Arcane promotions

[jwin]

I personally like airIII for my archmage attack. It may have less damage than crush, but affect everything within two spaces. So, hidden shadows, another city, reinforcing units, units guarding resources etc. Air is weaker than fire at level 2, however.

As far as building more than one mana node, I only do when there is a spell (such as fireball, skeleton, etc) that I would like all mages to have. Since only 6-9 units will have the third level spells(unless you graft flesh), I never make enough nodes to give the third level free. It doesn't make sense to make extra nodes just for the few that promote to the last level; let them spend a promotion on it. Unless, of course, you focus on just one type of summon. You can make even level 2 summons very powerful with 5 or 6 nodes.

 

[Polycrates]

Unless your going for mage/wizard spam, I disagree with this, and even then it's questionable. For lvl 3 spells, I find Crush (Earth III) to be much more useful. It's physical damage so it can't be resisted, and it affects every unit in a tile. Meteors can only cause collateral damage to 4 units (for reference, catapults are around 6), so that's (at most) 12 units per spell, usually less. So other than the occasional lucky meteor that kills a unit, Crush does significantly more damage.

For summoning, Earth Elementals and Fire Elementals are similar in usefulness. Earth Elementals have 10 + 1/earth node strength that cannot be resisted. Fire Elementals have 5 + 3 fire + 1 (fire?)/fire node and +25% city attack, with 2 moves instead of 1.

Also, Earth mana increases the likelihood of discovering resources in your mines, whereas Fire has no other benefits. The only time that Fire is significantly better IMO is with lvl 2 spells. Sandlions and fireballs are some of the best spells at their level, with possible contenders of Chaos (chaos marauders) and Death (contagion, specters). If you're building a massive army of mages, then Fire and Death (for extra Archmage slots) are the best, but if you're just using a few highly promoted Archmages, Earth will help take down cities faster.

The thing with fire is that there's a significant time lag between mages and archmages (infernal grimoire or tower of divination speed it up a lot, but the xp-gathering still takes time). Even then, you're very limited in archmage numbers.
Meanwhile, for all that time, fire casters rule the world - and fireballs in particular become significantly more useful with every empowerment they get. Someone exploiting level 2 fire to its fullest (especially with a bit of contagion in the mix) can really throw their weight around during that window, in a way that's hard to match with any other unit in its timeframe, and net themselves a very big advantage out of it. Might even get yourself a node or two that can be turned into earth.
Even when archmages come, rank-and-file fire wizards are still very useful as general-purpose softeners.
Don't get me wrong, I think earth is a great mana type, and I think you're probably right about Crush vs Meteors. Fire fades in the late game (though it still scales well with raw numbers), but level 2 fire is just something else, and the advantage far outweighs the investment, in my book.

Other than that:
Death is great, and contagion works very well in concert with fire magic. Plus there's good summons and eventual lichdom.
Body is fantastic - haste, regeneration and stoneskin are all extremely useful, particularly for offensive stacks. Haste in particular is probably the pick of the adept spells. If I could only have one magic-user with one sphere, it would be body.
Enchantment is very solid (though it's kinda wasted if you've got kilmorph). The troop boosts are nice, the spellstaff is great, and you get extra happiness to boot.
Nature is nice all down the line, though it's really only a primary choice for leaves civs.
Water is well worth an early node if you find yourself with a bunch of desert, but water walking is only really useful with a bunch of drown, and there are better level 3 spells.

I would only double up on fire, death or body.

 

[xanaqui42]

that's strange, i read at one part of the wiki that spirit guide gives +50% XP, and at another part that it gives 25% exp, and passes on the spirit guide trait.

seems like the wiki info is conflicting. did it change in different versions? has anyone tested it in the latest version?

It's half the (Now-dead) unit's XP to a random unit. I updated the wiki references I could find.

 

[katika]

The thing with fire is that there's a significant time lag between mages and archmages (infernal grimoire or tower of divination speed it up a lot, but the xp-gathering still takes time). Even then, you're very limited in archmage numbers.
Meanwhile, for all that time, fire casters rule the world - and fireballs in particular become significantly more useful with every empowerment they get. Someone exploiting level 2 fire to its fullest (especially with a bit of contagion in the mix) can really throw their weight around during that window, in a way that's hard to match with any other unit in its timeframe, and net themselves a very big advantage out of it. Might even get yourself a node or two that can be turned into earth.

