[onomastikon]

Well I'm into my third week with this now and I *thought* I was getting the hang of magic now, experimenting with new races, but I am still confused on many points, and here is one of them:

The mage units are often not strong enough in their paths to cast the good spells I am planning for. Only my Pretender can.

What I mean on the exampple with Machaka: they have fire, nature, earth and death mages. So I plan to go alteration (nature and earth goodies), smaller evocation (fire) and summoning, construction. But the mages all have ONE point of power in the paths. So I must make a combat-oriented pretender!

Basically I find it difficult to make a pretender who sort of stays at home with its own people, doing research or whatnot -- not that I have to, but I wanted to try this style of play. I find my mages basically do the research and leave the fighting to my troops + pretender.

How do you people view magic then? Do you empower all your mages? Or do you first go high construction, make those magic-boosting items, then research the school of choice, and THEN send the mages out to the field? Or what?

thank you