Recommendations for new players

[rgp151]

This is a set of recommendations mainly for players that may be coming to this game without having ever played the original, but can apply for anyone possibly.

My first piece of advice is: Learn to love summing. I think summoning is the aspect of the game most overlooked by new players, because those spells look really expensive and like they are going to take too long to cast, and you don't wan to spend all that mana, etc.

But summoning is by far the best way to get started in the early game.

So my advice would be to start by playing through at least into the late game with every school of magic by taking 10 books of a single school and the Conjuration retort (or ability or whatever its called now). The exception here will be Life, don't do that with Life. I would play through all of these using High Elves for starters as they give you more mana and are just generally well rounded.

For your single Uncommon spell pick the most powerful summon for each school. Put all of your Power to Mana on turn one to build up mana as fast as you can, and then summon some units. Your first priority should be to acquire Nodes (but be opportunistic and take what you can). You need nodes to power your conjuration.

With Nature you want a Basilisk for sure, and if you can add in a Sprite then do that, but keep the Sprites out of combat with other ranged units. But the visibility and Forestry are helpful and they can help against Phantom units. If you see a lot of Sorcery nodes then make more Sprites. Basilisks are good all game long, especially when taking capitals since they stand up well to the towers and as you get more powerful can can summon stacks of them quickly. Gorgons are very good, but not as good against the towers unless they are well buffed.

With Chaos you can either go with Chimera, which are quite strong, or Doom Bats, which are weaker but also cheaper and can still get the job done. Actually Hell Hounds can be good. You will probably want something like a full stack of Hell Hounds or a Doom Bat mixed with Hell Hounds or Chimera plus a couple of Hell Hounds. Get some Chaos nodes and you'll be good. Take towns with Magic Spirits and Fire Elementals when you can. Long term you want stacks of all Chaos units and stacks of zero Chaos units. Use Chaos Channels to convert Normal units to Chaos Units once they are Elite (is that still an issue or do Chaos Channeled units get EXP now?). Use Warp Reality to give your Chaos units a big advantage. You're best Ultra Rare Global Enchant is Chaos Surge for the buffs. Continue using your Uncommon summons throughout the game. Rely on Fire Elementals heavily in combat.

Sorcery, get the Phantom Beast, but you will instead be using a lot of Magic Spirits and sometimes Nagas on the map. Send Magic Spirits out and use them to start battles that you dominate with Phantom Warriors and Beasts. In Nodes rely on Warriors over Beasts as they are more cost effective with the node buffs. You should be able to take towns easily with a single Naga. You will transition to Normal units and heroes as the game goes on, using Magic Immunity, Invisibility, Guardian Wind, etc. to keep them protected. Storm Giants aren't great, but the Ultra Rare summons are.

With Death take Shadow Demons. In Classic with Death you either started with just Ghouls or Wraiths (11 books). But Wraiths aren't as good in this version of the game, nor are Ghouls really since they aren't guarantied to create undead units. But still, the classic strategy with death is to open by taking towns and creating undead to fill the garrisons. That doesn't work as well in this game, also many towns have only a single defender, so just rely on Shadow Demons. But you can use Ghouls too. With Death you should be using all summoned units all the time pretty much, only have normal units on defense. Undead units with Darkness is what its all about with Death. Get Zombie Mastery ASAP.

So play through all of those starts first. Don't worry about Life for now.

As for how to build, you should not build Settlers at all. Sometimes it makes sense to build Settlers, but generally you can get more than enough towns just by conquest. Develop your economy before doing anything else. In your capital you should basically build to a Miner's Guild before building any unit production buildings or units.

The build order is generally:
Granary > Marketplace > Farmer's Market > Sawmill > Shrine > Forester's Guild > Miner's Guild. Once all of that is built, then you can build other stuff.

As a High Men example I would typically build: Granary > Marketplace > Farmer's Market > Sawmill > Shrine > Forester's Guild > Miner's Guild > Armory > Fighter's Guild > Pikemen > Temple > Parthenon > Priest > Cathedral > Armorer's Guild > Paladin > Paladin > Library > Sages Guild > Alchemist's Guild > Paladin > Paladin > Paladin > Paladin, etc.

