Master of Magic Iron Man Run

Welcome to my Iron Man Run of Master of Magic played on Impossible difficulty setting. This run is my blind, first attempt at Impossible difficulty and Iron Man in MoM. In case the reader does not want to read No Reload Run Baldur's Gate, the parameters of Iron Man mode are as follows:

Master of Magic Iron Man Rules

No reloading. If the Wizard is utterly vanquished, the player does not reload to try again but instead begins another game -- or gives up. Simply put, it is game over, man. Game over.
No reloading means no save-scumming. We are not allowed to reload after lost battles or due to the suboptimal results of battles. Likewise, we are not allowed to reload for RNG manipulation purposes (e.g., in order to yield the best items, spells and retorts).
If the player discerns a tedious state of affairs (RNG), the player may resign and begin anew -- but only after playing for a duration of 20 years or 240 turns (which is enough time to know if the run is enjoyable or not).

The result is that we put more thought into our decisions and play the game more carefully. Naturally, we can save the game when we need to take a break, and reload later. We don't have to play in one sitting. Also, we can still save the game often in case of technical difficulties or interruptions.

In addition, I've employed a couple self-imposed restrictions. The MoM Build I've decided to roll with is 9 Life Book with Warlord. As I said in my Master of Magic Review, 11 Book Life Book Builds are king-tier due to early acquisition of the Incarnation spell, but I don't want to use Torin the Chosen as a crutch. In addition, the selection of High Men civ means weak and slow in the early game but super-strong late-game. High Men may be the hardest civ to roll with in Iron Man mode, since the early game can be tough going.

As we can see, 9 Books only gives us access to 10 Common Life spells of which we can choose 8 in chargen. None of them can greatly impact or dictate combat encounters. Unlike 11 Book Life builds, we gain no access to Uncommon or Rare spells in chargen. That means we don't have initial access to True Sight, Prayer, Incarnation or Lionheart spells.

Starting City: High Men's Hamlet of Haven

The first thing we do is name our starting city and survey the land. The terrain resource RNG shown below is only average in quality. In essence, this means our production is going to be slower than usual. And our population growth is also slow due to being High Men.

The only (possible) advantage of our location is that we are positioned on the coastline, meaning we can build a Shipwright's Guild followed by a Ship Yard and Triremes.

Note the blackspace in the viewport and the brown space on the world map shown in the above infographic. The empty space is the fog of war which represents our lack of intelligence as it pertains to the greater world. As we move our units about on the map, fog of war is gradually lifted to reveal the terrain, its landmarks and the enemy.

Surveying doesn't give us a complete picture of our situation. We need to know continental geography and get knowledge on our rivals before we can begin to measure campaign difficulty.

Let's take a look at our city's current resources and garrison:

Next, let's take a look at what buildings we already have:

And let's take a look at what we can build and train:

That's a lot of options, but the first thing we want to do is build up food stocks and population. Thus, the intended order of construction is:

Granary (+2 Food, +20 People per turn)
Marketplace (Tax Revenue +50%)
Farmer's Market (+3 Food, +30 People per turn)
Sawmill (+25% Production of Forest terrain)
Forester's Guild (+2 Food, Production +25% Forest terrain)

From my experience, the above bonuses result in booming capital cities. Due to our average terrain roll, our rate of construction is going to be a couple of months behind what I'm used to, though.

Campaign Commencement

Our campaign begins in January, 1400. We begin on Turn no.1 of our campaign, with each turn representing one month.

First Decade of the Campaign: Initial Territorial Acquisitions

In the first decade of his campaign to become the Master of Magic, Merlin's High Men military managed to conquer three neutral barbarian strongholds in close proximity to Haven: two to the north and one to the south. Thus, to Merlin's realm is now added Linz, Rostok and Bromburg.

It was Merlin's Warlord retort, along with Common Life buffs, that made such acquisitions possible early in the campaign (since Barbarians are stronger than High Men early on). Merlin's intent is to employ a Barbarian horde of berserkers as early-mid expansion forces while the slower but stronger High Men build up their elite forces in the capital, Haven.

If fortune favors Merlin, a High Men magic-resistant Paladin force will eventually be assembled, perhaps led by Champion Roland -- How Merlin would crush his rivals with such holy warriors! At this point, though, it is but a daydream.

Knowing the Enemy

Even as he conquered the barbarian tribes, Merlin sent out Magic Spirits to scout far and wide on both Arcanus and Myrror planes. To Merlin's dismay, the spirits revealed to him the following four Wizard rivals:

To the south, Tauron and his Halflings surrounded by a Wall of Fire:

To the east, Sharee and her High Men surrounded by a Wall of Fire:

To the west, Tlaloc and his High Elves surrounded by a Wall of Darkness:

And in Myrror, Sss'ra and his Trolls:

Thus, three out of four Wizards are by nature offensive; only Sss'ra turtles. Of the three conquerors, the most likely to give Merlin trouble is Tauron due to his focus in Chaos coupled with Aggressive Expansionist traits. Note also how Tlaloc's fame score quickly drew him the max of five Heroes.

Merlin shares the largest island of Arcanus with Tauron whereas Sharee and Tlaloc occupy their own islands to the east and west. Sss'ra was largely left to his devices in the Myrror plane, surrounded by Dark Elf neutrals. However, the mana-hungry Tauron was moving in for conquest; the first of Arcanus Wizards to do so.

Merlin focused initially on building agrarian societies in order to build population and food reserves to power his upcoming army. Annoyed by such prosperity, Tauron's counter was to begin corrupting the earth around Merlin's capital, Haven. At this point, Merlin is unable to reconsecrate his lands.

