[Mightypeon]

Originally Posted by Executor

I used matrixes but I didn't use too many since you need a mage to carry them and mages weren't major parts of my army. Besides, I also had the problem of the 50 item per turn limit and only 15 or so astral smiths, so other stuff took priority.
Things I mostly used astral for were astral caps, coins, eyes of void, spell focus, lucky pendant, crystal ords, AMA, and herald lances.
Had 11 fully equipped mind hunters when AC broke out. Shiny had the pleasure of meeting most of them. Each one of those costs 50-60 gems without hammers now days.

As for crystal shields, I forged those like crazy.
An S1 smith with a crystal shield + astral cap + crystal coin (11 gems total I think) and you can cast WotF.
An A1 mage with helmet + wind bag + crystal shield + matrix (around 25 gems total I think) and you can cast for warriors, mass flight, etc.
A F2 smith with it for flaming arrows.
Earth 3 smith for army of lead, earthquakes and such.
You could pretty much cast any spell A/S/F/E with little to no trouble.

Most of the items forged were used for thugs and SCs though.

I mostly used mages for support and buff spells. Items were used for spells and bows/crossbows for troop support. And of course every army had at least some SCs and thugs. Each army was well rounded and prepared to deal with just about anything.

A typical army which took over Shiny consisted of;

Lighting bows and spirit helms for lightning damage, rods of incineration for fire (I was a BIG fan of those for only 5F gems!), staff of numbness for cold (stun, fatigue) damage.
Herald lances for undead, massed bows of war under flaming arrows, boosted mages for first round flaming arrows, WotF, antimagic, blessings of iron and army of lead. When need arose there was a mage for fog warriors and mass flight as well.
Armies consisted of heavy flail infantry under weapons of sharpness and strength of giants along with the regular battle wide buffs.
Along side those there were always some Treants, Grendels and banes.

The craziest thing for me were probably the 8-15 gem banes which had some pretty insane stats and uses. Banes with 40 defense, anti SC banes, raiding banes, etc. They came in pretty much every variety.

Never had the magic is fading event happen to me in all my Dominions games.

I actually use Smiths in battle, but often, only 50 Smiths can forge items per turn, and if you ahve that number (it may be less if you have some cursed artificats in storage), you will propably still have an excess number of smiths capable of playing battle assist. Strength of Giants, Eart Meld, Destruction and ofc Magma eruption are all usefull spells.
I also like weapons of sharpness a lot, there is not a lot of things that are immune to weapons of sharpness Strength of gianted Flail troops.