Getting the most out of your manna nodes

[Angel-Julia]

Hello,
I have been thinking of how to get the most out of mana nodes.
I often build “buffer” adepts as the first ones off the production line, as they don’t get any free promotions, and then build my main damage dealers later when I have a few nodes.

Now I was thinking of how to get the most out of all the spell areas by using metamagic to change nodes. Depending on starting conditions and how much you expand early through war I often find the initial nodes are 2-4 nodes, and then the palace ones.

So we end out having a few to play around with on top of what we start with, what should we do with them?

Many of the lvl 1 skills apply a bonus for the whole stack, so you only need one caster per stack, though if you want multiple buff/debuff skills cast on the turn of an attack then you need an adept for each of these skills.

Here are my thoughts, build something like 3 buffer adepts per SOD you plan on creating and a few home guard buffers. I.e. 10 in total if you want 2 SOD in the later game and 4 home guard buffers.

Phase 1:
Build 2 adepts for buffing each of your main attacking stacks. I like to re-name my adepts so I know their purpose. If mana allows have 2 death at time of building all the buffers for free death 1 promotion.

Buffer 1: speeds up stacks and enchants
Body1: (Haste for your stack to move much faster)
Spirit 1 (gives courage to all units on tile)
Death 1 (increase the number of skeleton cannon fodder your army can support)
Enchant 1 (can enchant blade in some turn that the stack is not attacking)
Nature 1 (tree top defense for when your army happens to be in a forest)
Later when upgraded to a mage:
Enchant 2 (at a later stage in the game you can upgrade it to get flaming arrows on your achers)
Nature 2 (Poisoned blade)
Body2: (regenerate your army after a battle)

Buffer 2 (offence stack: Dance of blades on attack move)
Chaos 1 (dance of blades for your stack on the attacking move)
Entropy 1 (rust hard opponents in the bombard phase of an attack the turn before actual attack)
Death 1 (increase the number of skeleton cannon fodder your army can support)
Spell extension 2? (something to do with promotions, allowing you to rust from a distance the turn before an attack when approaching)

Buffer 3 (Offencive stack: Blur on attack move)
Shadow 1 & 2 (blur/shadowwalk on the attack move)
Entropy 1 (rust hard opponents in the bombard phase of an attack the turn before actual attack)
Death 1 (increase the number of skeleton cannon fodder your army can support)
Spell extension 2? (something to do with spare promotions, allowing you to rust from a distance the turn before an attack when approaching)

Buffer 4 defense, (you can have a few of these supporting cities as needed)
Ice 1 (snow)
Earth 1 (wall of stone)
Death 1 (increase the number of skeleton cannon fodder your army can support)
Metamagic 2 (for changing your nodes around)
Mind 1 (inspiration)
Mind 2 (charm to assist )
Other enchanting etc


Home guard

Extra nodes available: make 2 death nodes, meaning that all buffer adepts will automatically have raise skeleton without wasting promotions, thus increasing the max number of skelles you can support. Though the real summoning of these skelles will be happening from your more talented C5 mages in the turns between combat while they have nothing else to do.

Phase 2:
Build a Metamagic node (save a unupgraded node for this in phase 1 unless you will be gaining a node from expansion/conquest)

This comes at the stage you have mages, enabling metamagic 2. Upgrade one of the buffer adepts (or a few if you have spare promotions) to get metamagic 2, enabling you to convert your nodes. Change your nodes accordingly to your needs.

As far as I could count you will need to have the following spheres open at some stage in time to fully equip your buffers: Death, entropy, body, spirit, enchant, nature, chaos, earth, ice.
You could simply repetitively re-convert one or two nodes to open up these spheres for the buffers (some you might already have from the palace) while having death 2 at all times is great for the free skeleton promotion.

Phase 3:
Now is time to build your damage dealers. You want all nodes(including metamagic) changed to the sphere you need the free promotions in.
4 mana of chosen sphere of destruction (e.g. fire, sun, air etc)
4 death mana
Build the adepts that will become your damage dealers, and upgrade them with combat 5, spell extension etc. they gain the free promotions for each spell sphere from all the nodes you have in that sphere. At the same time you get the free death promotions to convert some to liechdom. In the turns between battles while traveling they can also summon empowered skelles.

