Surviving on Impossible

[Dorkus]

In the early game, leadership is close to useless. You should win all of your fights with intelligent spell usage, and with mage towers replenshing mana instantly, there's no reason not to do this at all. It's the fastest way to win battles, and it takes no losses.

At the end of the game, the difference of a few hundred leadership literally has no impact. On the other hand, attribute modifiers scale pretty well. I agree with you somewhat that defense is not all that useful. The stacks in the late game are so big that you need to minimize the number of times you are struck. And if you're not being hit, then there's no point in defense. But attack is still mildly useful, as it will help you focus fire on a single stack and wipe it out, with spells, in a single turn. Three points in attack is +10% damage. That's not jaw dropping, considering 1 point in intellect does ~+11% damage to spells. But it's nothing to sneeze at.

I also disagree with you about rage. Rage is incredibly useful, not always for killing stacks -- although maxed underground blades, blackhole, and soul drain are good for that. It is useful for crowd control and support. Ice thorns can delay melee stacks for two turns. THe stonewall can delay them for one. Timeback can effectively delay an entire army for a turn -- just send in a big stack on a suicide run, absorb all the blows (perhaps casting kamikaze on that same stack), then timeback to get your unit back to full strength. Glot's armor, with a bit of investment, can allow you to cast armageddon TWICE without taking any losses. Chargers can essentially duplicate the effect of the most overpowered item in the game (devourer of fury), and improve the efficiency of the somewhat cheap invisibility tactic that can allow you to go through the entire game with no losses, at least if you can find invisibility early.

Unfortunately, for the mage rage does not build up quickly. ANd inquisitors that are useful in the early game simply don't cut up, as damage dealers or rage builders, in the late game. Especially if you are going to build up black hole and/or soul drain, you need some serious rage. Seven roasted rats help, but I would take rage/mana over attack/defense any day of the week, and certainly over leadership too, at least until lvl 10-15 or so.

Intellect and mana are fairly straightforward. These are the bread and soy butter of the mage, and well worth investing in. If you have a big mana pool, you can pull some pretty crazy stuff -- such as the double armageddon with glot's armor first turn. In sum, my ranking would be the following for early game:

Intellect
Mana
Rage
Attack
Leadership
Defense

Starting at around level 15, I would say:

Intellect
Leadership
Mana
Rage
Attack
Defense