Can't wrap my head around using battle magic correctly.

[Fidine]

Always when i play i can never seem to use mages right. How many mages is one suppose to bring to mid game battle? I usually bring 4 max. It just seems too much otherwise, especially when in one battle most of them die and it puts you off.

[Draken]

1. Protect your mages.

Why are they dying? If enemies directly attack them, give them bodyguards.
If they get riddled with arrows put them further in the back of the battlefield and give them Robes of Missle Protection.

If you really want good help, you should give a few more details. Like what nation you are playing. What mages you bring. What you have researched. Who you are fighting against...

[Imperialus]

Depends a lot on... well a lot. Heck, even 'midgame' is one of those things that people have different definitions for.

What nation are you? What kind of mages do you have? A Neifel Jarl is a 'mage' as is a Yogi from Bandar Log. They behave... differently though.

What kind of spells are you trying to cast? Are you buffing your troops in the first two or three rounds and then the mage is basically done their job? Are you relying on magic for direct damage throughout the battle? Are you summoning things? Debuffing enemy troops?

There are a few different strategies and Dom 6 has really mixed up the magic game. Point buffing and small AoE effects are much more prominent now, with spells affecting an entire army being much rarer and higher level. Trying to buff your entire frontline would take a ton of mages. You need to be pretty purposeful with them.

Sticking with the point buffing example; I have found a lot of success in attaching a mage to a small unit of elite troops that take up about as much space as one of their buff spells... Like say you have a unit of elite cavalry like Helherdings. You can buff the ponies by casting "Immaculate Mounts" which has an AoE of 3. In that case, since cav fit 2 to a square you could manage to hit six of them with 1 casting, followed by a second casting of Protective Winds to help them deal with archery as the close before the 'attack' portion of 'hold and attack' kicks in and they go charging across the field. In that senario 1 mage can support six of those cav.

If instead you had human size units, they fit 3 to a square so you can multiply the AoE by 3 instead of 2 so one mage casting AoE 3 spells can support 9 human size troops.

It's not perfect, sometimes mages will hit empty squares or the troops you want to buff will spread themselves out into additional squares (your 9 humans might hang out in 4 squares for example) but following that overall ratio of (#of units in a square) x (AoE of the spell) to be fairly effective.

[ncarr99]

Originally posted by Fidine:

Always when i play i can never seem to use mages right. How many mages is one suppose to bring to mid game battle? I usually bring 4 max. It just seems too much otherwise, especially when in one battle most of them die and it puts you off.

Are you playing single player or multiplayer? In Multiplayer the number of mages is going to ramp up quick, and by the mid game you might see battles with dozens of mages on each side. Single player...well the AI has never been as effective as players, and correspondingly it's not as necessary to bring tons and tons of mages.

[Sombre]

The answer is bring as many as you need to be achieve your goals, plus a few more as backups. This isn't a hugely helpful response of course, but it is true. Every turn those mages spend out in the field accompanying an army is a turn thy spent not researching and not site searching. Equally though there is no point in researching and site searching if you aren't going to use the gems and the research to help win the game.

[Noob]

I have the same problem, in my specific case I'm playing as Nidavangr and my 2 water 1 nature mages are honestly kinda useless, if I let them by themselves they just quicken themselves or mossbody the bodyguards so in the end they have like 0 impact.

Cold bolts seems to hit my own troops more often than not, so as the game went on I found myself using mages in battles less and less.

I also used my pretender to summon an ice drake and it's breath also seems to mostly hit my troops.

What I did find useful was crafting the bottle of living water for the free water elementals every fight and I don't even need to bring a mage to the fight.

Obviously I'm new and must be doing magic wrong. Any tips?

[Draken]

Summoning Water elementals is a good in combat spell.
As is point-buffing Gift of Formlessness. Basically AoE 1 wave warriors.
Or Quickness.
Frozen Heart is a staple anti thug spell.
The water attack spells do seem to be buffed too.

Friendly fire is something a lot of attack spells struggle with.

[Ibis]

Originally posted by Noob:

Any tips?

Try things out as you research new spells.

Also think about possible strats, like for exemple mossbody is a very strong buff but you need to place your mages casting it near the troops that will likely go into melee.

Likewise, the ice drake needs to be placed so that it won't breath over non-cold resistant troops. You can either summon cold resistant chaff to go ahead of the drake, or script a cold resist buff to protect your chaff.

There's a LOT of possible strat and covering them all is basically impossible in a short answer. Discovering them is part of the fun of the game.

[Noob]

Originally posted by Draken:

Summoning Water elementals is a good in combat spell.
As is point-buffing Gift of Formlessness. Basically AoE 1 wave warriors.
Or Quickness.
Frozen Heart is a staple anti thug spell.
The water attack spells do seem to be buffed too.

