Use of mages
 

Newbie here I need tips on the use of mages!

I almost always just use them for research, and then when construction is high enough, i start forging stuff.

Trying to figure out how to do the upgrading path tricks with items and summons e.g get a N2 mage add a thistle mace, with N3 get a Ivy king who is *naturally* N3, add mace to get a N4 etc..

But one thing I'm still wondering is, how efficient mages are in battle. I know it depends on what mages you are using, but is it generally worth while to drag a couple of mages with your elite troops just to have them cast battle field magic? Sure there are some special tactics like Wind guide , flaming arrow with archers, but in general are they worth it?

So far, the only time my mages see battle is if they are attacked in their nice fortress+lab... Is that a mistake? Should I be more warlike with my mages?

Any national specific advise is welcome as well.

Re: Use of mages
 

Mages often make the difference between victory or death.

Use them in your battles for buffing your troops and also for countering your enemy troops strengths and weaknesses.

Re: Use of mages
 

Yes it is a mistake. take a few with your large armies.

Battlefield wide buffs are priceless.
Flaming arrows also works on slingers, turning a crappy chaff into deadly chaff.

Re: Use of mages
 

Or the area effect, large number of effect evocations.

Falling Fire/Frost, Shadow Blast, Nether Darts, Blade Wind, Magma Eruption.

Re: Use of mages
 

from my experiences in dom 2, the right buffs can create some nasty forces- machakas chaff units become deadly with flaming arrows and windguide

Re: Use of mages
 

Mages *are* the firepower of an advanced army. Recruitable units are, by and large, just meatshields after a certain point. Look into the battlefield enchantment attack spells and also the higher level AOE battlefield spells.

Re: Use of mages
 

Oh, the pleasure!

Frying your opponents with Thunder Strikes, Magma Eruptions etc. or mincing them with those blood-thirsty, fire-spitting Archangels (Glory to the nation of Pythium!)is a rapture beyond your wildest dreams!

However, there is one very irritating issue regarding the use of heavy battlefield spells. Gems. You have to keep your mages stocked up if you want them to have any effect and dealing with this sort of micro-management is NOT fun - at least in SP games I find it very tedious and time-consuming.

Re: Use of mages
 

I'll admit I tend to rarely use gems for regular attack spells. Battlefield buffs and the like, sure, but not the regular AoE spells.
The only one mentioned so far is ShadowBlast, which is nice, but may not be worth the micromanagement most of the time.
It can be devastating at the right time: Someone's storming your castle, hand out nice shiny death gems to all you high death mages and watch the enemy go away.

Re: Use of mages
 

After more intensive SP playing I realise My use of magic is definitely suboptimal. That is why i have problems playing big maps. I just research and research and research, but i don't really use them , meanwhile i get a ton of gems sitting around and the computer starts killing me with his magic and my blessed units become outdated.

I have to force myself to actually use what i research. The problem is each spell (even up to lv6) is still not very powerful. You need to cast it multiple times to see it's power. But there's really a lot of micromanagement. I know you can store attack commands, but for rituals or forging it gets really old. Worse for nations with mages with lots of random paths...

Even for construction which is the school i know best, i underuse it.

I was trying the other day to mass produce some lucky pedants, but it was a pain trying to remember which of the 20 or so mages in my capital could forge it (not all had S1). Not to mention figuring out what to forge in the first place. Was a mage with 3D2N able to forge exactly the same stuff has a 3D2N1A at contruction 6?

All trying to remember which mages have cast site searching spells, you can make a mistake and you find 2 different mages cast the same site searching spell on the same province sigh.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++

There is a certain point where you have to say, enough is enough and stop the bulk of research and send your army of mages out there to conquer!!!

12 mages backed up with some minimal troops is quite amazing site with lv 6 magic.

Re: Use of mages
 

The auto site search should work pretty will for avoiding duplicate searches.

The 'F1' screen makes it easier to find the mages you need.

Summoned troops and commanders are probably the lowest micromanagement use of research and gems. Takes some experimentation to figure out which ones are most useful.

