Newbie - General Concepts

[Cainehill]

Endoperez wrote a great reply, BUT:
Most pretenders are built to fulfill one spesific role, and their actions are planned with their abilities in mind. As an example, if you have Son of Niefel with Water 9 to get quickness for sacred units, you want to plan his doing according to his powerful magic. As Breath of Winter becomes more powerful with more powerful Water mage, using him in battle seems like a good idea.

Unlike Fire Shield, Breath of Winter doesn't improve with higher ranks of magic. Instead, the effect is dependent on the climate of the province : in cold provinces the cloud is larger and may do more damage, in provinces with Heat-3 the spell is nearly worthless.

By way of illustration : I teleported a monolith into provinces with different weather, using nothing but Breath of Winter. The only time he failed was against militia when teleported into Heat-3. The spell often couldn't be seen at all, and the militia swarming the monolith took so little damage that they never retreated.

Because of this, the monolith eventually auto-retreated, but because it's immobile it can't retreat, and so died. Doing the exact same thing with Heat-2, the spell's cloud was sufficiently larger that the militia took noticeable damage in the first 10 rounds and fled after taking casualties, unlike the Heat-3 where there was zero casualties amongst the militia.