Again, just a generalization. And something like that is what I would do if playing Sorcery or Chaos for example, while my summoned units are off fighting battles or providing additional defense.

And don't forget to rush buy. Rush buying is more important the earlier you do it. Rush buy that Granary when you can, Rush buy the Marketplace and Farmer's Market to save a few turns and get growing faster.

Make stacks that go together.

When using Death or Chaos, make stacks with all Death or Chaos units. Take fights with those stacks you have an advantage in and avoid fights were you don't. Also have hero stacks, ranged stacks, cavalry stacks, etc. Now, there are times when you mix and match, but generally, you want to have stacks where all the units have the same movement allowance to get maximum mobility for the stack. With a ranged stack, you may have something like 6 Slingers, 1 Shaman, 2 Paladins or Berserkers or heroes or whatever. It can be good to have a couple melee units in there as blockers, etc. or to deal with odd units that can't be hit by the ranged units, etc.

The fastest way to gain resources is through conquest.

One of the things that makes MoM different from most other 4X games, and more fun IMO, is that loot from battles is so good. In fact, your economy will grow much much faster by getting active on the map and taking encounters and conquering cities than sitting defensively waiting for resources to accrue. This is the biggest mistake people make. They get defensive, sit in their towns and wait for gold and mana to build up. No, no, don't do that. You have to make a stack and go conquer stuff. Its best to always have at least one stack, often heroes, that does nothing but take neutral encounters, like liars. It can be tempting sometimes to use them to take towns, but don't let yourself get bogged down sitting in a town waiting for it to build up while your death stack defends it. That's a losing proposition.

Make a death stack and keep it on the move. You can raze towns with it, or sometimes even conquer (depending on more advanced tactics), but don't just take a town and then sit it in and wait to build up the town. Bad, bad.

Understand the conquering strategy for each school.

Several of the schools have distinct conquering strategies that allow you to effectively expand and take towns while being able to keep you war machine moving. Using these strategies is essential.

1) Sorcery : Summon Circle > Word of Recall > Rely on combat summons. With Sorcery you want to have towns deep in your empire that just keep pumping out defensive units, like Paladins, Catapults, Priests, etc. When you take a new town, move the Summon Circle to that town and then use Word of Recall to teleport a garrison into the town. Then your death stack can move on while you put production in the new towns to economic development. You can also defend sparsely garrisoned towns using combat summons.

2) Life: A little challenging in the early game, but down the road its all about Prosperity, Stream of Life, etc. Use Prosperity on your large cities to generate lots of gold. With Just Cause crank your taxes to generate more gold. Use that gold to buy units and quickly develop towns that you conquer so that your death stack can quickly move on. In addition, its typically good to use Warlord with Life so you can also build units sooner, not having to rely on getting a Fighter's Guild first.

3) Death: Generate Undead units using Ghouls, Wraiths (doesn't work as well in this game right now) and Zombie Mastery. Fill towns with undead units. In the early/mid game you can even use Skeletons to hold down towns. With Darkeness they can do ok while your death stack moves on. Don't leave your Shadow Demons sitting in town defending unless the place is under immediate threat. Be ready to convert Spearmen to Werewolves if you see a stack coming.

4) Nature: Move that summoning circle and summon in defensive units like Spider, Sprites, and Stone Giants. Or Basilisks if the town is under serious threat.

5) Chaos: Hell Hounds, Hell Hounds, Hell Hounds. Also, eventually Chaos Spawn can be ok. Once you get Flame Strike (and they fix Flame Strike) then you can rely on Flame Strike for a lot of your defense. Also use preemptive strikes, like Fire Storm and Call the Void.

Of these, clearly Sorcery is best, and ultimately Sorcery is the overall best at conquest IMO. Word of Recall is just so, so powerful and the ability to call in Phantom Beasts and Air Elementals is huge. Death was really good in Classic, but less so in this game right now. Undead generation is not good enough right now IMO. Life with Warlord can be pretty good once you get your economy going. The ability to build units w/o a Fighter's Guild can help a lot. And once you get Lionheart you can also defend a lot with just Spearmen and Bowmen. But the key is being able to rush purchase those units.