You will want enough adepts build to provide all your T3 summoners/casters, as liech/arc mage. Then extra adepts could always be trained for some extra fireball bombardment while your arcmages are busy doing more important things

The choice of sphere is up to you.
If you’re aiming for level 3 then the aurealis is great with its +2 afinity, though while you’ll be lacking at lvl 2
For the lvl 2 spheres air and fire are great winners for their massive malestorm damage and fireball bombardment replaces the need for catapults. Death is also not a bad support role for lvl 2 summons.

Of course if nodes allow (due to rapid espansion and conquering, and palace bonuses) then stocking up on death and sun could be a long term strategy, at lvl 2 getting a nice death summon and then when reaching arcmage getting aurealis and liech. After creating enough for the national limit then switching nodes to fire and air for some fireball and malestorm supporters.


Phase 4:
Convert ALL mana nodes to affinity for your desired summon. This can be a VERY powerful late move, especially if you went for sun mana, which is fairly useless at lvl 2, but at lvl 3 really shines with the +2 afinity for aurealis. E.g. with 5 sun mana that would boost the aurealis by an addisional 10 points up to 16 strength.





This strategy can be done with any number of nodes, naturally the changing of nodes is done faster if you rotate multiple nodes, though can even be done with 1 node. With the 2 death nodes at all times it provides a good increase in the number of cannon fodder skelles your C5 summoners can generate when they are idle between battle, and then getting the most out of the affinities at the end.

Naturally to get the most out of this you could use Amurites etc for the fast promotions, or Grigori adventurers etc to get total ownage earlier. This would naturally have to be tied into the rest of your strategy to handle early warfare, building etc to keep things going smoothly in the early game before the big cannons come out. I’d also suggest your standard stack supplement of units&heros, making use of the buffs, fireball bombardments, debuffs on enemies, summon cannon fodder etc to clean up the leftovers and get some exp, while protecting the mages from hard hitters and assisins etc.


I haven’t played that much recently, though was very active a couple of years ago, so my apologies if some information is out of date, please update me if something should be done differently.

What are other peoples thoughts on how to best utelize your nodes through metamagic and how to best distrabute skills between the buffers?

 

[DaveGold]

I wouldn't disagree with anything in the original post however I would add some opinions of my own. Having a high level of one type of mana gives your casters free promotions when they are built and upgraded. This can be very useful and shouldn't always be ignored in favour of amassing a variety of mana. You usually also get the best effectiveness from boosting the mana you already have (from palace, religions, etc) rather than customizing to a one-size-fits-all strategy.

As for my play style, when I promote an adept and build your initial nodes you should probably have a plan in mind; whether to be making my adepts work or just have them as mages-in-waiting. Mages-in-waiting would be looking to have a combat skill at tier II, mobility and spell extensions, with spare promotions for buffs and utility. Long term adepts would need mainly buffs and terrain changers. I'd try to build only a limited number of adepts to start with, 4 being the obvious number, unless mages were going to be key to a later military victory. In most games I would try to build one meta-magic node.

By the time I get to archmages the game is probably won or lost already so although there are probably some overpowered strategies they're not particularly important. Getting combat ready mages can be crucial and often unlocks military options for your empire.

 

[Breunor]

I have similar ideas but a little different twist.

I first decide if my mages are 'support' for an SoD to fight an SoD, or are they primary. I also try to figure out at what point I want to do most of my attacking.

For an SoD vs. SoD, say on a large/huge map, then the ability to buff the whole stack is most important as Angel-Julia said. So I give priority to body (Haste, but see below), enchantment (enchant blade), chaos (dance of blades); and late in the game, entropy is powerful (rust), probably the most powerful, when opponents have iron or mithril weapons. I'm not as big a fan of courage, loyalty, treetop defense or wall of stone but they have their uses.

For haste, a key issue is if you are building an SoD with only living units; otherwise, the non-hasted (non-living) units can be left behind. If you do, and use catapults, for instance, then haste isn't as important (although it is still useful as there can always be an emergency you want to handle).

