I'm just starting and am very discouraged because any enemies I discover near my village crush me... their units usually destroy mine in one attack. I even discovered 50 mp and summoned ghouls, which die in two hits instead of one. Am i supposed to spend 100 turns producing troops just so I can win one fight? It's making me want to quit, but I injured my right hand IRL (six stitches) and need a good turn-based game to play left-handed.

I'm playing Medium with 10 Death Books and Archmage, and my starting units cannot kill anything. Even with skeletons and ghouls, I am massacred in every fight. How can I win at least one fight? I really want to have fun with this game but I can't even get off the runway so to speak.

What race are you playing as currently? Knowing that would make giving specific advice easier, but I'll throw some general advice out there.

Here's a few "quick fix" ideas:

Since you're new and apparently struggling a bit, restart and dial the difficulty back to the lowest setting. There's no shame in learning the game a bit before stepping up. Also consider setting the starting option "Magic" to weak. It'll make the node fights easier. These tweaks should allow you to simply relax and experiment. Going further, a fun starting race can be the Gnolls. Even their basic units can whip some tail and at a low cost. Especially if paired up with the warlord pick. Massed swordsmen early and wolf riders later on can be quite potent. Starting race is up to you, though. Played correctly, all the races are viable, but some are certainly more viable than others. As far as magic goes, for low difficulty games I'm a fan of nature magic paired up with nature mastery and conjurer picks. Using low cost summons to work in tandem with warlord boosted units can be a simple and effective strategy to start out with.

Beyond that, it may be necessary to simply ignore the battles you can't win yet and go after the ones that you can. Nodes and neutral cities should be priorities as taking these will increase the capacity to build up and conquer further. Pick the low hanging fruit and try to avoid Pyrrhic ( "cost" prohibitive) victories early on or getting fixated on one target. Don't forget to make settlers and expand, but remember to send some units out with the settlers. They're generally not cheap to build and it's a shame to lose settlers/young settlements to lightweight wandering monsters.

Following all that I think you'll be on one of many possible roads to success, but definitely feel free to do it your own way. Above all, try to enjoy exploring and getting into trouble. That's half the fun.

Early conquest relies on one of two things - quality normal troops produced in your cities, or quality early summons. Without knowing what race you start with, I can't judge how you stand there, but many races get some pretty good units available early on even if they are not the dedicated "speed kill" races. Death doesn't really do so well with early summons - skeletons and ghouls aren't all that great, compared to Hell Hounds (Chaos) or Sprites (Nature).

Or maybe it's just my personal dislike of Death magic speaking here.

Thanks for the replies, I picked orcs simply because they were the only race that didn't disallow certain building types, and since I don't know a lot about the different buildings, I didn't want any of them off-limits.

I suppose I'm surprised at the fact that nearby nodes have deathknights and other difficult battles, as I had assumed that fights near my home base would be easier. Def. thinking about lowering difficulty a bit.

Well if your really set on using Death Magic then it would be better just to choose all 11 picks in Death Books. You see this allows you to get all the common death spells along with 2 Uncommon (Shadow Demons) and 1 Rare (Wraiths FTW).

So with Wraiths as your rare pick race really doesn't matter much but it's best to choose one of the more non offensive races that others get along with so when you take over their cities theres less unrest. Halflings are good for this as are High Men and Barbarians.

Start the game by adjusting the magic sliders all to Mana. Your research doesn't matter that much yet and neither does spell skill. Give yourself around 10 turns of building up mana and then summon Wraiths. These guys can take any neutral town super easy and best thing is they return many of the units you kill as Undead versions that are free to keep around, although they won't heal so are only good for limited time. That means any town you take over gets a free garrison of the guys u just killed.

Wraiths are NOT the unit to take Sorcery Nodes though because all the Sorc guys are immune to the Death Life Stealing of the Wraiths. Shadow Demons are for Sorc Nodes although it will take them a couple turns as they only get 8 magic shots per combat. You can use that combined with their regenerating to First weaken units and then finish them off or just let the turns run out then keep whittling them down.

Shadow Demons can also let you get a quick start on Myrror as they can shift plane without having to go through a Wizard Tower.

DEATH ALL THE WAY HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Actually their are no real "Easy" nodes that you can take out super quick 99% of the time. They are something you have to work upto. Don't expect to take them in the first 50 turns of the game without going super 1 school magic to get a super tough summon creature like the wraiths or angels etc. Super magic is great but can be boring when it starts lacking challenge.