Nature and Chaos struggle a little, but again, you have to use those summons. This is why I think that Conjuration and going deep into a single school is very powerful, so those summons get really cheap. Summoning a lot speed up everything. The more you summon the less you are slowing down the rest of your economy.

As for Life:

IMO, the opening for Life is harder to master because you can't rely on summoned units. Unicorns just aren't good enough. Most importantly, they can't take nodes, which you really need to be able to take to keep fueling your conjuration.

For Life you are better off starting with Warlord. This will let you build (effective) normal units much faster. Actually I would go with either Warlord + Alchemy or Warlord + Archamge. Good races for Life are Draconian, Barbarian, Nomads and Klackons. All either have Flying units or units capable of hitting flying units and importantly all have powerful units you can build early (well Klackons sort of).

Again put all power to mana to start. Cast Just Causes ASAP. Increase taxes with Just Cause.

For life you want to get active as soon as you can, BUT it will surely be slower than summoning. Still, build just to the Forester's Guild, then start making some units to form a stack. With Draconians, Barbarians, and Nomads, that means making a Stable. Make the Stable, and build 2-4 units from it, depending on what you see around for conquering and how long it will take and how many heroes you've been able to recruit. typically, take one of those units and buff the heck out of it. I'll often have something like a single Barbarian Cavalry with Heroism, Bless, Endurance, Holy Armor, Holy Weapon, along with 2 other unbuffed Cavs that will gain Exp along the way. Maybe endurance on all of them. Or maybe its a hero that gets the buffs, etc.

Again, you need to take some nodes to keep your power base up to pay for the buffs. Nomads and Horsebowmen work really well for taking Sorcery Nodes, but it can be harder for Chaos and Nature. You don't need nodes so much with Draconians. So with 3 or 4 Cavalry type units and a hero you should be able to be quite effective. Keep buffing that stack as you are able. Heroism will fall off as they gain EXP but stuff like Bless and Endurance can be important to get onto all the units. Holy Armor for melee units, etc.

If playing Klackons, then just go for Stag Beetles and don't do anything until you get them. You'll fall behind a bit, but make up for it when the Beetles come out.

Don't start with Life. Don't play Life Halflings. Halflings move to slowly. Use Horsebowmen and Cavalry to quickly move around the map. Actually, the easiest way to start Life is Draconians. But when playing Draconians, its often worthwhile to build a Spearman after your Farmer's Market and then load that Spearman up with buffs and take what you can with him. So Dracs can give you an even earlier start than the others. Barbarian Spearmen can work too, but IMO, its often better to just wait for the Cavs, but it can depend on the situation. When playing Life + Nature Warlord I have conquered multiple towns and taken nodes with a single Spearman buffed with Heroism, Bless, Giant Strength, Holy Weapon and Endurance.

The point is, with Life you really have to rely on Normal units to get active and start taking resources. With all the other schools you can get active and acquire resources even sooner by using Conjuration and summing up an army while your capital develops economically.

Also, here is an old thread of mine about Classic MoM that still largely applies: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=10783

[Aunty Herbert]

Some early choices when picking Death Magic:
For grabbing early neutral settlements, Weakness is perfect. Spearmen and Swordsmen of almost all races are sitting ducks, once Weakness sticks on them, and you can even capture most settlements with a single Magic Spirit.
Weakness is incredibly cheap to cast, and thus can be cast repeatedly even in very early turns.

Talking about a single Magic Spirit, you probably want more than one, if you got no Green books with Sprite. Exploring the area and discovering the easy pickings quickly will speed up your development a lot.

A few turns in, summon a Ghoul, chose lairs with single common fantastic creatures (Hellhound, Bear, Naga, Sprite). Cast Black Sleep on the critter, then your Ghoul can "recruit" it, without even getting hurt.
Once you recruiteded a bunch of them, the upkeep cost will probably become quite high for such an early economy. Make sure you got enough mana in the bank to cast Darkness, to buff them all, then find a large lair or dungeon, that you can barely beat with them.
If you fought well, and still only one of your creatures barely survived, then you picked the right fight. Enjoy the loot and the early fame.