So, for instance with the Khazad, where I usually have trebuchets and first level spells, I don't bother with body (and often use the mana nodes for passive effect. Enchantment is usually my first choice.)

For the level two spells, then air (maelstorm) I find by far the most powerful, and air 1 is nice for water-based maps like Archipelago. Fireball is important for hasted stacks wanted to reduce defenses, and shadow (shadowalk) can be good if you don't have the time or ability to reduce defenses with catapults, ships, or fireballs.

Coversely, if magic is your first line of power for someone like the Amurites, especially Dain, or the Sheaim (Tebryn) death can really be good. Obviously, if you want liches you will need death at some point anyway. I kind of view death as an alternative for body - if you summon a lot of skeletons, then haste isn't as important.

If I fight against a powerful Sheaim I bee-line for destroy undead, haste those mages and melt the pyre zombies!

I agree that regenerate (body 2) is a great buff spell.

Ice has some nice spells across the board if it is available.

I don't find spirit as useful directly, I pretty much don't use it unless I'm attacking Acheron (the other dragons are very late game for me, although I admit they can be useful for other units like Spectres). Life for me is similar - absolutely great if hell terrain is all over, otherwise secondary.

If I have a lot of desert, then water is great and it can be useful for putting out fires/smoke. If I'm the Ljosalfar or the Svartalfar, I want water in case someone is burning my forests down!

Not surprisingly, the other mana types can be great as Civ (as opposed to army) buffs - depending on the game, the research from mind, reduced maintenance form law can really add up. Indeed, mind can be good very early for an adept to cast inspiration with its first level spell while accumulating experience points before the big push. In my last game I played the Kuriotates, and I rushed to get life since I had massive health problems for my huge cities and I wanted both the health from the node and Aquae Secullus. Although Spirit isn't always that great directly the Shrine of Sirona is a nice, cheap wonder. Sometimes it pays to build these nodes, get the wonders, and then metamagic them over to something else, you don't lose the wonder!

Similarly, if I play on a map without a lot of direct contact (sometimes Erebus or Archipelago) then passive effects and later level spells are more important.

If you go with the Grigori-archmage strategy, using the ability to summon 2 units, switch to summoner, then obviously summoning nodes for late game are most important.

I usually find the decisive part of the game is over before I get archmages, but can and do change the game's strategy, this result is probably based on my play style. The one area I disagree with Angel-Julia has to do wtih changes nodes for affinity - if I'm 'going wide' with nodes, I often go for metamagic and get djinnis. However, the aureolis strategy CAN be powerful, especially with the Malakim/Empyrean combo where you 'start' with 2, one from the palace and one from the Empyrean shrine.

I find that body, ice, entropy, and death have real good spells at all three levels for most maps/game sizes.


So I do like the 'phases' that Angel-Julia proposes, but I do admit that I change from game to game. Sometimes my mages are buffers, sometimes they are my main force, sometimes mana nodes are for Civ building, so I'm not usually 'setting' my mana types without considering the goals of my Civ, map, opponents, and size.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Angel-Julia]

Hello, and thank you for your great comments.

There is one key aspect to the original post that I think was missed, that is the use of “dispel magic” (Metamagic 2). That allows you to reset your mana nodes. After you have metamagic 2 mage then you can recycle your nodes at will.

That means that with only access to a single node you can first turn it to metamagic in order to learn “dispel magic” and gain the ability of resetting your nodes, and then you can sequentially change that one specific node into body, spirit, death, enchant, nature, chaos, death, earth, ice, shadow, & mind to pick up all the buffs for your adepts. You need to have all your buffer adepts already built so that they can pick up the spell sphere in the limited time that it’s available. then switch nodes to one type (e.g. air, fire, death, sun) for free promotions to your C5 arcmages, and for affinity bonuses.

This can be done independently of what your palace has to offer, of course saving a bit of time in the switching if you already have that type.

Having a high level of one type of mana gives your casters free promotions when they are built and upgraded. This can be very useful and shouldn't always be ignored in favour of amassing a variety of mana.