*This is not to say that some nodes are easier than others ofc. A node guarded by Phantom Warriors/Beasts is quite a bit easier than one guarded by Sky Drakes after all.*

Here is a great site to help you out with knowing what you might expect from enemy encounters. Register as you can post questions there on specific pages for things like abilities.

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

The only main complaint I really have with Master of Magic is that you never know if theres just 1 or 9 of a damn unit in a site you explore until you actually enter combat. For instance running across a ruin that says Sprites could either have just 1 unit which u could usually beat but could also have 4 which would kick your but. Heroes of Might and Magic had the nice few, several, pack, lots, horde etc to let you know relative strength but that game was made later so ofc they learned from mistakes MoM made.

As a general rule of thumb, the races with the best end-units take the longest to get there: either the race itself is slow-growing, or you have to build so many required buildings beforehand.

A good compromise for beginners are the Halflings. They naturally produce more food (which other races have to build an animist's guild to match), get along with almost everyone (which means conquered cities have fewer rebels and therefore more productive workers), and their slingers are a powerful ranged unit, especially when given magical weapons (alchemist's guild, mithril, adamantium) and/or buffed. They do have some weaknesses — no road-building engineers, and only basic ships — but nothing that conquering a few of the right neighbors wouldn't solve.

But really, it depends on your playing style. Some races (Barbarians, Lizardmen, Klackons, Gnolls) better lend themselves to conquest right out of the gate, at the expense of being kind of meh by mid-game. Others (High Men, High Elves, Beastmen, Dark Elves) take much longer to develop, but are close to unstoppable once they finally get there.

If you're not going EvilLoynis's all-black route, consider taking the Warlord skill: it makes all of your normal units (and any heroes) tougher by starting them one level better, leveling them up sooner and eventually maxing out at one level higher.

And welcome to the madness. :)

Orcs are terrible. They are especially terrible for a player having issues getting started without losing critical battles in the early game, since their early units are actually worse than standard in some cases.

Almost any other race will help you survive the early years better than Orcs. I suggest Halflings or Barbarians for really strong early game performance, or High Men if you really don't want to restrict your building options very much. If you go with the 11 book Death Magic EvilLoynis suggested, you might profit from choosing High Elves instead, as they produce bonus mana per turn compared to other races. Their poor religious building selection won't matter much for an early conquest strategy using Wraiths and Shadow Demons.

agent101g,

Don't give up. The game can be very hard or very easy at the beginning depending on how the geography of the map shakes out. If you get stuck starting close to a hyper-aggressive rival wizard (I'm looking at you Lo Pan), you're going to have to fight. That can be tough even for an experienced player. On the other hand it's very common to start isolated on an island, which should give you a bit more time to develop before you have to go on the offensive. So if one game goes south, try again. You may find it's easier just because of random factors.

I think the part of the game that is crucial to understand for a new player is the magic slider settings. I know I didn't understand it at first, and it caused me all kinds of trouble.

The leftmost slider is for magic points -- a simple resource, like gold and food. You need this raw magical energy to pay for casting spells and to maintain spells that last more than an instant, like enchantments on your cities and units. Most summoned creatures have a cost-per-turn as well.

The middle slider is research, to learn new spells. Usually not so important in the early game, especially if you're forced to fight right away. You won't have the magic points to cast a lot of spells anyway, and later on when your empire gets rolling you can make up ground in research very quickly. I've played whole games with this slider at the lowest possible setting, because certain buildings provide research, and that's enough by itself to keep you competitive.

The rightmost slider is casting power. From the standpoint of winning the game, this is the most important slider, but early on you'll probably need magic points more. In short, increasing your casting power makes you a more powerful wizard. You can see what your casting power is by looking at the text under the three sliders. Whatever that number is, is the maximum amount of magic points you can expend casting spells in a single turn. For example, if your casting power is 20, you could cast a Phantom Warriors spell costing 10 points twice in combat. After than, you could cast no more spells in combat, even if you have 30,000 magic points. This carries over to all combats in a single turn, so if you use up your casting power in one fight, you still won't be recovered if you have to fight another battle in the same turn.

Furthermore, and separate from combat, casting power limits the magic points you can spend casting other spells per turn. If you have a Summon Great Wyrm spell that has a casting cost of 1000, but your casting power is only 20, it will take you 50 turns to cast! If your casting power is 500 (and I've gotten it up that high once or twice), it'll only take you two turns to summon a great wyrm. A huge difference.

Hope that helps, and don't give up. When you're just starting to learn the game, I wouldn't hesitate to restart if you don't like how things are going.