Mana Leak is usually more important in the later game, when you fight Shadow Demons, Giants or stuff like Efreets, Demon Kings, Jinny, etcetera, but early game it can reduce Sprites from 4 shots to 2 shots, which can make all the difference.

Dark Ritual is THE economy spell for Death Magic. Every settlement with even a Parthenon, let alone a Cathedral or an Alchemy Guild will produce more Mana than most Nodes on Arcanus. (OK, how much a node produces also depends on mana setting, ofc.)
If your starting race doesn't have the tech, one of your conquered settlements WILL have it.

From the uncommon selection, especially if you start on Arcanus, Shadow Demons are first choice, once you get them offered. They can shadow shift to Mirra and conquer a neutral settlement there, long before you are powerful enough to bust down a wizard's tower.
Werewolves are also very good. They can't attack flyers, but if you got 4 of them, they can block flyers from reaching your squishies, and they are really good at dealing damage to anything on foot, or anything, that attacks them to get past them.
Like Shadow Demons, they regenerate, and even come back after battle, when they died.
Perfect creatures to stack enchantments on, as they will last you a long time and never need to slow down to heal.

Dark Prayer is the most important uncommon combat spell, as it debuffs resistance.
Talking about resistance, don't accept heroes, who can't cast spells. Look for trinkets, wands and staves, which give minus on spell resistance to equip them with, plus protective stuff.

Late game, don't shy away from cursing your opposition. They don't know where it comes from, so they won't even get angry.

[Thewizardlord]

There's a lot of right things are this. But a lot of wrong too or at least inaccuracies

I suspect OP's playing style is biased too much by playing mostly 11(10) book starts and relying on the uncommon or rare as a clutch spell. While the shadow demons strategy is very strong (among the easiest wins imho) winning with other summons particularly at highest level may not be easy for some.

For example he correctly identifies that Life works best with Warlord (obviously) but saying Life warlord slingers are too slow is hilariously wrong.

While slingers are a bit nerfed from classic for reasons I don't want go into, they are a simple win , simpler dare I say than some of the weaker 10/ 11 book + Summon strategy but I think OP's style is so distorted by his summons only style he doesn't know how to do it to maximum effect.

Anyway if you want a fast life strategy, try life+warlord + maybe alchemy and Gnolls. Throw in a book or 2 of nature (for earth lore) or chaos (for flame blade). Go wolf riders move 5 and buff them to max. Heroism, holy Weapon, Armor etc

It's both fast and reliable.

[rgp151]

Originally posted by Thewizardlord:

There's a lot of right things are this. But a lot of wrong too or at least inaccuracies

I suspect OP's playing style is biased too much by playing mostly 11(10) book starts and relying on the uncommon or rare as a clutch spell. While the shadow demons strategy is very strong (among the easiest wins imho) winning with other summons particularly at highest level may not be easy for some.

For example he correctly identifies that Life works best with Warlord (obviously) but saying Life warlord slingers are too slow is hilariously wrong.

While slingers are a bit nerfed from classic for reasons I don't want go into, they are a simple win , simpler dare I say than some of the weaker 10/ 11 book + Summon strategy but I think OP's style is so distorted by his summons only style he doesn't know how to do it to maximum effect.

Anyway if you want a fast life strategy, try life+warlord + maybe alchemy and Gnolls. Throw in a book or 2 of nature (for earth lore) or chaos (for flame blade).

It's both fast and reliable.

I hardly every play 11 books, and really wish 11 book starts didn't even exist, and same for 10 books that they've added now really. I don't think allowing higher level spells at the beginning makes for good games. But this is for new players, so starting with that higher level spell can be helpful.

In Classic I think 9 books + Conjuration + an Elemental Mastery is by far one of the strongest starts and of course relies heavily on summoning. For Sorcery and Chaos its still probably actually stronger than starting with 10 books even in this game.

But no, I've never liked Halflings. Just not enough mobility. True the mobility is better in this game, but still. I much prefer Barbarians or Nomads (or of course Draconians). Barbarian Cavalry are way, way better than Slingers for rushing.

