Hey, guys! I think it'd be great if every civ had a thread like the Grigori one, so let's make an Amurite guide! They were the first civ I played, and I was completely lost, so I'm shooting for teaching beginners. I've never done this sort of thread, so feel free to speak up if I get something wrong; constructive criticism is good.
The Amurites, like the Calabim and Sindar, are a civ with one really awesome shtick that'll let them totally dominate the game, but you have to get to it first. That shtick is magic. So much is riding on your wizards, that it isn't even funny.
The Leaders
Both leaders have Arcane (free XP when you make an adept), so it's their other traits that define them.
Dain gets Philosophical, which makes research-related buildings cheaper. He's good if you want to tech up ahead of your enemies.
Valledia's Organized trait is better for warfare and early expansion, because she can build command posts and cheap money-saving buildings.
In unrestricted leaders, people like Tebryn, Faeryl, Thessa, and Keelyn open a wide variety of strategies.
Faith: The Right One For You
Start with Runes. Easy, early-game money, quick research, and Soldiers of Killmoph to help you get set up. It's viable to stick with Runes for an entire game.
However, if you want to switch, you get plenty of options:
GOOD: Empyrean offers you nothing but good things. I have not tried it personally, however. I definitely suggest founding this religion, since the holy shrine reveals invisible units, and if it's invisible, it's probably a threat to your mages.
NEUTRAL: Octopus Overlords, Archmage hero, Tsunamis, and undead. What's not to like?
EVIL: Ashen Veil, for Sacrifice the Weak and a small research bonus. However, unlike the above, there are downsides. You'll get Hell Terrain before anyone else, Basium can be summoned at any time to drag you into a world war, nobody good will like you, and Armageddon is now a step closer than it already was. Also, the hero is a horseman, and that's not really your thing. It's powerful, but all in all, I prefer Runes or Overlords to this.
Early Game Research:
Your early game goal is to research what you need to live, while getting to sorcery as quickly as possible. You'll probably need bronze working and agriculture early on, but you can hold off on any other resources until you at least have knowledge of the ether. The sooner you get your adepts, the sooner they'll have enough XP to be wizards.
Another interesting idea (perhaps if you're on an island or are otherwise isolated) is to try and found every religion you can. Every holy city is the potential site of a holy shrine, and each holy shrine is a free source of mana. If you somehow manage to found every religion, that's seven kinds of mana that you don't have to fight for. Dain, due to his cheap libraries and easy great prophets, is the best one for this strategy.
I've never tried ceasing a shrine for it's mana before, so I don't know if they can be captured (but they probably can). If they can, you might want to consider not using this strategy, and saving your Great Prophets.
Magic Warfare: How to Make Your Adepts Into Efficient Killing Machines
The civpedia states that Amurite mages are "not particularly spectacular of their own right, what makes them remarkable is the sheer number of them and the ease with which they can be brought to bear on the field." That's a good indication of how the Amurites are meant to fight: with vast numbers of spellcasters.
Aside from a larger number of adepts, your early armies will not be hugely different from anyone else's I discourage you from being a heavy warmonger during this time.
Much of your army will consist of wizards. I suggest civics (like conquest and apprenticeship) wonders (Form of the Titan) and buildings (Cave of Ancestors) that grant free XP, because the faster you can make wizards, the more successful you will be.
Once you grab Sorcery and different kinds of mana, things begin to change. It's time to specialize your forces. That's a key word, here: SPECIALIZE. Plan ahead. I haven't seen a lot of people doing this, and it really makes them more effective. Since you are going to be building so many more mages than other civs normally do, you can afford to make many of the same kind, without sacrificing much versatility.
I suggest using large numbers of wizards, each of which has a specialty. It's a bit more complicated, but I find it more effective. I use the basic configurations below, depending on what mana I have found. Feel free to suggest others.
Fire Mages: Artillery is the "queen of the battlefield", and it's what Fire Mages do best. Their job is to crack defenses and blast enemy units. They can empty lightly defended cities by themselves, and completely destroy units out in the open. They're unlikely to completely destroy huge stacks in highly defended cities with healers or health buildings, but they'll weaken them enough for your infantry to take over.
