Mage power levels and Pretender setup

[onomastikon]

Well I'm into my third week with this now and I *thought* I was getting the hang of magic now, experimenting with new races, but I am still confused on many points, and here is one of them:

The mage units are often not strong enough in their paths to cast the good spells I am planning for. Only my Pretender can.

What I mean on the exampple with Machaka: they have fire, nature, earth and death mages. So I plan to go alteration (nature and earth goodies), smaller evocation (fire) and summoning, construction. But the mages all have ONE point of power in the paths. So I must make a combat-oriented pretender!

Basically I find it difficult to make a pretender who sort of stays at home with its own people, doing research or whatnot -- not that I have to, but I wanted to try this style of play. I find my mages basically do the research and leave the fighting to my troops + pretender.

How do you people view magic then? Do you empower all your mages? Or do you first go high construction, make those magic-boosting items, then research the school of choice, and THEN send the mages out to the field? Or what?

thank you

[SurvivalistMerc]

I'm in the rainbow mage Category. I don't really like combat pretenders, though I feel I need to further explore them in order to really do well in MP. (The higher independent settings kicked my tail, and I am C'tis base...not exactly underpowered.)

At first, the mages just cast their low-level evocations in battle. I usually script sermon of courage if they have priestly power rather than low-level inaccurate evocations.

Most schools have a conjuration-2 or conj-3 spell to boost their magic power in a given path. For instance, Summon Earthpower, which is Conj-3. These spells usually require only 1 or 2 skill to cast. (I think the water one requuires only 1 skill.)

Thus, with proper equipment and orders to first cast the spell to boost magical skill, low-level magi can cast some pretty amazing spells.

As an example, you can get blade wind out of any mage with 1 earth using earth boots (construction 4) and summon earthpower. Not bad, eh?

This leaves your pretender free to site search and cast global spells. And research when he/she has nothing better to do. It's a very interesting style of play which I find quite enjoyable.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Most schools have a conjuration-2 or conj-3 spell to boost their magic power in a given path. For instance, Summon Earthpower, which is Conj-3. These spells usually require only 1 or 2 skill to cast. (I think the water one requuires only 1 skill.)

Only Earth and Fire. Air and Water are usually unviable (require a storm and being underwater, respectively). The astral one is too expensive for low astral mages: 100 fatigue and a gem. Only good for high astral and mages in communion. Earth, Death, and Nature have cheap con-4 boosting items, though.

Level 1 mages in other paths, without communion, are generally useless outside of research and forging cheap items...

[PvK]

There are several different approaches possible, depending upon your nation and the situations (i.e. independent mages, research levels, gem income, enemy activities, & magic goals). Combat pretender is one of the easiest, and can be effective at first, but I tend to think it's not generally the most effective nor the most interesting. If you do a successful pretender blitz then it's effective but not terribly interesting. If not, then it can accomplish rather less than another mage could by doing other things.

Site searching, one way or another, can make a big difference.

Some nations have mages which can be fairly effective out of the box.

However yes, often it makes a huge difference to getting effective spells, to use one of the many ways to boost the starting mages' power levels by one or more levels. Sure, the pretender can do things himself, but it's much better to have producable units doing things so the pretender can do other things that they can't. Empowerment, items, combat power boost spells, and communions can all do this - which ones to use depends on all the various factors mentioned above.

It helps to find desired abilities worth taking the effort to obtain, rather than just empowering and seeing what you get. Many effects aren't particularly useful except in an appropriate situation.

There are also ways to improve effectiveness a lot which don't involve just increasing power to reach the level needed to cast a spell - improving accuracy, reinvigoration, penetration, defense, speed, immunity, etc, can all make the difference between a bad investment and an effective tool.

PvK

[ January 19, 2004, 16:57: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Teraswaerto]

Level 1 mages can cast some useful spells like Blindness, Curse, etc.

[ January 19, 2004, 16:55: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Usually giving 2 or 3 will be enough. There are spells in that range which provide boosts. There are also equip items that can be built at those levels (after researching contruction to 2/4/6/8) and those items give boosts of 1 or 2 different magics. And of course there is empowerment.

So a mage with 3 air can create the Bag of Wind to get another notch of air magic (and a good battle summons). Then create the winged helm for another. This brings him to 5 in air. If you mention the level and which magic then we can give specific examples.

ALso since 2 or 3 tend to find the right sites thats another kindof closed loop. Lets say I have a pretender with 3air, 3nature, 3death; and I search my provinces. If I find alot of death sites giving me alot of gems then I might complain because I dont have the mages to make good use of it. But if Im getting too many death gems to use then I can use them to empower some mages to the level I need. So a Rainbow Pretender tactic would be to allow the sites, and gem income, decide what you need to make for best use.

I know some hate to play that way. They prefer plans and strategys laid out before the game. But personally I like making use of quirks that pop up.

edited: Type my answer and hit enter just to see there is already half a dozen good answers. OK Im going to start doing my answers in notepad. Then refreshing the thread. And then IF no one has already given a perfectly good answer THEN I will hit "Post Reply" and paste it in.

[ January 19, 2004, 16:59: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]