Warrior, Paladin, Mage (info, strategy, hints, etc.)

[Arilian]

Is Damage spells are Viable option for a mage at impossible difficulty after mid game?

As an old heroes please i have started in impossible and i managed fine so far (after a few errors and restart like spending all my crystal, missing the spirits of rage q)


At the beginning of the dwarwen lands i realised that i am a bit misdeveloped my spirits (mabye i was a bit unlucky) and i am not sure chaos was a good choice for spells. I am already at lvl3, 15+INT and it starting to get weaker.
I am not sure how much is left from the game but given i am only lvl 11 i think damage spells and damage spirit effects will be useless at the end game (in impossible)
Am i wrong?

[Elwin]

yep, for impossible crowd control spells and skills are the key.

[Razorflame]

nah it's not chaos can rock

but that depends HEAVILY on your intelligence

and 15 won't get you any far...

you need at LEAST 25 before u even go to dwarven lands

and after dwarven lands u need have like 30 or somewhere near that

to even rock anything ^^

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

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

I'd say that Order is indeed needed even for a Mage.

A lot of fast-moving units can be pretty much grounded with the Lightning spell, plus it does quite good damage as well. Resurrection is a must-have if you want to avoid casualties, Defenseless can make tough units easier to kill (dragons, especially good against Cyclopes). If you are a mage, you cannot get Onslaught that easy, so a Mass Battle Standard comes in handy. Gift and Fit of Action are also valuable. And you're really stuck without Dispel if one of your units gets turned into a sheep...