About order spells.

I haven't played past dwarves so don't really know later spells... But Phoenix is really great at least until that. What I do is summon phoenix as first move in battle and send it attack enemy.

It has attack that hits 3 targets so damage is decent. At level 3 it also got 800 hp. It ties most if not all enemy units hitting it for round while I shoot them with my spells, rage and ranged. When they finally kill it next round it resurrects. Then they waste another round hitting it while I keep bombarding them. It has given me many victories without single lost unit.

For me, Phoenix began to wear quickly, esp as a paladin, later game monsters can easily do 800hp dmg in one hit and there are better spells to cast (mass haste, geyser etc) first round.

I think order is a must but I don't think its neccessary to max it, resurrection lv 1 or 2 are fine for the early game and later game you'll most probably be abusing sacrifice, I don't like the mass initiative spell (you get first round from the warrior tree and that's the most important) I'd rather have mass haste and get that all important first strike in.

So far I haven't found haste that useful. My aim is to slow enemy getting to me rather than rushing to it. Of course because of that I use lot of ranged units. And when enemy gets close I can see how far they can move next turn so I just leave my melee outside their attack range and hit them next round when I can be first.

Of course if enemies later have enough movement to get to me with one move then haste will be much more useful.

I find chaos the worst but thats probs cos the only good chaos spells i have are DOOM and weakness..not sure if weakness lvl 3 is mass? i have sacrifice but doesnt seem to work for me..tried it on a load of peasants to give me some more black dragons but it wouldnt let me..

I,ve got some decent order spells...divine armor, demon/dragon slayer, dragon arrows..but my fave is easily distortion. Beserk is insane and Phantom is the best spell in the game that ive used so far. slow would be good if it was mass at lvl 3..but i guess that would be too good.

Yeah... Black Dragons are pretty much immune to all magic and any special abilities or beneficial spells that other troops might have. Use Sacrifice to resurrect other troops.

Yeah I used to think Chaos was the worst too, but they have some excellent lategame stuff. Distortion owns everything though - quite often I find myself only having the Distorion spellbook open during a fight.

Magic Spring is also Distortion I think...but I agree that Phantom is close to the most useful spell later in the game.

Sacrifice is best spell ever, and it is Chaos Magic. If not this single spell, I'd vote for Distortion.

Well, I haven't actually used Sacrifice yet. I totally missed out on it in my first game and now I read everywhere that people rely on it etc. I'm a bit confused about it - if you raise the stack above the limit through sacrifice, doesn't that mean that it will attack your own units? How is this used effectively?

BTW, Distortion also has a couple more excellent spells, Geyser and one of my favourites, Ghost Blade, which my Mage can do 2000 damage with for 10 mana.

If stack is only a bit above the limit, it will not attack other units (IDK how it works exactly). Best used at the end of fight.
One more great spell - Pain Mirror. Sometimes waaay stronger than anything else.

So true. Works great with my barbarians going berserk. I also find "trap" really useful. Not only it has very high damage it additionally ends opponents move and works with black dragons, great stuff.

And about sacrifice - it's awesome for replenish your army. You can take one low level unit (so it could be resurrected) in your army and keep huge replacement of them in reserve. You will have always something to sacrifice so rest of your units would be covered. No more need to run between shops. It is usable on nearly every unit in game except for black dragons. But hey, you can't have everything right?