I will say that my style is biased by rushing in Classic where towers weren't a thing. With towers its a bit more difficult, but still you can take early capitals.

In terms of Barbarians vs Halflings:

Both will let you build key units with a single building upgrade, a Stable for Barbarians or Armory for Halflings.

Cavalry move at a speed of 4, Slingers at 2. With Endurance its 5 vs 3.

In Classic, you could take most capitals early in teh game with as few as 2 buffed Barb Cavalry, while you would have needed at least 4 or 5 Slingers/Shamen. It's also easier to buff 2 or 3 units than 4 or 5, esp if we are talking about Endurance, which is sort of all or nothing.

Now in this version, it may be true that things swing a little in favor of Halflings because when attacking capitals simply having more units is better to spread the impact of the towers. But still I think you can go with as little as 3 Barbarian Cavalry for early attacks. One tactic is to throw in some Magic Spirits, so you attack with 3 Cavalry and 3 or 4 Magic Spirits, which will spread out the damage from the tower. Hopefully the tower will hit the Magic spirits a few times. Of course you pre-position the Magic Spirits since they will slow the stack down. Often you can have them waiting nearby in the water.

But, with 3 Cavalry you only have 3 units to put Endurance on. So you have a 3 unit stack moving at a speed of 5.

The other problem with Slingers is that they can get shut down with Guardian Wind and/or Warp Wood. Now again, maybe right now the AI in this game isn't good enough for that, but in Classic 1.5 getting shut down by those spells was pretty common when attacking a wizard.

For me personally, I just really value mobility a lot, which is why I also really liked Nomads and Draconians (and Sorcery). So plodding around with 1 movement Slinger stacks was never for me. It wouldn't be that uncommon to get Shuri early on and be able to have Barb Cavalry stacks with Endurance moving at 6 across the map. And yeah, Life + Nature for the Water Walking and Earth Lore is also good, esp with giant Strength on Barbarians. Or Nomads with Horsebowmen and Rangers moving at 6.

And with Slingers, you pretty much need a full stack of them, so getting Endurance on all of them is a bit much, whereas with Barb Cavalry and Horsebowmen/Rangers/Heroes you can get by with just 3 or 4 units.

Obviously Slingers are powerful, they just move too slowly for me and they can be negated by a few easy low level spells.

[bjarne.lindh]

Well everybody, I think the most sure early win is Heroes! Especially in this version of the game where you can easily have them Demigods before turn 100. What is also spectacular in this version of the game is the chance of looting spells and the chance of buying really OP items from merchant. It seems enough with one sorcerybook to loot invisibility, magicimmunity and windwalking. Last night I tried magicimmunity versus Towermissiles and had Bshan solobanishing 2 Wizards at only level Lord. The Towers still do damage to Magicimmune, but so little it aint a problem if you have healing.
And as moves go, with windwalking you have 6 superarmys with 11 moves! Because of bug or if its supposed to be like that you can even use just one set of moveitems.
Try this start:
Warlord
Famous
Nodemaster
2 Life+healing
2 Sorcery+confusion
1 Chaos
1 Nature
Keep atleast 500 gold all times for herooffers, atleast 1500 gold for items. All the spells you will get from lairs rather than research. And this way you will get maximumamount of unitspells that will ensure your heroes soon are unbeatable.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by rgp151:

I hardly every play 11 books, and really wish 11 book starts didn't even exist, and same for 10 books that they've added now really. I don't think allowing higher level spells at the beginning makes for good games. But this is for new players, so starting with that higher level spell can be helpful.

I feel like trading a lot of books for retorts gives much cheesier game starts. I read the OP recommendation to go book-heavy more as an advice to learn the fundamentals first, and understand, what the spells of each color actually do, before fiddling around with Wizard perks.
All the "classical" Wizards only have a single starting perk, and either one or two colors.
Starting with an uncommon or even rare spell isn't so much of a boon. You still need to build up the mana sources and casting skill to make somewhat regular use of them.

Sticking to that "minimum starting perks, and no full rainbow" scheme certainly allows a higher variation of gameplay, than just optimizing the start conditions, with just a token selection of the best utility spells from all the colors.

