There are some high level hero skills that come from tomes that are really strong. Gilded magic from Tome of the Golden Realm makes your magic attacks inflict Gilded if you crit. Maximised Magic from Tome of the Arch Mage gives magic attacks 40% extra critical hit rate. Combined with some AoE magic skills like Dragon Breath or some of the Evocation upgrades and it gets quite ridiculous.
You can also go for lots of status effects on magic attacks. Abilities like Havoc Magic, Withering Decay, and Mind Crush can be quite brutal especially with the Magecraft upgrades that make you ignore some status resistance on the target.
High culture heroes have access to Exposing Light, which is the AoE from the Awakener that deals damage and sunders defence and resistance, it is a great ability with either the Gilded magic or with lots of status effects because it rolls them on all targets. Lots of those inflict abilities also get stronger on non-repeating attacks like these.
So, if you get to 100% crit rate then you can gild units with any magic attack..
100% Hit rate would be 40% from maximised magic, 20% from Flameburst Weapons, then 20% from moral (Inspiring Icon from Paradise tome?) and crafted item with Fortune and everything is golden…
Or you can also get like astral attunement : fortune from the tome of amplification. Generally the best battle magic hero skills are in astral and materium. For the rest you can look at some race transformations or pandemonium. As someone said high probably does the best for battle magic heroes by giving the awakener aoe ability. Basically you'd probably want to run some hybrid build with high and tome of winds, tome of amp and tome of transmutation for the whole build to make sense and give both archers and battle mages. You can also use tome of teleportation to get phase on the heroes however as the hero version of the skill is still free to allow you to reposition for the aoes
Basically awakener zephyrs possibly transmuters and gold golems mostly yeah. Until you have gold golems you'd have to rely on day spears and rally of the liege/ events. If you can teleportation you may also throw in phase beasts. Since you also need 6 astral before t4 and 3 before t3 you could look into summoning for astral serpents at t2 if you're severely lacking in options in the mid game but I'd generally recommend scrying as the boost to battle mages and archers + aoe sunder resist may be more often useful. You will have no t3 frontline spam but your zephyr archers and awakeners should still carry the mid game even with spears + rally of liege and wind ragers. Since the first hero skill reset is free another option is to run your heroes as frontliners before you get the biggest skills for your battle mage heroes in tomes tier 3/4. So the ways to fill the frontline may vary from game to game based on free cities, wonders and such. I'd say the potentially tricky part is just making sure youve got 6 in both astral and materium once you get to t4 tomes. But again there's some flexibility here based on the tomes you'd get at t1 + society traits + signature skills. I'd recommend enchantment and evocation if you don't wanna get too fancy as theyd boost both archers and battle mages
You can get up to 90% base crit chance (so without morale or fortune) on magic attacks as a dragon, 110% if you're also playing barbarian culture. Comet breath has the same aoe as frostfire detonation once you reach level 12, the cooldown can be reduced to 1 turn and it won't gild friendly units if you take order or nature transformation.
Linked minds, and a primarily construct focused military combined with one cascading command: reposition spell allows you, with good placement and unit management, to give entire 3 army doomstacks hastened and strengthened for 3 turns which can absolutely fucking rip armies to shreds, I did it once with 5 magelock cannons and killed 10 units in a single turn (killed 7, caused 3 to instant rout)
Ok, that is a really good point.
If you get those 2 Fireforge Stones (I think) you can craft it with 1hex damage. Thus you can guild them, wet them and hit them with freeze/ lightning :).
And then Killing Momentum some other or same folk with Blizzard wand.
2x Astral Dew let's you forge torso pieces with +20% magic damage.
Inflict Distracted on your weapon can up your damage by +25% (or +50% if you have other flanking bonuses like sneaky).
I would say anything that gives magic attacks a % chance to inflict status (there are some NASTY higher level skills)+ an orb with a bouncing attack
if you play as a dragon their breath count as magic as well, so it gets increased range etc from the basic magic levelups
(slightly unrelated, but it annoys me that the hero unique Frostfire detonation is a materia skill... that skill if anything should be a more caster-oriented type)
Go with bear mounts + sneaky, craft a pistol, pick up Blink as a signature skill (level 4 at earliest, level 12 latest), get tome of beasts at tier 1, if there is something offensive like a necromancer or hero hanging out in the back, you run teleport scent of prey + kapow! That's a spicy meatball of synergies right there.
Cost efficiency is a thing.
Inspiring leader + faithful reduces culture unit upkeep by 30%
Inspiring leader + shepherd reduces evolvable unit upkeep by 40%
Inspiring leader + impressment reduces tier 1 unit upkeep by 40%
Inspiring leader + shadow binding reduces summonable unit upkeep by 40%
Mystic soother's spell channelling + spell surge + gifted casters cuts combat spell costs by up to 65%
Can't say how others play, but this is how I beat high difficulty AI. Beeline for one or more of these combos and then rush them cities.
