Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?

[thejeff]

Against the big AI armies, you need to use a lot of mages to have an effect.

The key is that you may have to use a similar gold cost of mages to destroy a good sized AI army, and you could also beat them with the same gold cost of troops, but you'd lose a lot of troops and the mages will all survive. (You may lose some of the troops you use to keep the AI hordes away from your mages, but they're replaceable.)

It may take 3000 gold worth of mages & 500 gold worth of meatshield troops to beat that 300 unit AI army, but you'll still have the mages and he'll have lost the army.

The other approach is buffing your troops, but I don't think C'tis works well for that. Quickened, lucky troops with strength and protection bonuses work quite nicely.