Killing mages in the back

[ghoul31]

What is the best way to kill mages in the back of the army?
When i send flying units to attack the rear, they don't make it all the way to to back

[llamabeast]

It's intentionally very difficult (mages would be useless if they were easy to pick off).

One very powerful approach is whole-battlefield spells, like Earthquake or Rain of Stones.

[Foodstamp]

You can also equip your own commanders with a ranged weapon and aiming items. Then set him to "Fire Rear" or "Fire at Large Monsters" if they are using mages who have high hit points in relation to the other units on the field. I used this tactic one time against a guy playing Kailasa and he publicly called me a cheater :angel. Many of the bow/crossbow weapons work well for this and normally have cool secondary effects. If your commander has access to air and/or nature magic you can increase his precision further with "eagle eye" (I think this is the name of the nature spell.) and "aim".

[Redeyes]

I also think that works pretty well, Foodstamp. You are right on the names :p

If you can get the proper resistance wrathful skies/heat from hell and other battlefield enchantments are pretty efficient at taking out weak commanders like mages usually are. They aren't immediately effective, but if you set your army up so it holds back in the back row you can easily win a long range war of attrition. Caelum is especially good at this, but other air nations should be able to do it pretty well too.

[Maerlande]

Rain works on fire mages. Fatigue them out and they can't run away.

[Gandalf Parker]

Think of "attack rearmost" as being a line of sight problem. Its not, but it helps to think of it that way. The units have trouble deciding who "rearmost" refers to if they cant see them.

I like to set units such as knights or bears off to the sides (place them "low" in the image for assigning positions). Then put them on "hold and attack, rearmost". If I have enough of them then they will spread out along the side of the attacking army with some reaching into the rear. It also helps to have a group placed far on te other flank (high on the positioning square) with orders to attack rear but without the wait. They draw the enemy army up toward them giving more open room for the later rear-attackers to get past them on the other flank.

Also its handy to have lots of flyers attack archers. Archers are often placed in the rear. After the archers are dead then the flyers might move on to the commanders.

If you have an army which fatigues easily such as Ulm with heavy armor, then you might position them in the middle with hold instructions. Force the enemy to come to them and then wait for the rear attackers to do their job.

[Lingchih]

Or you can steal the Fire Commanders script from Bogus's archer hero.

Whoops! Did I just say that. Nevermind.

[TwoBits]

I might be wrong, but I think I've seen Bladewind go for groups of mages in the rear, as opposed to the heavy infantry up front. Does Bladewind try to target more "vulnerable" units, if in range? Are there other spells like that?

[thejeff]

The spell evaluation pays a lot of attention to how much damage the spell is likely to do. So, if they're in range, a spell like Blade Wind is likely to do more damage to a group of unarmored mages than to closer heavy infantry.

[ghoul31]

Blade wind seems to target random , large groups. It doesn't target less armored troops specificially.

[Gregstrom]

Again, it's about dealing maximum damage. Bladewind has an awful lot of missiles, and frequently targeting larger groups will (on average) deal more damage than targeting smaller unarmoured groups.

[ghoul31]

Again, it's about dealing maximum damage. Bladewind has an awful lot of missiles, and frequently targeting larger groups will (on average) deal more damage than targeting smaller unarmoured groups.

Thats not true. Bladewind does almost no damage at all to heavily armored groups. But the computer often will target the heavily armored troops instead of the mages.

[Fantomen]

Flying thugs can work well if you make a lot of them and have them attack rear on different turns. Make sure to have some regular fliers attack before them.

Flying tramplers are good too, like elephants/behemoths/leviathans buffed with gift of flight or big guys with stymphalian wings+golden shield, I like GORed seige golems or crushers for that.

Well placed and protected mages are sure hard to kill though, but thats a good thing IMO.

[zzcat]

"Attack large monster" work wonders in many situation. And you can cast border summons like Howl at turn 5. There is a good chance that your foe's army has moved far enough so your wolves can slay a couple of mages before they are killed.

[Deathjester]

Again, it's about dealing maximum damage. Bladewind has an awful lot of missiles, and frequently targeting larger groups will (on average) deal more damage than targeting smaller unarmoured groups.

Thats not true. Bladewind does almost no damage at all to heavily armored groups. But the computer often will target the heavily armored troops instead of the mages.

You have to factor range into the equation as well. The mage will target the heavily armored troops if a better target is not in range (usually the case with mages placed in the back).

[Gregstrom]

Again, it's about dealing maximum damage. Bladewind has an awful lot of missiles, and frequently targeting larger groups will (on average) deal more damage than targeting smaller unarmoured groups.

Thats not true. Bladewind does almost no damage at all to heavily armored groups. But the computer often will target the heavily armored troops instead of the mages.

Dealing ~12 points of damage split across 30 armoured troops > dealing 9 points of damage and killing an elderly mage.

[Deathjester]

Again, it's about dealing maximum damage. Bladewind has an awful lot of missiles, and frequently targeting larger groups will (on average) deal more damage than targeting smaller unarmoured groups.

Thats not true. Bladewind does almost no damage at all to heavily armored groups. But the computer often will target the heavily armored troops instead of the mages.

Dealing ~12 points of damage split across 30 armoured troops > dealing 9 points of damage and killing an elderly mage.

Yeah. Damage points is the hard currency here. The mage will not consider that 9 points to a mage is better than 12 points to chaff. Apart from being hard to code mages evaluating targets like that, it would be bad design if you could just pick off mages easily imo. Part of the challenge is to figure out ways to get to them, and the tactical part of using troops wisely to protect mages is an important part of tactics.

[Taqwus]

Earth Attack and Disease Demons are decent against mages. :p

Darkness and storms can reduce their utility until you do manage to kill them, if you're not as dependent on precision as they are.