Master of Magic – How to Beat Hard AI Wizards With Gnolls

If you already done with normal-difficulty games and interested in hard difficulty. Early offense with Gnolls might be a simple and useful strategy.

Why Gnolls

With significant resource boosts, hard enemy AI wizards dominate the mid-game. To beat them, you can play some late-game strategies, or simply just play early offense and rush it.

Here are the races you might consider to pick for playing early offense:

Arcanus:

• Gnolls
• Lizardmen
• Halflings

Myrrans:

• Draconians
• Beastmen
• Trolls

For strategy reason, Arcanus races are the better, because you want to face your enemies as soon as possible. The plan is to rush an enemy wizard between round 40 – 70, and benefit from the resource you earned by conquering. In order to do so, Gnolls and Lizardmen are the best. Halfings can do the trick too, but it is not as powerful as Gnolls and Lizardmen.

Advantage of these races for playing early offense:

Gnolls

• Best melee units in Arcanus ( +2 attack )
• Cheap unit construction cost ( normal cost )

Lizardmen

• Great melee units ( + 1 shiled and + 1 HP )
• Cheap unit construction cost ( normal cost )
• Water movement

Halfing

• Great swordmen
• Great range units

Game play of early offense gnoll is way simpler than Lizardmen, so this article will be about gnolls.

Jafar or Custom Wizard

You can just pick Jafar by default as your wizard, he is perfect for early offense gnolls, if you want to explore your choices, read on:

To play early offense with gnolls, first you need to know that during the early offense period ( before round 70 ), due to its low construction cost and low upkeep, 80% of units in your troop will be gnoll spearmen. Gnoll spearmen is 3 times stronger compare to high Men spearmen, actually it is stronger than high men swordmen. The rest of your troop would like this: your heroes, 1 – 3 gnoll swordmen, 1 – 3 magic spirit for scouting.

Yes you do not need any summon creatures other than magic spirit.

Gnoll Spearmen

• Construction cost : 10
• Upkeep : 1 food
• Fiqures : 8
• Attack : 3
• Defense : 2
• Resistance : 4
• HP : 1

The strategy to custom our wizard is simple: Anything that can power up our gnoll melee units.

Useful Traits:

• Alchemy ( For free magic weapons + 10% chance to hit )
• Warlord ( For extra unit level )

P. S. Since you have Alchemy trait, you probably would not need Channeler trait.

Useful Spells:

Sorcery

• Wandering Island ( for travel across sea )
• Confusion ( combat magic )
• Phantom Warriors ( combat magic )

Life

• Healing
• Holy Weapon
• Heroism
• Blessing ( Against death wizards )
• Heroism

Death

• Weakness

Nature:

• Water Walking
• Web

Remember that gnolls do not have water walking, and building ships are too slow for early offense. So you probably want to pick some Sorcery books for Wandering Island spell.

Gameplay

Our Goal would be conquer one enemy fortress before round 70, while enemy wizard do not posses any mid-game units. it is possible to be done before round 40 with some luck.

Round 1 – 20:

• In your starting city, build a granary for food.
• In your starting city, keep building gnoll spearmen and nothing else.
• send out every units separately to scout the map
• Get a free magic spirit and use it to scout the map.
• Summon an extra magic spirit to scout the map.
• Find cities as a fast as you can and conquer them all by your gnoll troops.
• Using conquered cities to produce food to maintain your growing troop.

Round 20 – 40:

• Meet the nearest enemy wizard, He / she will soon declare war to you.
• Raze every cities / outpost near enemy fortress to weaken that wizard. unless you think you can guard it.
• Hire 1 – 2 heroes.

Round 40 – 70:

• Conquer enemy wizard fortress ( usually need 5 – 8 gnoll spearrmen units plus your heroes )
• Prepare to travel across the sea to fight other enemy wizrads
• Prepare to build some gnoll wolf riders ( or other mid-game units. )

Round 70-:

• Now you probably the strongest wizard stand in the game, so feel free to do play with ease, the survivor mode is over.