[rgp151]

Yeah, there are definitely some balance issues and bugs in the game right now that can lead to insane heroes. But nothing gives a faster start than Conjuration, especially with Sorcery and Chaos.

You can have a Magic Spirit on turn 2 and as soon as you find your first neutral town you can conquer it with just the Magic Spirit with either Sorcery or Chaos 95% of the time. You can take single or even double unit low level encounters with just the Magic Spirit, or even harder if you use 10 books and Phantom Beast.

Nothing is faster than that. Even if you use Famous, you have to get the money to buy the hero and you need to cast Heroism, at a bare minimum, and even then most single ungeared heroes can't immediately take much, even with heroism, unless its like the Draconian.

With Chaos you can have a full stack of Hell Hounds, which can easily take many nodes and pretty much any neutral town and even capitals, within 15 turns. No hero strategy gives a faster start than that.

There is nothing wrong with those other strategies, the point of this though is to keep it simple for new players and make it easy to quickly start being active on the map and taking resources. There just is no faster way to do that than by summoning.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by rgp151:

You can have a Magic Spirit on turn 2 and as soon as you find your first neutral town you can conquer it with just the Magic Spirit with either Sorcery or Chaos 95% of the time. You can take single or even double unit low level encounters with just the Magic Spirit, or even harder if you use 10 books and Phantom Beast.

A Magic Spirit can capture most starting neutral cities with just the Death Spell Weaken. It's cheap, and Spearmen and Swordsmen with 0 to 1 attack are easy prey.
Single or double unit lairs? Send in a Ghoul and cast Black Sleep. You not only get the lair loot, but also the former guardian as undead minion.

That full stack of hellhounds by turn 15 indeed works with Chaos Mastery, but you need 160 starting gold to transform to mana, easy economy and plentyful magic settings.

[rgp151]

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

I read the OP recommendation to go book-heavy more as an advice to learn the fundamentals first, and understand, what the spells of each color actually do, before fiddling around with Wizard perks.

Yes.

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

Starting with an uncommon or even rare spell isn't so much of a boon. You still need to build up the mana sources and casting skill to make somewhat regular use of them.

It's pretty big actually. I recently played Nature 10 books starting with Basilisk. With this setup the Basilisk only costs 179 to cast and you start with 20 casting skill. So I had a Basilisk on about turn 12. I quickly took 4 nodes and 3 towns, got my second Basilisk, defeated a wizard, got some Uncommon and Rare spells from encounters, all before turn 40.

Coming out with next level fantastic units early in the game is way OP, and honestly I wish the game didn't have that feature as it makes things extremely unbalanced and can make the game not fun when multiple enemy AIs start with 11 books and have Rare summons while you are sitting there with Swordsmen. Too many times I've been defeated by Freya in Classic Impossible because she came in with a stack of Gorgons on like turn 20, lol.

But, for beginners I think its a useful way to learn to play. The biggest problem beginners have is sitting around too long in the beginning just building their capital and not doing anything on the map, so this is a way to be able to quickly field a capable army.

Using a rainbow of books can get you a lot of spells to work with, but it doesn't do much to really jump-start you in the early game, and I think for beginners jump-starting the early game is what's most important.

With this setup, using High Elves you have the follow starts with Chaos and Sorcery:
12 Mana per turn on turn 1
20 Casting skill
Hell Hounds cost 22
Chimera cost 192
Fire Elementals cost 11

So once you get your casting skill to 22 you can cast 2 Fire Elementals in combat and you can summon Hell Hounds immediately. Even with 2 Magic Spirits in play you'll get 10 mana per turns once you put it all to mana, though it can be worth it to pump skill to get to 22 first.

So however you do it, by turn 15 or so you can have a substantial army, whether Chimera or Hell Hounds and you'll have Fire Elementals to boot. And with nothing more than Magic Spirits you can take towns essentially immediately. So you can have Magic Spirits finding towns to take, while your Hell Hounds/Chimera take nodes and encounters. And if you find a wizard you can take out a wizard with stack of Hell Hounds, even with towers in play.

