Having just recently competed my first game on Easy difficulty I mostly managed to figure out most of the systems including diplomacy establishing an alliance with a wizard and living in "Harmony" after the first two wizards that I encountered both declared war on me. Third time's a charm as they say.

Other wizards would often park units on my nodes including my ally before trying to steal them from me. (My ally never sent a spirit to claim the node but it is still unnerving all the same.)

I went through the documentation but I was not able to find the answer to this.

At which treaty-level do wizards leave your nodes alone in the different versions (1.31, 1.52 and Caster of Magic)?

Secondly, on my first game (1.31) I had a stack of hell hounds guarding a Sorcery Node. Is it just my imagination or can this harm creatures belonging to a different domain?

I also seem to recall a rampaging unit (Halfling Slinger) running into a Sorcery Node that I controlled and then joining my cause.

All my answers deal with 1.31. I know the Community Patch and Caster of Magic have changes, but I'm not particularly familiar with them, especially CoM. Congrats! Be advised that treaties aren't really worth anything, as the AI will sometimes decide they just hate your guts and it is time to go to war between turns. It is too goofy to depend on. Spell trading is nice, though, so feel free to do that (but carefully consider whether you want them to be able to cast whatever you're giving in trade!). None. If a node isn't guarded, an AI wizard is going to send something to sit on top of it, with an eye toward eventually claiming the node as their own. There is no notification when node control changes hands, either. My solution has always been to plop a spearman down on any node I've claimed so they can't steal it without starting a battle. I've almost never had them actually attack my spear garrison, which is nice. That is your imagination.

Nodes have two effects on battles:
1) If the battle takes place on the tile containing the node itself, then the node has a 500(?) strength Counter Magic effect that will try to counter any spell NOT matching the node (ex. Nature spells are unaffected in a Nature node, but any non-Nature spell in a Nature node has to survive the node's Counter Magic). This only applies to spells cast in battle, not to spells cast overland (ex. you can cast Holy Weapon on your Nature node guards while out of battle, but in battle the Nature node will try to counter the Holy Weapon spell).

This applies to spells cast by units as well, not just wizards and heroes.

2) Each node has an area of influence that affects some of the tiles around it; the influenced tiles are marked by the sparkles after any player has melded with the node. If no player has melded with a node, the area of influence still exists, but you can't see the sparkles. Creatures that match the node's sphere of magic get a +2 bonus to most of their stats in any battle on a tile under the node's influence. So those Phantom Warriors guarding that Sorcery node have 2 armor, not zero armor. This bonus applies to ALL creatures in the area of influence during battle; if you summon some Phantom Warriors in a Sorcery node, your warriors will also have 2 armor.

There is a bug about summoned units, though. The bonus is not applied until the start of the combat round after they are summoned, so if you have the choice, don't summon the unit on the same combat round where you want it to start fighting.

This entire influence effect does not penalize any units that don't match the node.

I'm not sure if this influence effect also happens overland, increasing a unit's armor and resistance against certain global spells. It simply doesn't come up enough. That doesn't sound right. I've never heard of a rampaging unit treating a node differently from any other kind of tile.

That's alright. I'm currently trying to figure out which version suits me best. I managed to get two Alliances with Wizard #3 and Wizard #4. I never managed to get Wizard #4 above "Peaceful" and war was eventually declared but Wizard #3 remained allied to me even after I started casting the "Spell of Mastery". Still, I would like to have seen a diplomatic victory/way of removing my final "rival". I get that "There can only be one" master of magic but given that we attract magician heroes it seems ludicrous that we can't influence wizards to join our banner by magical or non-magical means.

If what I suspect is true then the main difference between how I handled #3 and #4 was that I gave #3 a spell tribute. That is good to know. Does the same hold true for things like "Warp Node"? For all I know the unit thought that it was a Magic Spirit. There was an animation which I first associated with the node but upon reflection it may have been the "Meld" effect before it converted to my side.

