[rdonj]

Protection does protect against earthquake, but as earthquake does piercing damage it's basically 8 damage vs 10 protection to an ironskinned mage. And the fatigue from casting the earthquake makes things even worse. Have you tried gearing your mages though? Defense helps protect against earthquakes (shield parry doesn't count though), so if you give your mages +defense items they'll do a much better job of surviving. And giving them luck wouldn't hurt matters either.

You also underestimate the effectiveness of army buffs but I'm not going to get into that again with you :P Just try to imagine how much more deadly a force of light infantry would be with over 20 protection and 17 damage, armor piercing melee attacks, twice each turn.

Just to illustrate - normally, they do 13 damage. Heavy infantry has 15+ protection, so they are expected to not do damage if they hit. With 17 armor piercing, that 15 protection counts as 7, which means you overkill their protection by 10. Now the vast majority of hits that connect will kill, and you strike twice per turn now as opposed to once. Meanwhile they probably do no more than 16 to your 20+, as opposed to 16 to your... 10ish? There's a huge difference.