For Sorcery:
12 Mana per turn on turn 1
20 Casting skill
Nagas cost 55
Phantom Warriors cost 6
Phantom Beasts cost 19

So again, you can cast Phantom Beasts on turn 1. Nagas easily dominate towns all on their own with just a single unit. Don't need to make any stacks, just send out 3 or 4 single Nagas all over the map. You can conquer towns and then make a Spearman and then move on. You can easily defend any town with a Phantom Beast. You'll have 5+ towns by turn 20. You can take pretty much every neutral town on Arcanus.

To boot, most Sorcery nodes are trivial to take. You can take them with just a Magic Spirit, or if harder a Naga or maybe even 2 Nagas. If you can't take it in a single go, just keep hitting it with Magic Spirits and Phantom Warriors until you finally do.

And spells you find from the very beginning will be Uncommon at least. So not only do you start with an Uncommon unit that you can field almost immediately, as well as super cheap combat summons, but you will immediately start finding Uncommon level spells as well because you already know all the Common ones, except one.

When you start with a rainbow you will first find a bunch of Common spells. Yes, in the long run this can pay off and be powerful when you have amassed a bunch of spells from all realms, that's true. But its not a "fast start". The point of this is to help new players have faster starts that can get them to a more powerful point much earlier in the game that doesn't require them to have to build units or wait to hire and develop heroes before they can do anything.

[Aunty Herbert]

Hell hounds cost 38, though, 24 with Chaos Mastery. I just checked.

[bjarne.lindh]

But it DOES jumpstart you and make you way more active on map. Way better than anything else as the game is now. And I nearly never cast heroism on the heroes cause they level so fast its a waste of mana! I do it only if Im short of mana and need a magehero to start helping out with spells. But its true that for beginners it might not be best strategy cause this one really relies on multitasking and knowing what lairs is possible to take with the hero you have while also getting cheap neutral citys in process.
In my current game Im not using my normal strategy cause Im going for 5 wizard achievement. And as Kali I choosed Bshan starthero. I had banished 2 wizards before turn 100 and predict to have won game before turn 150.
So it might not be the best strategy for beginners but as it stands NO other combo beats Herostrategy....

[bjarne.lindh]

But playing death is really bad for Hero strategy...vampiric is a mess compared to healing. Getting regeneration seems to be only solution, and lots of healers.

[bjarne.lindh]

And about that Im really starting to feel that the spells you get from lairs cant be entirely random, Im on my 15th game now and havent ONCE got regeneration. Gaias blessing I get EVERY game though...

[rgp151]

I was going to post a screen shot, but don't think you can on here. Anyway, just started up a game with Sorcery 10 books and Conjuration.

Its turn 29. I have 5 cities. One of them was High Elf with 4 Halberdiers, 2 Swordmen, and 1 Cavalry. It's population 10, my capital is pop 7. Just found my first Sorcery node, there are 4 other Nature nodes, but I'll take the Sorcery node next turn. I've got 160 gold, 109 mana, 14 gpt and 17 mpt with 2 Spirits and 1 Naga, 4 turns left on budling the Sawmill in the capital.

Nothing else can really get that fast of a start. What makes Sorcery so easy is you don't have to maintain the higher mpt since you can rely on combat summons instead. Chaos is also good, but to maintain the units getting nodes is more critical.

And of course Death is also good, but I think is more challenging and takes more experience to get started. You have to know what creates are good to attack with Ghouls, which ones to keep around, which ones to let go, when to use Weakeness vs Black Sleep, how to take nodes, which is not necessarily easy. Yes, its all good and can be very effective, it just requires more experience than starting with Sorcery or Chaos IMO.

[Thewizardlord]

Originally posted by rgp151:

I hardly every play 11 books, and really wish 11 book starts didn't even exist, and same for 10 books that they've added now really. I don't think allowing higher level spells at the beginning makes for good games. But this is for new players, so starting with that higher level spell can be helpful.

But do you deny no matter what combo you play you tend to play summon heavy? It's also why you seem to not realize the power of life as it is not known for summons. Yet life is generally recognized as the most powerful or 2nd most powerful after Sorcery.