The Meteor Storm spell is gone, so you'll probably want to keep them as wizards. They should focus on Fire, Metamagic (bonus damage), Combat (bonus damage), and Spell Extension (Mobility 2 fireballs).
Lightning Mages: Lightning Mages use Maelstrom as their primary attack. They do percentage-based damage, and should be used as your opening move when attacking large stacks and cities with huge garrisons, in order to soften them up for the fireballs. For this reason, I don't teach them fire spells. Too much mircomanagement for me, but feel free to try if you think you can handle it.
Air,Combat, and metamagic are their most important promotions, leaving them with a bit of flexibility. Water Walking and Mobility are good for them, because it lets them attack from odd places. I also suggest using them as maritime weapons, since once stationed aboard a ship can soften up enemy ships for a barrage of Arcane Barge fireballs.
Fire and Lightning will make up the bulk of your heavy artillery, and I highly suggest building them first.
Life Mages: These will be needed to battle the Sheaim and Infernals, and hold back the Hell Terrain as the AC goes up. Destroy Undead is a great spell against them (combine with Maelstorm for a nasty bit of effectiveness), and Sanctuary robs the Infernals of their Hell Terrain defense bonuses. Combat, Meta, Life, and whatever else you feel like.
Necromancers: If you can get death mana, than most of your early game adepts will be necros. Skeletons are good in that they cost nothing, and take only a turn to make. Later, they can be upgraded to wizards, and used to make more cheap fodder. Combat, Death, and Spell Extension are needed, and try to pick up a different buff for as many of them as you can.
Enchanters: Enchanters are Mind wizards, using Charm to penetrate deeply into enemy territory without losses. An enemy army rushing to confront your Fire Mages can be rendered helpless to be slaughtered by a few well-placed fireballs. Enchanters make very good Archmages. A Tower of Alteration will make them even more effective. Meta, and Mind are your best friends. You might also want to give them enchantment, so they can create enchanted blades and fire arrows for your main force.
Blinders: Like Enchanters, but with Blinding Light.
Archmages: I generally raise my archmages apart from my main force. I typically use Meta (Resist Bonus and Jinn), Combat (stronger summons, the last thing I pick if there's a choice), Extension (faster summons), Mind (Domination), and Death (Lichcraft), but you can use anything you want. There is a lot of possibility here, depending on what you want to be able to do.
If you're going for a Tower victory, then at some point, you'll probably build most - if not all - of these.
Govannon: Govannon can teach any living unit to cast Blaze, Blur, Dance of Blades, Haste, and Raise Skeleton, so make sure he learns them all, and have him walk/Nexus Gate around and pass this knowledge on to everyone in your army. Permanent buffs like Enchanted Blade and Fire Arrows are also a good thing he can leave behind.
Other minor spells: Rust is a good spell for weakening enemy melee troops, and since they will be more numerous than your melee troops, this is important. Poison Blade, Enchant Blade, and Fire Arrow are all good additions to your army, and you may want mages you specialize in those kinds of buffs. Mutation can help create stronger units, but it's risky. Spring is good for making your land productive, while courage is needed for demon/dragonslayers. These are all nice things to include on any non-specialized adepts you might want to build, or if you have a slot left over on one of your specialized ones.
Chanters: Chanters are your answer to enemy mages. They're assassins who can teleport home to your capital. Bring one with your main army to ensure that you always have magical superiority on the battlefield.
Firebows: Firebows can use fireball, but not as well as a mage who is specialized for it. Useful for deterring attacks on your cities.
Skeletons: Early game fodder that need to be heavily buffed and in huge numbers to do anything later on, but losing them costs you nothing. If you have Govannon teach every single unit in your army to cast Raise Skeleton, then you can build a massive fodder force that at least looks scary and is easily replaceable.
