How to use mage in a battle

[Tuidjy]

I am always amazed by some people who keep giving advice that presumes that
their opponent is brain dead. The reason you will not see armies of 50 mages
except in artificial winner-takes-all battles, is that big armies cost a lot,
require huge upkeep, move glacially slow, and are decimated as soon as they show
up outside a dome.

Not by remote spells, but by battlefield wide spells like rain of stones, flame
storm, astral tempest and wrathful skies. Watch how the mega army fights one
turn, and on the next, teleport in a few mages that will cast the most suitable
of the above mentioned spells. Do not forget to also:

1. Provide some cannon fodder with 'Call of the Wild', 'Call of the Wind',
or 'Imprint souls', so that your mages survive the first enemy turn.
2. Garantee a retreat province for your mages (no, they are not supposed to win
the battle, just cripple the clumsy behemont.
3. If possible, garantee that there is nowhere for his routers to retreat.

This is not to say that remote spells or assassins are not to be used if you
have them, but as Boron said, they will only inconvenience the enemy. A nice
astral tempest will ruin most armies. Armies are for defense and mopping up.
The enemy's back is broken with carefully targetted surgical strikes executed
by a few specialist mages...

[deccan]

Tuidjy said:
I am always amazed by some people who keep giving advice that presumes that
their opponent is brain dead. The reason you will not see armies of 50 mages
except in artificial winner-takes-all battles, is that big armies cost a lot,
require huge upkeep, move glacially slow, and are decimated as soon as they show
up outside a dome.

So does this mean that mage-based armies designed for using communion generally don't work in practice?

[archaeolept]

there is no general rule. it depends upon game settings, players, and who you're fighting. multiple small communion squads, w/ a relief caster, are probably safer, though.

[Skolem]

there is no general rule. it depends upon game settings, players, and who you're fighting. multiple small communion squads, w/ a relief caster, are probably safer, though.

And may I ask how they are like? this are the kind of army I had thought about, and which I do not bring to function. Something like 3 to 5 mage, (with some normal troops or not?) and maybe a summon or two, what should this guys cast?

[Boron]

Good points Tuidjy .

Your post showed me that i still have to learn a lot in battle tactics .

What you and Alexti said is true .
Almost any nation has rather fragile mages , especially for pythium this is true .


If you play e.g. Vanheim/LoT do the mirror images help against earth quakes , wrathful skies lightnings etc. or not ?

These spells make most national mages in quantities >5 rather useless .
Vanheim , Pan , Jotunheim + LoT are at least partially exeptions but all other nations should have extreme troubles there with their national mages .

This shifts then in lategame the balance more to SCs + Strong summonable mages ?

[atul]

The way I see it the point of using mages is to ensure you inflict more damage to your opponent than you receive. With SCs it's a bit of a win/lose situation, with mages and troops there's more shades of gray.

As to using mages in battles, I'd think you should never put mages in the field unless you have a specific purpose - especially in the early game they're more valuable researching or sitesearching.

What uses mages have, then? The way I see it, several depending on who they are. Also, nearly all the mages are going to need a screen of troops who protect them and do the fighting.

Boosting your troops: This helps your troops to overtake an enemy force with less casualities than without boosts - always good on a long run. Spells like Body Ethereal, Regeneration, Protection, Flaming Arrows and so on help either to minimize the beating they take or maximize the beating they give.

Supplementing your troops with summons: Raise Skeletons, Phantasmal Warriors/Wolves, Summon Imps and so on. Have battle summons do most of the work wearing enemy down (and taking most of the beating from their mages) so that your troops can mop up later on.

Cracking the toughies: In case there are some tough units in the enemy's army, try to find out the weakness they have (low MR, missing elemental immunity) and exploit it. Spells depend on the weakness.

General fire support: Ease the work of your troops. The spells can range from direct damage (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Soul Slay) to scary stuff (Terror, Agony, Panic) to debuffs (Paralyze, Rust Mist, Entangle).

And of course there's the role of lone mage casting battlefield-wide destruction spells, not to beat the enemy but to inflict maximum pain.

As a general rule of thumb I'd say forget about personal buffs other than Quickness and those that boost either Precision or magic levels. The point is your troops are supposed to protect your mages, and if they rout your mage is anyway either routing or unconscious - fire shield won't do any good then. The first few rounds are crucial: less friendly fire, more time for summons to reach the front. Of course this is conditional, use protection spells to counter your enemy's attacks and so on.

So I'd say the question to be asked shouldn't be "what do I do with mages?" but "what do I do with mages x,y,z put against situation n or m?" The big advantage mage/troop army has against SCs is that they're usually much more expendable.

But, this is just an opinion of one guy, so take it with a grain of salt. And all the other usual disclaimers.

