Is magic worth it?!?

[DireAussie]

>Late age game with Arcoscephale

Generally speaking late age has less magic; late age mages have less magic skills. As stated on page 97 of the manual - "The early age has a predominance of magic, and as the ages progress, the primacy of arms and armor becomes pronounced".

Here's one strategy for making late game arco a strong magic nation: Take magic 3 and a strong dominion. Recruit sybils until you get a few level 3 astral. Build cheap forts and labs and then pump out mystics en-masse. Set your sybil to cast light of the northern star and set all your mystics to cast mind burn. Watch the enemy die.

Another strategy for late game arco involving magic: Take luck 3, turmoil 3 and an awake pretender you can use for early expansion (eg dragon), with magic keep in mind a good bless effect. Recruit mystics and go for arcane probing (evocation) then conjuration 5. While researching conjuration, use arcane probing to find astral sites and use mystics that have a high magic skill to find magic sites (you should have lots of provinces you can search due to quick early expansion). By the time you have conjuration 5 you should have gotten plenty of magic gems from luck 3 and from magic site searching. Convert the gems to astral and use your mystics to cast ritual spell Summon Sirrush. Use your newly acquired uber blessable mutant-dragons to smash the enemy.