Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Your maths is not correct at all, because the mages (should) survive the battle. So you can't calculate the cost of a shadow blast as being (cost of mage) + (cost of gem).

The way I'm doing the math is based on the observation that battles against the AI tend to be close to "all or nothing" affairs. If I come to the fight with 50 troops, and he has 100, I'm going to lose 40 and he'll lose 10. If I can add 100 troops to that battle, he'll lose 80 and I'll lose 20. My losses when I win a battle are relatively minimal, and my losses are catastrophic when I lose a battle.

I'm looking for mages to provide a greater likelihood of winning... too often, it seems like they instead increase my losses -- my army of 50 troops and 5 mages meets his 50 troops, and my mages incinerate half of my troops in the process of killing his