Interesting. I honestly don't bother much with diplomacy beyond spell trading because of how bipolar the AI can be about relations. If you keep giving them valuable stuff to boost relations, that may help keep an alliance intact. I know that different spells have different values (ex. they'll trade with you longer if you're giving more valuable spells instead of the cheapest spells). I think giving them things they already have stocked is also not very efficient (ex. giving them gold when they already have lots of gold doesn't make them much happier). There's a huge difference between the wizards and the spell casting heroes, though. Wizards have unlimited potential for growth of their magical power; heroes (even the Champions) simply don't. I don't understand what you're asking with regard to Warp Node. Warp Node just changes the Power output of the node and can be dispelled. I need more details to take a decent guess at what happened. Did this happen overland or in battle? What magic books did you have? Were there guards on the node? What other unit(s) were stacked with the Slinger before and after?

Actually, the first question is "Which version of the game were you playing?". If it wasn't 1.31, then we're out of my area of experience. :)

I've never seen the AI use Warp Node, so I don't think it is a concern. I don't use the spell either since I'd later have to deal with it before I could take the node for myself. Melding doesn't happen in combat, but Possession is a combat spell that maybe could be mistaken for it I guess? I was throwing ideas in the dark.

A neutral stack will periodically spawn from some neutral city or an uncleared ruin/wizard tower/node/etc, but I can't think of any effect that would switch a neutral non-fantastic unit to a wizard's control on the overland map. This is regardless of the unit walking across a node. Possession (Death) could force conversion of a non-fantastic unit in combat, and Creature Binding (Sorcery) could force conversion of a fantastic creature in combat, but neither spell is usable overland.

I have no idea what happened.

It's probably just a bug. The unit was clearly heading for the node as there was nothing beyond it to target.

How difficult is it to hit the gold and mana cap?

Could be. That's a bit of a hard question to answer, because it depends on what you mean. It isn't *hard* to hit the cap if that's what you want to do (each treasury is hard-capped at 30,000), but you're probably in full control of the game if you can't find ways to spend your income and are therefore losing income to the hard cap. More spell skill is always useful, so you don't need to invest Power into generating Mana. You can rush buildings in towns to use gold if you have a large glut of it. Also, you can lower the tax rate to reduce unrest, thereby increasing productivity of your towns by turning rebels into workers.

I see, I was trying to evaluate my performance with that question.

I get the impression that the game rewards hoarding gold so that you get better heroes and items to equip them with.

To fully equip 6 heroes with the best gear could easily cost 72000 gold if done through the merchant based on the prices that I have seen. I suppose that obtaining loot from dungeons is "free" but I got junk just as often as I did good stuff. I'd rather get something else if I lose the hero that can use the item in the process. Speaking of which.

How often do retorts and spellbooks show up as rewards in your experience? Does the difficulty setting matter in that regard?

The score screen is as good a way to evaluate performance as any.

Personally, I don't think gold and mana treasury values are good indicators of success, since they will fluctuate over the course of the game and having a large stockpile means you aren't spending it on advancing your empire. Your gold income and your power income are better indicators (but balance higher tax income against increased rebel count). Fame is a much more important value for attracting heroes and merchants; if your fame is low, the good heroes won't show up at all, and merchants (and mercenaries) are also more rare.

As long as you have at least 1000 gold in your treasury, you won't miss a chance to hire a hero if one would show up.

I don't recall the specific gold values for items, but you can create custom items that are tailored specifically for your heroes, or you can find extra items in ruins and nodes. The really good merchant items are generally too pricey to buy before you can custom outfit your heroes anyway.

If you want to increase the appearance rate of heroes and merchants, you can start with the Famous retort.
https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Famous
That page also has links to the page for Fame and the page for Item Merchants. Don't rely on merchants. Use the loot from sites and build your own with Create Artifact; you can get the full value for the cost that way. If you really like decked out heroes, then the Artificer and Runemaster retorts both drop the cost of creating your own items.

There are only a few archetypes for what items heroes can use. Don't try to keep too many staffs or (especially) bows, and you should be fine as long as you can keep some of your heroes alive. Retorts and spellbooks are pretty rare, and you generally only see them in very well defended nodes. Like, Great Wyrms, Great Drakes, and Sky Drakes (yes, plural) level of defended. I don't think the difficulty setting matters too much (except that it might increase the strength of defenders? I don't recall), but the Node Strength setting does (stronger nodes means stronger guards means better rewards).