Infantry: After all that, your infantry seems rather boring. Swordsmen, Champions, ect. The only difference is, mine can cast Haste, Blur, and Dance of Blades before each and every battle, and everyone elses' can't. City Raider, shock, cover, and similar promotions should take priority, since the point of bringing infantry along is to crack open a city that's been weakened by the mages, and protect the mages from being cracked open by everyone else.
Cavalry: Cavalry with Haste are probably awesome, but since everyone else has haste, I typically don't use cavalry very much.
Scout: After making Govannan, teach all your recon units Haste to make them extra effective.
This was a fairly good modmod that adds Amurite units from a few months ago, but I don't know if it's still supported:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270736 It replaces high tech units with high magic ones. Fairly cool, since the Amurites are an otherwise contradictory low tech/high science race.
Because of all the Fire and Air Mages with Meta to boost their damage output, you get a lot of Meta spells. The first one is the functional equivalent of an air recon unit. That, combined with all your extended fireballs, will allow you to start attacking at immense range. Close range, you can blast, maelstorm, blind, charm, dominate, buff, debuff, and attack better than they can.
GETTING THAT MANA
NODES: An adept and a tech is all you need. However, Nodes tend to be rather rare, and even when they do appear to be fairly common, getting them depends on pulling off a good early game expansion without any hitches. After that, you may have to fight for them.
CONQUEST: If an enemy surrenders, you can demand any resources you like from them. However, only demand the ones you need to build the tower you're working on right now, because I've had the AI rebel when trying to take all three.
SHRINES: Found a religion, and burn a Great Prophet. You can conceivably get Sun, Law, Nature, Shadow, Water, Entropy, and Earth this way.
WONDERS: A few wonders give you mana, if you already have one like it. Stockpiling Mana is a fairly good idea, since most of it has positive effects on your empire.
RITES OF OGHMA: This creates new mana nodes all over the world, but it's a bit random for my tastes. Still, it's good to have around.
DISPEL: The Meta 2 Spell allows you to transform a complete mana node into a raw mana node.
ARCANE LARCUNA: Your world spell resets all mana nodes, and gives every mage unit an XP for each one. Build a lot of adepts first: you've got Fire and Meta, so you can make them into Fire Mages on the very next turn.
The Amurites, like the Calabim and Sindar, are a civ with one really awesome shtick that'll let them totally dominate the game, but you have to get to it first. That shtick is magic. So much is riding on your wizards, that it isn't even funny.
The Leaders
Both leaders have Arcane (free XP when you make an adept), so it's their other traits that define them.
Dain gets Philosophical, which makes research-related buildings cheaper. He's good if you want to tech up ahead of your enemies.
Valledia's Organized trait is better for warfare and early expansion, because she can build command posts and cheap money-saving buildings.
In unrestricted leaders, people like Tebryn, Faeryl, Thessa, and Keelyn open a wide variety of strategies.
Faith: The Right One For You
Start with Runes. Easy, early-game money, quick research, and Soldiers of Killmoph to help you get set up. It's viable to stick with Runes for an entire game.
However, if you want to switch, you get plenty of options:
GOOD: Empyrean offers you nothing but good things. I have not tried it personally, however. I definitely suggest founding this religion, since the holy shrine reveals invisible units, and if it's invisible, it's probably a threat to your mages.
NEUTRAL: Octopus Overlords, Archmage hero, Tsunamis, and undead. What's not to like?
EVIL: Ashen Veil, for Sacrifice the Weak and a small research bonus. However, unlike the above, there are downsides. You'll get Hell Terrain before anyone else, Basium can be summoned at any time to drag you into a world war, nobody good will like you, and Armageddon is now a step closer than it already was. Also, the hero is a horseman, and that's not really your thing. It's powerful, but all in all, I prefer Runes or Overlords to this.
Early Game Research:
Your early game goal is to research what you need to live, while getting to sorcery as quickly as possible. You'll probably need bronze working and agriculture early on, but you can hold off on any other resources until you at least have knowledge of the ether. The sooner you get your adepts, the sooner they'll have enough XP to be wizards.
