How to use mage in a battle

[Yvelina]

I play exclusively Vanheim, so what I say may not apply to most nations, because the majority of Vanheim's mages are extremely mobile, sneaky, and anything but fragile.

I seldom use more than five or six mages in one task force. The majority of my force is Vanjarls, which are usually set to horror spam. I usually have a one vanadrott who casts warthful skies, and then summons air elementals. Sometimes, I will send a specialist, who will be hand-tailored (selected and equiped) for the task. She may be an air queen scripted to attack the main target, or a dwarf who will petrify a dangerous enemy, or a fairy queen that will charm a valuable enemy, or a Tartarian that will hold the enemy hordes while the wrathful skies destroy them.

These armies are teleported on top of their target, and their scripts reflect my latest knowledge of the enemy's script. Usually, after the victory, the Vanir hide among the local population, while the dwarves or Tartarians build a lab. This way, the enemy's retaliation is less costly. In any case, the idea is that the cost of the inflicted losses exceeds the cost of your task force.

Recent examples:
In my current game, I teleported three vans and one air queen on top of Anya (Abisya's pretender) She had just taken a province of mine (the local warden and his lone bodyguard died gloriously) and I knew exactly what her equipment was. She had, of course, a chest wound - these are surprisingly common when you have pissed off the Vanir. She was equiped and scripted as a standard SC - life drain weapon, lucky coin, boots of quickness, starshine cap, anti-magic, etherial cloak. I used my vans to summon horrors for five turns, while the air queen waited until Anya had tired herself with buffs and by killing the lifeless horrors. When Veni attacked, Anya was at 84 fatigue. After her first hit, Anya went to sleep, and never woke up.

Later, in the same game, I sent three vanjarls and three vanadrotts to contain a Caelum mamonth/seraph army inside a castle. It was important that the birdies did not get loose inside my lands (they had just jumped me) so I also cast 'Imprint Souls' on the province. The jarls and one of the drotts spammed horrors, and the elephants spend some time chasing the chaff around. Meanwhile the other two drotts buffed themselves, and at the end of the five turns went elephant hunting. One elephant escaped. The battlefield was in flight range of Caelum's capital. So on the next turn I teleported Vidi (Air Queen #2) scripted to attack rear on turn one, in case Caelum counterattacked. But on that turn, he had lost his pretender, two armies and a temple... he has stalled since.

In another recent game, I teleported a army in the middle of C'tis lands, right on top of a castle bursting with troops. The original detachment was just a wrath squad, but each turn, I was adding some surprise for the lizards who tried to break the siege - a Tartarian or two, an Air Queen, an empowered magma dwarf, devils, a nature mage with Mass Regeneration, etc... The purpose of that army was to hold a province with about ten neighbors, provide some intelligence on his troops in the neighborhood, and tempt C'tis into attacking.

What do these armies have in common? Not much really, except that they were tailored for a specific task, and that they arrived by magic on top of an expensive enemy asset.

[Skolem]

well it seems that horror, undeads or phantasmal warrior summoning is quite common.
when I set mages to this spell after two/three turn most of them stop because of fatigue, do you every mage in armys recuperation items? or how do you solve the fatigue problem if you have no nature at our disposal?

[Cainehill]

Skolem said:
well it seems that horror, undeads or phantasmal warrior summoning is quite common.
when I set mages to this spell after two/three turn most of them stop because of fatigue, do you every mage in armys recuperation items? or how do you solve the fatigue problem if you have no nature at our disposal?

Booster items help to keep the fatigue costs down. (Note that I'm not much of a fan of phantasmal warrior, but it can be a way to produce minor amounts of chaff.) For nations with sacred mages (Pythium, Vanheim, etc) an earth blessing is always nice - 2 or 3 fatigue back a turn isn't much, but it helps, and stacks with normal fatigue recovery. A positive magic scale also helps lower the fatigue costs.

And no, I don't usually give fatigue recovery items to my mages - I think a booster generally gives more of a benefit (halving the fatigue cost for an 80 fatigue spell like bladewind, etc) than spending gems on a recovery item. Hopefully, by the time the mages go unconscious they've done enough damage to win the battle, or at least given the other person a pyrhic victory.

[Crash]

Well,

I'm not the greatest mage user, but I have gotten stomped by several different configurations of mages casting different spells.

One constant I've noticed, people tend to build armies around spells, rather than look for spells that compliment an army.

By this I mean, find a useful/damaging spell (or set of spells), Yvelina gave 2, wrathful skies and horrors, but there are others especially if you play modded games. And then find a country with national mages who can cast those spells with minimal buffing. Then for the army just throw in some 'blocker' type troops to keep the mages upright long enough to do your damage.

I haven't really explored this part of the game thoroughly yet, but I have been on the receiving end of several very effective firing lines .

Crash

[Ironhawk]

As I understand it the use of the Relief spell is commonplace to reduce fatigue. Just get yourself some Nature mages and script them to cast Relief x5 or something. Should put a major dent in your other mages fatigue without the need for equipment or boosting.

[Endoperez]

I think Man is one of the easier nations to learn how to use mages right: you have powerful N-A mages (although limited in number) that can Cloud Trapeze, cast lightning spells (armor negating, not resistable and no racial umminties present) and summon chaff (wolves/dragonflies/false horrors). They also have the mages for cheaply summoning masses of Vinemen and even Ogres if you have gems for a few Thistle Maces, and sneaky Bards who can cast Soothing Song (AoE relief available from turn 1).

You also have the option of Cloud Trapeze - Wrath with Call of Wilds/Winds, so that the battle Lasts long enough for enemy to take damage. You could also cast Storm after the hawks have attacked, so that they with their low movement score will prolong the battle even more.