Specific tactic to make Metamagic awesome

[popejubal]

Let's say you have 7 sources of mana - 3 from your capital and 4 from nodes. If you make nodes to match your capital, you get a free promotion of that magic type for all of your Adepts.

Go ahead and give at least one of them Metamagic I as a paid-for promotion because you were smart enough to make that 7th node Metamagic. They get 2 other random promotions and now they're at level 4 with 10 XP. Yay! Now they can upgrade to Magi! Woot!

Before you upgrade most of them, upgrade just one and give him Metamagic II. Now dispel all of your nodes and build nodes to give yourself 3 of one kind of mana (maybe the same as something you had built before, maybe something entirely new). Upgrade any Magi that you want to have level 2 for that mana type. Dispel Magic again and rebuild the Mana Nodes to some other type of Mana x3. Upgrade another Mage or two. Voila, you now get another magic type at level II -without needing to spend a promotion on it.

When it's time to finally upgrade to Archmagi, build 4 of one mana node type and then do your upgrade (or build Hemah, Corindale, Gibbon Goeta or whoever). You get that magic at level III without spending promotions. Now it's a whole lot easier to get Combat V, Twincast and a couple of different magic spheres at level III for your Archmagi without sacrificing permanent strategic resources.

The best part of all this is that you don't even need to keep the Metamagic node around after you get one or two Mages promoted to Metamagic II for the Dispel Magic. Just dispel the Metamagic nodes and make sure you keep those 1 or 2 Mages safe from Hidden Nationality Assassins.

Example:
Grigori promotes an Adventurer to Adept with two nodes each of Enchantment, Spirit and Water. The Hero Adept gets Enchantment I, Spirit I and Water I for free. Very nice. Promote the hero with Combat I, II and III and it's time to upgrade him to Mage. I'll upgrade another (non-hero) Adept to Mage and give him Metamagic II after building the Metamagic node. Dispel Magic on other nodes to build 3 Air nodes along with the Metamagic node. Upgrade the Hero to Mage and laugh with joy as my newly inspired friend enjoys a free Air I and Air II promotion. I'll go ahead and give him Metamagic I and II as paid-for promtions. Combat III, IV and V as well as Twincast and Spell Extension I and II take him up to 82 XP with no more promotions available before hitting the 100 XP wall. Dispel all of the nodes and build 3 Death nodes and another node of your choice. Promote to Archmage and gaze in wide wonder at the joy you have found.

You now have a Hero with Enchantment I, Spirit I, Water I, Air II, Metamagic II, Death III, Combat V, Spell Extention II, and Twincast, at 100XP. That's 18 promotions of magical goodness all for 10 promotions worth of experience.

Metamagic is amazing. Feel free to turn the last node to Death for extra Affinity fun. Maybe summon Basium and have fun attacking the good civs who don't like the fact that you use Death mana. Give him lots of Angels from the Good Razed cities you just trashed.

All that with just 4 nodes. Rock on. With 6 or 7 nodes, you can go absolutely nuts.

 

[Zechnophobe]

So... you can squeeze out a few extra mana promotions? Woo? I'm not horribly impressed, considering the amount of work and time that go into it. A few normal ol' adepts can pick up the utility level 1 spells, no need to waste an archmage tooling them around.

Heck, you can't even dispel until sorcery, making it pretty 'ho hum'. And heck, if you just made them all Death to start with, and gone crazy, you'd be doing just as well with your archmage, or pretty close.

 

[Verdian]

I tried doing that once, and it was a lot more micromanagment than I wanted to do. I know Dispell Magic is great for tower victories (and Govannah, now), but it is one of my least favorites because (a) it requires a lot of micromanagment, and (b) it is such a useful spell that it cries out to be used. Boring + Need = Not Fun. That, plus the difficulty in making Djinns strong (why not just go death magic?) makes metamagic really unappealling to me.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I personally think that Djinni really need to be unitcombat_adept and start with channeling I & II, making them start with mage spells based on the mane you own.

