How difficult is this game?

[llamabeast]

I like MA Marignon for a starting nation. They are human, so quite familiar. They have powerful crossbowmen, and elite knights. It rapidly becomes obvious that magic is powerful as they can lay down some serious firepower with easy access to fire magic. And later on in the game they can do interesting things like summon angels.

Also they have interesting options in that any of a strong bless, a rainbow pretender or excellent scales would be a reasonable tactic to try out.

[Fenris99]

Those guys sound even more interesting.

[VedalkenBear]

They _are_ pretty 'traditional'; I guess my issue with them is that they are virtually the only nation he ever plays. So I'm overloaded on them.

[Fenris99]

Oh, when I play RTS I'm kind of a turtler. I like to build up and research and then attack with a fully upgraded army.

[Fenris99]

ok, question: How do you raise the spell levels of your mages? Do they go up automatically when you research magic?

[Amhazair]

I suppose you mean their level in the different paths of magic (fire, death, nature and the like)? They don't improve automatically or easily. With the appropiate level in construction and the apropiate paths you can construct some items that boost one or more paths. (A list of all the boosters can be found on page 282-283 of the manual. That's the page I've used most often. )

Alternatively you can use magical gems to 'empower' you mage in that path. To do so just select the 'empower' order when your commander is in a province with a lab. This is cripplingly expensive though, and generally only done to experiment/for fun in SP, or occasianally to reach certain benchmarks in MP (you'll start to figure them out when you play more)

[Fenris99]

Amhazair said:
I suppose you mean their level in the different paths of magic (fire, death, nature and the like)? They don't improve automatically or easily. With the appropiate level in construction and the apropiate paths you can construct some items that boost one or more paths. (A list of all the boosters can be found on page 282-283 of the manual. That's the page I've used most often. )

So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

Also, what determines their base level in the magic disciplines? Is it the pretender's levels?