as i am playing a mage the schools of magic have diffenrt importance depending whut spellbooks and scroll i find in game. as i have foundout they are random it all depends.

in my game i got fireball and firerain early and decided to be good at chaos. if finding other damage spells scrolls early (lvl 7-12) had mayby made be go an another school.

i saved for earlier magic lvl 1 and found it very usefull. altough upgrading to lvl 2 cost more then many other skills that gives way more benefit to my magic couse they are cheaper.

The skill that allows you to place units before combat is one of the best skills in warrior tree. It allows you to position your army to use terrain and, combined with initiative bonus from another skill, allows your melee units to strike first.
I played a paladin and went mostly melee from about lvl 15. Used low level mobs and Inquisitors for Rez(have not got sacrifice, so had to be carefull). gotta love those chain sea devil crits for 50k+ (using magic to give them 1 more attack and glot's armor to prevent losses). Only ranged mobs were skeletons.

I also think that pally is best choice for higher levels. Has more Leadership and rage than mage and can CC just as good. (And magic damage dealing does not scale well with levels.)

One thing to note about the Frenzy skill. It only gives that bonus after your unit kills a complete stack of units. So it's pretty much useless IMO.

On the topic Hints and Tips, it is said that High end game spells are very crystal expensive, so is is better to spare them
On the other hands, in this topic , it is said that Alchemy is pretty useless because magic crystal are abundant.

So who should I trust ? I cannot decide if Alchemy is a good choice or not.

Late-game spells are incredibly expensive to upgrade and magic crystals are not that abundant. So yeah, Alchemy is useful.

Oh later on in the game it is harder and harder to upgrade spells, some great spells require like 20 crystals or so... You will not have enough crystals to have all spells at level 3

Indeed most spells end up costing a lot when you reach that area. Also i noticed that smashing blows also becomes available for guardsmen with that skill.. so just a small note there, would be interesting to see if other units get affected by that skill, for example if black knights also get the circle attack or if elven archers perhaps get fire arrows ? Otherwise it would be an interesting addition to them as some skills are definately lack luster.

But i don't agree with the note on inquisition, as it is i have a hard time finding them so i tend to mostly upgrade priests which are more available, not to say it wouldn't be nice if the inquisition skill was improved upon a bit, perhaps skills or abilities imparted would be nice.

I'm now using a mage and am finding the 50% less crystals used to be awesome. Now I can actually have every spell learned and more than a select few spells at level 3. Also, some requirements seem to be rounded down. Spells that cost 3 crystals to learn are only 1 crystal w/ this skill maxed.

Yeah, inquisition is a very weak skill. It needs to supply a bonus, like +2 Initiative and +50% res power for Inquisitors.

Most if not all of my points are already made by other posters, but what the hell.

Tactics, in my opinion, is an excellent skill alongside onslaught. My tactics usually revolve around taking out all the rangers and dragons before the enemy even gets a shot or a flap of a wing off. Tactics typically lets you use a creature with a movement of only 5 get the jump on the enemy. Gotta love griffins, I always send them to furiously attack almost anything they can reach cos they have unlimited retaliations and then resurrect them later.

Frenzy, as pointed out, only kicks in when a creature finishes a monster stack, so at least to me it seems you get the +attack bonus when you've already secured the victory.

Nighttime operations is, for me at least, all but useless. The reason night seems to be shorter is because every time you use the zeppelin or boat to other continents, it's daytime again.

The most puzzling thing about the skills is the harhness of diminishing returns. Typically for the first lvl of a skill you get a 10% or 15% bonus for a small amount of runes. The next levels only offer 5% bonuses but still cost more! It seems to me that it's a smart idea to take one of each and max em out much later.

Frenzy is a God-send fighting the spider boss.