Sharee's sprites were often spotted buzzing about Merlin's borders, led by Sharee's Hero, Reya. Tauron's Hell Hounds also sniffed about Merlin's territory, scouting for weaknesses.

Unprovoked, both Tauron and Tlaloc declared war on Merlin in August 1408; that is, on the 8th year of the campaign. Before that time, Haven was attacked several times by rampaging monsters (war bears and phantom warriors), and once by Tauron's Hell Hounds. Merlin incurred no great High Men losses, however.

Heroes didn't exactly flock to Merlin's banner in the first decade, since he was always strapped for cash and lacked fame. And while Merlin (miraculously) has access to Summon Hero and Summon Champion spells already, casting them is expensive and time-consuming.

It is now the end of the first decade of Merlin's campaign. War will probably be ongoing for decades -- if Merlin survives that long. His slow start was predicted; the lightning fast starts of his rivals not so much.

Can Merlin survive the onslaught from Tauron in the south and Tlaloc in the west?
How long will it be before Sharee declares war on Merlin as well?
With Tauron's brute-force mentality and focus in Chaos, how will Merlin's mundane forces fare vs. AoE Flame Strike and insta-kill Fireball and Lightning Bolt?
Will Tauron's Corruption lead to a casting of Great Wasting?
Who will get most of the treasures, and what will they be?

Second Decade of the Campaign

Ok, Sharee declared war on us in December 1411. As with Tauron and Tlaloc, the war was unprovoked; our very existence seems to be an insult to our rivals, and grounds for a beatdown. Can't we just coexist peacefully together for one more decade; that is, until Merlin gets his Paladins?

Anyway, skirmishes with Tauron and Sharee have highlighted two huge issues that we need to address:

The first is that Tauron casts Fireball and Lightning Bolt, insta-killing any units that fail their resistance check -- even Heroes. Thus, in each and every battle we can expect to lose up to two or three units of our force from Tauron's remote spellcasting, to say nothing of what combatants Tauron puts on the battlefield.
Second, Tauron and Sharee both have units with strong ranged attacks. Tauron has Halfling Slingers and Sharee has Sprites, which she is casting Stoneskin on. Slingers and Sprites are deadly in the early game. So what happens is, their projectile hail does massive damage to our ranks as they close in to melee range, which is incredibly costly even if we scrape through. To make it even harder to close in, Tauron summons Fire Elementals between our forces and his. If Tauron ends up researching the Flame Strike AoE as well, we're going to get decimated.

Merlin weathered the storm of halflings, sprites and hell hounds for a few more years. However, fending them off was exceedingly expensive and set back by many years Merlin's plans for High Men Paladin-hood. Luckily, Tauron and Sharee began waging war against each other, granting Merlin a reprieve that he desperately needed.

Led by Marcus the Ranger (a middling Hero of low-tier rank), Merlin expanded eastward from Rostock and across a narrow straight of sea in order to take two more strongholds: the Neutral High Men stronghold of Birmingham and Shareee's High Men stronghold of Coventry. At this point, Marcus is commanding a rag-tag force in an attempt to hold Coventry against Sharee's bitter reprisals.

In addition, magic-resistant Paladins came online for Merlin in May 1418; that is, 18 years into the campaign. Paladins endure Tauron's remote bombardments during battles and allow us to laugh in the face of sprite ranged attacks. Being mounted, Paladins close in more quickly on Halfling Slingers as well. That said, training Paladins take a lot of time and Merlin is almost out of time.

Threatening to cripple the global economy, Tauron unleashed Great Wasting in June 1420; that, in addition to the corruption and volcanism that he often inflicts on Arcanus. Awful stuff.

Whenever Merlin peers out from his tower's windows and gazes into his scrying mirrors, it seems as if Tauron is ever in his face, flipping him the bird: "Git gud, scrub".

The red line is what peak Wizard looks like:

Tauron is basically Sauron. This run taught me how strong Chaos builds can be: send in tank units and then bombard remotely with Fireball, Flame Strike and Lightning Bolt.

Merlin's Banishment: September 1422

Merlin was unable to build a strong enough Paladin force before Tauron once again turned his baleful gaze Merlin's way.

Having worn down Haven's garrison with unrelenting packs of hell hounds and halfling hordes, Tauron proceeded to bombard Haven into oblivion with several successive Fireballs. At the last, destruction was total.

As he floated away to be reabsorbed into the arcane ether, Merlin wished he could have cast "Reload". With such a godly spell at his disposal, Merlin felt he would have become the Master of Magic.

This concludes Iron Man Impossible with 9 Life Book Warlord Build. In retrospect, my self-imposed restrictions were too harsh. Even 11 Life Book Builds that do NOT take Incarnation are much stronger than 9 Life Book Builds with Warlord.

High Men is not recommended as civ due to the slowness of their development. We probably want a civ that is strong early-to-mid campaign; that way, we can work towards taking over a stronger civ before its build-up and then employ the stronger civ late-game. Recommended starting civs would be Barbarian, Gnoll or Halfling. Nomad would also be solid. If Myrran, Dwarf or the recommended Arcanian civs.

Ranged units are crucial vs. ranged foes and flight-capables. Strong magic and elemental resistances are vital when going up against Tauron builds (Chaos), which means dips in both Sorcery and Nature. We also want spotters everywhere or we can't see big build-ups coming.

At least, these are things I'll bear in mind on my second attempt. Ok, second attempt is up: Master of Magic Impossible.

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