Honestly Summons are considered a bit underpowered in classic MoM except for certain exceptions (combat summons are decent also) and only if you can cheat them out early. There's a reason Servavy over at COM buffed them so much over normal units.

Your advice gives the impression all the summons are good, which is extremely misleading to newbies. If this was CoM this heavy focus on Summon would be correct. In Classic or New MoM, it's a bit misleading.

Originally posted by rgp151:

In Classic I think 9 books + Conjuration + an Elemental Mastery is by far one of the strongest starts and of course relies heavily on summoning. For Sorcery and Chaos its still probably actually stronger than starting with 10 books even in this game.

Disagree. That's a strong start but hardly the strongest. Most good 11 book strategies are better.

Originally posted by rgp151:

But no, I've never liked Halflings. Just not enough mobility. True the mobility is better in this game, but still. I much prefer Barbarians or Nomads (or of course Draconians). Barbarian Cavalry are way, way better than Slingers for rushing.

I will say that my style is biased by rushing in Classic where towers weren't a thing. With towers its a bit more difficult, but still you can take early capitals.

There are different degrees of rush. There's rush where you scout like crazy and ignore almost anything but going for the enemy capital/cities and AIM TO WIN WITH THE FIRST FEW STACKS YOU CREATE (I call this ultra rush) and there's rush where you mostly all out attack but you do take time to clear nodes, and there's in my view a more sensible rush where you just aim to take an early lead by taking over 2-3 enemy AI wizard terrority and develop normally once you have a huge lead,

In my view, unless you are doing an ultra-rush type strategy endurance Slingers are more than adequate. Yes, I have run into games where my 3rd or last Wizard starts putting guardan wind. My slingers can still cut through with sufficient buffs but it starts getting difficult but by then, I have such lead it doesn't matter.

You fail to realize yes Barbarian Calvary are faster but they are only 4 figures so life buffs are weaker on them than Slingers. This is a huge gap in power that allows the Halfling player to win many victories the Barbarians fail to. Your style favours Summons, thats why you don't know how to play Life even the rush type strategies.

Honestly, Halfling Slingers is such a recognized well honored strategy because Haflings are strong both militarily and economic, if you have problems winning with that particularly now with the enhanced mobility, you can't be a very good player, no offense,

Originally posted by rgp151:

Now in this version, it may be true that things swing a little in favor of Halflings because when attacking capitals simply having more units is better to spread the impact of the towers. But still I think you can go with as little as 3 Barbarian Cavalry for early attacks.

You think or you know? BTW i was a early beta tester focusing on life magic strategics. I can tell you, Life+warlord+Slinger definitely wins. Once you add lion heart they are ridiculous.

Originally posted by rgp151:

One tactic is to throw in some Magic Spirits, so you attack with 3 Cavalry and 3 or 4 Magic Spirits, which will spread out the damage from the tower. Hopefully the tower will hit the Magic spirits a few times. Of course you pre-position the Magic Spirits since they will slow the stack down. Often you can have them waiting nearby in the water.

or this sounds like pure theorizing.

For me personally, I just really value mobility a lot, which is why I also really liked Nomads and Draconians (and Sorcery). So plodding around with 1 movement Slinger stacks was never for me.

Even in classic it would be 2 due to endurance. 3 in New MoM. Feels like you don't know how to play MoM life Slingers. I

And yeah, Life + Nature for the Water Walking and Earth Lore is also good, esp with giant Strength on Barbarians. Or Nomads with Horsebowmen and Rangers moving at 6.

With Earth lore, you know where to go, any differences in mobility is more or less moot really. You going to win whether is movement 3 or 5.

Don't get me wrong I like a lot of what you say, but your view of the relative power of Summons and your underestimation of the power of life + slingers is disturbing

[bjarne.lindh]

Well, the thing is though, you cant endgame very fast relying on troops, they just are too slow. Thats why Im so negative to the poor defending of the capitols, a fast hero kites around their troops and takes the capitol, without spellcasting the rest is a piece of cake. And fast heroes tracks down every last city in a matter of a few turns. I have witnessed that the AI actually to some extent follow rules of troopsupport, you dont even have to fight their multitudes of stacks...cause without citys they are soon gone.