Do people underuse mages?

[K]

So the last few months I've gotten back into Dominions after a year-long break, so I've been looking at the game with new eyes. One thing I've noticed in my recent MP games is that people rarely use mages in battles, even if those battles are important ones like the last push toward someone's home castle.

Several times, it really was a "if you'd had forty less troops but three mages with that army, you'd have won the war" kinds of situations.

I mean, for the gold expended you get more than enough kills to justify the cost. Is it just that people get drawn in by the big research goals?

[Irishmafia2020]

I know that i learned a rough lesson when 10 mages, some wolves, and militia tore up my otherwise undefeated army in single player mode... Even so, I tend to keep most of my mages safely near the labs so that they can create items and research...

[Klepto]

I find that communions of 16-20 mages work wonders

Then again I'm new here, and only really know SP

[JimMorrison]

I find that the decision of when and where to deploy mages, is a tricky one. Unless you are sending in a special purpose mage, to cast a single powerful buff like Fire Arrows, then a single mage is unlikely to have a profound effect on the outcome of the battle. So the tradeoff between uncovering more powerful magic (or staying in the arms race at all) vs making an army significantly more powerful, sometimes is very vague. Also, some nations have specific tactics that can make the use of mages a risky proposition unless you are strong enough to protect them adequately.

But like I said, it's tricky. Well used, a powerful cadre of battlemages can bring your armies to victory much more quickly, gaining you access to greater income, and more labs to rectify the temporary loss of research.


An interesting anecdote - the first time I tried to kill a player in MP, I was R'lyeh and he was Atlantis. My army crashed down onto his castle nearly unopposed (I had defeated his army 2 turns previous), and I sieged for a few turns, and then stormed. He had at least a dozen Kings of the Deep, and they flat out murdered my army. Regrouping, I sent the majority of my mages with my new army, with the belief that if I didn't kill him on the second try, the situation was moot (later it proved that the FIRST loss ruined my timeline, gotta love hindsight), and I arrived just as I completed research on Enslave Mind. Well, let's just say that I still had Kings of the Deep in my army at the end of the game.

The moral? Mages are only worth what they can accomplish. If you reach a new level of magical research, but lose the war..... well, those mages were worth nothing to you.

[AreaOfEffect]

I'm big on battle mages. Play against me some time.

[Jazzepi]

I simply think of mages as big, scary super-archers. In groups tend to do far more damage to the opponent when placed, and used, properly then 200 archers would. So what you basically get is an extreme amount of power density. A lot of damage, from a very small source.

The only cavet is that you need to research to "turn on" your super archers. Once I've turned on my battle mages, I have no compunctions about destroying my own research to put them to good use.

Jazzepi

[TwoBits]

Key spells need to be researched before it becomes "worthwhile" (a very subjective judgment there, to be sure) to switch them from research to combat. There's no point in sending 10 mages into battle only to spam Flying Shards :P

On the other hand, I sometimes like nations with expensive, capital only mages - plop down 500 gold for that Neifel Jarl or Dai-Oni for example, and it's hard to justify sitting him on his butt in the lab, just studying. Encourages you to get them out in the field doing bad things to your enemies...

[Nikelaos]

i think the problem is people don't realise the effectiveness of lower lvl spells, heck with two lvl 1 death mages spamming frighten behind my lines i was able to rout an army twice the size of mine to allow reinfocements time to come.

offcourse the fun really starts when you get 10+ mages spamming panic making huge armies rout within 5 turns of battle but you need those mages pumping out spells early game.

[fungalreason]

I find it's partly a logistics issue. Mages aren't all that useful at the beginning without spells, so it's often better to keep them at home and research. Then once you've researched a decent amount, it can be time consuming to get them to the front. Many of the more powerful battle mages are capital-only and map move 1, so depending on how you expand it may be several turns to get them where they are needed.

[Tifone]

I dunno who do you play with, but I think you should also remind that many n00bs like me have problems feeling as they are doing the right thing when stopping pumping out new recruits to build and 800 gold new fortress + 400 temple + 500 lab for 1 new battlemage a turn. That's money