Picks: Warlord, Myrran (Dwarves), Famous, Charismatic, Artificier, 2 Life books, Patch n

Planning to try a relatively "mundane" playthrough, relying on armies and heroes. Yeah, I know it's not optimal. :)

Early game advice?

Don't die. ;)

More seriously: Dwarf Swordsmen are solid, so make sure to build the building (smithy?) that enables them early. Hammerhands are the go-to unit for dwarves later. I think they beat out the golem, overall.

The other strength of dwarves is the awesome engineers they have. They build roads super fast, so you might want to examine that too.

Dwarves get bonuses for mining gold and gems and anything you can dig up, so build your cities next to those resources.

Thanks. The building tree chart should help there.

Ok, so start with swordsmen, take over some nearby cities (if available), or settle (if not). Occupy mining resources, link everyone with roads...Can engineers build towns? Can't remember.

...With mining being a big thing, building marketplaces/etc. and converting gold to magic sounds practical Alchemist could be a nice pick for the next run...

My starting fame is going to be good, so obviously mercenaries. And heroes, if I can get them. The sooner you get a hero, the better, after all. And especially ones who can train. Any ":army bonus" heroes are going to be especially useful.

Need to go over the tech trees later...

One of two ways to go with magic: Either build up a massive amount of skill, and go for critical, powerful, one-shot spells, or bulk a few core armies (heroes?) with critical spells.

As I recall, dwarves are pretty surly and other races don't like to be ruled by them, so you might want to research/hope for some pacifying spells like Just Cause. Also look for spells that increase reproduction. Stream of Life is going to be your holy grail.

No engineers can't build towns. Only settlers can build new towns. The shortcoming (no pun intended) of dwarves is that they reproduce really slowly, and their settlers are very expensive. You're going to want to conquer cities if possible, and pick your settlement locations very carefully. Settling in a bad location is going to be a waste, especially with no Nature spells to modify the terrain.

Once dwarves get rolling they produce lots and lots of gold and they can crank out new military units really fast. I'd try collecting an army of heroes and Hammerhands (preferably with Mithril weapons at least, if not Adamantium), and start popping ruins and nodes. You have Life books, so maybe you have the better Guardians instead of simple Magic Spirits for the nodes.

The Wind Mage would be a great hero to get. He has Wind Walking which means his whole stack moves by flying. That would be perfect for hauling an army of Hammerhands around Myrror because dwarves have very poor naval technology. Make sure to give him items that increase movement.

Wolf's comments raises an important question that will affect your strategy: What size land mass did you choose at the start of the game?

If it is large land masses, then churn out 2-3 engineers to connect your cities with a road. Just be very careful to make the road pass through the cities (not around), and defend all of them because enemies will be happy to travel long distances on those roads to visit your cities. The roads will make it easy to move your guys to the front, which is going to be important for replacing losses with your 1 move units. Also, focus more on using dwarves because unrest will be an issue with all myrran races.

If you come across draconians, then get a couple draconian spearmen out to do your scouting. 2 move, flying, and extra sight range for cheap. Draconian spearmen make great city defenders too, since they can stall out land-only units. Doom drakes are probably the long term unit of choice for military from draconian cities.

If you come across trolls, then go for War Trolls and ignore the mammoths. Don't even bother with an Armorer's Guild, and don't bother making settlers to make new troll cities.

With only 2 life spell books, your magic choices are going to be pretty poor. You'll need to crack some nodes and lairs to get decent magic. Just Cause and Healing are two excellent spells to use if you can lay hands on them. Look at creating some starter artifacts for heroes, then move on toward mid tier artifacts. No sense wasting the artificer + warlord combo for hero buffing. You might consider pumping research until you have Summon Hero/Champion, otherwise just pump spell skill for when you do get decent magic from cracking nodes.

Bookwyrm above gives some excellent tips and I agree with most of them.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Myrran races pretty much HATE the each other. The Beastmen and Draconians are the least contentious of the Myrran races but are pretty much like Klackons and have +20% unrest with the others on their plane.

