confused about what starting arcane tech to go with (such as necromancery)

[smjjames]

Well, I'm not sure where to post this, so if it's in the wrong place, then I apologize about it.

Anyways, I'm new to FfH and in this game I'm doing, I want to get one of the arcane techs, but I'm not sure which one. I'm playing the calabim atm, and I have the ashen veil religion throughout my small empire (I'm playing on a small map, pangaea). Even though everybody else is neutral, a few through another religion, I don't want to damage my relationship with the other civs any further.

As calabim, I have shadow, law, and body mana with one sun mana which I guess is because a city of mine is next to it. I do have one other mana spot, but it's raw untapped mana even though it says the mana type is entropy. I can make the raw mana node anything I want I think.

The main thing here is that I have no idea about what specialization would work or even what exactly each specialization would lead to.

 

[Grunthex]

All the four routes LEAD the same place -- you have Knowledge of the Ether, which branches into the 4 types of magic, which all lead back to Sorcery.

As for which one to go for, if I don't have another plan, I often go for either elementalism or divination. Keep in mind this advice is coming from an incurable builder. I even ended up playing Tasunke peacefully...

Elementalism - gives access to good attack spells at the mage level (Fire, Air), good utility at the adept level (Spring, Blaze), and strong summons at the archmage level (all)

Divination - Most of the "builder" mana are in here. Law - reduces maintenance costs, gives the nice Valor spell (and Courage, if you should be near a certain beast). Spirit - Lets me build the Shrine of Sirona. Life - health bonus, access to Aquae Sucellus wonder, can sanctify ruins to minimize the AC (handy because I have to burn most AI cities as they don't fit my placement plan!)

As for the other two schools: Necromancy tends to come with a lot of drawbacks. Death and Entropy mana have diplomatic hits, and Chaos can mutate your units. (Yes, I hate that!). To me this is a great late-game school, unless you're playing hyper-evil and damn the consequences.

Alteration - This has um... enchant mana. Free happiness, and some ok spells. Nature mana -- for whatever it is nature does (I like one archmage with it for vitalize. Otherwise Ew.) And uh... something I can't recall. Yeah, I never pick Alteration.

 

[smjjames]

hmm, thanks for the info. I already have a bit of law mana and a sun mana location, so divination could work for me, despite the fact that it doesn't fit the evilness I'm going for right now in this game. Still, I really don't want any diplomacy hits right now before I have a chance to spread the ashen veil beyond my empire. I know it should spread on it's own, but it is really slow in that way.

Oh yea, the sanctify ruins will definetly help me out here.... only problem I don't know of any ruins in the world of the game I'm doing.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd strongly avoid death, since vampires have that spell for free with no diplo penalty. I've never really been impressed by entropy. The Mutation spell isn't worth it (especially since you can get it as a passive effect), but Pit Beasts are nice. Of course, the Law summon has the same mechanism. Shadow's HN summon is nice.

I'd probably go for Elementalism, especially Air. Nice direct damage spell, awesome summon (Air Elementals have great visibility, flying, and spawn lighting elementals when they win. These have blitz and heal 50% if when they win. Great for cleaning up after Maelstroms.) Fire and Water are also nice, but I;m not a huge fan of Earth spells (although it has beter passive effects). Its tower is probably the most useful.

Alteration is weakest, as it has fewer spheres. Nature III could be great for the Calabim (more food yields), but the lower spells aren't really worth it. Enchantment isn't bad, but body is probably the best of the three. You already have body mana though, and your vampires have it for free.

Divination isn't bad.


Remember having more than one of the same mana is quite useful. Passive effects are cumulative, and having multiple mana gives your arcane units spell sphere promotion for free.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

Personally my favorite manas are probably air, water, death, and metamagic (though it's from Sorcery and not one of the four branches). Air mainly for my mages and Maelstrom, water for spring and getting rid of deserts, death for lichdom mainly, and metamagic for the incredibly useful spells and bonuses to spell damage and resistance, and summon Djinn gets really powerful later once you've vassalized a few rivals and have a few holy shrines.

First node I build and tech I get is usually Elementalism for water mana, since death mana I can usually get from the Broken Sepulcher, Tower, and Soul Forge later. I also always tend to have at least 1 permanent Metamagic node so my mages can dispel and rebuild my nodes.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Elementalism easily. Fire and air gives you fireballs and maelstorm, which in combination equals lots of death and destruction, while water gives you springs, and turning deserts into plains is much more of an economic boast than anything divination could give you. If you have access to lots of nodes, get tons of Earth nodes, and watch metals pop up everywhere and your production skyrocket.

You only really need necromacy if you're Sheaim. Large numbers of Wraiths ain't funny.

 

[smjjames]

yea, I'm playing as the light elves (the Ljossafar) in a new game since I'm having crashes in the game I mentioned above, something wierd going on with the infernals, dunno.

Anyways, going with both divination (for the life and nature) and elemental is probably good for the Ljossafar and makes sense with them IMO

Also, should I be playing Ljossafar as Arendel or will I get into trouble later ingame? As I understand it in the manual, they are a defensive civ, so.....

