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Thanks for your replies to my huge question. One more question, what is a retort used for?

Originally posted by SBoy@Mar 23 2006, 08:59 PM
Thanks for your replies to my huge question. One more question, what is a retort used for?

It depends on what the specific retort is. Basicly a 'retort' is like a special skill of your wizard, such as Artificer, Alchemy, Warlord, etc.

Of those 3, Artificer halves the cost of creating artifacts through a spell and starts you off with the artifact creation spell from the begining; Alchemy lets you convert mana to gold at a ratio of 1:1 instead of 2:1, which means you no longer lose half of the resource when you convert from one form to the other; and Warlord makes all your normal (i.e. non-magical) units be 1 level higher than usual, which is very useful (that's why it costs 2 picks).

[Richrf]

This is the best game ever!!!

You get a lot more from it , if you study the manuals...

Though 1.31 changed a few things, it's still mostly valid.

For a challange in game play, try taking only a single book of magic or try conquering the world with only a single city!
:Titan:

Why, I can conquer the world, though with two cities and not one :P And with all nodes on Myrror being my :whistle:

[another_guest]

Originally posted by Gamefreak@Apr 3 2006, 12:26 PM
Why, I can conquer the world, though with two cities and not one :P And with all nodes on Myrror being my :whistle:

What difficulty setting? Hats off if it's more than easy
I must say I have to expand a bit early in the game to get some cash flow... Only 2 cities would make my advance a lot slower I reckon.

I tried that once, on the second-hard difficult setting, 4 opponents, strongest magic node effects and medium land-size (hate the opponents to have too many cities, slows game-turns down). It is safe enough as long as you start on Myrror. I chose a city with a good bonus, preferably 1 adamantium + 1 gold / jewel mine in it's radius, and being on water shore is great as well for those nations that can build merchant's guild (requires two ship buildings before can be built). All you have to do is to plunder few easiest lairs around you with the two starter units, then position them in the city for the case of attack of neutral city or plundering monsters. And from the first round on comstruct buildings, build them all.
When I have them all up to wizards tower (therefore already have alchemists's guild) I start to build the best units (while dismissing the starting ones), one or two each for city defense and to plunder harder lairs, for example with High Elves - 1-2 Elvenlords (the ones with piercing attack like Paladins), 2 Longbowshooters (with adamantium they're good killers) and 1-2 Magicians. After they're built I set the city to produce gold through converting build-strength (the hammers) for gold (with all of the gold-bonus increasing buildings that gives a nice boost) and set up a second town.
With the units I plunder the more advanced lairs and preferably at least one magic node if there's one nearby and reachable, and meanwhile study spells up to be able to create artifact and summon a champion, not hero. He either joins the "elite army" or waits in town until the best, most powerful artifacts for him are created. When he has them all he can try himself on all but the hardest lairs/nodes, gains levels through experience unless he was cast Chaos Channels / Black Channels upon (then he doesn't get exp from battles), gathers fame that decreases the gold-cost of units and most important - conquers the magic nodes and spell-books/mana-increasing retorts (save-reload until you have what you want). With each node more in my possession I grow in power rapidly so already soon the enemy wizards are not a threat anymore, unless one of them was lucky and managed to rise high in power while I was trying the same. But even then there're no real problems anymore, it's just a question of some time and lots of fun before he's eradicated, my meanwhile powerful champion will quickly decrease his army and number of his cities, and weak he's not a threat.

All you actually will have to do from then on is to study spells up to Spell of Mastery, cast that spell and win. The AI is quite weak so there's not much challenge anyway, but on the difficulty-level Impossible it's quite difficult while doesn't really increase fun.

[blastradius14]

I've beaten it on hard with one city when starting on Myrror. Just lock em out and go for armageddon!


Summoning volcanoes and owning all the nodes on your side of the world really helps your power to keep the enemies from dispelling your planar seal.

[another_guest]

Originally posted by blastradius14@Apr 4 2006, 04:01 AM
I've beaten it on hard with one city when starting on Myrror. Just lock em out and go for armageddon!

Summoning volcanoes and owning all the nodes on your side of the world really helps your power to keep the enemies from dispelling your planar seal.

Lately I feel more like starting on the regular plane (i.e. not Myrror) because it's happened a bit too often that my first city was overrun by rampaging monsters from a nearby node that was too powerful to conquer thus far.

Volcanoes never seem to work for me, whenever I cast them I don't see any increase in mana per turn :blink:

I usually go for lots of magic and a relatively small army (compared to enemy wizards), with a few beefed up heroes/champions with ranged attack. Plus a few powerful beasts to take care of the toughest nodes.

Originally posted by another_guest@Apr 4 2006, 09:48 AM
Volcanoes never seem to work for me, whenever I cast them I don't see any increase in mana per turn :blink:

I usually go for lots of magic and a relatively small army (compared to enemy wizards), with a few beefed up heroes/champions with ranged attack. Plus a few powerful beasts to take care of the toughest nodes.

Volcanoes add 0.5 to your spell power points (in that magic-menu above) which is then divided between your mana, research and casting skill accordingly to how you raised the three bars. If you you leave them at their default values you should notice increase in mana per turn for every two volcanoes. And don't forget that volcanoes have a % chance to convert back to hills and stop producing mana after that, so never rely on volcanoes as your firm mana source unless you have Armageddon in effect, then there appear more new volcanoes than them stop to exist, although there's a limited amount of volcanoes that can be existing.