So what would be good gold/power income numbers?

Given the spellbook requirements does such a strategy require hunting for spellbooks if you actually plan on using said items?
I found 2 spellbooks but they were not defended by any Drakes or Great Wyrms.

When you talk about the "Node Strength" setting do you mean the "Magic" setting?

If you just want some reference numbers:

I've got an old save where I've expanded fairly well on Myrror with a lot of Dark Elf cities, and I haven't seen Arcanus at all. I've got a couple nodes, but not many. I'm the only wizard on Myrror and one wizard is (presumably) defeated, others unmet. No spell books, 6 retorts, looks like I started as Trolls.

I've got a gold surplus of 122 gold per turn at 1.5 tax rate.
I've got a power base of 190 (all going to Skill), probably mostly from population.

I've got a different old save that is "Ready To Win", with 6 demi-gods (and Warlord trait), one banished wizard remaining, and a doom stack outside their last city. I have a lot of cities across both planes, variety of races. 13 spellbooks, 5 retorts.

I've got a gold surplus of 133 gold per turn at 1 tax rate, and 957 gold per turn at 1.5 tax rate.
I've got a power base of 2116 (all going to Skill). All nodes are mine, plenty of magical races.

Sure, I do it all the time. Basic stats aren't locked behind spell books, and those are mostly better than abilities anyway. For example, a +6 Attack, +3 To Hit, +3 Defense, +20 Spell Skill staff is about as good as you can get.

Okay. That can happen too.

Yes.

Okay yeah, I can do something with those numbers, yes.
What sort of stats do you need for a hero to survive against a Very Rare fantastic creature, let alone a stack of them, not counting Regeneration?

Okay, thanks for letting me know about that. I thought that the "Magic" setting was mostly about whether a player wanted a low or high fantasy experience. I may just have to try that out.

Is it possible to edit your savefile to later try a scenario on a higher difficulty?

That depends heavily on the particular creatures, because different creatures present very different kinds of threats. The best way to get a feel for how strong you need to be is simply to play the game and take your lumps; you can always save before trying a battle while you are learning and reload if you get wiped.

I'll try to outline some strategies for dealing with the types of threats, and I'm going to name some of the more powerful Rare creatures for these categories.

I'm going to preemptively say that aiming for +5 or so To Hit from all sources (levels, hero abilities, buffs, and items) is a good target so most of your damage scores hits on the enemy. +7 so all of your attack will hit is much better, but +5 is pretty reasonable for 80% hit per attack icon.

The champion level heroes are all good picks pretty much all of the time once they've gotten to level 4-5 or so (before that and they can still be very useful, but they are much more fragile). Alorra, Aerie, and Warrax are all very solid ranged/caster heroes. Mystic X is also a good caster hero, but he tends to lag a bit behind the others in power. Deth Stryke and Sir Harold are good melee, but melee heroes do need to concern themselves more with Defense and battlefield positioning than ranged and casters do. The Life and Death specific heroes (Roland, Elana, Mortu, Ravashack, and Torin) are champion heroes on steroids.

Some of the non-champions are also very strong. Awards in this tier go to Shalla (Thrown, Blademaster, Might), Yramrag (Doom Bolt!), Fang (fire breath, fast flyer), and Malleus (Arcane Power, Flame Strike!) for being exceptional.

Now for the opposition:
Slow brawlers (Earth Elemental, Behemoth, Great Drake, Chaos Spawn, Hydra, Wraith):
Stack up the ranged damage with decent hit rates, and none of these creatures are actual threats. Make sure to add some Move bonus to your heroes in case the enemy does start to get close so you can back off and keep shooting. An attack value in the 20's should be sufficient if you have that 80% accuracy, and you won't even have to worry about how hard some of these brutes can swing.

