[Amorphous]

I have a lot of comments, but I will try to limit myself a bit at least.


Man can do quite a lot with battle magic and a lot of is of the kind that interacts and combines well with national troops.

Lightning and poison are the obvious choices for damage spam, but in most cases your troops - with the help of a buff or 10 - can do just fine in the damage department. Do not forget such things as sleep and spamming panic and false horrors. Charm has been mentioned as have buffs, but the last part is very - not to say extremely - important to man.

All your mages can cast protection, use it. Get access to earth so that you can use stone- or ironskin when an opponent brings too much fire damage to the table. As the game goes on, start piling buffs on your troops. Knights are great in the beginning game and with buffs they keep on being absolutely fantastic - quickened, foggy, protected, giant-strength knights with weapons of sharpness never go out of style. Knights do die almost as easily to damage spells as any other troops, but that does not mean that you should stop producing them. Buff them with gift of flight or, in a pinch, haste. Knights are offensive units and should be used as such. Once they are mixed in with enemy they are harder to take out and - most important of all - they get to smack them around. They are expensive, but you have a very solid income and cheap and sacred mages - troops and castles are for what it is used.

Not using knights cripples Man.


It is important to realise that one of Man's strength is that it can field a lot of armies that need an effort to get rid of. Of course, a reasonably large and dedicated opposing army will squash it, but that demands resources. A nation with plenty of decent air mages will not have as much trouble, but one relying on its pretender or expensive summons to cast storm or arrow fend to lessen the impact of your longbowmen will have problems.

The other obvious answer to longbowmen are heavy infantry with shields, but that has drawbacks that Man can exploit as well. Obviously, lightning spam can be used to great effect here (orb lightning works particularly well against human sized troops), but knights and some magic for slightly larger battles works very well, too. Knights are just as protected as other heavy infantry, but with relatively low encumbrance. Work the difference by casting curse of stones on your enemies and relief on your own troops. Add in regeneration to add to your staying power and weapons of sharpness to detract from that of your opponent. In practice you have to limit yourself to what you have actually researched, of course, but at least curse of stones is a guarantee.



I also want to add something about bards. They are not only massively stealthy (+30 , not +25 to be precise), they also have leadership 10. This makes bards the preferred ferrier of wardens as they are much harder to detect than your other stealthy commanders. This makes them almost perfect body guards for a cloud trapezing crone. The bard can throw a quick protection or two on the wardens and then concentrate on keeping everyone's hp high and fatigue low. The wardens kill anything getting close to the crone and the crone does the rest.


Finally, about the pretender I strongly recommend taking A4 and at least E2 - preferably E3. Waiting until construction 6 for the ability to craft air boosters can hurt quite a bit. Without at least E2 you will in all probability have to empower a E1 crone or independent mage and that is 30 gems that you need - earth is vital for man. Eventually you will want a couple of troll kings to cover earth casting. With E3 you can craft a hammer as soon as you get the gems and as a bonus you then have easy access to elemental staffs. This in turn facilitates serious water access through naiads - and opens up for clams.