playing mom on hard difficulty gives me a lot of trouble. One big problem is when an enemy wizard casts spell blast every time I try to summon a hero/champ or make items for them. Since heroes are my game plan, that spells big trouble. The only solution I can think of is to attack that wizard with creature armies, but that takes so long to develop that another wizard defeats me before I can make it work. What would you do? Thx

If Hard gives you trouble, then Hard + Insecticide would probably give you fits (and Impossible will give you nightmares).

What sort of build are you using? What color(s) are your spellbooks, and what skills (if any) does your wizard have?

I tend to play a Hero-centric build myself; my current preferred configuration consists of 2 LIfe, 2 Chaos (or Nature), 3 Sorcery, Runemaster, Artificer and Warlord. This build gives me stronger starting units, an immediate and ongoing boost to heroes, the power to build and break items for a profit (and equip my heroes with better stuff sooner) and the ability to incorporate abilities such as Flaming, Guardian Wind and Flight into hero items. The downside, of course, is a distinct lack of Rare and Very Rare spells, at least until I start banishing and re-banishing the other wizards.

Other options for you might be to summon fantastic units to augment your heroes (or city garrisons) or cheat by using Alt-P to scramble the enemy wizards' personalities. But by far the best strategy is to go forth and conquer their fortress over and over, if you can: not only will you buy time, but you'll pick up new spells, and expand your empire while at the same time reducing theirs. (As part of this trick, I like to use Summoning Circle + Word of Recall to quickly garrison newly-conquered cities, to reduce the risk of reconquest.)

Bottom line is, think outside the box. Put more points into spell skill, so you can eventually summon things faster. Nodes (especially on Myrror) can have prisoners, saving you the trouble of casting Summon Hero. Spellcasting heroes can make battles easier, if you sometimes use their spells instead of their attacks. High fame leads to better merchant offers than what you can cast with Create Artifact. Consider halflings; they're a fast-growing friendly race, and their slingers can be ridiculously effective, especially with a nearby adamantium or mithril deposit and/or an alchemist's guild.

I (and others) can offer you more specific advice with more info on what your wizard has and how you play. In the meantime, try some of these tips and best of luck.

Thanks 2hs. My build is 5 sorcery, 1 life or nature, plus warlord, artificer, conjurer, alchemy. Similar to yours, I think. My strategy is to get Malleus and another hero or two, make them items with guardian wind, magic immunity, flight, and some + attack and to hit. I send them out to tear up anything in between me and victory. It has worked well but its weaknesses are 1. invisible enemies, and 2. spell blast, which prevents me getting my guys equipped or even summoned.

First off Gerin I see you read my thread regarding just how awesome Malleus is haha so congrats on choosing the Hero I consider the best non champion ;)

I also agree with 2HS about NOT picking Conjurer as this really needs you to focus on Summoning NON Heroe units like sprites, war bears etc to have it's benefits come in useful. On the whole summoning non epic creatures, Sky Drakes/Wraiths/Great Wyrm/Angel etc, is pretty useless as you really need to many of them to do anything decent and they don't get levels for keeping them around longer.

Another way to help with casting without interuption is to have a couple other Spell Caster wizards sitting in your main city to help speed it up. I like to use Zaldron especially for this but also Yramrag, Serena (is she gets Sage or Noble), Morgana (noble/sage/arcane Power). Basically if you get a caster that has Spell casting and Sage they make GREAT fortress Heroes to help crank out artifacts and/or spells. I like to take either 2 or 3 Life books to get Heroism to auto boost them to level 4 as this helps them if they are defending the town, helping to cast AND Sage boost.

My Favorite Build is the Artificer & Runemaster combo (artifacts only cost 75% and you can make and break for faster mana) and starting on Myrror. I usually get 2 Life/Chaos books and either 2 Nature or sometimes 2 Sorc. Sometimes I will choose Warlord instead of Myrran and get 1 more book.

I appreciate all this great input and will get to work putting it into effect right away. :)

Here is one of the main problems you run into when playing a strategy game. Choosing which method your going to use and what your ultimate units will be.

When using Conjurer you would really usually want to specialize in 1 magic getting it's Mastery retort as well. This only works with Sorcery, Nature and Chaos Magics though.

Also if your going to be focusing on combat summons and/or normal summons then you would probably also want to have the Channeler retort as this not only reduces upkeep costs on both summons and enchantments but it also negates distance from your capitol when casting in combat. For instance when you are on the opposite plane all your wizards spells cost 3x normal amount but with Channeler it's just the normal cost.

Another very advanced possibility with summons is Conjurer + Mastery + 13 spell books in same element giving instant and unlimited summons in and out of combat HAHAHAHA

13 books = - 60% Realm Casting/Research cost reduction
Mastery = - 15% Realm Casting/Summoning reduction
Conjurer = - 25% Summoning Casting/Research Reduction

This strat needs you to choose the mastery and Conjurer straight off with 9 spell books and finding 4 more books from nodes/lairs. It's easier to do this than choose 11 books and hope to get Mastery/Conjurer.

The original advice to stay away from conjurer was based on the fact that he states that Heroes are his main choice for play style.

Yep; I completely overlooked this simple boost. I use it myself during the early game, but once I'm ready to take on the world, I march out all (or all but one) of my heroes and give up most of this benefit. Of course, by then I've built up my mana bank and spellcasting skill to the point where I can handle the loss.

Y'all are right about Artificer/Runemaster. It's a very effective combo. I did miss having Warlord though. :(

The above strategy is only viable for Nature, Chaos and Sorcery magics because Life and Death lack a mastery skill to reduce the casting costs that last 15%.

I believe the easiest magical realm to do this with would be Sorcery along with choosing Halflings. Slingers are great ranged attackers and also quite effective vs sorcery guys except ofc for sky drakes and air elementals. vs Phantom warriors and beats though they can really be effective.

Also keep in mind that although getting the above books/skills would allow you to summon 100 Sky Drakes in 1 turn, you would still have to pay the upkeep on them as soon as you hit end turn.