Advice on army for my mage

[ginolard]

Am playing through for the first time as a mage. I made an initial boob in that I didn't realise how you accessed the Spirits of Rage so they are a bit lower level than they probably should be.

Anyway, I am wondering if my army could be better. I am in The Land Of The Dead and struggling.

I'm a 20th lvl mage with 12205 leadership

Army is

142 Dwarves
54 Cannoneers
15 Ents
200 Royal Snakes
6 Giants

I tend to find that I get overpowered easily if my big damage spells don't take out a hefty portion of the enemy. I'm thinking of dropping the Giants for some lower level creatures but which ones?

Any tips?

[Razorflame]

dodge the elves asap

u have a BIG MORALE penalty
which decreases damage and chance of criticals

or make an all elven party

[Elwin]

Yes deffinetly get rid off ents, first thing is morale as said above, second is that your army is too much tank oriented, for tanking giant is enough no need for another tank, i suggest to get some ranged or suport unit instead maybe archmage shaman inquisitor

[Metathron]

Got an artifact called Anga's Ruby? Don it, and struggle no more.

It gives a huge boost to female fighters, so I suggest getting sprites and lake fairies, dryads (optional - good if you're facing lots of level 3 or lower creatures so you can put them to sleep), and I suggest the best ranged creatures - elves and hunters. If you decide on an all elven army, you'll get a +1 morale bonus, if you don't, go with some great unit like royal snakes, emerald green dragons, shamans, or something completely different!

Some of those fights in Death Valley are really hard, I'm talking about the fights against the dragons, of course. I left them for later, came back after I cleared most of the demon lands actually.

[Vilk]

Instead of using spells almost only for damaging enemy units try more different tactics. Very efficient and even more for a mage is to combine target and a protection spell on a strong unit to distract enemy long range (that won't work as well against non long range units). Try more spells like traps, phantom, invisibility, any protection spell like stoneskin, and so on.

For rage skills try think use them each time in first rounds of all fights if they are low level they'll level up fast. Reaper and Lina are the best choices at this point of the game but the two other can be useful too.

Sleep doesn't work against undead, that makes dryads less interesting for this part of the game even with the ruby. Lake fairies (or sprites) are an interesting choice for a low level unit but without time back well developed it's not that good. if you go for this sort of choice you'll have to drop any dwarf unit (cannoneers, dwarves, giants) to avoid morale penalty.

Like Elwin suggest you could drop the ents and get one more range unit. Inquisitors hit hard the undead but not Dragons because they have a high magic protection. The problem is that you probably haven't get enough of them and didn't used sacrifice to increase their stack. Archmage aren't a long range unit that hit hard but their shield skill is very handy to protect a stack. Also their small teleport skill has many interesting use case.

I would also drop the dwarves to try something else, perhaps unicorns or black unicorns if you already have some. But polar bears could be an interesting choice. At this part of the game you probably don't have yet Horsemen or knights in numbers high enough and it's a bit late to start using sacrifice to get a bigger stack of them. If you can have them, any of them are a quite good choice to replace the dwarves.

Emerald Green dragon is a possibility but then you'd better drop the giants to avoid morale penalty. If you want drop the giants then those are an interesting choice you should try.

[Stepsongrapes]

You definitely have too many slow hitters. Dwarves, ents, and, giants combined in one army is part of your problem. Certainly lose either the ents or the dwarfs + giants.

Mix in more range and try to avoid morale lowering combinations, like the elf/dwarf problem you have here. Frankly, what you use should be somewhat dictated by what artifacts you have at hand. With the unit mix you have, I have a hard time thinking of good artifacts that benefit such a mixed bag army.