This is done in phase 3, you first reset multiple nodes to air, fire, or sun, and then after gaining multiple nodes of one type then you build the adepts at that point, giving them free air3, fire3, or sun3 etc promotions. These ones will get combat 5 and spell extension promotions to make their spells more deadly

By the time I get to archmages the game is probably won or lost already so although there are probably some overpowered strategies they're not particularly important. Getting combat ready mages can be crucial and often unlocks military options for your empire.

That’s why I often resort to sphere 2 damage dealers (air2, or fire2) if it’s going to be a medium length game, and only go for sun if I can make it to arcmages quickly (e.g. having arcane trait, or planning on a Grigori adventurer) or if playing a huge map that will last long enough to get to level 3 spells.

For haste, a key issue is if you are building an SoD with only living units; otherwise, the non-hasted (non-living) units can be left behind. If you do, and use catapults, for instance, then haste isn't as important (although it is still useful as there can always be an emergency you want to handle).

Yes, I generally only use living units, no need to waste money on catapults when you have unlimited fireball power. The only slow ones are skeleton summons, so I often tond move them with the stack, and just summon some if needed in a pre-attack turn (if bomming is needed) or leave them behind as free city guards (yes they don’t keep the people happy, but they keep the city safe while your army advances)

I usually find the decisive part of the game is over before I get archmages, but can and do change the game's strategy, this result is probably based on my play style. The one area I disagree with Angel-Julia has to do wtih changes nodes for affinity - if I'm 'going wide' with nodes, I often go for metamagic and get djinnis. However, the aureolis strategy CAN be powerful, especially with the Malakim/Empyrean combo where you 'start' with 2, one from the palace and one from the Empyrean shrine.

Yes, metamagic is great if you are going to keep a broad range of nodes at all time to make use of the 1 affinity for everything. Though the affinity 2 just cant be beat. And by the time you get to arc mages you will already have your buffers built, and the free promotions for phase3 mages already lined up, so there is no other use for the mana nodes. At this stage when you have arcmages you will not be building any more adepts, as you already have your buffers, and enough maturing mages with C5 and free promotions to fill national slots, so there is no further use of the nodes. Might as well switch them ALL to sun for the +2 sun affinity that absolutely rocks!



The idea of this metamagic re-forming strategy is that it offers the best of all worlds. It offers the broad range of buffs for the buffers, the free promotions for your super arcmages, and the full force of affinity in the final stages.

 

[nzk13]

has noone realized that we're talking about mana, the pretty blue stuff, and not manna, which the israelites ate in the desert? Secondly, rust is Entropy, not Earth I.

 

[Angel-Julia]

Thanks for the corrections NZ.

I was thinking about how this plan fits into the tec tree. of course having all level 1 options available is nice, though it takes time to research them all. so i was considering which tec opens up what we need.

my thoughts, start with necromancy, opening up a lot of useful lvl 1 buffs to start off with

now you have metamagic and the DD spheres open it's time to re-arrange the nodes. collect the other T1 buffs for your adepts.

during this time you can research elementalism to open up the real damage dealing powers, and then re-arrange to get 4 of one type for the free promotions. then build 8+ adepts that will later become your arc-mage specialist/Lich.

the disadvantage of this is that it takes some time before building your 8 adepts that will become your arcmages/lich, as it's first researching 2 types of mana nodes. it often takes some time to conquer land to get get the 4 mana nodes for free air3/sun3/fire3 promotions, so this is not a big issue in my games. having more nodes (ideally 8) would be also useful for these adepts, as it will give death3 and air3/sun3/fire3 to your future lich power, and so saving some promotions

on the other hand you dont want to wait too long with building these adepts, as you want them to start gaining exp as soon as possible, so another approach would be to just go straight for elementalism(or your appropriate tec choice) to get the main damage dealer mana type, and then only after building the 8 adpets with free sphere promotion3, then going back to use metamagic for re-forming the nodes(and researching divinication, alteration, and necromancy to open up all the free buffs). this approach would get your 8 main DD built sooner, though would drastically delay the time you get your super buffer adepts with body, spirit, death, enchant, nature, chaos, death, earth, ice, shadow & mind buffs.

i guess the choice is more up to the playing strategy, getting all those buffs REALLY strengthens a stack, and is good for a player that builds strong stacks with buffer adepts to give them an edge, compared to getting the 8 adepts build sooner with free promotions and delaying picking up the rest of the magic spheres till later. i guess also research priority comes into play, picking up all of divinication, alteration, elementalism, and necromancy takes some time out of your research agenda if there are critical research tasks at hand, though if going for the metamagic mana-reforming i'd definutly suggest researching all of them at one stage so to open up all the spheres for the best buffer possibilities.

