[Akela]

Well thanks to all the good advice here I now have two brothers hooked! One to go.

I can tell you from my own experience (1 month now, about 10 games) and the questions I fielded from my brothers that magic is a complete mystery to the brand new player. Like one poster said, we would build mages and put them on research (because that's what Bruce did in the tutuorial) but that's all they would ever do.

You could probably divide magic by effect into 4 main categories. Stuff that modifies combat (buffs/debuffs), direct damage spells, summons and miscellaneous stuff like teleport. All of which are pretty hard for a brand new player to construct a strategy around. The first game seems to be, at least in my limited experience, a matter of moving large masses of troops around the map, watching them fight, and building more of the same.