I agree, but my point was that it has its time to shine and then pails, thus no need for nerfing it. Great Sage are great for Arcane Lore (instead of wasting a free tech wonder).

That said, I almost always save a node in my territory for fire, but after I get 1 (or 2 if my palace provides fire mana), other nodes are more valuable. Which node I build first depends on which tech I research first, provided I have more than 1 node available, and I usually get Sorcery before Elementalism.

 

[onedreamer]

I just finished reading a really interesting article in the FfH Wiki about spell casrer specialization.

It addresses the use of different units for different purposes. The first ones being dabblers, then later when you have multiple manna of one type you produce the units that will ultimatly become your arc-mages etc.

Ideally for a super powered unit you can only cast one spell per turn, so a million weak spells isn’t as good as one stron one. Maybe build for one or two powerful level 3 spells.

Now for these super spell casters you want
A powerful lvl 3 spell
Combat5
Spell extention 2

That is a total of 10 promotions. (LOTS of exp!!!)

Combat 5 is totally useless, to quote you, a super powered arch mage is a million times stronger with 5 more schools of magic than one school and combat 5. You can only have 3 archmages, and specilizing them in one school of magic only it's bad, since spells are quite situational. You aren't even sure that spell extention will be useful with that level 3 spell. That build is good for a summoner not for an archmage.

Now if these units are created after having 3 of one manna type then they will get the first two levels for that spell free, meaning only 8 promotions. (65exp or something?)

You're basing this strategy on pure theory, the reality is quite different. There are many things you didn't consider:
1- Having 3 or more manas of more than one type is an epic quest that will take up a lot of time, and by the time you succeed it will be really late and redundant to build adepts...
2- The early adepts that you built with Knowledge of the Ether will have much more experience than these new late units will ever get, also because the first adepts will have a chance to fight lower level units and win some battles for a good amount of xp, the late ones won't.

The extra promotions don’t make so much difference at low levels, but are worth (level10 exp-level 8 exp) experience points later. Two free levels make a HUGE difference in experience when talking about level 10+.

I just hold the promotions until the unit is archmage, heh...........

So I was thinking that making 3 of a single type at the very start means that those very first adepts you are traning will eventually become your super mage, with metiors, C5, SE2 etc. this means you get your super mages much earlier. Then later getting one of each realm for your “dabblers”. But however limits you to only 3 realms at the start. Sure the difference between C5 and C3 is only 10% more strength in spell/summon, but it is something to be considered as an advantage in specializing. I guess all you really need is one powerful spell.

This seems to contradict what you wrote above, anyways combat promotions are irrilevant in the vast majority of mages spells, so I really don't understand why you keep looking at them.

I'm going to have to try some of these realms, although i it is a pity that you need to wait such a long time before you can test out the real high level magic. so takes a very long time to get around to testing all the realms.

It also takes a long time to get around with the different strategies to adopt with different civs. Civs in FFH don't just have a UU and a UB... it's much more and it's what makes this mod so replayable.

 

[onedreamer]

I'll have to disagree here, in my opinion all battlemages need combat, since it will boost all the attack spells, such as fireball, contagion, maelstorm, crush, and more. Therefore, combat promotions are nearly as useful to mages as they are to conjurers.
Still, I agree that Savants should be able to upgrade into conjurers.

Uh ? Ok someone here must be missing something. Combat promotions don't boost the damage of attack spells at all. The only mage spell affected (as far as I remember) is Fireball, and consequently Meteor Shower, because they are not direct damage spells but they are in all effects summon spells (they summon the fireball(s) unit(s) that can attack a target). Once, the fire sphere was a must for attacking, but lately other spheres got very powerful level 3 spells, which are now much more effective than fire ones, like Crush, Tsunami (that needs a little boost to work on fresh water tiles also, IMO) and Maelstrom. Without counting the mighty Domination. So I reiterate, that combat promotions are a huge waste of xp for mages, unless you're specifically building a "fire mage", like I call them, which I do, but lately I never promote these guys to archmages, since it's much better to just make 3 mages which will cast 3 empower 5 fireballs, than wasting a powerful archmage able to cast domination and maelstrom, unyielding order and whatnot.

 

[Grey Fox]

Uh ? Ok someone here must be missing something. Combat promotions don't boost the damage of attack spells at all.