 

[readercolin]

You seem to be under a somewhat false assumption that if you build the unit with the mana nodes, he automatically gets the spheres that you have the stacked mana for, both level 1, level 2, AND level 3. This, is false. Arcane units automatically gain the spheres for their maximum level of channeling when built OR upgraded. This means that if you wanted to build Hemah and have him start with say, sun 3, you would need 4 sun nodes. But, if you wanted to build an archmage, you first have to build an adept. When you build the adept, he gets any free level 1 spell that you have the stacked mana nodes for, but not any level 2 or level 3. When you make him into a mage, he gets any level 1 AND level 2 spells that you have the stacked mana for. That means that you could build an adept with no free spells, give him combat 1-4 as his free, first, second, and third promotions, and use him to build your mana nodes. Then, when he upgrades to a mage, if you have stacked 2 mana, he would get the level 1 spell, 3 mana the level 2 spell.

As an example, if you wanted to have a death caster, and started off with 0 death mana, but 3 free mana nodes, you could build as many adepts as you wanted and promote them with combat 1-4. Then, use those adepts to change your nodes to death (change 2, and when you turn him into a mage, he gets death 1 for free, meaning that on upgrading to a mage he could grab death 2, and be combat 4, death 2 - change 3 and he gets death 1 and death 2 for free, allowing him to grab combat 5).

Similarly, you could use this in another manner. Say you want 8 archmages, and have 4 mana nodes. You want to be able to turn 4 of your archmages into lich's, but then stack water nodes (lets say because you were following OO). If you were say, the amurites, and had the necronomicon, this would give you 1 water mana, and 0 death mana. In this case, you could build your 8 adepts right off the bat (give them combat 1-4), use them to turn 2 nodes each to metamagic and 2 to water, then upgrade your adepts to mages. These mages would automatically start off with water 2, metamagic 2, allowing you to dispell all your nodes and turn them into death. After this, you could then upgrade your mages to archmages, and they would automatically get death 1-3 (free archmage promotion is spent on water 3). 4 liches, 4 archmages later, dispell the mana nodes again, and turn them all into water. Due to this flopping around, you now have 4 archmages, 4 liches, all with metamagic 1-2 for free, water 1-2 for free, water 3 taken, death 1-3 for free, combat 1-5 and spell extension 1-2 as you taken promotions (combat 1-4 as an adept, turn to mage, take combat 5 as your free, spell extension 1 as your 17xp, and spell extension 2 as your 26xp, water 3 as free archmage spell). However, in this example, if you had turned all your mana nodes to water in the first place, you would have gotten water 1-2 on becoming a mage, and water 3 on becoming an archmage - missing out on the free metamagic/death from this example.

-Colin

 

[DaveGold]

As the previous post illustrates, getting the most out of your mana nodes often leads to micromanagement .

 

[Angel-Julia]

You seem to be under a somewhat false assumption that if you build the unit with the mana nodes, he automatically gets the spheres that you have the stacked mana for, both level 1, level 2, AND level 3. This, is false. Arcane units automatically gain the spheres for their maximum level of channeling when built OR upgraded. This means that if you wanted to build Hemah and have him start with say, sun 3, you would need 4 sun nodes. But, if you wanted to build an archmage, you first have to build an adept. When you build the adept, he gets any free level 1 spell that you have the stacked mana nodes for, but not any level 2 or level 3. When you make him into a mage, he gets any level 1 AND level 2 spells that you have the stacked mana for. That means that you could build an adept with no free spells, give him combat 1-4 as his free, first, second, and third promotions, and use him to build your mana nodes. Then, when he upgrades to a mage, if you have stacked 2 mana, he would get the level 1 spell, 3 mana the level 2 spell.