Re: Use of mages
 

Thanks I will be using those now.

Thanks for the idea about summoning.

I'm familiar with construction, alteration (mostly buff spells, alter fate! personal luck! Mirror image!), evocation (battle field attack ., Magma bolt! Flare! Blade wind!), enchantment (mix of buff battle field and ritual Gift of heath! ) and even thamutary (site searching, province attack) i kind of get.

Unfortunately conjuration it is a school that I least understand and familiar with, next to Blood.

Most of low levels summons (lv 5 and down) look like lemons
to me. The blood summons look okay, but i don't do blood magic. But that's another thread..

Re: Use of mages
 

Yeah, well, most of the low-level summons *are* lemons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Except for some of the nationals. Right now, I like LA Agartha's Conj 4 Sepulchrals. Sacred, high-damage (24 Str + 11), decent attack, great protection (E9 + Legions of Steel = 20 Prot), cheap (4 death gems). Zero-encumbrance, and we all know how important that is. 65 hp and size 4 means even anti-undead spells like Dust to Dust don't have an easy time taking them down.

Flame Corpses (also LA Agartha) look promising, but I tried them against EA Pangaea's centaurs and they didn't kill many, probably because they centaurs have so many hit points. I think I'd rather spend the fire gems on Lightless Lanterns, but if anyone knows a good use for Flame Corpses I'll be glad to hear it.

-Max

Re: Use of mages
 

If you aren't using magic, you're not advancing up the only tech tree there is in the game.

The classic uses of non-national low level summons are Vine Ogres and Corpse Men (technically, a construction not a conjuration). Both benefit from decently tough basic frames but can be summoned cheaply in large numbers with the right equipment (see manual). You probably won't be able to put together overwhelming numbers of them until mid-late anyway (since you'll want maybe 5-10 properly equipped mages casting the appropriate spell monthly, and earlier in the game research is king), but they are available quite early if your basic forces need a bit of backup.

One battlefield spell in particular you might want to look more closely at is Raise Skeletons (Enchantment 3). It is one of the earlier spells in the game that you can use to obliterate indeps without much effort, especially in conjunction with solid ranged troops. It's a nice spell because a. it doesn't miss b. it doesn't have a range at which the computer won't cast it c. it gives you endlessly reusable chaff to eat up whatever casualties indeps might otherwise inflict which would slow down your momentum. Particularly nice against heavy cav, to have them break their lances against.

Re: Use of mages
 

I think that, for a total beginner who wants to discover battle magic,EA Abysia is a good option, as it has powerfull fire mages with fire immune troops. Put three or four(or more !)mages in your main army with whatever script you like, and watch your ennemies BURN ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Use of mages
 

Agreed - although you'll need to research Fireball (Evocation 3) before they can really cause any pain.

Re: Use of mages
 

Don't they start with flare? Or was that MA Abysia or dom2 abysia?

Re: Use of mages
 

Dom2 abysia.

Re: Use of mages
 

I also took considerable time until I learned how to use mages for something other than research and construction of items. (I attribute it to my extensive Civ experiences.)
You can win on medium sized maps without much magic.

But following some sage advice I received here I started making maps to allow 30+ provinces per player, set gold and resources to 50%, indies to 9 and magic research to easy. I started out getting crushed by the AI, but eventually learned to adapt. Instead of having 20 or more capitol only mages sitting in my capital researching spells that the field army commanders can't cast, I find I only keep about 5 there for forging, and most of my research is now done by indie mages (with skulls or feathers).

Re: Use of mages
 

I've found mages quite useful in battle. Of course there's a tradeoff, especially if you throw a large force of them into the fray because you're losing research. I believe this can be recovered in the long term by the extra income produced from taking over another nation early.

For example, I put about 8 crones of Avalon into battle as Man against MA Argatha. By using gems to up some of the crones to cast level 3 air magic we were able to rout huge groups of heavy infantry our archers would have been unable to touch by casting Thunder Strike. Thankfully the armor piercing qualities of lightning made them a perfect counter to Argatha's highly armored, highly arrow resistant, troops.

Jazzepi