Lords of Magic - Special Edition

A strategic analysis of the 8 different faiths

Target of the analysis is to identify fundamental strengths/weaknesses of the 8
differnet faiths in respect to their ability to economic growth. Economic
growth means the faiths ability to gather the game ressources (Met, Gold,
Crystals as income; followers as labour, experienced leaders and experienced
troops as troops) compared to other faiths. With the general rule of strategy
games - who has more gets more - in mind the key element is swiftness. So the
central question is: How fast is a specific faith able to develop in general
(not taking into account the differing abilities of the human playing the
faith)?

Conditions
LOM on normal difficulty, no cheats, no hex editing, standard maps (Urak or
Urak Part II), standard starting party (no lord editing)

General remarks

The ability not only to grow but to grow fast in LOM is bound to 4 key elements
shown below:

1) Gathering income

In the very early game this ability is a function of how fast a faith is able
to reach and conquer income gathering and income delivering buildings. The
first ones being gold and crystal mines and breweries, the second ones being
all dungeons who deliver income one time (when conquered) dependent on dungeon
difficulty. In the long run income depends a lot on the ability to harvest and
spare ressources, which makes it necessary to have as much income and as least
income losses as possible. The faster you are able to harvest and spare income,
the earlier you may develop capitals (more income), barracks (better trained
troops), watchtowers (better information). In order to maximize income you have
to gain control over as many faithes as possible as early as possible. In order
to minimize income losses you must be able to reach targets with the least
posible amount of troops (whose training requires part of your spared income)
and to avoid troop losses (which would be a loss of spent income).

2) Attract followers

In the long run this is more decisive for the speed of economic development
than the income delivering builings. The more followers, the more troops may be
trained and the more people work in the income delivering facilities of the
capital(s). The attraction of followers is a direct function of liberated great
temple(s) and the speed of fame development. The key factor for fame is the
number and difficulty of won battles.

3) Develop leaders

The better leaders are developed, the better the trained troops recruited in
your building. At least for warriors and thieves this is much more important
than their improved fighting abilities - you will find it much more decisive to
have a level 5 leaders accompanied by level 3 troops than level 7 leaders
accompanied by level 2 troops. It is differnt for mages though. These guys are
often only used for training once or twice in a game (to develop the mages
researching the better spells) but grow exponentially in effectiveness with
better levels (more mana means the ability to repeat deadly or protective
spells several times. Some spells like Vortex are exponetially more deadly with
high level than with low level mages as well).
Leader development is a direct function of leader survival in won battles, the
speed of leader development (which differs not only between faithes but between
the different leader types inside the faith) and the usefulness of gained
artifacts (some of them are vastly more useful than others of similar level
even if all for the same faith. Example: Aramaugs amulet exceeds Kapelkes ring
by far).

4) Develop troops

While troop development early is simply a function of won battles, this changes
latest mid game (round 50). It becomes more and more important to have good
troops right when they leave the barracks/guilds. Thus troop development is a
function of leader development and income use (aka upgrade of capital and
associated building. Example: An elven thief on level 7 may train elven archers
to level 2 in a level 1 building (10% of her experience), but may be able to
train level 4 archers in a level 3 building (30% of her experience).

And the winner is ...

Okay, and now let´s judge the different faithes along these 4 key elements. Who
is able to exceed others in one of the key elements - and why?

The benefit of water - income

The price for gathering income goes to the water faith. Two elements make water
superior:
It is the ONLY faith which starts on neutral or better relations to 4 other
faithes (life, air, order, chaos). All of these start with not liberated
temples on normal difficulty. As the AI is seldom able to free its own temple
before turns 30 to 50 you have a good chance of getting them all. This means 4
faithes plus your own who swear fealty to you. A pool of 5 different troop
ressources. All or most of the income gathering buildings (mines and breweries)
in the regions of 5 faithes. 5 lords (best leaders available). 5 capitals with
all their followers. A HUGE advantage!
The second element is speed. The speediest way of movement in LOM is by sea,
the speediest ships on sea are available for the water faith. Example: A water
army with the slowest member being a water priestess would need appr. 7 turns
between the water region and the chaos region by land movement on the Urak map.
It needs 2 turns by sea! So with water you have a MUCH bigger chance reaching
all dungeons and income gathering buildings near the sea than any other faith.
Period. The second HUGE advantage.
As the water troops are average all around (with an excellent cavalry) you are
on the other hand not harmed by serious disadvantages. In fact, the two
described advantages - if played correctly -  give a much bigger boost
economically than you would imagine. Water will most likely have their capital
and all related buildings on level 3 by turn 50 while AT THE SAME TIME fielding
2 full size armies (3 leaders, 9 units) and some minor ones. NO other faith is
able to be that fast. BTW, with the seagulls and the ships water has the
biggest chance of discovering most dungeons erlier than the competitors.
Seagulls have the highest movement rate (and worst fighting stats) of the
scouts - and fly!
The worst faithes economy wise (a severe imbalance in the game) are the >bad<
ones. Why? Because death temple is always developed on normal difficulty and
one other >bad< faith as well. For death itself, two other >bad< faithes are
already deceloped. Best chances (still worse than the worst >good< one) are for
chaos, who have neutral or better relationship to earth, fire and water. But
even them will be harmed by separated regions (water being separated by the
>good< faithes of life and order, fire being separated by the death faith).
Interesting enough the starting income gathering buildings - which favour death
in all areas (Balkoth generating crystals), earth in gold, the elves in mana
etc. - do not play a significant role in the end. Which does not mean you
should not take advantage of a lvl 7 death gold mine randomly placed in the air
region here and there :-). But the income generated is neglectable compared to
the 32 followers each generating gold, met, crystals and fame in a maxed
capital.