Keep in mind that it may be best to just Raze the other Myrran races and do your best to grab Halflings or Highmen (Nomads if not those 2) from Arcanus and move them down to Myrror as those 3 races suffer no extra unrest with Dwarfs. Not to mention both those races would really benefit from some Adamantium :P

For the Road Building Engineers, be sure to enchant them with Endurance as this speeds up road construction in 2 ways. Endurance cuts road construction time by 50%. For example making a road on a Hill or Forest tile normally takes 1 unit of normal engineers 6 Turns, Endurance reduces this to 3 Turns. When Endurance is combined with the 50% bonus that Dwarfs already have it reduces time needed by 75%. This allows 2 Enduranced Dwarven Engineers to build a road anywhere in only 1 turn :)

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarves

I think a lot of this advice just isn't for the OP's wizard. Look at his retorts.

He would want to capture and just keep hostile Myrrans' cities on ice for a long while. Trade Goods. Enemy races are too expensive to build up. Attracting mercenaries relies on stockpiling gold. Leave the tax rate at an optimal level for the dwarves, rather than lower it to try to please everyone. But definitely don't raze any cities, especially not myrran races' cities; all of them are useful. Losing fame over something like that is just awful, especially early.

Keep stockpiling gold, and have the fortress spam settlers to maintain an ideal population level— i.e., rather than build a Temple and huge garrison there, just expand horizontally.

Engineers very early, but hammerhands are more optional, since presumably there will be a lot of mercs and heroes knocking. Pray for a high elf unit. A Forester unit can stack with dwarf mountaineers and give the group Pathfinding. Super thing for engineers.

Check spellbook runes to see if stream of life is hidden in there. Whether it is, or isnt, that can help make decisions during the game. Maybe there is an enemy wizard with life books. Maybe you can trade create artifact for a rare life spell early on.

Hey all this thread got me thinking again and I decided to try a Troll+Chaos/Black Channel Game. Picks were Myrran, Alchemy (Trolls need this bad), Artificer (To trade for the 2 Channels or Summon Hero) with 2 books in each Death, Chaos and Nature (web).

Sadly in my current game my usual Hero choices are kind of sucky because of their lousy random picks and ones I don't usually use got pretty decent ones. For example:

Malleus got sucky Prayer Master.
Yramrag got even suckier Charmed. (Will still use him for the casting speed and spells)

Shin Bo got Armsmaster + Leadership lol. This normally would be very bad but putting this guy in with a bunch of WarTrolls will get them exp up really fast and he can't be targeted by enemy spells which lets him stay alive lol.
Morgana got Arcane Power + some more Casting Skill which is decent.

I am almost afraid to see what my boys Ravashack, Mortu, Aerie and Warrax got.

Yeah, that's pretty good for War Trolls actually. Do dead War Trolls come back to life after a battle if it ends with no vitctor? I don't remember ever seeing that before. If they do come back to life, an invisible hero could prevent a disaster.

War Trolls are just plain fun.

Regeneration kicks in only for victors of the battle. So if the 50 rounds run out, the defenders would regenerate.

Same story for Life Drain effects and Zombie Mastery; they only kick in for the victors of the battle.

As far as I know it depends entirely on who is the "Defender" as if combat goes those 50 rounds the defender is the victor so in that case yes his guys would come back because of their Regen. Being Black Channeled "Undead" has no bearing.

However if your ShinBo led Trolls initiate the Attack then if the battle goes the 50 rounds then only the units you have left around survive.

Of course if you were defending a city with ShinBo then by making the battle go those 50 rounds your city is probably going to take heavy damage sadly.

I've found flying/invisible units combo AMAZINGLY well with city walls in defending a city. Computer won't romp over your town because they can't get past the flyers + walls. :)

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I'm bored. While dwarves get along poorly with all the Myrran races, they do get on pretty well with halflings and high men and most of the other Arcanan races. I would make a priority of taking a wizard tower early, so you can get to Arcana and conquer some of these more easily pacified slaves. You might even send a halfling settler back to Myrros and found a halfling city near an adamantine square so you can build adamantine slingers to go with your hammerhands.