Another interesting idea (perhaps if you're on an island or are otherwise isolated) is to try and found every religion you can. Every holy city is the potential site of a holy shrine, and each holy shrine is a free source of mana. If you somehow manage to found every religion, that's seven kinds of mana that you don't have to fight for. Dain, due to his cheap libraries and easy great prophets, is the best one for this strategy.
I've never tried ceasing a shrine for it's mana before, so I don't know if they can be captured (but they probably can). If they can, you might want to consider not using this strategy, and saving your Great Prophets.
Magic Warfare: How to Make Your Adepts Into Efficient Killing Machines
The civpedia states that Amurite mages are "not particularly spectacular of their own right, what makes them remarkable is the sheer number of them and the ease with which they can be brought to bear on the field." That's a good indication of how the Amurites are meant to fight: with vast numbers of spellcasters.
Aside from a larger number of adepts, your early armies will not be hugely different from anyone else's I discourage you from being a heavy warmonger during this time.
Much of your army will consist of wizards. I suggest civics (like conquest and apprenticeship) wonders (Form of the Titan) and buildings (Cave of Ancestors) that grant free XP, because the faster you can make wizards, the more successful you will be.
Once you grab Sorcery and different kinds of mana, things begin to change. It's time to specialize your forces. That's a key word, here: SPECIALIZE. Plan ahead. I haven't seen a lot of people doing this, and it really makes them more effective. Since you are going to be building so many more mages than other civs normally do, you can afford to make many of the same kind, without sacrificing much versatility.
I suggest using large numbers of wizards, each of which has a specialty. It's a bit more complicated, but I find it more effective. I use the basic configurations below, depending on what mana I have found. Feel free to suggest others.
Fire Mages: Artillery is the "queen of the battlefield", and it's what Fire Mages do best. Their job is to crack defenses and blast enemy units. They can empty lightly defended cities by themselves, and completely destroy units out in the open. They're unlikely to completely destroy huge stacks in highly defended cities with healers or health buildings, but they'll weaken them enough for your infantry to take over.
The Meteor Storm spell is gone, so you'll probably want to keep them as wizards. They should focus on Fire, Metamagic (bonus damage), Combat (bonus damage), and Spell Extension (Mobility 2 fireballs).
Lightning Mages: Lightning Mages use Maelstrom as their primary attack. They do percentage-based damage, and should be used as your opening move when attacking large stacks and cities with huge garrisons, in order to soften them up for the fireballs. For this reason, I don't teach them fire spells. Too much mircomanagement for me, but feel free to try if you think you can handle it.
Air,Combat, and metamagic are their most important promotions, leaving them with a bit of flexibility. Water Walking and Mobility are good for them, because it lets them attack from odd places. I also suggest using them as maritime weapons, since once stationed aboard a ship can soften up enemy ships for a barrage of Arcane Barge fireballs.
Fire and Lightning will make up the bulk of your heavy artillery, and I highly suggest building them first.
Life Mages: These will be needed to battle the Sheaim and Infernals, and hold back the Hell Terrain as the AC goes up. Destroy Undead is a great spell against them (combine with Maelstorm for a nasty bit of effectiveness), and Sanctuary robs the Infernals of their Hell Terrain defense bonuses. Combat, Meta, Life, and whatever else you feel like.
Necromancers: If you can get death mana, than most of your early game adepts will be necros. Skeletons are good in that they cost nothing, and take only a turn to make. Later, they can be upgraded to wizards, and used to make more cheap fodder. Combat, Death, and Spell Extension are needed, and try to pick up a different buff for as many of them as you can.
Enchanters: Enchanters are Mind wizards, using Charm to penetrate deeply into enemy territory without losses. An enemy army rushing to confront your Fire Mages can be rendered helpless to be slaughtered by a few well-placed fireballs. Enchanters make very good Archmages. A Tower of Alteration will make them even more effective. Meta, and Mind are your best friends. You might also want to give them enchantment, so they can create enchanted blades and fire arrows for your main force.
Blinders: Like Enchanters, but with Blinding Light.
