Staves for Mages...my issue with class choices.

You're right on these observations, but the mage has the greatest potential of any path. If anything, other classes need more to match the potential of the mage. Mages need weaknesses, in my opinion, not more strengths.

When I play I rarely choose mage, because it kills the challenge of the game for me. (Were I to try insane/insane, I'd go mage!)

Also, there are special mage staffs in LH 1.7, and unitstats included that modders can use to mage mage-specific items in the future.

I am playing 1.7. I have not seen any mage stuff drop. Ill look for it. 

Should be a "Mage's staff" purchasable in the store once you get the "enchantment" technology, if memory of the beta serves.

If you're using a spellcaster, why are you using basic attacks? Spells like Flame Dart and Kill typically greatly exceed the single-target damage potential of any weapon; spells like Blizzard and Horrific Wail can kill armies with one or two castings. Overall, if you're using a spellcaster to perform basic attacks, you aren't using the caster correctly.

There are a couple of staffs that improve spell damage or spell mastery or reduce spell costs, and daggers provide an initiative bonus and a hidden damage bonus (critical chance applies to damage spells, though mages are unlikely to have a high enough critical chance to worry about and the bonus from the Evoker trait line overshadows critical hits due to how rare critical hits with low critical chance are). Since mages don't have access to heavy armors, you're probably going to want the armors that improve their dodge score so that they don't get hit as often, and there are a couple of robes and perhaps a bit of armor that offer dodge bonuses.

I also agree with davronna that it's not the mages that are 'weak,' at least not in the late game. Mages, in my personal opinion, are the single most powerful champion class in the game, followed by Commanders. Warriors, Assassins, and Defenders are kind of garbage by comparison to either Mages or Commanders, especially since most of what you can do with a Warrior, Assassin, or Defender can be done with a regular trained unit, and there's a spell for most of the rest. That being said, mages really need to be at least into the low-teen levels before they start to shine. If you're trying for a damage mage, you can't really get many of the good damage spells and a decent chunk of the Evoker line before level 10 or 12; if you're going for a summoner, you can't get many summons out early; if you're going for a curse caster, you need the spell mastery and the spells, and that's not that much easier to obtain than the damage spells and Evoker bonuses.

You also need to know what spell schools you want to get, and what mage-specific spell traits you want to pick up to complement (or supplant) your elemental schools - as far as battle magic goes, Air is mostly support with some halfway decent damage spells, Fire is mostly direct damage, Water has a decent curse and perhaps the best AOE damage spell in the game, Earth has a bunch of blessings and some expensive damage spells, Death is where most of the good curses are at and also has some decent (but generally expensive) single-target damage spells, and Life has healing and blessing and a decent curse - and you need to know how you want to play it. Blessing casters are not typically going to have spectacular direct damage output; most of what they do for you is preserving and empowering the other units in your army with spells like Haste, Growth, Giant Form, Diamond Skin, Heal, and Wellspring. Curse casters are similarly unlikely to have spectacular damage output - but spells like Mass Curse and Grave Seal do wonders for the damage output of your 6-figure Greataxe-equipped regulars, while spells like Wither and Shrink and Slow do a reasonable job mitigating your opponent's offensive capabilities. With a Summoner, you really ought to look at the secondary effects of a lot of the summons; a Grave Elemental will bless all your troops adjacent to it with a one-time resurrect spell on the turn it is summoned, while Earth and Fire Elementals damage units in the tiles around the one that they're summoned into. Other summons may grant you access to a useful ability - such as the Air Elemental's Titan's Breath ability - or serve as useful fodder to absorb enemy attacks or allow you to get around the enemy's melee infantry line to go after casters and archers in the back. Beyond that, none of the four basic types - bless, curse, summon, damage - of caster are really mutually exclusive (though some combinations are easier to get than others); most curse and damage spells will benefit from spell mastery bonuses, and you'll pick up some spell mastery traits on the way to Evoker anyways, while Evoker isn't hard to reach if you've already developed the spell master traits and blessings don't require any traits whatsoever and thus can pair with anything without competing for trait space.

