Your most magic-less game

[MKDELTA]

Mine must be my current EA Ulm game. Glory of the Gods, some VP stuff, Indies 9, very difficult magic research. I simply...have...no usable mages. Or that much usable spells. E1 mages with some feeble random on top aren't very useful. Especialy without magma bolts. I have couple of Antlered Shamans backing my raiding groups armiees/with Panic. Apart from that, pretty much nothing. One or two of the groups had a shaman tossing that first berserk spell on some units. Even site searching has given exceptionaly dry results.

[Sombre]

The problem with a hard research game designed to cut down on magic is that bless troops take over, along with a handful of effective SC pretenders (like PoD).

A game with very hard research, pretenders restricted max of 4 in a magic path and certain pretenders banned might be good fun.

I do sometimes turn on hard research for SP games though, where I don't use uber blesses or SCs.

[DigitalSin]

I have to say, I almost never play with low magic teams, and I find the magic one of the most fun parts of the game. I don't think I've ever really had a magicless or low-magic game..

[DrPraetorious]

My suggestion would be:
* Very difficult research.
* 125% resources and supplies, 100% gold.
* All pretenders must be *dormant*, neither awake nor imprisoned.

Everyone would still go for a strong bless or a supercombatant, it is true, but that's okay if everyone knows that up front.

[ano]

Doesn't it almost *kill* certain nations and certain strategies with no chance to defend themselves from double-blessed van (who takes the imprisoned pretender anyway) at least with PoD. I find Sombre's suggestion much more viable.

[MKDELTA]

Except that AI can't do double blessed Vans, and I don't play Vanheim because I find the theme boring. I wanted this to be a thread about experiences with low-magic games, not another minmaxing thread.