Best Magic Path Synergies?

[Edratman]

If you want to test out every possible path combination, excluding blood, the mod "Gem Valley" provides that capability in a wild magic manner.

[chrispedersen]

Well, here's an interesting combination.
Earth and Air. High Dominion + Dark Skies + Melancholia....

Making *all* of an opponents researchers desert.......

[Poopsi]

Blood and astral are a good combo. Astral by itself has many good spells, both battlefield(soul slay, astral geyser, master enslave, communions), and out of it (wish, strands, etc...). Blood sort of has all sorts of spells which would fit in other categories, only they are cheaper by virtue of using blood slaves. Plus, with astral you get the nifty send horror spells. It might be interesting to use astral corruption as well, albeit it will force you to focus on blood spells.

I think that taking blood in the pretender is not a good idea, through, as the bless is very bad, and you can boost blood easily thanks to the high ammount of slaves you´ll get.

If anything, I´d include enough blood dots to break into blood if you dont have native blood hunters. Otherwise just boost your god's power through mass human sacrifice.

In fact, here is an idea: take a SC pretender with a blood nation, and when his SCness starts to be challenged, turn him into the uber-blood god through mass empowerments.

[Sombre]

I think people tend to overemphasise the amount of blood slaves you can drag in each turn. A well run blood economy can certainly produce a lot, but setting up that economy is no easy task when you're being raided, need gold for upkeep and other duties, don't have masses of efficient blood hunters etc.

Empowering a unit from nothing to high level in blood isn't as wasteful as doing it in another path of course, but it is still pretty crazy.

[Ferrosol]

Some of my favourite combos for magic

1. Earth/Fire Magma eruption!
2. Astral/Death Nether darts!
3. Fire/Death Banefire!
4. Astral/Nature buff bot beyond compare

[Sombre]

I also want to add that it's a real shame there are so few water/fire mages, because the water/fire spells are cool and actually pretty good. Acid spells can do a horrible amount of damage for their level and cost.

[vfb]

It's nice for Oceania coming out of the water. The amber mages even have nature for better aim.

[DonCorazon]

Air/Earth:
1. Cloud Trapeze then Mistform and Rain of Stones, or EarthQuake, Bladewind, Destruction...
2. Fog Warriors then Rain of Stones
3. Mistform and Ironskin, or other protection buff
4. Summon Earthpower, Thunderstrike
5. Aim, Bladewind
6. Enchant Gargoyle
7. Staff of Elemental Mastery

[SlipperyJim]

Water/Nature:
Bog Beasts!

More seriously, how about Astral/Water?

• Personal Buffs! Body Ethereal + Personal Luck + Astral Shield + Quicken Self + Breath of Winter
• You know all of those beefy water summons: Krakens, Sea Serpents, Asp Turtles, Sea Trolls, oh my? Buff them, too! Ethereal Asp Turtles! Lucky Sea Trolls!
• Abominations!
• Underwater Mind Hunters that can't get shot by Seeking Arrows, toasted by Flames from the Sky, or sickened by Leprosy
• Um ... hold on a second....
• There are two nifty Astral/Water artifacts: Trident from Beyond & Nethgul.
• Did I mention Abominations yet?
• Power of the Spheres + Falling Frost (or Ice Strike, or Frozen Heart) spam
• That's all I got for now.

I guess it's not great synergy, but there are a few possibilities.

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by SlipperyJim

Water/Nature:
Bog Beasts!

More seriously, how about Astral/Water?

• Personal Buffs! Body Ethereal + Personal Luck + Astral Shield + Quicken Self + Breath of Winter
• You know all of those beefy water summons: Krakens, Sea Serpents, Asp Turtles, Sea Trolls, oh my? Buff them, too! Ethereal Asp Turtles! Lucky Sea Trolls!
• Abominations!
• Underwater Mind Hunters that can't get shot by Seeking Arrows, toasted by Flames from the Sky, or sickened by Leprosy
• Um ... hold on a second....
• There are two nifty Astral/Water artifacts: Trident from Beyond & Nethgul.
• Did I mention Abominations yet?
• Power of the Spheres + Falling Frost (or Ice Strike, or Frozen Heart) spam
• That's all I got for now.

I guess it's not great synergy, but there are a few possibilities.

astral/water has amazing synergy,

each have spells that specificly kill undead or demons respectively which means you don't need to spend so much time and resources making preists to tackle nations like ermor.

as already stated some nice buffs
and summons.

Grip of winter + falling frost spam tears through anything not resistant to cold, whole armies become over fatigued and suffer frozen death.

How about stellar cascades instead of falling frost if they are cold resistant?

oh and how about all those lovely astral spells to move you're frozen death machine of a mage force around the map with their armies.