[Jack Simth]

It's hard to get, but there is a technique which, once successfully implemented, is completely unbeatable (and I'm NOT talking the Spell of Mastery) - You need two advantages (I may have the names wrong): Artificer and Runemaster, and one spell: Time Stop (sorcery). Runemaster reduces the cost of any arcane spell by 25%, Artificer reduces the cost of artifact forging (an arcane spell...) by 50% - with the net effect being that you can forge artifacts for 1/4 normal cost. The fun part? Recycling an artifact returns 1/2 the normal forge cost - a net gain of 2x your investment. If you can then get your effective casting skill over the maintanence cost of the Time Stop spell (200, as I recall - and each djinn in your capital boosts it by 20 - you can have 9, so you just need 21+ skill from yourself - not an issue), you cast TS, forge/recycle to get the maintenence for the TS and a backlog for summoning (and you don't have to maintain your summons during a TS - all you have to come up with is the 200 per extra turn for the TS), and conquer everyone with summons. Your opponents cannot build units, cannot cast non-combat spells, do not have any income (limiting combat spells), and YOU can keep it up indefinately. Every enemy unit you eliminate stays gone until the TS ends (barring trollish immortality - them you have to wipe out all at once), and you never need to let it end (except for the save bug - a TS doesn't work after a save/load cycle).