Best ways to poach mages...

[Gandalf Parker]

I prefer stealing mages.

[Gregstrom]

Mind Hunt: Pointless against Astral mages, and thus pretty risky in the late game.

Seeking Arrow: Kills a 10 HP mage ~1/3 of the time. Large numbers of mages dilute the effect of spamming it.

Earth Attack: Very nasty attacker, but E5 mages can be hard to come by.

Ashen Angel: Risks suicide if you use against one or two commanders, but many consider it the most dangerous assassin spell. If you've bootstrapped Death to the point where you have multiple demiliches, it's a good choice.

Infernal Disease: Not the most dangerous of the spells, but if you're a Blood nation you may well be able to spam these in terrifying numbers towards the endgame. And of course even a failed attack may well disease the target, causing a slow and lingering death.

Send Tupilak: LA Atlantis only. Cheap and accessible for their mages, so it should be spammable. May be less effective against thugs than other assassin spells.

Flames from Afar: Only likely to be effective against large groups of researchers.

Flames from the Sky: Effective against most non-giants, but expensive.

Murdering Winter/Wolven Winter combo: Effective but expensive again.

A couple of less obvious options:

Rain of Blood: 5% of diseasing any mage in the province. Also an outside chance that the added Misfortune will trigger a nasty event.

Leprosy: 50% of mages in the province get diseased.

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by licker

For example, mind hunt works well when there are no astral mages in the province, and is death for your mage if there are s2+ mages there correct?

Not death, they get 40% chance of being feebleminded for every S level of the astral mage there. Not clear if it stacks (i.e. if there are 3 S mages, the chances are 40%,40%,40% or 120%?), but you shouldn't try anyway, too risky for a S4 mage

Well, a feebleminded mage is as good as death if you can't heal him anyway. Gems/items carrier but not much more

[Gregstrom]

On the subject of Mind Hunt:

As Arco can heal Feeblemind (you'll probably need multiple priestesses to do so quickly, though), they can blaze away with Mind Hunt to their heart (companion)'s content. It's a waste of gems against an Astral-heavy nation, but if they only have S1 or maybe S2 mages then you aren't losing much by trying.

[licker]

Would an immortal mindhunting also recover in a somewhat timely fashion?

[chrispedersen]

Earth attack is really the only effective way, if your opponent has any kind of Astral mages to preclude mindhunt.

Looming hell allows body guards to attack mages - works ok.. only in situations when you have assassins in the square (to make him use bodyguards) or perhaps when you have autosummoning troops.

Leprosy works... ok. So do Disease demons.

Whirlwind and Monkey attack don't work except IF the mage is in a coastal hex and IF the water is between you and him - you can pick him up and drop him in the water.
Which may or may not kill him.

[Psycho]

Leprosy is MR negated, so you'll want some penetration in order to affect mages.

Looming hell affects any unit under the commander, not just bodyguards.

[AreaOfEffect]

To snipe an astral mage. Teleport, cast Magic Duel, cast Returning. Requires Thaumaturgy 3, Evocation 3, an S9/S10 Sacred Statue (or it's equivlent), and about 5 astral gems.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Earth attack is really the only effective way, if your opponent has any kind of Astral mages to preclude mindhunt.


Looming hell allows body guards to attack mages - works ok.. only in situations when you have assassins in the square (to make him use bodyguards) or perhaps when you have autosummoning troops.

Or if he's using bodyguards to protect against Earth Attack or other assassin spells

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Whirlwind and Monkey attack don't work except IF the mage is in a coastal hex and IF the water is between you and him - you can pick him up and drop him in the water.
Which may or may not kill him.

Except that flying monkeys don't ever attack mages (according to the spell description). I hadn't thought of Whirlwind, though.

[SlipperyJim]

Earth Attack is indeed effective. It's also high research (Conj 8, right?) and requires an E5 mage to cast. So it's not an easy solution, but it sure is fun.

Disease Demons also work pretty well.

Vengeance of the Dead can be highly effective against a battlemage (or anyone else who's killed a lot of people), but you might need some MR-penetration gear. Useless against mages who haven't ever left the library....

As another option:
Gift of Health + spamming Mind Hunt = loads of dead commanders

Just make sure that your Mind Hunters are hiding in a province with strong friendly Dominion. If they happen to stumble over an enemy Astral mage, Gift of Health will rehabilitate them pretty quickly.

I whacked an enemy Pretender once with Mind Hunt. MR-penetration gear is a good thing....