Your choice of elemental schools is really the main thing which chooses the direction your mage goes - Fire, Water, and Death are the primary curse and damage schools, while Air, Earth, and Life are the primary blessing schools (Life additionally is the only school which allows the caster to serve as a healer, though Death offers damage spells that can heal the caster). Air, in addition to its battlefield blessings, has some damage and curse potential; Titan's Breath cast with high mastery will take away an enemy turn and potentially grant your units some free hits, while Storm offers a decent amount of damage of a type that is rarely resisted (lightning resistance is a very rare thing), though it's unreliable due to hitting a random target, and there's little reason to object to the mobility granted by Thunderstrike, which lets you teleport to any location on the battlefield (though you could probably care less about the associated damage effect; you shouldn't be teleporting your caster right next to any hostile units unless those units are about to die anyways).

Oh yes there are about 7 staves you can get. Most are attack value of 6 or 7, The fire ones are better at a value of 11 I think. 

My complaint, is there is no mage weapons comparable to the higher melee weapons such as Heartseeker. 

Thanks Joeball. 

I am going to restart a NEW game slightly more difficult. I wanted to create the BEST Mage. 

So what race and traits would you go for to start?

What elemental spells would you go for? Fire and Life? Fire and Death?

Do you have a preference for Kingdom versus Empire? Strategic casters or tactical casters? What type of mage do you want to play? How much versatility do you want said mage to have? A custom Mage sovereign should probably have Brilliant and Tactician; at the very least, the experience bonus from Brilliant is worthwhile, and you can never go wrong with more initiative.

You should perhaps look at the spells available in each path and decide what you want to play with, rather than having me tell you. Regardless, if you're looking for a damage caster, I would say that you more or less cannot go wrong with Fire 2/3 (for Flame Dart at Fire 2 and Fireball at Fire 3), Water 4 for Blizzard (possibly the best AOE damage spell in the game), or Death for Drain Life at Death 3, Touch of Entropy at Death 4, and Kill at Death 5. Fire is your minimum investment damage path, and also note that in the early stages of the game, Burning Hands is both cheap enough to cast and reasonably effective when compared to normal weapons, especially if you can manage to hit two or three enemies with it (Burning Hands is also the only first level damage spell in the game). Fire should be paired with either Water or Death so that you have an alternative damage spell to go to if and when you come across units with high fire resistance; Water is in my opinion more attractive for a pure damage caster just because of how good Blizzard is against multi-figure units, though Death is much better against single powerful targets like dragons or the bosses of Wildlands (especially once you get to Kill). Remember that Blizzard is relatively ineffective against single-figure high-health units and targets with lots of cold resistance. Air and Earth are possible schools for damage casters, although neither is exceptional; Air has only one useful damage spell, Storm, at Air 3, as Thunderstrike (also at Air 3) requires you to teleport your caster next to an enemy in order to make use of the damage, though the teleport effect is useful enough on its own and Storm unfortunately cannot be aimed, while Earth has two relatively ineffective damage spells in Shockwave at Earth 3 (10 +2 per Earth Shard physical damage to units adjacent to the caster) and Shatter at Earth 4 (target loses 25% of its health and armor; this is more useful when used as a curse than as pure damage). Life has no damage spells.

