Falling frost vs. AI hordes

[attackdrone]

I've had some luck with Magma Eruption, which is Evocation 6, Earth 3 + Fire 1.

Orb Lightning works fairly well also, especially when massed. I've found Orb Lightning to be preferable to Thunder Strike in many situations.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by attackdrone

I've had some luck with Magma Eruption, which is Evocation 6, Earth 3 + Fire 1.

Orb Lightning works fairly well also, especially when massed. I've found Orb Lightning to be preferable to Thunder Strike in many situations.

Oh, right, I forgot to mention Magma Eruption, which is also very effective at clobbering AI hordes. But requiring both F and E makes it a bit harder to get a hold of.

Isn't Orb Lightning short-range? And it doesn't seem to hit too many troops. How many mages do you need to clear a significant fraction of a 300-troop AI army?

[rdonj]

Mmm... falling fires, mediocre? I'm playing a game right now where one fire mage has killed over 70 enemy soldiers over just two battles just casting those, fireballs and incinerates. The visual results on the battlefield weren't stunning, but the numbers were actually pretty good. If you say about 30 enemy casualties per mage, 3 mages is nearly 100 dead enemy soldiers. Not bad, I'd say.

Cloud of death can be a very powerful spell, if you can hold enemy soldiers over one without yours taking too much collateral damage. Other cloud spells aren't quite as strong, but are still good against the right opponent.

Also things like that spell that sets large numbers of people on fire, and flame eruption if you can work it out, can cause large numbers of casualties. Most other spells work more indirectly and will result in your troops killing the enemies easier, which isn't bad at all but is a lot harder to quantify.

After that I can mainly think of spells that require gems, and if I recall correctly you are not very much into those.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Mmm... falling fires, mediocre? I'm playing a game right now where one fire mage has killed over 70 enemy soldiers over just two battles just casting those, fireballs and incinerates. The visual results on the battlefield weren't stunning, but the numbers were actually pretty good. If you say about 30 enemy casualties per mage, 3 mages is nearly 100 dead enemy soldiers. Not bad, I'd say.

I'm going to guess that the "one mage" isn't a 150 gold Witch Hunter that first cast Phoenix Power, then cast falling fires three times before exhausting out? Because that's my typical result, which is more like 15 enemy fatalities per battle. Nice, admittedly, but not great.

Now if you're using a 320 gold MA Anathemant Dragon, or better yet, a 440 gold Anointed of Rhuax, yeah, I can see you laying down some serious damage... but note you're paying a lot more for it.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by krpeters

I'm going to guess that the "one mage" isn't a 150 gold Witch Hunter that first cast Phoenix Power, then cast falling fires three times before exhausting out? Because that's my typical result, which is more like 15 enemy fatalities per battle. Nice, admittedly, but not great.

Now if you're using a 320 gold MA Anathemant Dragon, or better yet, a 440 gold Anointed of Rhuax, yeah, I can see you laying down some serious damage... but note you're paying a lot more for it.

That's an f3 mage with phoenix power. F2's aren't quite as good, no. But if you can get up to f4, they tend to cause a LOT of casualties. And at 30 casualties per battle, they only need to survive two battles to pay themselves back. You also can't underestimate the power of momentum.