dragons. just take care of them, dont rush them in. It depends what you are fighting against. You basicly wait for melee units to go towards you, then go with dragons on his mages (since dragons have hi magic dmg resistance, especially black ones) or you get your summoned units to hit and get retaliated, then attack same stack with dragons. It is also good idea to have them stoneskined (actually, everything is good stoneskined
)
as for build, I go for linguistics 2 (intelect), then chaos magic to 2, then distortion to 2, then go for higher concentration 1, then transmute 1, then, if if i have demon portal chaos 3, otherwise distortion 3 (stoneskin, phantom) then chaos 3 (fear, later demon portal, fire rain etc.) then i go for more transmute and higher concentration, order magic i level up I have spare runes since Out of 5 games I find ressurect only in 1 or 2, and beside that only dispel lvl3 and heal lvl 3 are worth it, at least for me. Dragon slayer, demon slayer are not bad but i rather cast stoneskin or haste.
as for the rest of the skills in mind and might, dunno, I take onslaught asap (scouting is first of course
), then I go for rage control anger. By the time you do all this, you don't really need anything cause you are prolly level 30 already :/
as for paladins, they are great, especialy when phantomed, but they don't like to do critcal attacks against anything except demons, don't know why. I had that banner of true faith, gives them 20% more critical, i had morale items for humans that gave them + 2 more morale, 7% more critical from medal, 3% more critical from prayer, all in all, there were at some 70% critical chance and I NEVER saw them do critical dmg against anything except demons. I always dump them for something else that can go tank. ED are great tanks and they do more criticals with only ~45% thatn paladins did with 70+. Maybe it's just my luck, dunno. undead units, namely ancient vampires, with only +1 morale do criticals all the time.
PS. word of caution: as a mage your LS is low, meaning, bringig paladins into a battle with 70+ evil beholedrs or 120+ demoneses = mind control/charm + your paladins hit your dragons, then dragons retaliate, pretty nasty if they hit red or black dragons...or 150+ inquisitors of yours that will die hard and then retaliate with magic dmg