 

[Mailbox]

Earth, Death, and Law are my favorites. Earth for the great passive effects (wall of stone, increased resource discovery), Death for war (Lichdom and Wraiths), and Law for all around goodness (Valor, reduced maintenance, and Hosts).

 

[BeefontheBone]

The towers are also something of a consideration - I like to use the Tower of Divination to snag Mithril Weapons and build Caminus Aureas for a nice empire-wide military boost and early phalanxes for city taking. As AV Calabim at that stage it's not really necessary though - vampires and a vampiric Losha Valas are pretty unstoppable anyhow

 

[Caradoc]

You will eventually want more than one, so I suggest Divination for a start. The first and second tier spells are all pretty good. Tower of Divination can be your shortcut to Archmages (and the Shrine of Shinola keeps your shoes looking good).

My second will be Elementalism for obvious reasons.

 

[Sarisin]

Divination - Most of the "builder" mana are in here. Law - reduces maintenance costs, gives the nice Valor spell (and Courage, if you should be near a certain beast). Spirit - Lets me build the Shrine of Sirona. Life - health bonus, access to Aquae Sucellus wonder, can sanctify ruins to minimize the AC (handy because I have to burn most AI cities as they don't fit my placement plan!)

I think Spirit mana still lets you get Courage rather than Law.

But, I agree that I tend to focus on these first. I love to get the Shrine of Sirona. Also, as mentioned, the Tower of Divination is a must for later game when some techs take forever to research. I like Law because it gives the Loyalty spell which is needed for (a) not allowing your units to go barbarian with the Avatar of Wrath appears and (b) not allowing your Ravenous Werewolves to go barbarian (from the Enraged promotion, same as (a) above).

Really, you have to research all four so you can research Arcane Lore. I like that tech because then you can build the Crown of Akrien, which is really good for your Science/Research. But, I tend to choose Divination first.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Elementalism gives the biggest immediate benefits.

When you have archmages, you will want alteration for vitalize. When you have an army that can stand up to Acheron, you will want Divination to give that army the pair of balls needed to even attack him.

You have a while before either of these things happen though, so you can afford to postpone these spheres. Elementalism, through spring, helps you as soon as you get it, and if you like fighting Maelstrom and Fireball are strong and easily accessible too.

 

[Slvynn]

I disagree with most of posted here.
If i have already any summon/offensive capable (any elemental, shadow, chaos, sun, law) mana type from palace The 1st one i getting is always Alteration.
Enchantment:
Spellstaff is king spell for offencive casters.
+20% of all melee unit strenght (LVL 1) (usefull with any race and really worth it at start of game, increasing chances that your 1st warriors will sucess with barbs, level up and will become very strong units) or +1 str to all archery units (LVL2) when playing elves.
If you play hero sorcery units (like Hemah), enchantment is must . Staff + twincast.....

also +1 happiness in all cities
Body:
Awesome strong path. Haste is megausefull, regeneration allows you to engage turn after turn combined with courage and priests in stack. Lvl 3 is very powerfull spell.
Nature, Dimensional = more weaker types, but Vitalise is very very usefull and only it making alteration worth a pick. Esp. if you playing such food relying race as Calabim.

PS. Also f.. haters of Mutation. Great spell when you know how to use it at proper situations.
normal fresh built lvl 1 stygians have no chances against my elite lvl 1 mutation genetics stygians.
Blitz, Commando, Strong promos with 50% chance of good combo. Rest 50% warriors is just experience. Then you have small group of semi heroes, that never die if you play carfully.
I have always some stygians that their XP exceed 100 xp points.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Your thing about the body sphere is an excellent point that would make me recommend early Alteration for most civs. The Calabim, however, get body mana for free. They don't NEED alteration for the body sphere.

Enchantment's spellstaffs don't come into play until much later.

For a civ that starts with body mana, enchanted blade and +1 happiness are the only legs Alteration has to stand on until later. They're not WEAK legs, but they don't keep up with elementalism.

 

[smjjames]

as far as the mutation promotion goes, I don't really know what exactly it does as it doesn't say in the civilopedia and the mouseover description doesn't give much.

 

[xienwolf]

All it does is keep you from being mutated again

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Mutation = any number of random promotions chosen from a hugeass list. You could get 1, you could get 10. Most of them are positive, but the few negative ones tend to hurt. It always grants the Mutated promotion, which... yeah, what Xien said.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Pit beast Is actually far and away the strongest spell in the game for a summoner faction. Dream Eaters turn into one wizard armies with them.

And mutation gets significantly better if you also have a Cure Disease caster, since that'll clear up most of the bad effects you can get from it.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Except for Crazed, that'll bite you in the ass.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Pit Beasts and Einherjar are actually identical, except that the Einherjar's total strength includes 4 holy and a Pit Beast's includes 2 unholy.


I'm not a fan of mutation as a spell, since it is also the mana's passive effect and because it takes away from the uniqueness of Balseraph Freaks.

I still think that Summon Chaos Marauders should make a comeback, as should all other spells expressly mentioned in the civilopedia.