Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

If you can't stand to piecemeal it then Mass protection is for you. Suddenly those lizards that C'tiss puts out become hard to kill. Don't forget your healing light or Skull staffs.

My personal favorites Flaming arrows and rain, depending on which side I am on.

Desiccation or Curse of the desert seems petty but I have seen it rout mean armies. Your troops just grind to a halt.

Got water? Bottles of living water are great. One water elemental is pathetic. Five or ten is something else. That wimpy scout is a one shot SC. Put him in the front with a say behind troops order and he is a fire and forget weapon.

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

Wishing for dominion is one of my favorite tricks. It's great to help score that end-game dominion kill against the stupid Sphinx hiding in his fortress, or against the water nation when I don't want to bother with Thetis Blessing.

One of the best things to do with magic is build stuff. Nature has some great construction potential, especially in the Misc category. Wineskins and Cauldrons will end all of your supply woes, Rings of Regen are good insurance for valuable commanders, and a Barkskin Amulet is a cheap way to protect a mage from the occasional stray arrow.

In a MA Man game once, I had a standard outfit for my Mothers of Avalon. Every Mother got a Robe of Missile Protection and a Barkskin Amulet. It was cheap & effective, and they could self-forge the gear. No, it didn't make my mages unkillable, but it sure helped keep the casualty rate down as low as possible.

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

hrmm perhaps i'm missing somethere here too...

In single player it seems like it's more of a game of mass smaller battles so to speak instead of these titanic end all battles... The computere usually has his forces relatievly spread out and I am forced to do the same to some extent to keep my borders from being invaded...

How does this play out in MP? When fighting human opponents are the battles typically more decisive?

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

There is generally even more raiding in multiplayer than in single player but, as humans also tend to hold less back there are usually more decisive battles too.

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

If you play a solo game with resources and independents turned DOWN then you can get something like an idea of what an MP game is like. You get rushed by all of the AIs and they use more of theyr national troops

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

The battles are typically very decisive between players. Often losing 2-3 important battles spells certain long term doom for your god and nation.

Most players usually have 2-3 big core armies and then small groups of raiders by midgame. Those could be individual SC's, small groups of thugs or small stealth/flying/teleporting armies.

Personally, its your big armies that win you the war in the long run, raiders are there to annoy your opponent, hurt him economically, keep him off balance/paranoid and generally make life unpleasent... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Its your big armies that hold land, conquer castles/capitals and destroy his ability to fight back, by defeating his armies.

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

Like the OP, i have being playing SP only but in EA. I've tried maybe about 8+ nations so far.

Yeah, personally I find the battlefield magic relatively weak , until level 4-5. Before that it's mostly use for bluffing SC's and thugs and site searching spells.

So early game most of the mages i recruit are for researching, but by the time i get good spells most of my mages are behind the line and it takes heck a lot of effort to get them to the front lines (unless they have air 3 for cloud trapezie).

It's kind of irriating like with forging stuff and recruiting capital only troops but at least for those i can use the extra commanders as mules...

But it sure is fun watching the mages cast all the flame based spells - flame bolt,fire blast fireball, flame erruption, Flare,Falling fires etc though to be honest
a lot of them look pretty similar to me.

I suppose there is an art to it by looking at different AOE, and range since the damage all look the same (plus minus 1)

And i suppose the larger the AOE the better (after damaage)

I figured out that there is no point in scripting very short range spells like Flame erruption as the first or second turn, cos the enemy won't be close enough....

Though with ranges 25 and up to 40, don't seem to make any difference to me...

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

You dont need commanders as 'mules' when you forge items, just build a lab near the front line. Range is a big factor, long range is particularly useful because it lets your mages hang back out of the range of enemy mages and archers ect.

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

Ahh perhaps that helps me understand a bit better the use of magic too... It sounds like magic is more useful then in MP because the battles are so important...

I mean many of the battles in SP vs the computer are rarely that much different from the next... So I have a hard time justifying spending a bunch of resources say on summoning elementals, regularly b/c I don't have enough gems to support it every single turn.

Where as in a MP game if you have a big fight you want to throw in everything you have to make sure you come out on top...

Does that sound about right?

Re: Is magic worth it?!?
 

Pretty much, although gem spending is often saved for the very large battles. If you want to see some bigger battles find a one province wide chokepoint and put enough PD in it to hold off enemy attacks. After a while they should either have a big force outside it that you can attack or they will beat the PD with a large army which you can then attack.