[Skolem]

atul said:So I'd say the question to be asked shouldn't be "what do I do with mages?" but "what do I do with mages x,y,z put against situation n or m?" The big advantage mage/troop army has against SCs is that they're usually much more expendable.

first thanks for the answer. I was aware that it was a highly situational problem, but i though maybe there are a few rule of thumbs, or basic techniques which one could build upon. That was what I was interrested in. the problem that I am still overhelmed by the multitude of spells that are posible, and most that I experiment with either weren't succesfull (I suppose I use them in the wrong case, and or my army wasn't build around such a spell or there was just something else) or I just forgott how I use them . how you use a SC is fairly situational to, but you find a lot of builds, with explanations in the forum, I though maybe one of the wise, old and mighty players , could give an advice in how to create army's with mages and how to use them effectively, as I IMHO found is maybe the greatest lack of strategical discussion in this forum.

[Zooko]

So maybe one answer is: you should do lots of scouting and other reconnaissance against your enemy before giving orders to your mages.

This seems slightly different than with Super-Combatants, where, I presume, you would give your Super-Combatant more or less the same orders, with perhaps slightly different immunities or something depending on the enemy.

[atul]

Skolem said:
I was aware that it was a highly situational problem, but i though maybe there are a few rule of thumbs, or basic techniques which one could build upon. That was what I was interrested in. the problem that I am still overhelmed by the multitude of spells that are posible,

You've been asking for help with communion and Pythium, well, that's one of the things I haven't really figured out either so can't help you there, sorry. I've used slaves in order to get magic boost for big spells, but they always seem to die... With Pythium I've read on these forums about using Body Ethereal, I'd assume with quickness - direct damage (star fires, mind burn/soul slay, stellar cascades) you'd go far, I've seen even communion-based Smite-spamming happen.

Skolem said:how you use a SC is fairly situational to, but you find a lot of builds, with explanations in the forum, I though maybe one of the wise, old and mighty players , could give an advice in how to create army's with mages and how to use them effectively, as I IMHO found is maybe the greatest lack of strategical discussion in this forum.

I'm by no means old nor mighty, but I'd think the problem with mages is that their use is much more situational than SCs. Scout the weakness, exploit it. And it really depends on the mages you have at your disposal. So generic strategic discussion would be a bit hard. I think that thread "Alexander's ever-expanding Tome of Knowledge" had some good tricks in it, though.

[Yvelina]

I play exclusively Vanheim, so what I say may not apply to most nations, because the majority of Vanheim's mages are extremely mobile, sneaky, and anything but fragile.

I seldom use more than five or six mages in one task force. The majority of my force is Vanjarls, which are usually set to horror spam. I usually have a one vanadrott who casts warthful skies, and then summons air elementals. Sometimes, I will send a specialist, who will be hand-tailored (selected and equiped) for the task. She may be an air queen scripted to attack the main target, or a dwarf who will petrify a dangerous enemy, or a fairy queen that will charm a valuable enemy, or a Tartarian that will hold the enemy hordes while the wrathful skies destroy them.

These armies are teleported on top of their target, and their scripts reflect my latest knowledge of the enemy's script. Usually, after the victory, the Vanir hide among the local population, while the dwarves or Tartarians build a lab. This way, the enemy's retaliation is less costly. In any case, the idea is that the cost of the inflicted losses exceeds the cost of your task force.

Recent examples:
In my current game, I teleported three vans and one air queen on top of Anya (Abisya's pretender) She had just taken a province of mine (the local warden and his lone bodyguard died gloriously) and I knew exactly what her equipment was. She had, of course, a chest wound - these are surprisingly common when you have pissed off the Vanir. She was equiped and scripted as a standard SC - life drain weapon, lucky coin, boots of quickness, starshine cap, anti-magic, etherial cloak. I used my vans to summon horrors for five turns, while the air queen waited until Anya had tired herself with buffs and by killing the lifeless horrors. When Veni attacked, Anya was at 84 fatigue. After her first hit, Anya went to sleep, and never woke up.

Later, in the same game, I sent three vanjarls and three vanadrotts to contain a Caelum mamonth/seraph army inside a castle. It was important that the birdies did not get loose inside my lands (they had just jumped me) so I also cast 'Imprint Souls' on the province. The jarls and one of the drotts spammed horrors, and the elephants spend some time chasing the chaff around. Meanwhile the other two drotts buffed themselves, and at the end of the five turns went elephant hunting. One elephant escaped. The battlefield was in flight range of Caelum's capital. So on the next turn I teleported Vidi (Air Queen #2) scripted to attack rear on turn one, in case Caelum counterattacked. But on that turn, he had lost his pretender, two armies and a temple... he has stalled since.

In another recent game, I teleported a army in the middle of C'tis lands, right on top of a castle bursting with troops. The original detachment was just a wrath squad, but each turn, I was adding some surprise for the lizards who tried to break the siege - a Tartarian or two, an Air Queen, an empowered magma dwarf, devils, a nature mage with Mass Regeneration, etc... The purpose of that army was to hold a province with about ten neighbors, provide some intelligence on his troops in the neighborhood, and tempt C'tis into attacking.

What do these armies have in common? Not much really, except that they were tailored for a specific task, and that they arrived by magic on top of an expensive enemy asset.