Use of mages

[Jazzepi]

I've found mages quite useful in battle. Of course there's a tradeoff, especially if you throw a large force of them into the fray because you're losing research. I believe this can be recovered in the long term by the extra income produced from taking over another nation early.

For example, I put about 8 crones of Avalon into battle as Man against MA Argatha. By using gems to up some of the crones to cast level 3 air magic we were able to rout huge groups of heavy infantry our archers would have been unable to touch by casting Thunder Strike. Thankfully the armor piercing qualities of lightning made them a perfect counter to Argatha's highly armored, highly arrow resistant, troops.

Jazzepi