Master of Magic - Implode's Multiplayer Edition

As I understand things, every wizard has access to the magic spirit spell. Guardian spirits are like a superior version, but you have to have some specialty in white magic (I forget the name of the school of magic but I think it' the one with the white icon).

One problem I've run into is that without access to the guardian spirit spell, once my enemy has it and uses guardian spirits to meld with nodes, I cannot take them back with magic spirits. The guardian spirit just kills the magic spirit every time because it's stronger. Is there any way I can recover nodes with which a guardian spirit has melded? I can't cast buffs on my magic spirit or anything to my knowledge, so unless I'm missing something it seems like these nodes claimed by guardian spirits are ones I'll never be able to take back since I can't cast guardian spirit.

Any ideas?

You could (in the original game) take a node with a guardian spirit if you sent a large stack of magic spirits against the guardian spirit.

I tried sending a stack of magic spirits to the node taken by the guardian spirit. It only let me attempt to meld each magic spirit one at a time (which of course was defeated by the guardian) and they could not all meld at once to defeat him.

DAMN YOU HORUS

The only thing I've figured out as a preventive measure is to move a unit on top of the node so the AI doesn't meld with the node (it hasnt attempted to attack a unit standing on top of the node first and then meld). Of course that doesn't help solve the problem of what to do once a node has been claimed by the guardian spirit.

lol, you're just very unlucky. I forget the percentage chance of a guardian spirit killing the magic spirit, but it's not *that* unlikely that you'll be able to take it back.

The third magic spirit is always succesful when i play (i get mad and do the save&load trick :D ).
But it might be around 15% chance. Something like that...

Lucern wrote:I forget the percentage chance of a guardian spirit killing the magic spirit

If anyone can find some official (i.e. strategy guide) documentation on this that would be great. I couldn't find anything and so I've implemented it in MoM IME like so:

The "Meld with Node" skill now has a value, Magic Spirits have "Meld with Node I", Guardian Spirits have "Meld with Node II". When you try to take a node that's already been captured, those values then factor into how likely you are to capture it.

So a Magic Spirit trying to take from a Magic Spirit would be trying at 1:1, so 50% chance. A Guardian Spirit trying to take from a Guardian Spirit would be trying at 2:2, so 50% chance.

A Magic Spirit trying to take from a Guardian Spirit would be trying at 1:2, so only 33% chance. A Guardian Spirit trying to take from a Magic Spirit would be trying at 2:1, so 66% chance.

That was my best stab at it with no official documentation to go on. My experience with the original MoM says those values are about right...?

If I have to make a homemade rule, I would said their strenght is egal to the square of their standard mana cost or production cost (just in case) (900:6400 or 14,06%) at least it should make the Gardian spirit useful in regard to their cost (30:80) but since we know that, in fact, you will succeed half the way in mean I would double the strenght of that guardian (30:160 or 18,75) wich is quite the same value anyway :D . So at least, you know that your enemie will pay the same mana then you to get it back.

The documentation that came with the game is frequently wrong...but...I'll type in the description of guardian spirit:

"Summons a guardian spirit. This spirit can meld with magic nodes in the same way as the arcane magic spirit. However, once melded, the guardian spirit can only be displaced by other spirits (magic or guardian) 25% of the time. A magic spirit, however, can always be displaced."

I also checked the in-game text...it is not as informative.

Importantly, and this is true as far as I can tell...magic spirits always take over magic spirits. Guardian spirits always take over magicspirits. The 25% comes in when a magic spirit tries to take a guardian spirit. That aside, I like the ideas in the systems given.


Edit: Corrected something important. "Guardian spirits always take over guardian spirits" was wrong...it's a 25% chance. But Guardian spirits and magic spirits always take over magic spirits, as per the game's rules.

maybe this could be another customizable option?

because, although I can understand the desire for something like Implode's current system, I personally would prefer the system that I'm observing in MoM currently:

if attacking spirit is greater or equal in power to the melded spirit, attacker wins
if attacking spirit is of lesser power than the melded spirit, roll for success (my observation is that the first lesser spirit always loses, and then it seems to be about a 50-50 chance for subsequent spirits)

so maybe have this could be an adjustable option? or even just a choice between "Original" and "Recommended"?

I'm pretty sure magic spirits can fail to meld if there is already one inside...

That's possible, I just don't recall it ever happening to me. That makes me of the oppinion that either it's a certain thing (at least if it's just a magic spirit holding the node currently) or it has a rather high chance of success when that's the case. But my other past experiences tell me that it's highly unlikely (though admitidly still possible) that I'm just lucky enough to have never lost the roll yet.

Honestly, the only times I've ever not taken with a single magic spirit are the times when I've watched the enemy use a guardian spirit to take it first.

Iluvalar wrote:I'm pretty sure magic spirits can fail to meld if there is already one inside...

I'm pretty sure I've never seen that happen.