rakenan: I also tried the build with Myrran and 8 Nature books as Dark Elves. That game was profoundly unpleasant.

UniversalWolf: One thing I've noticed about this build is that all Nature is not great for heroes. You can create items with pathfinding, water walking, and elemental resistance, and that's good for scouting and exploring, but you aren't going to get flight, invisibility, guardian wind, magic immunity, or true sight. Sorcery nodes tend to be pretty tough, since phantom beasts and warriors will be a pain, not to mention sky drakes.

I found the Entangle spell to be very handy for sky drakes, though. For some reason it hardly ever fizzles from the sorcery node.

UniversalWolf: A much simpler reason: I had never tried High Elves before. I picked the Oberic portrait because he looked like an elf.

The mana generation is definitely useful though, since you'll be casting lots of spells, and the poor growth rate is not much of a problem when all your cities will have Gaia's Blessing.

I've tried a couple of variations on this theme since, and none have worked as well. I tried going 5 Nature books, 4 Chaos books (I wanted Raise Volcano so I could colonize arctic regions), plus Chaos Mastery and Nature Mastery. Very much harder, because you can't start out with Gaia's Blessing, Change Terrain, and Transmute. Those three spells are they key. Without them High Elves are hard because they grow so slow, and like you say they have no engineers or shamans. And no Warships either, for that matter. I could just barely produce enough food and money to scrape by. If I were going to try it again I would scum an exceptional starting city location or I wouldn't bother.

High Elven units are pretty good though. Elven Lords are decent, although they seem slightly less powerful than Paladins (I haven't checked the numbers though). The Longbowmen and Pegasi worked best for me. Both should be used in large groups. The trick with Pegasi is to get as close as possible to the target before using the missile attack. Not usually a problem with a fly speed of 3.

And yeah, when I first figured out Trolls couldn't use Adamantium I was disappointed. On the other hand, Black Channelled Champion War Trolls are already massively powerful.

EvilLoynis: Was the reason you chose High Elves due to their mana generation?

It is odd how bad HE's are gimped in not having both Engineers and Shaman/Priests.

Although truthfully I find Myrran races that cannot take advantage of Adamantium to be much more frustrating. And that actually includes both Dark Elves and Trolls.

Tervvo: Elven wizards in a full group can take any city in Arcanus easily other than Paladin protected cities in which case longbowmen will take them down unbuffed with a couple shots each at veteran level.

TwoHandedSword: Point of order: High Elves have magicians; only Dark Elves have wizards. Doom Bolt > Fireball, almost every time.

But, High Men magicians have SIX figures per unit (instead of just four) which at elite level makes them almost as powerful as Dark Elf wizards, substantially sturdier, and much MUCH cheaper.

UniversalWolf: I've been trying this build again, and it shows off how different each game of MoM can be.

I started with High Elves and 11 Nature books on a fairly large continent. Strangely, there were very few nodes nearby, and most of those were guarded by Sky Drakes or Great Drakes, making them tough to crack (I still haven't gotten them, as a matter of fact). There were also no portal towers nearby, so it took a long time before I could access Myrror. The only neutrals nearby were a couple of gnoll cities, which I razed rather than captured. In fact, this whole game has been characterized by a lack of neutral cities. As far as I know, the ones I destroyed were the only two on Arcanus, and across the entirety of Myrror there was only one: a pathetically anemic dwarf city which still had only one citizen far into the course of the game when I finally captured it.

Luckily I started with mithril (but so did everyone else), and I managed to get five cites going with longbow garrisons before I ran into opposition. Luckily because once they came, they were hitting me from three sides at once. I took down Rjak (Death/Barbarians) who was on the far side of my continent. He never managed to get too big and was never much of a threat because he was in conflict with Freya (High Men/Nature) who was much more dangerous to me, despite starting on an island apart from my continent. She would cast water walking on her units and send them across to try to destroy my cities and plant colonies. I slowly beat her back, but she's still on her island.

Raven was the other annoyance. He had a city of halflings on an island off the other side of my continent. It was actually a really good spot for a city, but there wasn't room for any more colonies, so he was launching invasions to my continent almost from the very start of the game. I had a couple touch-and-go battles with large armies of slingers before I massed a bunch of Pegasi and took him out.

In this game I used Transmute and Change Terrain very offensively. Not only did I change Raven's mithirl lode to silver (and later Freya's too) and his gold to iron, I changed every plains square around enemy cities to forest in order to stunt their growth.

With no access to engineers for road building, I was really short on cash for a long time. My dwarf city is up and running now, so I should have roads. By now many of my cities are fully grown, and are cranking out trade good money, so I'm doing well.

Finally, there is no Adamantium anywhere on Myrror, although there's lots of mithril everywhere.

It's been a good game so far. Very satisfying as an empire building experience, with slow, steady progress. Things have picked up since I got The Wind Mage and created a couple movement artifacts for him. I use him to plant new colonies on Myrror quickly. I was very vulnerable early, since usable nodes were so scarce and/or tough. I think this hurt my rivals too though. Lo Pan is my last big opponent. He's got about six cities on a continent about 2/3 the size of mine. His amusing Corruption attacks get mopped up by my Gaia's Blessing spells, but he keeps sending large armies of hell hounds and wolf riders, so I'm going to have to take him down soon. Or cast the Spell of Mastery.