Fast Brawlers (Air Elemental, Death Knight, Arch Angel):
There is less leeway with these creatures because of how fast they are. Air Elementals and Arch Angels will tend to crumple if you can deliver a good hit, and moderate defense (10-15) should let you handle their attacks if they do close. Air Elementals have a good attack, but they are made of paper against anything that can hit reasonably hard. Arch Angels are more durable, but for their tier, they are more of a supporter type unit than an actual brawler. Death Knights can heal themselves while hurting you, and they have First Strike to do damage before you can retaliate, so make sure you can punch hard before engaging. Bringing webs, flight, or magic ranged attacks is recommended in all cases since these units fly.

Ranged Brawlers (Storm Giant, Demon Lord, Colossus):
All of these have a solid ranged attack (especially the armor piercing Storm Giant), which means your more fragile casters will have a harder time surviving. A large stack of Storm Giants can wipe out Aerie or Alorra before they get a turn, even at mid to high levels. Demon Lords are decent all-arounders as units, being decently durable, decent ranged attack, and Life Stealing to keep their health up; however, they tend to start by summoning Demons (approximately an Uncommon) which buys you some turns to lay into them.

Ranged Casters (Djinn, Efreet):
Djinn are more dangerous and have access to stronger spells (they'll happily Dispel Magic True to knock off your buffs), and both of these units have a solid ranged attack to injure your frailer heroes. Bring good defense (15 or so?).

Murder Machines (Sky Drake, Great Wyrm):
I'm lumping these two together because both can be right on top of you almost immediately, and both are strong enough to put even a Demi-God hero in a shallow grave without much effort. They will also happily start by murdering your more fragile heroes and then mopping up the rest afterward. These are both candidates for making piles of sacrificial powerful units and throwing them at the problem to whittle it down over multiple fights (make sure you get kills on individual units, because they heal to full between fights).

Great Wyrm: Bring Flight or Regeneration for any hero that you want to survive the battle, because merging lets them pick their target and eat it right as the battle starts. Their poison looks nasty, but you should easily have 10+ Resist naturally before you're strong enough to even consider engaging them, so the poison ultimately just looks pretty on the stat card. Their 25 Attack and 60% To Hit means their chosen victim has to deal with 15 incoming damage on average, and the victim has to do it twice per Wyrm because of Merging. You're looking at around 45 Defense to block all of that damage when comparing average damage to average successful defense. Bring Flight or Regeneration, and be aware that Giant Spiders (innate Web) tend to show up in the same places that Great Wyrms guard!

Sky Drake: They don't merge, but 4 Flight means they just need one extra turn to get close enough to start roasting you. Magic Immunity and True Sight make them exceptionally resist to caster heroes, and 20 Lighting Breath (armor piercing!) with 60% To Hit means you need around 80 Defense to fully block the lightning breath (assuming average damage success and average defense success). They have a solid melee attack to follow up the breath, too. You have to either go big or go home when facing multiples of these creatures. Alorra is subject to instant death if they close on her, but she is still one of your best friends when trying to deal with them since a high level Alorra can (hopefully) 1-shot a Drake each combat round (you're looking to inflict around 30 damage per arrow). Make sure to bring enough Move bonus so you can run while shooting. Your melee units need to stay home unless they can initiate an attack on these monsters, because even Roland, Mortu, and Torin will struggle if the Drakes get to use their breath during each exchange; bring some method of webbing the drake, or flight/thrown/breath/etc. on the melee hero). Web is an amazing spell for stalling the Sky Drakes if you can push it through a Sorcery Node's counter spell effect.

I doubt a savefile editor can mess with the difficulty setting of a game-in-progress, because that setting affects several aspects of the game both during map generation and during the game itself. Two examples: 1) AI wizards start with more picks for spell books and retorts, and they have more variability in their picks at higher difficulties, and 2) Indy stacks spawn from uncleared neutral cities/ruins/nodes more often at higher difficulties.

How does that stack up to item effects like "Doom" or "Phantasmal"? Do you still need "To Hit" bonus if your hero has got equipment with those properties?

Just how high did you manage to get your defense?

If my calculations/interpretations are correct then my Sky Drake slayer had +78/71 defense versus breath attack.
Ah well, too bad.