Best ways to poach mages...

[licker]

too many wise acres here

And yes, I get the remote assassination spells... I suppose I was looking for a bit more in depth discussion of their relative merits vs. different mage types.

For example, mind hunt works well when there are no astral mages in the province, and is death for your mage if there are s2+ mages there correct?

Seeking Arrow works reasonably well, but if the mage is wearing armor it doesn't work very well, and if the mage has some other form of missile protection it also has a poor success rate.

Fires from Afar can hit mages, but unless you are hitting a research center with a very high mage density its not going to be very effective...

Also do these kinds of spells generally benefit from being cast with higher levels of the appropriate path?

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by licker

For example, mind hunt works well when there are no astral mages in the province, and is death for your mage if there are s2+ mages there correct?

Not death, they get 40% chance of being feebleminded for every S level of the astral mage there. Not clear if it stacks (i.e. if there are 3 S mages, the chances are 40%,40%,40% or 120%?), but you shouldn't try anyway, too risky for a S4 mage

Well, a feebleminded mage is as good as death if you can't heal him anyway. Gems/items carrier but not much more