Maybe You are missing something. Here is code from the doDamage() function from the SDK, which is used with most targeted spells, except fireball and meteor etc.

if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_COMBAT1[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 5;
[/INDENT]}
if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_COMBAT2[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 5;
[/INDENT]}
if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_COMBAT3[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 5;
[/INDENT]}
if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_COMBAT4[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 5;
[/INDENT]}
if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_COMBAT5[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 5;
[/INDENT]}
if (pAttacker->isHasPromotion((PromotionTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("[B]PROMOTION_CHANNELING3[/B]")))
{[INDENT]iDmg += 10;
[/INDENT]}

 

[Vulcans]

I think my opinion agrees with the others, getting 3 of one mana type at the start is important for the battle mage/summoner that will ultimatly want C5, SE2 etc. for the others that don’t need C5, SE2 having multiple of one node type is not worth it.

If there are lots of nodes available I wonder if it would even work out to get 3 fire and 3 earth, to have the powerful level 2 spells in the mid-game, and then crush etc in the end game.

so this is how I figure one strategy could be, getting the 3 combat nodes first, then the extras.

Fire/earth: 3 (save levels for C5, SE2 offence units)
Law: 1 (Valour +exp, unyielding order no unhappy)
Enchantment 1 (dancing blades first strike)
Water 1(spring dessert to plains)
Body 1 (haste, free movement)
Death 1 (or 2 nodes for free skeletons for each arcane, lich ability later)

Optional extras if nodes available later
Spirit: (courage +10% health regen)
Nature: (vitalize)
Mind (inspiration, charmed?)


Then create units accordingly:

Mage battle (LVL 8 or 9)
Fire/Earth 3
C5, SE2
Death 1 (in the non-combat turns you can summon a collection of improved C5 SE2 skeletons)

Summoner (LVL 8 or 9)
Fire/Earth 3
C5, SE2
Death 1 (in the non-battle turns you can summon a collection of improved C5 SE2 skeletons)

Enchanter version 1 (LVL 5)
Law 2, Valour (attacking turn or turn before big attack for extra exp)
Body 2, Regenrate (turn after big attack)
Body 1: Haste (whenever possible)
Chaos 2 Dispel magic (on attacking turn if needed)

Enchanter version2 (LVL 5-7) (if nodes allow)
Chaos 1: Dance of blades (on attacking turn)
Earth 2, Rust (occasional attack)
Enchantement 1: enchanted blade (once per unit)
Spirit 1, courage (once per unit)

Peace makers (LVL 6, or 9 if linch)
Law 3, unyielding order
Earth 1: Wall of stone
Mind 2, inspiration (if mind node is available and levels permit)
Deadth 3 / Graft

 

[Polycrates]

I agree, but my point was that it has its time to shine and then pails, thus no need for nerfing it. Great Sage are great for Arcane Lore (instead of wasting a free tech wonder).

That said, I almost always save a node in my territory for fire, but after I get 1 (or 2 if my palace provides fire mana), other nodes are more valuable. Which node I build first depends on which tech I research first, provided I have more than 1 node available, and I usually get Sorcery before Elementalism.

I meant using the wonder for Strength of Will (which is otherwise about 5-6 great sages, plus you can't have already researched maths).
Once you have alteration, elementalism is the next tech on the lightbulb list, so I've never had a problem getting it in a timely fashion (alteration/elementalism/sorcery is a very nice use of three great sages). It also nicely deals with the "elementalism or necromancy?" dilemma.
Aaaaaaanyway, I guess my point is that fire shines so incredibly brightly in that time that there's nothing in the game that so utterly dominates its timeframe like fire mages - and that exploiting that to its fullest gives benefits far outweighing any opportunities lost later in the game. It's the point where the balance tips most decisively in favour of offense, and you've got your best chance of blitzing your way through huge swathes of the world with relative ease and speed, and minimal losses. So making the best use of that window seems to me to be by far the best use of magic. For me, that means fire first, then one body node and any others fire. When the dust settles, you should have more than enough new nodes in your grossly expanded lands to make into earth or whatever else

And even in the late game, a free fireball is a great backup spell for any caster (so is a sandlion). Good for preemptive city defense and offensive softening. It also nicely weakens units so your other wizardly units can get a decent fight in and boost their xp massively (especially in concert with stoneskin).
I'm not suggesting it should be nerfed (though it would be nice if there were other level 2 spells with similar offensive potential so it wasn't such a given), just that it's always damn nice to have extra fire nodes (much more so than for any other mana type).
Amurites in particular benefit from making two fire nodes, especially since they start with body anyway (masses of fireball wizards with spellstaves straight out of the caves, plus firebows that start with fireballs).