Friendly fire is something a lot of attack spells struggle with.

They problem is that summon water elemental need water 3, the highest Nidavangr mage is 2. I didn't know about Gift of Formlessness, more tankiness for less damage I guess.

[Ibis]

There's a water booster (water bracelet) in construction 7, also robe sea at construction 5, but you need a water bracelet first to forge it (or a water pretender).

Also mages can use gems in combat to increase their path for 1 cast, so a W2 mage can cast summon water elemental by using 2water gems (1 to get to w3 and 1 for the spell cost)

[Imperialus]

Originally posted by Noob:

I have the same problem, in my specific case I'm playing as Nidavangr and my 2 water 1 nature mages are honestly kinda useless, if I let them by themselves they just quicken themselves or mossbody the bodyguards so in the end they have like 0 impact.
Obviously I'm new and must be doing magic wrong. Any tips?

You've actually hit on exactly how you it seems like you are supposed to use them. They are thugs. Sacred, quickness, mossbody, enlarge, liquid body plus their transformation on death. They are probably overcosted for that, but they could be pretty effective depending on your bless.

[ncarr99]

Originally posted by Noob:

I have the same problem, in my specific case I'm playing as Nidavangr and my 2 water 1 nature mages are honestly kinda useless, if I let them by themselves they just quicken themselves or mossbody the bodyguards so in the end they have like 0 impact.

Cold bolts seems to hit my own troops more often than not, so as the game went on I found myself using mages in battles less and less.

I also used my pretender to summon an ice drake and it's breath also seems to mostly hit my troops.

What I did find useful was crafting the bottle of living water for the free water elementals every fight and I don't even need to bring a mage to the fight.

Obviously I'm new and must be doing magic wrong. Any tips?

Nidavanger is new so I imagine the community as a whole hasn't really figured out the "meta" for them yet, but I've been doing some testing and have some thoughts. I find their sacreds to be incredible, and things that have synergy with them would be to your benefit. They already have a lot of damage output so better to focus on defensive spells/blesses, especially ones that give them more protection or resistance to certain types of damage you may be likely to encounter. For example in the early/mid game I use the nature mages to cast group barkskin and the water mages to cast gift of formlessness.

Another thing to know is that at construction 6 you get access to a cheap water booster in the misc items called a water bracelet that'll get your mages up to water 3, at which point things like falling frost become available.

In general however magic really depends on who you are fighting and what kind of spells *they* are using. This doesn't come up as much in singleplayer because the AI rarely follows a consistent and purposeful strategy with their magic usage, but it's still relevant.

To continue with water specifically, here are some examples. If your enemy is using lots of fire magic or heat you may want fire resistance or rain. If your enemy is using thugs and supercombatants then perhaps frozen heart would help you out. If they don't have swamp resistance but you do then quagmire will mess them up. There are a handful of good evocations down the water path like falling frost and ice strike, or if your enemies are using lots of cheap demons and undead then cleansing water can slay many quickly. If they are not cold resistant, or even better are cold-blooded, then grip of winter will really give them a bad day. If you have good troops and want them to be better, then the stuff I mentioned with nidavanger is good, but you could also look into things like quickness or wave warriors. Outside of immediate battlefield casting there are also a variety of valuable summoned creatures and items that you could use water gems on - one example being if you have water/fire crosspath then the manifest vitriol spell for green lions is awesome, they are expensive and slow to mass but if you aren't doing anything else with your water gems and can get a few dozen together then they wreck stuff.

There's a lot of options, but it really just depends on the specific situation that you are in and what your enemy is bringing to the table. At the end of the day it comes down to your creativity and ability to adapt to your situation.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Draken:

Friendly fire is something a lot of attack spells struggle with.

I heard elsewhere archers will friendly fire less with precision boosting spells. Is that also true for attack magic? Would precision boosting items be worthwhile?

[Noob]

Thanks everyone for your answers, I never played Dominions before but read that magic was extremely important and OP compared to troops, but was experience was the opposite. I will keep playing and experimenting.

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Noob:

Thanks everyone for your answers, I never played Dominions before but read that magic was extremely important and OP compared to troops, but was experience was the opposite. I will keep playing and experimenting.

It is extremely powerful, but it's also hard to learn how to use it in a way that makes the most of its power.

Think of it like a situational and difficult to use force multiplier. Multiplying force can easily exceed any addition of force (an army backed by magic can defeat much, much, much larger armies with no magic) but it's quite a hard skill to learn.

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Halfshell:

Originally posted by Draken:

Friendly fire is something a lot of attack spells struggle with.

I heard elsewhere archers will friendly fire less with precision boosting spells. Is that also true for attack magic? Would precision boosting items be worthwhile?

Boosting the precision of your mages can help, yes, if the spell is a ranged targeted spell. It won't help with a battlefield enchantment though, for instance.