I am of the opinion that Dispel Magic needs to regain its old ability to remove promotions from spell buffs. (It might be better to make this 2 seperate spells at the same level.)


I don't think that Floating Eye's are appropriate for the sphere at all. That is really more of an OO thing. I think Metamagic I should be Ring of Warding, which creates a temporary (requires caster) version of the old Ring of Warding Building, making units in the city more resistant to magic.



I also really think that the Tower of Master should not just require all the towers, but all mana types too., and that it should provide some benefit from building it when that victory condition is off. (The way I usually do it is to have it apply Channeling III on move to arcane units in the city, making adepts level up faster and mages have access to archmage spells.)

 

[WarKirby]

Your idea for metamagic I is nice, but if Floating Eye were to be lost from there, I'd really like to see it appear in another arcane sphere, NOT being a religion specific spell.

It's really useful for amurite adepts.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

This is one of my main strategies playing the Amurites, since they get Metamagic from the Palace. I usually get 1 Adept to have Metamagic(unless I create combat groups, where adepts with Metamagic I, replace hunters with hawks), and when I get him to wizard, I build all mana nodes to one type, create 4-5 Adepts that get directly to Wizard(I love cave of ancestors ), then dispel the nodes, repeat for the next wizard specialization I want, and so on. This get me free sphere promotions, so that I can easily go to combat V + Spell Extension II + Mobility, which transform your summons and spells to killing machines...

 

[Caradoc]

Metamagic should be about the realm of magic itself. (As opposed to Enchantment, which imbues objects with magical properties.) Dispell is a proper metamagical power. And the Djinni summon could be if the Djinn had some metamagical property or impacted the summoner's spell casting. (Magister's idea of inheriting the master's spells would fit the bill.) But the Floating Eye is really out of place here. It might be better to have Metamagic 1 provide the extra damage and resistance instead of the Mana node itself.

 

[WarKirby]

Maybe the Floating Eye should be a Mind spell, since it's about knowledge.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Hmm...I still think that having a Floating Eye fits OO best, but I guess Mind could work too. The current Mind I spell, Inspiration, would actually fit quite well in the Creation sphere, as that is the sphere of Genius, of fertility of the imagination as well as the body.

 

[WarKirby]

Aww, I like inspiration too. And I think creation should be more about the direct fabrication of physical things, not inspiration.

Why can't Mind I have two spells ?

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Aww, I like inspiration too. And I think creation should be more about the direct fabrication of physical things, not inspiration.

Why can't Mind I have two spells ?

It would gain an advandage over the other spheres, obviously.

 

[Skitters]

Hmm...I still think that having a Floating Eye fits OO best, but I guess Mind could work too. The current Mind I spell, Inspiration, would actually fit quite well in the Creation sphere, as that is the sphere of Genius, of fertility of the imagination as well as the body.

in line with my post in the creation/force/dimensional thread - perhaps floating eye, could be switched to being the level 1 Dimensional spell?

 

[Zobo]

How about if metamagic had a spell that gave units in the stack some resistance from all magic damage?

Though if it's a adept level promotion maybe that would be too strong.

How about it giving magic immunity to the adept?

That way early metamagic adepts would be good against skeletons, and could conceivably gain experience against them. Your archmage could defeat an enemy summon not with a summon of his own, but casting immunity and clobbering the thing on the head.

 

[someone67]

How about if metamagic had a spell that gave units in the stack some resistance from all magic damage?

Though if it's a adept level promotion maybe that would be too strong.

How about it giving magic immunity to the adept?

That way early metamagic adepts would be good against skeletons, and could conceivably gain experience against them. Your archmage could defeat an enemy summon not with a summon of his own, but casting immunity and clobbering the thing on the head.

Yes, but with an 100% chance of wearing off, please. There are spells you want to be casted on your adepts.

 

[StormbringerGT]

Meta Magic is awesome on its own. Summoning Djinn when you hit Archmage is just crazy, not much stand up to those guys.