As an example, if you wanted to have a death caster, and started off with 0 death mana, but 3 free mana nodes, you could build as many adepts as you wanted and promote them with combat 1-4. Then, use those adepts to change your nodes to death (change 2, and when you turn him into a mage, he gets death 1 for free, meaning that on upgrading to a mage he could grab death 2, and be combat 4, death 2 - change 3 and he gets death 1 and death 2 for free, allowing him to grab combat 5).

Similarly, you could use this in another manner. Say you want 8 archmages, and have 4 mana nodes. You want to be able to turn 4 of your archmages into lich's, but then stack water nodes (lets say because you were following OO). If you were say, the amurites, and had the necronomicon, this would give you 1 water mana, and 0 death mana. In this case, you could build your 8 adepts right off the bat (give them combat 1-4), use them to turn 2 nodes each to metamagic and 2 to water, then upgrade your adepts to mages. These mages would automatically start off with water 2, metamagic 2, allowing you to dispell all your nodes and turn them into death. After this, you could then upgrade your mages to archmages, and they would automatically get death 1-3 (free archmage promotion is spent on water 3). 4 liches, 4 archmages later, dispell the mana nodes again, and turn them all into water. Due to this flopping around, you now have 4 archmages, 4 liches, all with metamagic 1-2 for free, water 1-2 for free, water 3 taken, death 1-3 for free, combat 1-5 and spell extension 1-2 as you taken promotions (combat 1-4 as an adept, turn to mage, take combat 5 as your free, spell extension 1 as your 17xp, and spell extension 2 as your 26xp, water 3 as free archmage spell). However, in this example, if you had turned all your mana nodes to water in the first place, you would have gotten water 1-2 on becoming a mage, and water 3 on becoming an archmage - missing out on the free metamagic/death from this example.

-Colin

Thanks for clarifying this. Things have changed a bit in the previous years since I played vanilla actively, in the past you had to get all the nodes before building the adept, and metamagic didn’t exist then (im just getting back into FFH).

I guess it’s best to then upgrade in batches after re-programming the nodes. That takes a lot of nodes for your example, needing 6 nodes(or palace substitutes) for water2 and metamagic2. maybe it’s best to do upgrades in two batches, putting the metamagic2 on the buff mages, and then only having 3-6 buff mages for metamagic, and then turn those metamagic into death before upgrading adepts to mages, and then to sun/fire etc when upgrading to final arcmage stage.

I guess there would be a bit of extra micromanagement to create additional buffers with access to all spheres. it's probably good to have 2 death/body/enchant/chaos/shadow nodes when creating adepts (except of course the very first one) to additionally pick up some free level 1 promotions

with a bit more thinking, i decided a nice strategy would be the following:
Buffer1(SOD): Haste, rust, enchant blade, enchant arrow, treetop defence, poisoned blade
Buffer2(SOD): blur, rust, regen, Skeleton(for increasing max numbers)
Buffer3(SOD): dance of blades, rust, snow, Skeleton(for increasing max numbers)
Buffer4(home defence):charm, inspiration, wall of stone, Skeleton, dispel magic(changing nodes)

Damage dealers 8 (with C5 & SE2)
fireball (fire 2)- from free promotion converting to mage
or malestorm (air2)- from free promotion converting to mage

on conversion to the 4 Lich pick up:
death3, sun3
giving: blinding light, Aurealis, raise skeleton, summon spectre, Liech

I guess the 4 arc-mages dont really need death3.
so they could be equipped with sun3, C5, SE2 for fighting, and then something else useful with free promotions (if you have manna stacking resources available) for when they are not fighting, e.g. enchant3 and maybe nature3 on one of them for terraforming use during peacetime.

finally convert all manna to sun for aurealis synergy.

as previously mentioned that takes 7 promotions. at mage level the fireball & malestorm are doing big dmg. at final stage the synergised Aurealis rocks!