Archmages: I generally raise my archmages apart from my main force. I typically use Meta (Resist Bonus and Jinn), Combat (stronger summons, the last thing I pick if there's a choice), Extension (faster summons), Mind (Domination), and Death (Lichcraft), but you can use anything you want. There is a lot of possibility here, depending on what you want to be able to do.
If you're going for a Tower victory, then at some point, you'll probably build most - if not all - of these.
Govannon: Govannon can teach any living unit to cast Blaze, Blur, Dance of Blades, Haste, and Raise Skeleton, so make sure he learns them all, and have him walk/Nexus Gate around and pass this knowledge on to everyone in your army. Permanent buffs like Enchanted Blade and Fire Arrows are also a good thing he can leave behind.
Other minor spells: Rust is a good spell for weakening enemy melee troops, and since they will be more numerous than your melee troops, this is important. Poison Blade, Enchant Blade, and Fire Arrow are all good additions to your army, and you may want mages you specialize in those kinds of buffs. Mutation can help create stronger units, but it's risky. Spring is good for making your land productive, while courage is needed for demon/dragonslayers. These are all nice things to include on any non-specialized adepts you might want to build, or if you have a slot left over on one of your specialized ones.
Chanters: Chanters are your answer to enemy mages. They're assassins who can teleport home to your capital. Bring one with your main army to ensure that you always have magical superiority on the battlefield.
Firebows: Firebows can use fireball, but not as well as a mage who is specialized for it. Useful for deterring attacks on your cities.
Skeletons: Early game fodder that need to be heavily buffed and in huge numbers to do anything later on, but losing them costs you nothing. If you have Govannon teach every single unit in your army to cast Raise Skeleton, then you can build a massive fodder force that at least looks scary and is easily replaceable.
Infantry: After all that, your infantry seems rather boring. Swordsmen, Champions, ect. The only difference is, mine can cast Haste, Blur, and Dance of Blades before each and every battle, and everyone elses' can't. City Raider, shock, cover, and similar promotions should take priority, since the point of bringing infantry along is to crack open a city that's been weakened by the mages, and protect the mages from being cracked open by everyone else.
Cavalry: Cavalry with Haste are probably awesome, but since everyone else has haste, I typically don't use cavalry very much.
Scout: After making Govannan, teach all your recon units Haste to make them extra effective.
This was a fairly good modmod that adds Amurite units from a few months ago, but I don't know if it's still supported:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270736 It replaces high tech units with high magic ones. Fairly cool, since the Amurites are an otherwise contradictory low tech/high science race.
Because of all the Fire and Air Mages with Meta to boost their damage output, you get a lot of Meta spells. The first one is the functional equivalent of an air recon unit. That, combined with all your extended fireballs, will allow you to start attacking at immense range. Close range, you can blast, maelstorm, blind, charm, dominate, buff, debuff, and attack better than they can.
GETTING THAT MANA
NODES: An adept and a tech is all you need. However, Nodes tend to be rather rare, and even when they do appear to be fairly common, getting them depends on pulling off a good early game expansion without any hitches. After that, you may have to fight for them.
CONQUEST: If an enemy surrenders, you can demand any resources you like from them. However, only demand the ones you need to build the tower you're working on right now, because I've had the AI rebel when trying to take all three.
SHRINES: Found a religion, and burn a Great Prophet. You can conceivably get Sun, Law, Nature, Shadow, Water, Entropy, and Earth this way.
WONDERS: A few wonders give you mana, if you already have one like it. Stockpiling Mana is a fairly good idea, since most of it has positive effects on your empire.
RITES OF OGHMA: This creates new mana nodes all over the world, but it's a bit random for my tastes. Still, it's good to have around.
DISPEL: The Meta 2 Spell allows you to transform a complete mana node into a raw mana node.
ARCANE LARCUNA: Your world spell resets all mana nodes, and gives every mage unit an XP for each one. Build a lot of adepts first: you've got Fire and Meta, so you can make them into Fire Mages on the very next turn.
+1 Cold for each Water Mana source you have, and you're bound to have one if you can cast the spell, so it's roughly the equivalent of an Immortal unit with cold damage, +more for however many mana sources you can build.