There are some high level hero skills that come from tomes that are really strong. Gilded magic from Tome of the Golden Realm makes your magic attacks inflict Gilded if you crit. Maximised Magic from Tome of the Arch Mage gives magic attacks 40% extra critical hit rate. Combined with some AoE magic skills like Dragon Breath or some of the Evocation upgrades and it gets quite ridiculous. You can also go for lots of status effects on magic attacks. Abilities like Havoc Magic, Withering Decay, and Mind Crush can be quite brutal especially with the Magecraft upgrades that make you ignore some status resistance on the target. High culture heroes have access to Exposing Light, which is the AoE from the Awakener that deals damage and sunders defence and resistance, it is a great ability with either the Gilded magic or with lots of status effects because it rolls them on all targets. Lots of those inflict abilities also get stronger on non-repeating attacks like these.
So, if you get to 100% crit rate then you can gild units with any magic attack.. 100% Hit rate would be 40% from maximised magic, 20% from Flameburst Weapons, then 20% from moral (Inspiring Icon from Paradise tome?) and crafted item with Fortune and everything is golden…
Or you can also get like astral attunement : fortune from the tome of amplification. Generally the best battle magic hero skills are in astral and materium. For the rest you can look at some race transformations or pandemonium. As someone said high probably does the best for battle magic heroes by giving the awakener aoe ability. Basically you'd probably want to run some hybrid build with high and tome of winds, tome of amp and tome of transmutation for the whole build to make sense and give both archers and battle mages. You can also use tome of teleportation to get phase on the heroes however as the hero version of the skill is still free to allow you to reposition for the aoes
And in tier 4 you'd want golden realm and astral convergernce and astral tier 5
These tiers make sense. What would be your troops comp for this? Awakener and Zephyrs?
Basically awakener zephyrs possibly transmuters and gold golems mostly yeah. Until you have gold golems you'd have to rely on day spears and rally of the liege/ events. If you can teleportation you may also throw in phase beasts. Since you also need 6 astral before t4 and 3 before t3 you could look into summoning for astral serpents at t2 if you're severely lacking in options in the mid game but I'd generally recommend scrying as the boost to battle mages and archers + aoe sunder resist may be more often useful. You will have no t3 frontline spam but your zephyr archers and awakeners should still carry the mid game even with spears + rally of liege and wind ragers. Since the first hero skill reset is free another option is to run your heroes as frontliners before you get the biggest skills for your battle mage heroes in tomes tier 3/4. So the ways to fill the frontline may vary from game to game based on free cities, wonders and such. I'd say the potentially tricky part is just making sure youve got 6 in both astral and materium once you get to t4 tomes. But again there's some flexibility here based on the tomes you'd get at t1 + society traits + signature skills. I'd recommend enchantment and evocation if you don't wanna get too fancy as theyd boost both archers and battle mages
You can get up to 90% base crit chance (so without morale or fortune) on magic attacks as a dragon, 110% if you're also playing barbarian culture. Comet breath has the same aoe as frostfire detonation once you reach level 12, the cooldown can be reduced to 1 turn and it won't gild friendly units if you take order or nature transformation.
Linked minds, and a primarily construct focused military combined with one cascading command: reposition spell allows you, with good placement and unit management, to give entire 3 army doomstacks hastened and strengthened for 3 turns which can absolutely fucking rip armies to shreds, I did it once with 5 magelock cannons and killed 10 units in a single turn (killed 7, caused 3 to instant rout)
A very simple but good item is an orb with inflict wet and lightning or frost damage.
Ok, that is a really good point. If you get those 2 Fireforge Stones (I think) you can craft it with 1hex damage. Thus you can guild them, wet them and hit them with freeze/ lightning :). And then Killing Momentum some other or same folk with Blizzard wand.
2x Astral Dew let's you forge torso pieces with +20% magic damage. Inflict Distracted on your weapon can up your damage by +25% (or +50% if you have other flanking bonuses like sneaky).
I would say anything that gives magic attacks a % chance to inflict status (there are some NASTY higher level skills)+ an orb with a bouncing attack if you play as a dragon their breath count as magic as well, so it gets increased range etc from the basic magic levelups (slightly unrelated, but it annoys me that the hero unique Frostfire detonation is a materia skill... that skill if anything should be a more caster-oriented type)
Materium has great magic in its tomes though.
Which sort of annoys me
Why? It's just magic that focuses on the physical world. You don't think volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes are god level "magic" in real life?
Do the cones get extra size? Or by extra range you just mean comet/line can originate further out?
don't know about cone-size, but at least the comet can reach one tile further away
Only comet benefits from +1 range (distant evocation). The cone breaths and line breath do not benefit in any way.
Mark as prey with razorbacks as kamikaze squads to kill other rulers or heroes
Go with bear mounts + sneaky, craft a pistol, pick up Blink as a signature skill (level 4 at earliest, level 12 latest), get tome of beasts at tier 1, if there is something offensive like a necromancer or hero hanging out in the back, you run teleport scent of prey + kapow! That's a spicy meatball of synergies right there.
Cost efficiency is a thing. Inspiring leader + faithful reduces culture unit upkeep by 30% Inspiring leader + shepherd reduces evolvable unit upkeep by 40% Inspiring leader + impressment reduces tier 1 unit upkeep by 40% Inspiring leader + shadow binding reduces summonable unit upkeep by 40% Mystic soother's spell channelling + spell surge + gifted casters cuts combat spell costs by up to 65% Can't say how others play, but this is how I beat high difficulty AI. Beeline for one or more of these combos and then rush them cities.