So combat would go like this:

Prior to combat
haste, enchant blade, enchant arrow, treetop defence, poisoned blade, summon skelles(in some situations skelles arnt worth casting on approach to the city, as they cant keep up with the haste living units)

Turn before city attack
-8 X fireball bombards defence, and/or malestorm weakens units
-3x rust on strongest meele units
-summon skelles (if the 3 buffers dont have any worthwhile rust targets)
-charm

turn of attack.
-8 X Aurealis summoned
-Blur &/or sharow walk
-dance of blades
-rust(if buffer1 doesnt need to cast haste, haste is great if units have blitz)
-Aurealis and Skelles attack
-your buffed units clean up the 1hp units left standing to farm exp.

Turn after attack
-regenerate
-haste and move to next city(with march on your units this rocks as you are regenerating while advancing rapidly)


With all that magic power it's a bit of an overkill, if you're finding the opponent too easy then the stack could be split for faster mopping up.

I might try a magic heavy game next time, maybe shaem or amurites(govanon rocks). arcane trait would be nexcisary to speed things up.

the only prob with magic is that it comes in too late, when the game outcome is already fairly much decided. the deciding factor of games tends to be much earlier in stopping the initial AI dogpile(turn 100-200). I'm not into playing execively long games that are already won, so would only go heavy magic on a hard huge map where i'm playing a strategy that can rush the magic well.

How does it go with grigori adventurers upgrading to adepts? Do they also get the free promotion at the moment of changing to an adept?

and what about Khazad? they cant get mages, so no metamagic2(except for one of the religious heros which doesnt synergise with the RoK money machiene that the dwarves like) therefore they wont be able to re-form nodes. meaning they can either pick up 1-2 key buffs, or add to their collection of earth nodes for a later on druid afinity, though missing out on the buffs.

 

[readercolin]

As someone who plays both the khazad and the grigori alot:

The grigori get adventurers. With the sole exception of having the hero promotion and becoming real units via money and not hammers, in all other aspects they function as regular units. That means that an adventurer turned into an adept gets 1 free promotion, as well as any free spells available. Same for mage and archmage. Just make sure that you give them combat 1-5, as then they are able to get twincast, unlike regular mages.

As the khazad, you grab sun and water if necessary, and then either buff earth or buff law (earth for druids, law for maintenence) depending upon how you are playing them. If you really wanted to, you could switch to OO or CoE, and build hemah/gibbon, allowing you someone to dispell nodes. Generally though, you have champions and are slowly grinding the world under your iron dwarven boots before anyone else has mages, much less the necessary support to make them useful, and the only necessary spell for them is enchanted blade. Haste is useless, as they're dragging along catapults (unless they've reached the point where they have 10 champions for their opponents every unit... a likely situation if you play your cards right), rust is... ok, but many opponents will have forges, making the spell pointless to use when attacking cities, skeleton is absolutely useless, blur is ok, but for the most part unnecessary, etc. If the game really drags on, then they'll grab their druids, but generally they aren't used. Unless the dwarves really got boned with their starting position, hammers and champions are what gives them victory, and yes, it is possible to outproduce even deity level AI's with them...

-Colin

 

[Emptiness]

rust is... ok, but many opponents will have forges, making the spell pointless to use when attacking cities

Cast your Rust on the same turn you attack. Forges only refresh weapon promotions and remove the Rusted promotion on your opponent's turn, so Rust cast on your turn prior to an attack works perfectly well to debuff your opponent's melee units. In theory you will be bringing along Adepts with Enchantment I to repair your Trebuchets; those Adepts might as well have Entropy I as well.

 

[ZHONN]

For a simple strategy I like just spamming death nodes. Spectres get really scary really soon.

In my last game as the Sheaim I quickly grabbed a bit of land to allow me three additional Death nodes for total of four. That meant that my adepts would only take combat and spell extension promotions. In the end I had about ten mages and a few Möbius witches conquering the entire World by themselves, even taking on longbowmen without breaking a sweat. Spectres were str 7 + 70% (20% of that from enchanted blade) and mov 4. Extremely strong, extremely mobile and extremely expendable.

One can also get couple of death mana easily from from wonders. The tower of necromancy is especially useful as it also adds +1 str to all your undead units: spectres, wraiths, skeletons, pyre zombies, diseased corpses etc. One can also build the Soul Forge for additional mana but it's such a long tech away that I'd prefer to go for archmages as quickly as possible instead of it.

