Or How about the good old Artificer + runemaster combo to build cheap artifacts and break them for 50% more mana than you put into them if you needed it?
actually if you added conjurer to artifcer + runemaster, you can make magic items for 50% of their break cost value, effectively with a little mana, you could make magic items to break them to build you up faster to massive magic items, effectively making the best possible magic items in the game and equiping your heroes with them, mixxed with other possible things like sorcery 5 lets you make magic items that also have special properties on one of the four slots on the magic item, this one being immunity to magic.
This is what made MOM so great because there was so many different possibilities, that even those who love the game often didn't explore every single possibility, and yes, there is a definite difference between playing a life 11 human (best unit palidan), a halfling artificer + runemaster + conjurer, a 11 death mage with gnolls, to a 7 green mage with a myrran & alchemy with trolls....
There was so much variance that even with a poor AI, tbe game was a tremendous hit, also there was definite things that were tough about the game, some of the monsters in lairs were extremely dangerous, I lost a really powerful hero, and decided to live with it......
Probably most people who know about MOM know from experience why it is so good, and why it has not really in reality gotten a proper remaking...... To remake it properly you cannot destroy the complexity.
The age of wonders was okay, but its not really on par to MOM imho..... Its possible that a remake of MOM 2 would suck, simliar to MOO3, what a travesty....
just because there is a huge fanbase for MOM, its very possible to not understand the things that make MOM so engrossing and replayable....
Please for all things holy whoever makes MOM 2, don't make it a MOO3