Oh, you said astral spells dont help you much in comat, that just makes me wonder what exactly are you doing wrong
First choice would probaly be several battle fortunes or one will of the fates, depending on your research level. They roughly double the life expectancy of your troops. After that, try Doom, it halves the expectancy of enemy's troops.
To make bigger spells easier to cast, use starshine skullcaps, crystal coins, extra gems or the jackpot, banner of the northern star (or it's spell Version). Against AI, antimagic is less effective, but against human it is often very good.
After you have banner of the northern star up, make all those water-1 mystics you get to cast quickness/soul slay x4. Dont put w2 mystics in the group though, they will cast breath of winter and kill all your own mages
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Astrologers with the Banner up get effective s4 (as air magic is also in the game, astral magic is denoted with "s".), which is good enough for enslave mind, which can in certain situations be not just effective, but funny too. Oh, and dont forget to give spell focuses to you astrologers, they are relatively cheap, and that +2 penetration makes ALL the difference. The other easy-to-massproduce penetration item is f2 w2, and with a right kind of mystic and a booster you can produce them too, but they are a bit more expensive.
Re: The machinations of battle
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