 

[Angel-Julia]

yeah, death mana spam works great, giving summons for each tier. I just went for earth manna spam in my Kahzad game, getting 8 earth mana giving my druids 16 strength.

Even when spamming one type of manna i think it's worthwhile switching the nodes around to pick up all the useful lvl1 buffs possible (except for Kahzad that cant make mages for metamagic2). I guess one consideration is also the extra research needed to get the 4 techs to be able to build every type of mana for improved buffers.

Necromancy is great, as it also opens up a lot of great lvl1 buffs before all mana nodes are switched to death via the use of dispel magic. elementalism doesnt add as much variety from opening up the lvl 1 buffs, though gives more powerful lvl2/3 spells.

 

[avalonnn]

yeah, death mana spam works great, giving summons for each tier. I just went for earth manna spam in my Kahzad game, getting 8 earth mana giving my druids 16 strength.

When you had 8 earth mana, did you see a noticeable increase in the rate at which generic mines turned into valuable resources?

 

[Emptiness]

One game is not a statistically relevant sample size for measuring the functionality of the increase in mineral discovery chances from earth mana. Many games (perhaps hundreds, I'm not sure of the exact number) would need to be played using the same map, with the same number of mines on non-resource tiles, in order to generate a statistically meaningful actual rate of discovery to compare with the intended rate (as defined in the game code). Then the process would need to be repeated (ie hundreds of additional games) for each amount of earth mana access that was going to be compared if there were going to be any statistically meaningful conclusions made about whether the intended increase in discovery chance was in fact taking place. A conclusion drawn from the events of a single game will be statistically unreliable.

Or, to put it another way, it is possible (even if the discovery increase chance is working correctly) for someone to play a game in which they end up with 8 earth mana and yet never discover a single new mineral resource - even though in a previous game, without access to any earth mana at all, the same person managed to discover several new mineral resources.

 

[Angel-Julia]

Yes, as emptiness stated there is a significant factor of statistical variation.

Actually i build the earth mana fairly late in the game, first focusing on researching the melee line, and education/currancy line. conquered 60% of the world with axemen/champions & trebs. i did this fast, with my C5+march+enchanted blade+divine shield+iron erpon champoins facing bronze axemen. The druids were a total overkill, though a lot of fun anyway.

I only had need for building the earth mana nodes after this, just before researching up the recon line for groves and then the religious line for druids.

at that time i had already mined all my land to make most use of the world spell "mother load". therefore i think i only built 1-2 mines after i had build all the earth nodes.

If you wanted to test it then you could make world builder, make a huge map, cover the world with hills and nothing else, and make yourself 100 workers, and of course many cities with phenominal culture to increase your boarders. then run two games, one game with 20 earth mana, one game with zero earth mana. Then set all workers to automate build mines. Then click the automate 500 turns, so the world will automatically be covered with mines. the next step is to zoom out and count how many resources have turned up on each game. having such a large map totally covered with mines, and a significant ctange in earth mana it would be enough to create some more statistically viable indicators. my assumption is that each earth mana liniarly stacks, so the impact of 20 mana is 20 times as much as the impact of one.

 

[readercolin]

resource chance discovery is (1+earthmana)/50000ish (not exact number, but close enough). This means that getting 1 earth mana doubles your base chances, 2 triples, etc. But it also means that each earth mana makes less and less of a change (subjectively - first one doubles, 2nd increases by 3/2, third by 4/3, fourth by 5/4 etc). Another thing to note is that resource chance discovery is random chance per turn - so every turn a mine will have a 1/50000 chance of discovering a material. Therefore, if you had 50000 mines, you would probably discover a new resource every turn.

-Colin

 

[Angel-Julia]

Interesting. this makes me think that maybe we should be pillaging our mines and re-mining them in the late game when there is absolutely nothing else for us to do with our workers once our entire land is improved.

 

[Emptiness]

Why would you think that? A new mine doesn't have any greater chance to discover a resource than a mine that has been around for a long time. Unless you rebuilt the mine in a single turn, pillaging and rebuilding a mine would actually hurt your chances of discovery because of the missed turns when there was no mine.

 

[Jarrema]

I was thinking, that new resources could be only found on the turn the mine is built...