Game Over!!

[shovah]

yea, breath of winter is evil

[Saber Cherry]

That too. In fact, I've recently encounted a rash of Rime Hauberks forged by water mages and placed on normal commanders... so that they can kill even when they're not around I have to admit that I picked one up after a battle and put it on the Ulm Black Forest vampire-hero, who killed his troops with it too, despite my scripting to have him fly to the rear and attack away from my other units.

But it's true, Breath of Winter is almost universally bad except for Jotunheim/Neifelheim, Ermor, or solo supercombattants. And it's cast unscripted

Falling Frost is a nice spell but it requires more water magic than 90% of water mages will ever have. It cannot be cast underwater. However, water mages cannot buff with "Summon Water Power" on land! A Robe of the Sea is expensive, while a Water Bracelet is Construction-6. Considering that normal water mages (Hydromancers, Initiate of the Deeps [Atlantis' cheap non-capitol mage], Jade Amazons, Master of the Way, Celestial Master, Master of the Five Elements, Pythium, Wizards, Sages, Skratti, Caelum, Marshmaster, Starspawn, Astrologer, Mystic, Rain Priest, anything else with randoms, especially summons) are all W1 or W2, water on a recruitable mage almost never lets you cast Falling Frost.

Of everything I listed, I think Jade Amazons have a 1/16 chance of W3, Skratti have a 1/4 or 1/8, and S&A Celestial Masters have a 1/4 (these numbers may be off due to forgetting which randoms are #, $, or ?).

Then there are the recruitable W3 mages: Atlantis King of the Deep (290g), Deep Seer (180g, capitol-only), Neifel Jarl (500g, capitol-only). There are no cheap W3 summons of which I'm aware.

So, what do you do with this water?

W1 mage: Cast Quickness, then Slime. At Alt-6, Frozen Heart... but not really, since it has a range of 20 on a W1 mage. Underwater, cast Water Power then Water Strike (1 enemy per cast).

W2 mage: Cast Quickness, 4x Cold Bolt, then Breath of Winter and kill your own troops. At Evoc-7, Ice Strike is OK, but only range 25, and only really good on high-level mages.

W3 mage: Almost doesn't exist except for 2 nations, Ice Devils, Sea Troll Kings, Elemental Queens, and W9 Gods... or massive communions, after which you have better spells than Falling Frost.

So - for the first half of the game, W1 mages research, W2 mages forge clams (if you play that way), and all the cool mages get into the hall of fame. W2 mages can't get into the hall of fame except by friendly kills (not sure if those count). It's hard to find a good use for low-level water magic for much of the game.

edit: Before you go summoning Sea King Courts willy-nilly, consider this:

Kristoffer O said
Trolls are incredibly greedy. What they do with their stipends is unknown. Tax collectors worldwide dream of solving this mystery. The trolls dream of juicy tax collectors.

Sea troll cost - 50
Troll cost - 60

[Oversway]

Forget what everyone else is saying, recruit those water mages! They are ignoring that nearly all of those 'useless' w1 mages have other paths. If we are talking about a level 1 single path, f1 and a1 are better useful, but not all that much better than w1.

Mages with only level 2 single path: yeah water is weaker (in battle) earlier on, but once you can give them water bracelets and get falling frost, they are a great deal! Before that they are great forgers. Plus, aren't we talking about just hydromancers here? They are not that common, anyways. There are also sea fathers but they have some holy magic and are sacred, so good researchers.

Yeah everyone has seen problems with BoW, but the same can be said for any troop that radiates heat,cold,disease,etc.

To sum it up, recruit mages that have water!

[Endoperez]

My two pieces of gold:

Recruit mages! is very high on the "do" list. Don't recruit Water mages! is pretty low on the "don't do" list. It is very important to recruit mages, to research, to forge, to search for sites. However, if you must chooce between different mages, Water mage usually is worse than a different mage. However, mages that have Water often have other nice qualities. Master of the Way are the cheapest researchers of Tien Chi for example, and good Banishers against undead.

[Manuk]

Water 2 mages are good for casting "voice of apsu" and search those cool magics sites. As for fire 2 cast "augury" and so forth.
It´s good to blood hunt also even if you almost never use it in battle. ( I casted once a battle blood spell on MP to give strenght to all my units and then some vampires and devils killed 2 enemy air queens )

[shovah]

+strength blood spell would go well with a mictain blood+fire bless (which would give even more strength to their multiple attack, flaming sacreds)