I'm another beginning mage and worried that I'm messing up strategically. The thing that worries me is that when I was on Debir Island I was able to wipe out pretty much everything with almost no casualties, in part because I could wipe whole stacks out with a level 2 magic pole-axe. But now I'm level 8, I've done all the quests on Debir Island, plus Goodman's last ambush and have cruised around Bolo and Scarlet Wind knocking off the easier monsters.
But everything's at least equal in strength to my army now, so that every combat costs me some troops...not a lot, maybe a couple stacks will lose 10-20% of their numbers, but some, especially if I'm fighting another hero. My direct damage spells don't have the same bite they did early on, and I haven't found the other spells I've got to be all that helpful. Call of Nature can be great but it's so unpredictable whether I get awesome royal snakes or worthless lake dragonflies. I've used helplessness a bit cause it's cheap on high defense critters. Precision and dragon arrows seem a waste because my archers do such piddling damage. My opponents keep casting things like Blind but I can't find it. I was thinking of trying Call of Nature and beef up the summoned troop with stoneskin and sending it out as a sacrificial lamb, but I feel like I need to bring in some of the other ground troops to get some.
My build so far
Heroism 1 rank (probably a waste--should I have gone for rage control and training maybe on my scarce might runes?)
Glory 2
Wisdom 2, Linguistics 2, Order Magic 2, Chaos Magic 1, Distortion Magic 1
My troops: Bowmen, Inquisitors, Ancient Bears, Sea Dogs, Marauders
Ancient bears are tough but seem a bit lacking in offense. I like Marauders a lot but they're a bit fragile, and I have trouble making maximum use of the sea dogs special. But it's the ranged troops that just don't seem to be doing much to me. The Inquisiitors resurrection skill sounded great and in the early game it basically prevented me from taking any losses, but now that I'm losing 5-10 troops in battles, they don't raise enough to make a difference. Other level 2+ troops I know where to find include beholders, snakes, swamp snakes (but no Royal Snakes, sadly), Berserkers, Priests, Bears, Repair Droids, Guard Droids. I can't fill my leadership quota of swordsmen (I think King Frederick only started with 40) and while I have found one source of Archmages, there are only four available.
So--have I spent my runes badly? Should I be casting different spells that I'm not recognizing the value of or are there just spells I haven't seen yet? Am I sweating the casualties too much? HOMM games have kind of trained me to avoid any losses, but maybe I'm worrying about it too much since I don't seem to be running out of money or troops (except for Swordsmen).
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