[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Bone Servants: I'll take another look. Not sure why they would need more precision, as they are just undead dogs... they don't have any missile weapons (do I misunderstand something?).

Spectral Servants: they die very very fast. Good against low morale infantry, but archers and even slingers eat them alive. They are bone-china fragile. From my testing they seem on par with the other servants.

The mages may be too cheap. The Barons turn out to be the best deal, except with massive luck. The Archmage Citizens (the gem producers) are good about 1/3rd of the time. The other 2/3rds they are severely curtailed in usefulness due to old age.... I may have to take another look just to make sure.

Note that the servants are cheap on purpose. To start with you have no gems, and only one source of 1 astral pearl per month. This means your mages are expensive, fragile, all but useless commanders for the first X turns. Slow start. Thematically, one big cause of the lack of gems is the servants themselves. You are sacrificing gem production for good cheap versatile troops. To check this, they are only available from the home province. You will quickly find yourself using independants as the main core of your armies....

From my experience so far: early game relies upon servants; mid game you need independants; mid-late game you better have either great evocation or conjurings; late game mages come into their own.

Note that my best mages have all fallen to arrows, age, curses, horrors, etc.... They are as frail as they are powerful. Nothing like having a 500gold arch-mage die to a single arrow--or, even worse, die 7 turns after you recruit him, due to a disease he was recruited with.