Originally Posted by Zhuangzi (Post 55027)

Totally agree. As far I am concerned the Mage owns this game, hands down. I have just completed my second game on Hard and it was MUCH easier as a Mage compared to a Paladin.

Why?

Because of SPELLS. In my opinion Order is not needed, but Distortion in the early game and Chaos in the late game own everything. I barely used the Ragebox for most of the game, mainly just Soul Drain for massive stacks and Time Back. Sometimes Glot's Armor. But my rage was only 50 at the end and I didn't need any more.

What you've got to do as a Mage is raise your intellect as high as it will go, and max out everything in the Magic tree except for Necromancer or Necro Call. You need Higher Magic x 3. You need Destroyer x 3. You definitely need level 3 Distortion and Chaos. And then with an Intellect of over 20 (mine was 32 by the end of the game) you will destroy your enemies. You don't really need much in the way of your own units, although dragons are essential at the end of the game.

Toward the end of the game, I was casting Fire Rain twice a turn for the first three turns, and using Soul Drain every second or third turn. That's it. I occasionally used Armageddon to clear out maps with lots of stacks (especially lots of ranged units) but this is not a good idea when you have dragons. In fact one cheap tactic is to get a team of weak and cheap units like Undead Spiders, Skeletons and Ghouls, then Armageddon everything. You can nuke the map twice on turn 1, which great for clearing out hordes of dragons. And then you can replenish your stacks very cheaply after the fight. I cleared out the Land of the Dead like this with no problems at all.

I never used Sacrifice. Not once. I used Phantom a lot in my Paladin game but barely at all in my second. In fact I didn't find Pain Mirror at all in my second game, but it didn't matter.

Mage >>>>>>>>>>> Daylight >>>>>>>>>>>>> Paladin