Newbie question: Best army buff paths/schools?

[MaxWilson]

Gotta disagree about Destruction, in part because it only affects 5-6 squares and partly because Svartalf precision is... less than stellar. When the enemy is far away, you have a good chance of missing the main body (hitting maybe 3-6 troops) and when the enemy is close you have the potential to break your own guys' armor. At least, I haven't been impressed by Destruction in the past, even though it looks nice on paper. Note that I'm not saying I've only got 15 Hirdmen per army--I've got a few armies of 22 to 50--and Strength of Giants scales better with army size than Destruction.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

P.S. My point isn't so much that killing 30 Abyssians is impressive, it's that the spells in question helped my Hirdmen much more than a F4E4W9S9 bless helped my Helhirdlings. My kill ratio is an order of magnitude better than before.

[Micah]

Ah, my mistake, normal Hirdmen, not Helhirdings. That's much better, although he shouldn't be using battleaxe infantry regardless, flails or morningstars are the way to go against hige defense.

Destruction is amazingly good. You might need more than one guy casting it so it'll get good coverage, but it's a fantastic spell. It's about 5 times as effective as strength of giants in terms of extra damage done in your example, so even with only 50% coverage you're still way, way ahead. The friendly fire potential is annoying, true, but your troops are much less likely to get hit than your enemy's troops (and if your guys do take a hit, even with armor they still have a really high chance of dying from a battleaxe Abysian)

[MaxWilson]

Maybe I'll have to give Destruction another shot. I'm still only playing against the AI (and occasionally myself), trying to get a handle on tactics. Last time I tried Destruction it was as a possible counter to E9N9 Niefel Jarls, but I could never make my Svartalfs actually hit the Jarls so I went with Iron Bane instead, which worked pretty well. Still, the nice thing about buffs, as opposed to maluses like Destruction, is that it's really easy to cast them on your whole army with only a single caster. I might try Destruction + Strength of Giants, but I doubt I'd drop Strength of Giants out completely unless facing something much more heavily armored than Abyssians, like Wraith Lords or Niefel Jarls.

Fog Warriors sounds cool, although the A5 requirement is steep since Storm Power only works in a storm (requires gems). Summon Earthpower/Phoenix Power are great since they effectively boost your E/F power by 1 for everyone in your whole army, but Summor Storm Power/Water Power seem much more specialized. Do most people just get A/W boosts from items? And thanks for the pointers to the Nature buffs.

-Max

[Teraswaerto]

If you use air magic a lot it's usually a good idea to carry around a Staff of Storms. That way you can always cast Storm Power, and there are other benefits.

[MaxWilson]

Staff of Storms. [checks manual] Cool! Thanks.

-Max

[Taqwus]

MaxWilson said:
Summon Earthpower/Phoenix Power are great since they effectively boost your E/F power by 1 for everyone in your whole army

Er, what?

[MaxWilson]

I seem to have worded that unclearly. By that I mean that when I'm looking through the manual for battlefield spells, I mentally adjust my nation's "maximum Earth level" upwards to account for Summon Earth Power. Magma Eruption is E3F1, but fire Svartalfs are effectively E3F1 so they can cast it without items. It's obviously true that you can get item boosters to let particular mages cast spells above your normal, national limits, but Summon Earth Power applies to pretty much all your earth mages, as does Phoenix Power to fire mages. Since you always have tons of mages in your research forts, it's nice for them to have access to powerful spells without needing item-boosters.

-Max

[Taqwus]

Oh, that makes sense. I was thinking more along the lines of Battlefield Enchantments...