Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?

[llamabeast]

Your maths is not correct at all, because the mages (should) survive the battle. So you can't calculate the cost of a shadow blast as being (cost of mage) + (cost of gem).

I suppose if you wanted to analyse it like that, you'd have to consider the expected number of castings the mage would make over his entire life. Say you'd expect N. Then the question is whether the troops killed by N shadow blasts cost more than N death gems and one death mage.

Anyway, Shadow Blast is an awesome spell, but should be saved for special occasions, when you really NEED to win. Mostly, as other people have mentioned, you should use skelly spam.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Your maths is not correct at all, because the mages (should) survive the battle. So you can't calculate the cost of a shadow blast as being (cost of mage) + (cost of gem).

The way I'm doing the math is based on the observation that battles against the AI tend to be close to "all or nothing" affairs. If I come to the fight with 50 troops, and he has 100, I'm going to lose 40 and he'll lose 10. If I can add 100 troops to that battle, he'll lose 80 and I'll lose 20. My losses when I win a battle are relatively minimal, and my losses are catastrophic when I lose a battle.

I'm looking for mages to provide a greater likelihood of winning... too often, it seems like they instead increase my losses -- my army of 50 troops and 5 mages meets his 50 troops, and my mages incinerate half of my troops in the process of killing his

[Rookierookie]

Originally Posted by krpeters

The way I'm doing the math is based on the observation that battles against the AI tend to be close to "all or nothing" affairs. If I come to the fight with 50 troops, and he has 100, I'm going to lose 40 and he'll lose 10. If I can add 100 troops to that battle, he'll lose 80 and I'll lose 20. My losses when I win a battle are relatively minimal, and my losses are catastrophic when I lose a battle.

I'm looking for mages to provide a greater likelihood of winning... too often, it seems like they instead increase my losses -- my army of 50 troops and 5 mages meets his 50 troops, and my mages incinerate half of my troops in the process of killing his

This makes sense only on normal difficulties. On Impossible settings, with custom advantaged AI-Gods, the AI will outbuild you 10-1 on conventional units. Units like knights will achieve a very favorable KD ratio, but there is only so much they can do before the AI swarms all over you.

[rdonj]

To answer your original question, magic is useful at ALL levels, but it depends on what you're trying to do with it. Most lower level magic is best used on small numbers of very expensive or otherwise rare things, rather than trying to be useful in army combats. For example spells like earth meld or mind burn are very useful on relatively small numbers of enemy elites. Under CBM, fire prison is an amazingly good spell. Try it sometime. It can be a real battle winner, especially if you rely on ranged units or something like summer lions. There are some exceptions to this though. Thunderstrike is an amazingly good spell no matter the number of troops the enemy has... it demolishes anything that does not have full lightning immunity, is pretty accurate, and can be spammed by thuggish mages who can survive without really needing troops to guard them. Try playing tir na nog, eriu, or ea caelum to get an idea of what I mean.

By and large though higher level magic is just much more efficient, especially buffs. Fog Warriors is one of the most powerful spells in the game IMO.

One thing that can help make your mages more efficient is using trick armies. Like say you're playing marignon. You can use summer lions to occupy the enemy army while your mages rain fire down on their heads, or have all your mages cast resist fire and then cast fire storm. Or with your C'tis example, using undead in combination with the raise dead spells (yes I know everyone's talking about these...), shadowblast, cloud of death, etc. Undead are immune to the effects of death spells so when you accidentally hit them they really don't care. A few wights or a bane lord or two can absorb all the missile fire they throw at you, and are quite tough to kill, and can hold the attention of nearby troops long enough for your mages to create an impenetrable wall of skeletons while dropping painful spells on them from afar.

Have you tried thugging? That sounds like something you'd feel is way too inefficient, but it works very well, and is really the best way to fight the AI. If you haven't and want to get a good idea of how effective thugging can be, try the following: Play Tir na N'og with an e9n4 bless. Try making armies that consist of 2 sidhe thugs, and 3 mages with air magic to at least level 3. Thugs should be equipped with a vine shield, a frost brand, and possibly rainbow armor to help with fatigue. Nothing else. Script bless, air shield, mistform, resist lightning, barkskin, attack closest. Script the mages to air shield, bless, aim, thunder strikex2, spells. As long as they don't have any flanking units, an army like this should be more or less invulnerable to conventional AI armies. The mages aren't really even necessary to be honest, they are just there to prove that it can be done :P Something like that is safer with death mages because of the skelly spam acting as a barrier to keep them safe.

[krpeters]

[quote=rdonj;742583]Have you tried thugging? That sounds like something you'd feel is way too inefficient, but it works very well, and is really the best way to fight the AI. If you haven't and want to get a good idea of how effective thugging can be, try the following: Play Tir na N'og with an e9n4 bless. Try making armies that consist of 2 sidhe thugs, and 3 mages with air magic to at least level 3. Thugs should be equipped with a vine shield, a frost brand, and possibly rainbow armor to help with fatigue. Nothing else. [quote]

I have tried thugging. Normally to keep my thugs alive, I have to put a ridiculous amount (50+gems) of equipment on them, making them not cost effective. In the example you describe the equipment is minimal, so maybe I should give that a try. I'm not convinced it is going to work -- against 100+ troops, mistform never seems to last long enough. Once it fails, my thugs die quickly.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by Rookierookie

This makes sense only on normal difficulties. On Impossible settings, with custom advantaged AI-Gods, the AI will outbuild you 10-1 on conventional units. Units like knights will achieve a very favorable KD ratio, but there is only so much they can do before the AI swarms all over you.

Exactly, as I try higher difficulty levels, I just get swarmed by enemy troops, so I'm looking for strategies to wipe out his swarms. What I find is that most of the magic is geared toward taking out small numbers of quality troops, not huge amounts of chaff.

What is all the excitement regarding Thunderstrike? I've tried it several times, and it never seems to work for me. My mages nearly always target the periphery of an enemy squad instead of the center, so I kill the three guys in the square it hits and injure half a dozen nearby. Very underwhelming. Is it critical to cast an aiming spell first to make this useful?