Overarching Magic Strategies

[HoneyBadger]

When playing Aboleths, I definitely think a LOT about what my magic strategy is going to be for that game. Currently, I've got my pretender plus 20something Mind Lords racing for early game Wish, but I pay very close attention to what I've got them researching at any given time, to make sure that my Mind Lords are able to provide as much long-range artillery as possible. Another good strategy is fever-fetish spamming on indep commanders. For the low-low-low price of 30 gold you can usually wring 3-4 firegems out of them before they turn into quivering pustulescent bloodjelly, beyond covering your base cost. Not a bad profit. Hard on his kids though, but then, to make a great omelette...

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Epaminondas, I think you make some good points. However, mid game, you might have a handful of great mages; late game, a double handful. Instead of that you could have 10 times that number of weak mages and/or well-equipped commanders acting as artillery. The massed mages strategy is awesome, but upkeep is a big drawback--100 mages at 150gp each means ~1,500gp/turn in upkeep. 100 massed commanders would cost 150gp/turn. Massed mages would cost initially 15,000gp. 100 well-equipped massed Commanders would cost 1,000gp plus 15gemsX100=1,500gems.

The loss of a mighty mage can be devastating. To protect itself, the mage has to expend the first 2-3 rounds of combat doing defensive spells. Then he can attack maybe 1-2 times before he has to rest, then he can attack maybe a third time before combat is over.

Compare this to 10 weak mages, spread out to avoid being shotgunned, spamming attack spells. 5-6 attack spells times 10 mages=a LOT of damage.

Compare this to 10 well-equipped commanders doing 5 attack spells of corrosion or numbness or fireball. The commanders are better armored, have more hitpoints, and can dish out the damage....

Of course, if you combine a great mage with great equipment, you have an even more powerful mage. Chainmail of displacement, Amulet of Reinvigoration, Luck Pendant; s/he can concentrate on attack, and get off a lot of powerful spells before s/he fatigues. Expensive though. And you are puttting all your eggs in one basket. (Caveat, this is what I usually do, just playing devil's advocate.)

There's plusses and minuses to each strategy.

[dirtywick]

I prefer the Thunder Bow whenever possible. For it's effect, it's a steal at 5 gems.

I understand there's different ways to go about it, but Construction is a must for every nation at some point. Even just to level 2 will give your commanders something to do instead of standing behind their troops dodging arrows. For most nations, sending a regular commander into battle naked is going to kill him sooner rather than later, and making a small investment of 5 gems to give him a ranged weapon is a good idea. You don't have to kit him out, just a cheap ranged weapon allows him to contribute and stay in relative safety.

So I think that however you want to play it, Const to 2 early to forge some cheap bows/wands is a smart move.

[Frostmourne27]

Most vaguely, I think you could say that there are three paths to magical victory: hordes, SCs/Thugs, or battle magic.

Hordes would be things like ivy crowns, vine ogres and the above metioned corpsemen. Spells that produce fairly good units, cost few gems and can be cast over and over by weak mages. Devil spamming counts, but only since slaves are cheap. Obviously, you need less devils than vine men, but it's the same concept.

SCs and Thugs would be high powered summons, with or without items, operating singly or in small groups. Anything costing more that about 10 gems per summoned creature probably falls into this group (I'm including things that probably wouldn't normally be called thugs, just as I put devils into the horde section - really, another catagory might be good)

Battle Magic is what Caelum does. Lots of mages, fighting with your troops, casting spells from lightning bolt to wrathful skies. This is pretty nation specific. E.g. Mictlan is going to have a harder ime at this than Caelum. Note that I haven't distinguished between buffs and killing spels.

Going along with these three groups would be magical support. This would be things like using summons and lucky randoms to diversify your magic, forging skull mentors/lightless lanterns, arming commanders with cheap magical trinket-esque items, casting helpful globals (the weaker, non game changing ones, like riches from beneath - this IS a game about magic, unless you play ulm)

P.S. Obviously, thats fairly rough and generic, and my three groups are in urgent need of subgroups, but it's late at night and I want to get some sleep.

[UninspiredName]

I'm a big fan of Global Enchantments, if you can find something that meshes well with your choice of nation. Even after Utterdark is dispelled, I find non-undead nations will be absolutely crippled by the population dive. Lure of the Deep and Dark Skies are also nice choices if you have a high-magic pretender with nothing better to do. Also, unless you're a superpower, many people don't bother dispelling a gem-spawner. At least not before you get a return on the spell's cost.

...But yeah, I love my Utterdark.

[Agrajag]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
Epaminondas, I think you make some good points. However, mid game, you might have a handful of great mages; late game, a double handful. Instead of that you could have 10 times that number of weak mages and/or well-equipped commanders acting as artillery. The massed mages strategy is awesome, but upkeep is a big drawback--100 mages at 150gp each means ~1,500gp/turn in upkeep. 100 massed commanders would cost 150gp/turn. Massed mages would cost initially 15,000gp. 100 well-equipped massed Commanders would cost 1,000gp plus 15gemsX100=1,500gems.

Your math is off, upkeep is IIRC 1/15 of unit cost (Which is probably why you made the mages cost 150), which would make a 100 of them cost 1,000 upkeep per turn.
Furthermore 1,500 gems are far more valuable than 15,000 gold. For one thing, you could get 22,500 gold just alchemizing (assuming correct gems), and you could probably put those gems to much better use in other places (150 tartarians come to mind, though obviously quite a bit harder to get.)