My first 'Impossible' Victory

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Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

My first 'Impossible' Victory

Post by Lucern »

Hey all,

Discovering this project, and the potential that lies within got me back into MoM, big time. I've played 5 full games in 2 weeks, but one thing I never did was win a game on impossible. I've had the game since December 1994...won 30-40 games on Hard, so I wasn't exactly what you'd call a noob, but on impossible they'd always get me in like 20 turns with either a raider unit from a nearby node/ruins or in a long protracted slow death from all sides from 3 enemy wizards. I really didn't think it was possible until I read about it online - I was thinking it was just sort of a joke.

Phase I:
So I started out with Warlord, the Halflings, and the remaining picks were invested in Life spell books. I had large land size and 4 enemy wizards. As it turned out, each wizard was on a separate land mass except for me and Oberic on a very large continent. I grabbed a nearby High Men village, teched straight to slingers and set in for the inevitable siege. Sure enough, Oberic shows up with legions of klakons and sprites, but with my slingers, he can't do any damage. Zaldron the Sage turned up and saved my research and casting power in the early game (and doubling as a counter-magic defense system). A good 100 turns later I've got the island to myself, banishing Oberic to his territories on Myrror (and I have NO idea how he got there...must have plane shifted). At this point I'm trying to consolidate the land mass, populating it with halflings and high men, and keeping the Klackon cities I took from Oberic (despite my misgivings about them...I do like Stag beetles). I made contact with Lo Pan to the northwest on a heavily defended Klackon island, and Tlaloc to the east on an even bigger Halfling/Lizardman island.

Phase II:
This was when the beast that lurked on Myrror showed up in his castings. It was Raven (whom I've never seen on Myrror at all), and he was casting some NASTY spells. He cast aura of magesty and then later Spell Suppression (I think it was called, which tries to dispel each of your spells as you were casting them). I had 2 towers on my island connecting me to his land mass, so I prepared for planar warfare against his draconian hordes. At this point I had paladins and slingers as the core of my army, and a pack of low-mid range heroes who were mopping up the island for treasure and nodes. My Crusade and about 10 Just Cause spells were disjuncted (disjoined? lol) or spell blasted, and it was even getting hard to cast simple spells like Endurance. I managed to get Incarnation, which i thought would just about end the game for me (I was wrong), as well as Alorra the Elven Archer. I started my attack a bit sooner than I would have liked, because Raven's spell power and dominance was really irking me, and he broke through a tower and had a stack of 4 doom drakes 4 draconian magicians and a shaman. This was a menance, and I threw Torin at them along with my hero stack, losing 3 others along with Torin. I recast Incarnation and 2 raise deads to get Shuri and Alorra back (I left poor Gunther buried near Jollyville) just before the dreaded Spell Suppression was cast. This was it. Raven had to die. I attacked a northern peninsula of his with my hero stack, with support from paladins and slingers. This peninsula consisted of isolated but huge draconian cities. I took 5, and he took each back and burned it down. Progress, I guess, but I should tell you about how aggravating these battles were.

Mass invisibility. POWERFUL Psionic blast on heroes, summon air elemental, Flight, Counter Magic and even crack's call from his miniscule nature spell books. I estimate that he had at least 150 skill, and as much as 200, and it was getting hard to win relatively easy battles. After I lost that 5th city, I went hunting with my hero stack (Alorra, Torin, Shuri, Shin-bo, Zaldron, and my new addition, Deth Stryke) for his capital. I saw the huge Draconian cities as I pressed on (in one turn) the magic roadway. At the southernmost tip of the far reaches of Myrror's one massive continent I found his capital. In it were 3 sky drakes, a ranger hero, magicians, invisible halberders, a stag beetle (for some reason lol) and 2 shamens. I went in, played defense with my spellcasters, healing and countering magic with a demi-god Zaldron. Once we had survived the onslaught of psionic blasts at Shuri and Alorra (almost as if he knew the skydrakes were the only impediment to his banishment, and my only weapons against them were bows), I approached the city to get the most out of my shots. I managed to take out 2 sky drakes, and we ended the battle safely, with the enemy not sallying forth. Next turn: we went back in, Shuri and Allora both were slain outright, and I raised them and played defense again. This time I killed the skydrake and everyone else, banishing Raven. To seal the deal and punish him as much as possible, I launched in with every paladin I had at the ready who could reach that magic road, and I took 11 cities that turn. The turn after I took another 6 with my 6 heroes, buying Doom Drake defenders or Shamen at each city, and I nabbed all of the rest of his connecting cities. Raven was done for. He lingered on while Shuri tracked the way to his distant draconian cities one by one, and we defeated him about 1 year later in his last city.

The other two battles weren't as interesting or challenging, but I finished the game at 104%, with something like 300 fame, about 1200 citizens (stream of life and change terrain from a nature book I scored) in the year 1235. Keep in mind that I did this in one sitting, in 13 or so hours lol. Sheer gaming bliss. This is my favorite game of all time. I do think though, for relaxation purposes, I'm sticking to hard from now on!
Richrf
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:29 am

Post by Richrf »

I used to be like you, playing only hard.

I believe the preferred way to win impossible is to hit them hard and fast rather than bunkering down. It doesn't matter what strategy you use (11 book or a more "normal" strat)..

For you to actually have hordes of paladins/slingers (pretty much the best melee and ranged units) backing up armies of heroes running around you must have "played defense" a lot. Seems you were quite lucky to find neutral high men?
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Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Post by Lucern »

You're right Richrf, I did play defense. I was actually intending to be aggressive, because past impossible games didn't work out when I was defensive. This time, however, there wasn't much else to take. Oberic was not expanding like I thought he should be, and he was doing it with Klackons, who don't inspire me to attack anyone until they have Stag Beetles. He had a pathetic 6 cities when I took him down, and he had the time. He was also putting them on worthless land - right in the desert, right on the ice, etc. My only relatively early assault was on Oberic. I took the only neutral city on the whole island, and the island was huge. Very odd.

Slingers were a blessing much more than paladins, mainly because my primary opponent had nothing but draconian cities, and tended to do the "I'm not attacking if I don't have to" thing when you're trying to take one from him. My hero casters/archers and my slingers made that game much more enjoyable.
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

Yeah playing defensively on Impossible doesn't work too well. One of the easier strategies is to get some killer units very early on (my favourites being Basilisks or Wraiths) and go on a rampage, taking out all nearby neutral cities, a few monster lairs, and even a node or an enemy wizard if you're lucky. For fast starts, it works even better than Life magic.

Since playing defensively is difficult, I tried playing a game on Impossible where I only kept my starting city - I could go out and attack any enemy cities or wizards I wanted, by always razed them (but keeping enough of an army to defend your city AND be able to attack is hard). Likewize you can capture nodes, but splitting your army to enable you to defend them is hard.

It took me a few tries to manage (first attempt Jafar cast Time Stop on me!) but I did eventually win it. Awful score (5295) but that's hardly surprising. Give it a go, it is really quite challenging :)

Implode.
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