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Well, I agree with Ironhawk to some extent. In dom2 the high-precision, few-target spells were better because armies were smaller. Now in dom3 the low-precision, many-target spells are better. And Caelum suffers more from quickness because they had water magic on all their mages. Of course, they are not the only ones that are hurt by that, lots of nations have water mages.

I'm not sure I agree that an air mage is no longer worth his own cost, though. After all mages are supposed to live a long time and fight in many battles, especially Caelum mages which are so hard to catch if they rout. And they still kill almost as many troops as they did before since they should still be limited by fatigue rather than # of rounds, most of the time. Their magic is just less dominant and develops a little more slowly in battle.