 

[onedreamer]

Maybe You are missing something. Here is code from the doDamage() function from the SDK, which is used with most targeted spells, except fireball and meteor etc.

Interesting, do you know if it's in 0.21 too ?

 

[katika]

I meant using the wonder for Strength of Will (which is otherwise about 5-6 great sages, plus you can't have already researched maths).
Once you have alteration, elementalism is the next tech on the lightbulb list, so I've never had a problem getting it in a timely fashion (alteration/elementalism/sorcery is a very nice use of three great sages). It also nicely deals with the "elementalism or necromancy?" dilemma.
Aaaaaaanyway, I guess my point is that fire shines so incredibly brightly in that time that there's nothing in the game that so utterly dominates its timeframe like fire mages - and that exploiting that to its fullest gives benefits far outweighing any opportunities lost later in the game. It's the point where the balance tips most decisively in favour of offense, and you've got your best chance of blitzing your way through huge swathes of the world with relative ease and speed, and minimal losses. So making the best use of that window seems to me to be by far the best use of magic. For me, that means fire first, then one body node and any others fire. When the dust settles, you should have more than enough new nodes in your grossly expanded lands to make into earth or whatever else

And even in the late game, a free fireball is a great backup spell for any caster (so is a sandlion). Good for preemptive city defense and offensive softening. It also nicely weakens units so your other wizardly units can get a decent fight in and boost their xp massively (especially in concert with stoneskin).
I'm not suggesting it should be nerfed (though it would be nice if there were other level 2 spells with similar offensive potential so it wasn't such a given), just that it's always damn nice to have extra fire nodes (much more so than for any other mana type).
Amurites in particular benefit from making two fire nodes, especially since they start with body anyway (masses of fireball wizards with spellstaves straight out of the caves, plus firebows that start with fireballs).

Death II works well enough in substitute except no one starts with that mana and for best use, you need some way around the disease. If you're facing the OO or AV, Life II Destroy Undead could be a good choice if you don't have to waste a node (although Lifesparks are nice for augmenting your units).

The problem is that only those 3 mana offer direct damage at sorcery level 2. The other spheres work mostly on enhancing your army and don't need combat or spell extension promotions to be useful, so getting additional mana is unnecessary. I think that fireballs and contagion should really be compared to level 2 summons instead, and in that case there are good alternatives depending on the situation.

 

[Vulcans]

What about using a stack of tsunami?
has a 11% chance to change a tile to a coast tile (destroying any city, moving any units to a clear plot (or killing them, if none is found), and removing any Bonus, Improvement, or Feature.

Make 6 mages (with linch), giving 66% chance of converting a city to a coast each turn. Then instrad of fighting and razing cities, you just make cities vanish. Could be fun to try. Especially if you yse a stack of hidden nationality mages.

Or if you are using graft flesh, then maybe you could graft 9 Tsunami comando mages with hidden nationality shadows.

Giving 9 tsunami, comando, invisible, hidden nationality, flesh golems.
They can walk undetected through your “friends” teritory, and 99% chance of sinking a city eact turn. you won't need to declare war on a civilisation to destroy them. They won't even know what hit them.

The rest of the world will suffer the same fate as Atlantis.

Now I think that’s a bit of an overpowered exploit!

 

[wilboman]

I can hardly imagine the 11% chance is cumulative. But my grasp of statistics is so bad that I can't remember what the real chance would be. But I'm guessing that with nine mages, it would be 100% minus the likelihood of nine strikeouts in a row (which, IIRC, is 89% to the power of nine - 35%). That means a roughly 65% for one or more successes.

 

[Grey Fox]

Interesting, do you know if it's in 0.21 too ?

I believe that code is in the Python in 0.21. And remember, they didn't have the Upper limit on damage in 0.21.

 

[Vulcans]

I can hardly imagine the 11% chance is cumulative. But my grasp of statistics is so bad that I can't remember what the real chance would be. But I'm guessing that with nine mages, it would be 100% minus the likelihood of nine strikeouts in a row (which, IIRC, is 89% to the power of nine - 35%). That means a roughly 65% for one or more successes.

