Upgrade strategies for adepts/mages

Hi everyone!

I'm curious what everyones strategy is for promoting adepts and mages for Fall from Heaven games? I like to switch my mana nodes up with Dispell Magic to erase a node and change the node to another mana type to get a variety of spells.

Also (later in the game) I like to make a bunch of 'battle wizards' that are extra good at pure combat and combat support. If I can get my hands on four raw mana nodes to work with I will make two of them fire nodes, and two of them death nodes. Then I build as many adepts as I can as quickly as I can (as they will each get Blaze and Rais Skeleton for free). I spend the promotions on giving them Extension I and II, and then rest of the promos mostly go to Combat I, II, etc. Then, before they are ready to upgrade to mages, you can dispel the extra death mana and replace it with a third fire mana so that all the mages get Fireball for free as well. This gives me a bunch of mages with raise skeleton, blaze and fireball without spending a single promotion, and the combat and extension promo's will upgrade the strengh and range of both the fireballs and the skelletons.

If I have access to extra mana nodes I usually make it an Air Node, and give some adepts the Fair Winds promo and then Malestrom when they upgrade to Mages so that they can cause some extra collateral damage.

This system has been working great against the AI, but I've just started my first Fall From Heaven Multiplayer game (playing the Svartalfar dark elves). Without access to seige units, I have to put everything I can into beefing up my mages, so any tips to maximize my mages would be super helpful!

I also like "rust" a lot.. giving -10% to units.. + removing their metal weapons is always nice.. against melee, but also against longbows and crossbows.
body1 is also a must. especially in magister or those modmods which enable to not re-cast if you have a caster with the promotion.

but even then, I like to have :
mindI, earth 1, body 1 adepts (and then spiritII when mages) my cities to help boos t cities and provide relays for speeding units.

well, in fact, most spell are useful.
with svart, you'll also like dance of blades... and shadow1, shadow 2... indeed, when using warrior-pult strategy, gaining 1 first strike per sacrificed warrior enable them to be much more efficient warrior-pults than otherwise.

My approach is often unfocused until mid-game if not later. I always make one adept right after my first guild and promote him with whatever I have per my palace or terrain. I move him around buffing as I research either alteration or enchantment. If I have good city buffing mana types (Spirit, Mind, or Earth), I might make a couple more adepts to help convert raw nodes.

I leave one blank of course until I get sorcery and make it a metamagic node and then use saved promos to get dispel on my first guy and then wipe it.

After that, my plan is ideally to...
make a guy with enchantment, law, and nature to buff then I wipe again and make a defense/attack adept with body and entropy. I also give him terraforming spells like scorch, spring, and sanctify.

Then, I am ready to start really training mages for city buffing. I try to get as much mind, earth, and spirit as I can to load each of my cities up with Hope, Inspiration, and Walls of Stone.

When I have a stash of these, I purge my nodes and reset to death in order to make four Death adepts to become my Liches. Then I choose four or five tier 3 spells I want in addition and prep four more adepts to be my archmages. (Typically, Chaos, Body, Shadow [for uppity allies], and one other with a T3 summon). After I get them to the top of their sphere I do body with the remaining promos.

Anyway, like I said this is ideally. Hard to work out perfect strats sometimes tho.

1-2 with scorch & spring depending on map and empire size. Needs Water1, Sun1
More with Maelstrom. If I can get it, Crown of Brilliance. Both for causing collateral. Needs Air2, Empyrean religion.

My friend wanted to play the bad guys in a game, so I choose the Illians.
I have to say, snowing the land is kinda cool. No pun intended.
Which means I have no need to terraform.
Since the leader is CHA, my adepts promote faster.
With siege, I haven't needed as many collateral adepts either, Though I am looking forward to getting at least 1 that can use Snowfall which requires Ice3.

What sucks is when you choose (or randomly get) an empire that doesn't get siege and you have little access to nodes, metal or horses.
I wouldn't mind a map setting that can increase the number of nodes or use the fantasy terrain on other existing maps.
It seems such a waste to go for the octopus religion on maps with such little water.