 2 move champions of DOOM.

 

[Blackmantle]

Spirit Mana's Tier 1 Spell has another significant effect besides ignoring fear which is often overseen. Higher heal-rate (for the whole stack the unit is in no less...). I even consider that part more important than overcoming fear since it matters so often...
For Civs that start with Spirit that can make a significant difference in early wars vs. adversaries of about equal strength... (or for any kind of sensible healing for HN units like captured animals)


Air even after the nerf has still one of the most powerful Tier 2 spells though you have to be a bit careful in its use now (sadly Tier 1 rather sucks.). Tier 3 spell is also rather solid with its extraordinary mobility...

Law is a sucky sphere by spells (tier 1 is useful for some but those usually start with it and quite some civs do anyways... Most notably its for calabim.) but as Zechnophobe said the passive effect can yield rather impressive results if massed (and those empires which have the possibility to mass it in the first place are also usually the ones with the biggest incentive to do so...)

Metamagic allows you to not have to chose but rather switch freely (which imo is very powerful since you needn't even stick to it.). This benefit includes getting good spheres for casting when building / upgrading arcane casters while using spheres with interesting passive effects at all other times...

Life is often overseen but for many civs with solid civ-heroes (either mid- or lategame) Tier 3 is rather powerful (especially if gained rather early via an early Tier 3 caster like Gibbon or Hemmah...).
The other 2 Tiers are rather situational (Tier 1 is important / good if hell-terrain /and or many graveyards are around. Tier 2 is very helpful vs. many undead [+demons?]).
If all 3 spells are! useful in a given game picking it should be a no-brainer and a usefullness of 2 of those warrants a solid pick... but it is one of the most situational spheres...

And the passive effect of earth-mana if massed! in my experience is more than just placebo. (even though after some found resources a switch to law or mind might still make sense...)
Given that early access to it is gained via a shrine usually it also not all so much a waste for even a minor passive effect. But i sure wouldn't recommend going out of ones way to acquire it. Since all 3 spells are rather week if still somewhat useful.

All in all most spheres are useful and fun to use and its not mandatory to always use the best to win. Often second-best will do. (Wonder for example might not be the most powerful spell without heroic casters. But its big fun quite often...)

The rest is allready covered nicely...

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I rather like spirit 2 when conquering. You could replicate the effects by building disciples, of course, but I'd rather not wait around for them to arrive, and waste all that building time.
Nature 2 is more useful than enchantment, and effects all unit types but horses, but only while moving and on defense. Still, nice to have one of those around.
Fireball's ability to bombard is very good if you neglect seige, like I tend to.

 

[it-ogo]

There are too many factors to make a general decision. Depending on map and situation you may be very short in health and like to have life mana and A.S. wonder. If you have Acheron nearby preventing your expansion you will probably like to have spirit. If you are inside the great jungles you may like fire mana early to have a great fire especially if you are Ljos-FoL with slow workers and fire resistant ancient forests. Raiders with rich neighbours may like to have shadow for repeating pillaging in the mid-to-late game. If you are planning exhausting wars law is a must have. Etc.

 

[it-ogo]

Double post.

 

[heisenberg]

I must say one of my personal favourites is mind.
Should you go for an early expansionist strategy spreading out multiple smaller cities all around, having an adept in each city casting inspiration really does add up, helping to offset some unavoidable maintenance costs.
Its sometimes really my own excuse to be spamming out adepts and giving them something passive to do while waiting for them to become mages.
As mentioned earlier, both tier 2-3 mind are still pretty useful spells.

 

[JameyM]

I'm a big fan of Spirit. Spirit 1 not only gives immunity to fear, but it's the rough equivalent to a Medic promotion on all units. Spirit 2 gives a culture bonus, letting you pop newly conquered/settled settlements faster without building disciples. Spirit 3 is pretty useless (you can cast it once per game for a permanent +1 relations bonus with the other leaders - since you get it so late, diplomacy is pretty well set by the time you cast it anyway).

I'm also a huge fan of Law because of Valor at Law 3. +1 XP per combat is huge, especially on maps with lots of barbarians (it allows you to keep getting XP from fighting barbarian units). Law also gives -5% to maintenance costs per node, which can help you keep your empire growing without going broke.

Enchantment is great all around. It's per node bonus (+1 happy) is good. Each of its spells are very useful.

I'm a fan of Earth 2 for making my life easier. +2 defense, 3 first strikes, and +50% damage resist adds up to make your mages strong enough to take hits from assassins. In general, once they have stoneskin on them, I don't have to stress about mages being exposed to the AI.

I'm also a big fan of Shadow. Shadow 1 is immunity to first strike. Shadow 2 is the ability to ignore city defenses. Those bonuses added together really make conquest easier.

Beyond that, I strongly recommend this tabulation of the spells and per node bonuses. As far as I know, it's accurate.

 

[civ_king]

If you are Khazad then Earth Mana is totally FTW, 30 strength Dwarven Druids anyone?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well, except that with Crush a 30 strength DD has about the same odds of winning as a 3 strength warrior. I think it's just overkill. A few mages summoning the 'extend-a-summons' from law and chaos can allow you to accumulate an army of summons, which is probably more useful.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

If you are Khazad then Earth Mana is totally FTW, 30 strength Dwarven Druids anyone?

Not just Khazad... Luichirp + CoE = Druids + Masking Shadows + Golems + Archmages if you want (unlike Khazad)

Trying this combo now, pretty ridiculously powerful.

 

[Caradoc]

Whatever you do, save a node for Metamagic. Once you have a Mage with Dispell Magic, you can get all the types of Mana you want from a single node.

 

[cyther]

If you are planning on summoning with summoner trait go for the water or death spheres. With the tower of elementalism water elementals are nearly impossible to stop. The death sphere is about the best that you can possibly get. Skeleton folder at level 1, Specters with death aff. at level 2, wraiths and lichdom at level 3 make this the best sphere in magic if you plan on going for power instead of variation in your magic line.

 

[popejubal]

Whatever you do, save a node for Metamagic. Once you have a Mage with Dispell Magic, you can get all the types of Mana you want from a single node.

Plus, if you give two Mages the Metamagic II promotion, you can Dispel Magic on the Metamagic node and then reuse it for something more proactive since your two Mages don't lose Metamagic II when the Metamagic goes away.

You can always just Dispel Magic on the node one more time later and rebuild the Metamagic Node if you really need to.

 

[phoulishwan]

Best way to use nodes in my opinion is on an affinity, be it nature, death, fire or whatever...then use vassalage to gain all the various nodes for the utility spells. Abuse the "Time for your tribute" option to force them to give you all their palace mana's and any others they happen to have built, best reason ever not to annihilate other civs

 

[Grey Fox]

I almost always get spirit, earth and mind, and then make an adept for every city to use Inspiration, Hope and Walls of Stone, then a Meta magic node so I can remake the mana nodes into other nodes depending on what I want. Death is nice, especially if you can make Archmages so you can free up some slots and make Liches. Fire and Air have nice attack spells of course, Body is nice early for Haste.