Mystic culture

[Blanch Warren]

I haven't actually done a mage oriented playthrough before, but my understanding is that Mystic is favored for it. Can anyone explain why this would be? The Tomes themselves provide mage units.

[Cindeerella]

The main reason because Mystic affinity is Astral so most of the time you bump Astral affinity very fast and it helps you with magic management and summons. The issue is that you mostly will have abundant mana with good economy and combat spells won’t actually deplet your stash, so to balance gold economy you spend mana for summons.

But actually it’s not true, you can just play Mystic with Chaos/Order/Materium affinities and just spamming warbreeds or inquisitors completely ignoring magic and summons. It’s totally possible, that’s how cultures work, overall their impact is minor (If you not barbarian)

[darkholyPL]

You get buildings that provide +mana and you can see the astral echo pickups on the world map, which is more mana.
Your units will have astral blades that goes nicely with your casting in combat, that you will do a lot of.
Mystic culture feeds into the mage playstyle the best, tho as stated above you don't NEED to play it, to play mage. It just has good synergy with it.

[Central]

well, one of the advantages of the mystic culture is that you dont need to pick up those mages from tomes, allowing you to pick other tomes instead.

their mages also have attuned cast, giving you 10 extra combat casting points per unit that you bring. so you can cast more or more expensive spells in combat.

[Midas]

Star blades is powered by spellcasting, and the cultural magic essence hunting helps with mana economy. Spell breakers also give you casting points.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by Central:

well, one of the advantages of the mystic culture is that you dont need to pick up those mages from tomes, allowing you to pick other tomes instead.

That would not be a mage playthrough since tome of evocation also contains the electric focus for mages....

[Central]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Originally posted by Central:

well, one of the advantages of the mystic culture is that you dont need to pick up those mages from tomes, allowing you to pick other tomes instead.

That would not be a mage playthrough since tome of evocation also contains the electric focus for mages....

a case could still be made for going on a different route with tomes.
yes you would miss 1 upgrade for your mages but you could get access to other goodies instead.
one example:
mythic mages are mounted, so you could instead go for cavalry bonuses from the tome of beasts which benefit your entire army.

tome of evocation is good, but there are plenty of other good and fun tomes out there.

[Balekai]

Don't forget the Mystic culture's Soothers (their support healing unit), that give a non-stacking discount (20% cheaper) for combat spells via their Spell Channelling trait. So having one in the group stacked with other sources of reducing combat spell costs can greatly reduce combat casting costs overall.

So for example a Soother (-20%) + Gifted Casters (-20% Combat Casting Cost) + Mana Channelers (-50% Summoning Spells Mana Cost) = -40% reduction to mana cost of all combat spells, -90% for Combat Summons spells.

Astral Echoes pickups are one of the best ways to supercharge your game start since they reward knowledge in addition to mana, and respawn on the map over time in random areas, giving your scouts continuous things to find.

Late game when echoes start to lose their allure, you still can build the Altar of the All-Seers that gives your Throne City a bonus to mana/knowledge for each 5 echoes you have picked up over the game, buffing late game generation further.

As mentioned Astral Blades has always been good, in addition to the multi damage channel attacks of mystic cultural units.

Even better since the Ashes DLC because Mystic Culture Units and Star Blades, combined with Alchemy Tome's miasma clouds, makes all those multi damage channel attacks/abilities cause negative status effects (90% base chance) vs. Afflicted. So without any other damage types, an extra 8 fire damage from burning, 8 electrical damage from Electrified, and Slow Movement + one less Retaliation Attack from Slowed status effect. Keep in mind none of those stack so spread the damage love around if need be (Also a great boost to their Scout units' damage since they only do 1 Fire, Electrical and Frost damage by default). :p

Anyways yeah Mystic culture is a very good culture overall. Especially for a spellcasting faction build but is not required to do so as others said.

[Kid Gloves]

Definitely worth reiterating that while mystic culture synergises well, it certainly isn't a requirement.

I was pleasantly surprised at how effective my industrious/astral dwarven wizard-king did at winning battles primarily through hurling spells.

If you want an enjoyable mage-oriented game, the best advice would be don't pick Barbarian culture.