Development by speed and healing power - life rules

Attraction of followers, leader development and troop development are basically
determined by the number of battles you fight successfully in a given time
frame AND the ability of liberating great temples of friendly faithes. And the
price goes to - life. What the hell might one or the other of you think? The
fragile Elvens? Yes! I´ll explain why.

Let´s take a look on the factors influencing how speedy you may
a) successfully fight battles (clear dungeons and temples) and
b) gaining the most experience out of battles

These are:
- Ability to win with the least amount of troops feasible
- Recovery time for troops between battle risks (healing wounds)
- Movement time for the fighting army and reinforcements

Well, weird enough life only excels in recovery time (the priceless healing
spells available early, after little research time for say a one lvl 4 or 2 lvl
2 mages). The price for the least amount of troops feasible goes to order and
death (second one if Balkoth is amongst the troops). Price for the fastest
movement goes to Air, where the slowest army member will have a speed of 22
(wind riders). And it is the first category where the elves get hardest pushed
- ability to win battles. In fact, their biggest problem is that the standard
starting party will not be able to free a temple before leveling AND buying
mercenaries. Order is faster - you can do with the starting party  after
leveling or without leveling but plus mercenaries (talking about loss free
battles, of course). Death excels here - Balkoth can do on his own. Air troops
are even more fragile than the elven one - in fact, the air warrior is inferior
to the elven counterpart due to worst reaction time of all warriors (time
between receiving a hit and striking back or hitting and hitting again). Which
outweighs their speed easily.
But that all does not mean much in the long run. It is the combination of fast
movement (slowest Elven army member would be an enchantress with speed 14,
compared to order with speed 12 mage or chaos with speed 10 stickthrower) AND
shortest recovery time (elves heal faster by nature even without magical help).
After leveling nicely accompanied by the unmatched power of Elven archers, who
can take out deadly enemies from far - sometimes from battle start like in
water breweries. It is this power that allows life to reach far dungeons
earlier, move earlier after battles and even take heavier wounds but still
recover faster that most always allows them to develop leaders and troops
faster, gain more fame and followers than any other faith in the same time
frame. Bear in mind that Elven galleons are the third fastest in the game as
well - far behind water but close behind air. Sure, using auto calc order and
chaos are easier. Sure, order and chaos units often would survive battles where
elven units would get lost. But despite their high defence (order) or attack
(chaos) rates - their troops WILL be wounded. Often heavily. So they either
have to rest for quite some time or go back to the capital to be cured in the
temple (which costs spared income - crystals). That is why one of the best
artifacts period to get for another faith than life is the ring of healing -
priceless for it´s power could not be achieved within the faith.

And the end result ...

favours both water and life - with a slight advantage to water. While the troop
mix is better with water (great cavalry and ships, medium archers and infantry,
medium thieves and warriors, weak mages) and the elven troops require more
skill to regularly win (great thieves and awesome archers. Weak warriors,
infantry and cavalry. Medium ships, powerful mages), water still needs more
time to recover between battles. But the speed of their ships combined with the
ability to control 5 faithes gives water the lead. Not surprising for a
strategy game focussed on - economy. Hey, did you really beleive it focusses on
something else? Think again.

As a side note for gameplay on normal difficulty; Try to get water if playing
elves and elves if playing water. Period. They start as neighbours, have the
same favourable terrain available (grass) and reach each others great temple in
3 turns. This combination favours the elves more than water - they are in a
much more dire need for a specific sort of troops (sturdy infantry and cavalry)
than the amazons. IF you manage to get an army with an elven mage, water
infantry and elven archers early on ... you name it.

Game imbalances

The analysis has already laid hand on some severe game imbalances. You will
even find more the more you play. E.g. watch which faith regularly liberates
its great temple when. Watch which faith already cleared lvl 5 dungeons while
another one still monks around with lvl 3 and 4. Look at the boosts of certain
artifacts (Aramaugs amulet and staff of drowning being the most remarkable
ones) compared to even more costly (in the lord editor) or more impressive
ones. And some of the advantages of certain faithes discussed in the game
boards out there in the wild kick in late - very late. The 3 high ranked air
mages with chain lightning? To get there you need ages of research and an
astonishing ability to develop your mages (which level slowly). It can be done
- in fact I´ve done it several times - but its is not what a game newbie would
be able to perform or would find fun. Elves and elven mages are much more
straightforward - and it is much easier to develop elven archers to lvl 5 than
air mages to lvl 8.

So the game developers arguably had preferences and dislikes. My judgement is
they really liked elves, did not see some of the hidden powers of water and had
to favour death because death will most likely fight all other faithes in the
end (the relation with death slowly declines on its own).

If you need an advice which faith to play as a game newcomer: Focus on order,
life and water. The good faithes are generally easier to play (more friendly
neighbours) than the bad ones. And air really needs some game experience to
shine. Except you follow my air strategy, of course :-).

Regards

Thorsten