I also feel ike some of the vortex spells are just crazy powerful

I killed 1000 skaven in a battle with Lord Kroak once. He didn't even need protecting. Just had him chilling in front of my line.

Lord Kroak is the strongest character both in SFO and Vanilla. So he should have such kills. Some other magic balance changes are coming in next update.

ive gotten 700 kills easy without sfo with lord kroak vs the huntsman on pvp, so getting 1k kills on skaven isnt too much more op than vanilla

but fire mages are kinda broken on sfo

True, I was just using him as an example. On Empire I frequently rack up at least 500 kills on most battle mages I take with me. Pretty much everyone but Amber and Jade.

1k kill with lord , so no need for any units , just 1 man army :-)

I'm going back on my last comment. Tested some mages in Vanilla and got similar results to SFO. I was still racking up 500 kills on most of my battle mages, and the AI mages were equally destroying my troops. So the small power spike to mages is definitely worth it for the huge amount of game improvements. Keep up the good work guys!

Got 3.8k kills with Teclis against Skaven ambush with Dark Elf reinforcements! I was utterly outnumbered so I must say I abused the map for all its worth, but still. It is his phoenix wind spell that is simply too good.

I know there are some abilities that can trigger based on available mana. Maybe give magic resistance if you have full mana? To not make it mandatory to have a mage.

Ive stopped playing with SFO (found a combination of mods that I personally enjoy more) but agree that the state of aoe damage, mostly from spells, is half of what turned me away from it.
A single aoe spell in SFO can decide a whole battle, and they are often cheap enough (and there is enough WoM) to cast it 5-10 times. Especially compaired with how lackluster "buff" spells are for damage output comparisons. Bring a mage or dont bother showing up.

I dont think its limited to spells, I was seeing warpfire throwers delete empire greatsword units in a single volley, I think its AoE values in general need a looking at (partially a vanilla issue as well).

I do feel like sfo does a lot of things right, making the lords have fun and diverse skillsets, but I started to look at any LL without magic as a waste of upkeep.

Yeah I just had an intervention force of skaven show up with 6 warp canons, like 2 doomflayers and a few abominations. My defending the siege was a joke :/