If you want a race that has good early-game units, Barbarians are probably the choice. Their warriors have the Throwing trait (as in throwing axes), which means they get a sort of double attack, and they can also attack flying creatures.

I strongly recommend playing on Intro/Tutor difficulty to start with so that you can get used to the game mechanics. Starting on Normal is actually quite difficult.

Your low-grade units are only going to be effective in large quantities (with heavy casualties) unless they're up against something similarly weak. Most ruins/nodes/etc will have stronger defenders (less so on Intro difficulty) and will take stronger units and/or more powerful spells from your wizard to deal with.

In the meantime, simply use a few of those units to scout the area and see what is in each lair. Your first priority should probably be to get a few new colonies up, but this means uncovering enough of the map to find sites to place them.

To get too know the game, just start with 11 life,cast invuln and hero on your spearmen and go conquer easy nodes and low level cities.Get Torin and beef him up a bit and you can beat anything in the game except cracks call.
Any incorporeal units like the spirits or anything with with wraithform cannot be killed by cracks call either.
A guardian spirit( cracks call will not work on,nothing incorporeal can be webbed or crack called) with invulnerable ,bless and true light will take out a whole node full of ghouls and zombies or shadow demons easily.
Use a few and you can even take out Demon Lords while healing them used in a combination with dispel evil which may take several tries but it will kill them while they are shooting at you. And, you often then get high level items or retorts that give you even more power.
If you choose invulnerable and plane shift as your beginning spells you can conquer races on the other plane like darK elves for more mana and dwarves for more gold.
After that you can try out more difficult strategies,and they are many many.

I disagree about wraiths going into sorcery nodes because they are immune to illusion attacks and the is what both phantom beasts and warriors use.
The wraiths are flying and one unit can wipe out a whole node of warriors easily.
Beasts are harder but shadow demons will take them out.Also even zombies ,ghouls etc will take out the warriors.
If there are only a few beasts they can win against them fairly easily as well.If you can see invis it negates the illusionary attack they have.

Few things

!) Immunity to Illusions does NOT mean that your immune to their attacks. It just means they don't get to ignore your Defense like they do with others.

2) Phantom Warriors get 5 attack each when they fight in the Node remember. They also get 2 defense in Nodes whereas otherwise they don't have any defense.

3) Because of Death Immunity your Wraiths have no way to gain back HP in battle. You also exchange damage at the same time even though THEY don't get to initiate an attack. While this can keep you from losing unexpectedly it does not compensate for having to fight 4-8 units of these guys.

Much better to use Shadow Demons which can also fly but also have the ranged attack to weaken them before engaging in hand to hand. Both together would be even better ofc.


* Also Terwo when quoting long strings of stuff try to clip it down a bit so ppl can see the statement or point your really interested in.

Agree but HMM kind of evolved to that,it even originated from an long standing rpg with strategic elements.Besides Mom the rpg in later stages is a great example of developers having not the vaguest idea,I mean no clue about what the gameplayers want(see mm9.
Every developer and I mean every developer, The programmers they employ are trained not to make a game like Mom1.
I have come to realize Master of Magic was a fluke, people trained in the business just aren't capable of making an updated version of that game anymore .
It can't all be marketing, Mom just goes opposite to all of the ingrained training of even the lowest trainee at the lowest spot of the totem pole
Some multi-millionaire give Insecticide a shot,maybe(or billionaire).

I think you're right about this. Back in the good old days, games weren't made by businessmen or marketing committees, they were made by computer nerds. That's how you got a gem like Master of Magic.

Hopefully Kickstarter will bring back the right kind of development. It seems to be working so far.

If you are set on your build:

I was thinking ,with death just bypass things like death knights or chaos nodes in the beginning, find some nodes with Phantom warriors or even beasts.
Even zombies own phantoms, you can get a lot of magic early if you find sorcery nodes with phantoms early.
If they have Phantom beasts there might be a little zerging, but not much.

Death totally owns sorcery nodes early in the game,a full pack of zombies can take down a few phantom beasts quite easily. Phantom warriors, a couple units will clear the whole node.
Conversely they have the hardest time against Sky Drakes later in the game,but by that
time other options open up.
A couple quick sorcery nodes and you are on your way to higher level death troops which are on a par with almost anything in the game.(death knight).
Some people shun giving give a clear start strategies, but not to worry, there are countless ones after you get one to get you started and you will start challenging yourself.
In the beginning when the game was first published I think even more people quit because they couldn't get started, even than number who quit because of the bugs at the time.