Can someone explain the magic to me

[lexington1]

I've managed to figure some of it out on my own, but can someone give a comprehensive guide for stuff like witch mana types are the best, and how to get those stack-blasting archmages I've heard people talking about on here? (I'm playing splintered court as Svartalfar right now, if it helps-speaking of which, how do you use CoE strategically? Now it almost seems like having no religion at all in your cities.)

 

[Monkeyfinger]

There's a bunch of discussion about good spheres here.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300800

Stack-blasting archmages are pretty much a thing of the past, they used to rule lategame battlefields but were then nerfed. There's 2 arcane anti-stack spells: Maelstrom (Air2) and Wither (Entropy3). Both have much lower damage caps than the old anti-stack spells archmages had, though wither's pretty mean anyway due to its secondary effects (no healing, halved experienced gain, -10% base strength)

You want stack-blasting, you go divine. These are your options:

Ritualists (Ashen Veil priests, need priesthood)
Cultists (Octopus overlords priests, need priesthood)
Chalid (Empyrean hero, needs religious law)
Luriduses (Empyrean high priests, requires Theology and high-leveled vicars. Vicars you get at priesthood)
High priests of winter (Illian unit, needs Theology and high-leveled priests of winter. You get 3 priests of winter through a ritual available at philosophy)
Dwarven Druids (Khazad/Luchuirp unit, need commune with nature)
Fireball golems (...kinda. They have limits on how much of a stack they can hurt, but the sheer NUMBER of fireballs compensates. Luchuirp unit, requres sorcery, fire mana, and the blasting workshop building. Okay, this one's arcane, not divine)

 

[slowcar]

back then meteors ruled the battlefield and consumed thousands of helpless melee troops.
nowadays maelstrom is the only remaining area spell - and it was recently capped in damage again, both total and direct. still a very good spell, especially when you combine it with some control spell (like blinding light).

archmages excel more in the ways of summoning. an exception (among others) is mind control (mind 3) that takes over the strongest (living) unit in the enemy stack. very handy not only to decimate defenders but to have somebody holding the city after you moved on

for specific splintered court help i would suggest the specific thread in the scenarios subforum. you can build gibbon very early and have an archmage with mind3, there should be few things (but surprise treant marchs) that can stop her.

 

[Blackmantle]

Fire still offers some kind of serious Stack busting at Tier 3 with Fire Elementals (which do collateral and pack quite a punch all by themselves.) and Water offers splitting Water Elementals which might not do collateral but can kill / maim quite a number of units (if you get that first/second elemental killed while attacking...), augmented if combined with Maelstorm or other stack busters (especially with Twincast or Tower of Elements or best both of them.)
Summoner Leaders especially profit from powerful summons like those...

Another utterly devastating technique is to mass Archmagi with Wonder (Chaos 3 spell which fires off 3 random effects.) or even better get some twincasting Mage-heroes to do the same with about 5/3 the efficiency.


The rest has allready been covered... so take a peek at the guide Monkeyfinger has linked here and the terrific FFH2 Manual by Xienwolf.

In Splintered Court as Svarts collecting all Mana from your team and rushing Gibbon might be the tactics of choice (and then beat up those Ljos with their own troops from Domination (Mind 3)), same as rushing Poisons with your team and getting Alazkan fast... I found that one of the easier scenarioes (if played as Svarts, can't comment on Ljos) up until now...