Must say I totally agree with this. And it also makes me wish developers today worked even half as well at creating games that could hold my attention for even 25% of the time that MoM, MoO2 and HoM&M 2/3 as I still play these games to this day.

Ofc just because there are so many ways will not mean you won't find a favorite and be reluctant to change. I am having trouble not doing the Artifact/Rune build now that I have discovered it.

PS guys let me know what you think of my spell book discount info. It was just a bit annoying that I coudn't find the info easily so I wrote it up myself.

I was aware of it, but I still found it helpful to have it written up. Thanks. I'm going to do a short write-up of my pure summoner game in a moment, and spell discounts certainly played a role there.

Yep. MoM is a very well-designed game, it seems.

Actually your thread was what pushed me into doing mine as any discussion of Summoning would be incomplete without it but it deserved a thread of it's own as well.

Sometimes people who know a game understand certain things happen but never bother to spell it out for others.

For myself I hadn't realized the Bonus started at 8 Books so even I learned something new.

You may be under a misapprehension. MAGICAL RANGED attacks do NOT suffer ranged penalty so it does no good/bad to wait for them to be within 4 squares.

Dark Elf Spearmen are the best to use early for Ranged Attack Strength. This is because they have 8 figures and all the Ranged Attacks start at 1 and increase by exp level the same amount, (minus Priest, Warlocks and Nightmares). They start at 1 at Recruit, 2 at Regular and Veteran, 3 at Elite & Ultra Elite and 4 if you can get them to Champion. Therefore Swordsmen and Halberdiers are not that useful, in fact I never build them. Even Cavalry suffer a bit because they HAVE to use those magical ranged attacks before they can use their melee attack. I would rather build Night Blades if I need fighters as they benefit from Adamantium greatly.

I love to have Flying WarLocks (usually through Chaos Channels). So nice to take out Great Wyrms with them hehe.

I know that's how it's supposed to work, but my experience doesn't match that, at least when we're talking about spearmen, swordsmen, and nightmares. Priests and warlocks definitely do follow that rule. The others...I'm not so sure. I suspect they have some sort of "special" magical ranged attack.

Are you taking into account that because of the relative weakness of their attacks early on it may not be getting through the enemies defense?

Remember 3 Def roughly blocks 1 damage on avg from each attacker. Sadly this goes a long way when you only have 1 atk each. This is why they really need exp bad.

Myran Races especially are also tougher to take down. Trolls, Dwarfs and Beastmen all have increased hp and Draconians have 1 more defense than normal.

On avg a fresh unit of DE's Spearmen deal 8*1*30% damage which equals 2.4 damage.
Most Swordsmen, as they are often the first rampaging monsters, have 4 Defense vs ranged attacks without any exp, which blocks 1.2 damage on avg.


Here are what stats get improved each level for normal units.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Experience_Level#Attribute_Improvement_Table_-_Normal_Units

No, I'm really just giving you my subjective opinion after playing plenty of dark elf games in the recent past. I got the very strong impression that magical ranged attacks from swordsmen, spearmen, and nightmares work like regular missile attacks instead of true ranged magic attacks like the priests and warlocks have. Next time you try a dark elf game, give it a try. Set up a line of spearmen against whatever enemy you're fighting (skeletons, zombies, ghouls, phantom warriors all work), and compare the effectiveness of the ranged attacks from long distances and short distances.

I freely admit I could be completely wrong about this, but for me those attacks always seem much more effective up close. Which is to say they do some damage at close range instead of none at long range.

Sometimes I have the feeling that Master of Magic is "lucky" for the player. I mean, that the developers put some bias into the probabilities when players get in difficult situations. My recent game was such that gave me 2 or 3 developing cities while my home city was well built. To make them catch up, I had to reduce taxes and got a gold problem. The game happened to have me twice benefitting from a merchants gold gift. That never happened in about 5 games before.
While this might be so, I sometimes have that feeling in combat: that the odds are some sort to your favor if you are outnumbered. For example, the confusion spell seem to work better if your situation is worse...
Perhaps it is just imagination....
I am thinking about this. If I was a developer, perhaps I would implement that to seduce a player and make him fall in love with the game. But this only works if it is not noticed....

That's not really my experience at all (I opened a thread to see if other people have the same experience). Might just be a visual bias, but my guys seem to roll more poorly than the enemy in a general sense. Citing from the other thread, an enemy magic spirit beat my magic spirit nearly to death without taking much damage.