Yes, I was being lazy with my maths.

Ok, the chance of a strike out is 89%. So 9 strikeouts is .89^¨9=35%. So 65% chance of sinking a city in one turn. Or 88% chance of sinking it in 2 turns (the time many normal attacks take for bombard, then attack). Naturally you could also get lucky and sink it in the first go.

The statistics would average out over the long run, some cities having better luck then other, so with 9 units you'd average 10 cities in 10 turns. Hey, speed it up, make an army of invisible hidden nationality tsunami casters

This strategy would be most effective on archipelago maps, as you need to cast it on a tile next to the waters edge. Meaning that to get the inland cities you might need to strike a line of 2-3 tiles to make a water path to the city.

I just somehow like the idea of sinking a civilization without even declaring war on them, and them not even knowing where your mages are that are hitting them. And I don’t care if the best hero in the world is defending the city, it won’t make a lick of difference!

With commando, mobility, haste, spell extention2 you can end your turns hiding anywhere outside of the hawk search range.

I bet the dumb AI wouldent know what to do, but a human would press F9, see who has the council of esus and declare on them VERY fast before their entire civilization is sunk in a few turns. Hmm, maybe as defence you could destroy your own roads to stop commando, and then set up a fale safe net of hawks 9 tiles in all directions of every city. But by the time you realize what’s happening it’d be far too late.

This could actually be very beneficial if waterwalking was included in their promotions, then they could also use it for defence, artificially make a wall of coast/water between the civilizations, and always retreat to safety on the other side of the water wall.

hmm, i see lots of possibilities.

 

[wilboman]

I'm SO never playing against you in MP

 

[Gabriel21]

I've never intentionally duplicated nodes, always leaving my options open for the towers, although there have been some changes in 0.22 that might entice me to change that strategy, particularly if I'm playing a summoning heavy Civ.

First I want to point out that this thread is fine.

Secondly I did the same but now in 0.22 it seems to change.

The Grigori adventures gain 1 xp every turn and make excellent archmages. However, you may also consider giving them (and other arcane heroes) the combat promotions so that they can get access to Twincast.

How to get twincast when playing Malakim? Trying to get it after Combat IV I had to find out, that Combat V is without reach of my archmages. Why?

 

[xAlephx]

Death II works well enough in substitute except no one starts with that mana and for best use, you need some way around the disease. If you're facing the OO or AV, Life II Destroy Undead could be a good choice if you don't have to waste a node (although Lifesparks are nice for augmenting your units).

Contagion is an excellent softener, but since it can't kill anyone anymore it loses a good bit of its previous utility. I primarily use it to disease all the targets in a city before bashing away with fireballs... a few combat promotions on the mages, pulverized city defenses, collateral damage bringing everyone down to 60% of their maximum life and a 30% disease penalty on top of that, and fireballs will start taking lives. I like this combo enough that I'll try to get a death node fairly early with the Amurites. Doesn't hurt that this also will allow Govannon to start enabling the skeleton hordes when you bulb Arcane Lore.

Edit - Grey Fox and I, at least, have been spending a lot of time as Amurites lately. A lot of the pro vs. con late game mage arguments (free promotions vs. not as much time to pick up experience) in this post fall fully in favor of late for the Amurites, since they will be picking up a lot of bonus experience for their adepts in the late game through their Cave of Ancestors.

 

[xAlephx]

How to get twincast when playing Malakim? Trying to get it after Combat IV I had to find out, that Combat V is without reach of my archmages. Why?

You have to have the hero promotion to get twincast. Archmages aren't heroes. They can pick up enchantment three for spellstaves, but they can't twincast.

I believe the Malakim summoner hero can pick it up, though.

 

[Gabriel21]

If there are lots of nodes available I wonder if it would even work out to get 3 fire and 3 earth, to have the powerful level 2 spells in the mid-game, and then crush etc in the end game.

My first strategy was more or less the same: Fire III and Earth III are the best offensive spells. But then I found Air III: Here you have a strong benefit as area spell. Dragons and others are protected against fire spells, but not so much against Maelstrom. And no fires are spreading.

If you place Air III ideally, not only cities are weakened but other units in the vicinity as well.