Is magic worth it?!?

[Meglobob]

General_Jah said:How does this play out in MP? When fighting human opponents are the battles typically more decisive?

The battles are typically very decisive between players. Often losing 2-3 important battles spells certain long term doom for your god and nation.

Most players usually have 2-3 big core armies and then small groups of raiders by midgame. Those could be individual SC's, small groups of thugs or small stealth/flying/teleporting armies.

Personally, its your big armies that win you the war in the long run, raiders are there to annoy your opponent, hurt him economically, keep him off balance/paranoid and generally make life unpleasent...

Its your big armies that hold land, conquer castles/capitals and destroy his ability to fight back, by defeating his armies.

[Crafty]

Like the OP, i have being playing SP only but in EA. I've tried maybe about 8+ nations so far.

Yeah, personally I find the battlefield magic relatively weak , until level 4-5. Before that it's mostly use for bluffing SC's and thugs and site searching spells.

So early game most of the mages i recruit are for researching, but by the time i get good spells most of my mages are behind the line and it takes heck a lot of effort to get them to the front lines (unless they have air 3 for cloud trapezie).

It's kind of irriating like with forging stuff and recruiting capital only troops but at least for those i can use the extra commanders as mules...

But it sure is fun watching the mages cast all the flame based spells - flame bolt,fire blast fireball, flame erruption, Flare,Falling fires etc though to be honest
a lot of them look pretty similar to me.

I suppose there is an art to it by looking at different AOE, and range since the damage all look the same (plus minus 1)

And i suppose the larger the AOE the better (after damaage)

I figured out that there is no point in scripting very short range spells like Flame erruption as the first or second turn, cos the enemy won't be close enough....

Though with ranges 25 and up to 40, don't seem to make any difference to me...

[Shovah32]

You dont need commanders as 'mules' when you forge items, just build a lab near the front line. Range is a big factor, long range is particularly useful because it lets your mages hang back out of the range of enemy mages and archers ect.

[General_Jah]

Meglobob said:

The battles are typically very decisive between players. Often losing 2-3 important battles spells certain long term doom for your god and nation.

Most players usually have 2-3 big core armies and then small groups of raiders by midgame. Those could be individual SC's, small groups of thugs or small stealth/flying/teleporting armies.

Personally, its your big armies that win you the war in the long run, raiders are there to annoy your opponent, hurt him economically, keep him off balance/paranoid and generally make life unpleasent...

Its your big armies that hold land, conquer castles/capitals and destroy his ability to fight back, by defeating his armies.

Ahh perhaps that helps me understand a bit better the use of magic too... It sounds like magic is more useful then in MP because the battles are so important...

I mean many of the battles in SP vs the computer are rarely that much different from the next... So I have a hard time justifying spending a bunch of resources say on summoning elementals, regularly b/c I don't have enough gems to support it every single turn.

Where as in a MP game if you have a big fight you want to throw in everything you have to make sure you come out on top...

Does that sound about right?

[Shovah32]

Pretty much, although gem spending is often saved for the very large battles. If you want to see some bigger battles find a one province wide chokepoint and put enough PD in it to hold off enemy attacks. After a while they should either have a big force outside it that you can attack or they will beat the PD with a large army which you can then attack.

[Crafty]

I don't do much site searching but i still end up with easily 300+ gems in at least 2 paths, and about 100 in the others. I really need to use magic more, throw some at the commanders just for fun even...

[Taqwus]

That's a sizeable stockpile -- useful if you have a global or a dispel in mind. If not, there's probably some good use for 'em.

[Aleph]

I'll reiterate the poster who mentioned Abyssia.

Others:

MA Ermor has pretty amazing communions very early, able to boost multiple Thaumaturgs to Holy 4. This gives a lot of nice options - even regular longdeads are formidable with Power of the Sepulchre, and your longdead horsemen legions and Shadow Vestals are nasty indeed. Plus, when in doubt, spam Smite.

If magic sites are weaker in LA, you might think about LA Mictlan as a magical force to be reckoned with. Mictlan, more than just about any other nation save perhaps Ermor, lives and dies by effective magic use. LA is pretty much identical to EA with regards to magic strength overall, with less fire and more water (leading to easier clam spam, another big source of magic power) and a variety of powerful mage priests who don't have to worry about age (nice before you get boots, still saves you blood/keeps a slot free). Also, national troops are a quite a bit weaker in LA, so your Jaguars won't be competing with Vans.