If you're looking for a tactical support caster, about the only path that you can go wrong in taking is Fire, and even then that's useful for something to do when you don't have a reason to cast a blessing or a curse (fire does offer Focus, which improves the caster's damage - invaluable for your damage mage - and Burning Blade for any champions/henchmen in the fight, which are both useful but not anything to write home about, as far as support spells go). Water and Air each have an excellent support spell available from the very start of the game (Air 1 for Haste and Water 1 for Slow, both of which have very low casting costs and affect initiative). Air 2 opens up Guardian Wind, which is a fairly good counter to ranged attacks, and Air 4 offers Titan's Breath, which will cause any enemy unit that fails the spell resistance check to lose its next turn (and possibly suffer guaranteed hits, should you be able to get a unit into striking distance). Death offers a lot of good to excellent curses; Wither at Death 1 reduces enemy attack scores by 2 plus however many Death Shards you have (if you go this route, consider taking Death Worship as a faction trait or play Resoln so that you can convert the shards you find over to Death, as this will empower both Wither, to remove the threat posed by the enemy armies, and Dirge of Ceresa, to make the threat removal permanent, in addition to granting Grave Seal for guaranteed critical hits on the affected target and Infection for spreading single-target curses to the entire army), Curse/Mass Curse at Death 1/3 to set your target's defense score to zero for three turns and lay on the damage, Blind at Death 2 for reducing enemy damage potential by reducing accuracy (works well for dodge-based units, not so well on defense-based units, and in my opinion isn't as good as Wither, though it's a useful complement to that spell and arguably better against units with very high attack scores), Shadowbolt at Death 3 for a now-negligible amount of damage and a guaranteed reduction in spell resistance (useful for getting attacks to stick to a high-resistance target but not for much else), and Siphon Strength at Death 3 which is more of a spell that a Warrior/Assassin/Defender with spellcasting abilities would use (still not useless for a support caster, but Wither and Blind have a similar effect and are more accessible, and Wither is potentially much better). Earth has Stoneskin at Earth 2 which is more useful for warrior-mages than for pure spellcasters, Diamondskin at Earth 3 which is hellishly expensive but makes the target invlunerable for three turns, Fracture also at Earth 3 which is a weaker and much more expensive Curse with a moderate amount of damage tacked on, and Giant Form at Earth 5 which gives a target unit an excellent bonus to its attack score (Growth at Life 3 is a weaker, more accessible, cheaper version with an added drawback). Life 2 gives you Heal and Life 4 gives you Wellspring (mass heal), both of which are excellent for keeping an army fighting (Wellspring additionally has a strategic version and can be used to heal up a battered army quickly after a tough fight), as well as Growth and Shrink at Life 3. Growth is a useful unit blessing that improves the attack score at the cost of the dodge score, while Shrink is a useful curse reducing the enemy's attack score but improving their dodge score. Shrink is probably less effective overall than Wither (especially if you have a big stack of Death Shards).

Summoners don't need any particular magic paths, as all the summon spells come from Path of the Mage traits.

Long story short: if you want tactical damage casters, you want Fire 2 or Fire 3, Water 4, or Death 3/4/5 as your main (or main + secondary) magic path. If you want tactical support casters, you want Air 1/2/4, Water 1, Life 2/3/4, or Death 1/2/3 as your main (or main + secondary) magic path. If you're looking for strategic support, Water + Earth can more or less lock down an army indefinitely (note that these do not need to be on the same caster, and that 2 Water casters or 2 Earth casters can accomplish the same thing), Fire and Water both have good strategic damage spells, Earth offers a city attack, Life offers strategic-level healing, Air/Fire/Earth/Life offer city enchantments that offer great benefits to trained units (particularly Air and Fire), Air offers a city enchantment boosting your gold income, and Death offers the only research per essence spell left in the game (Pit of Madness at Death 4).

Earth is the only magic path which I would not recommend taking on a primary spellcaster; most of what it does is accomplished more cheaply or more easily by other magic paths, and only Diamond Skin (which is incredibly expensive) and Giant Form are superior to the alternatives in the other paths, and the effect of Diamond Skin can technically be replicated by Wither if you have enough Death Shards except that it applies to your entire army instead of just one unit. Air is a good go-to path if you're looking for a mage who can do a little of everything but won't be investing a lot of levels into the elemental schools. Fire is your minimum-investment damage school and has reasonable options for early-game damage spellcasting as well as mid to late-game single-target and AOE damage spellcasting, while Blizzard (Water 4 or scrolls from loot or scrolls purchased for 100 gold each from a Scroll Scribe Conclave) or Horrific Wail (Greater Necromancy Mage trait, secondary summon line for Empires) or Dirge of Ceresa (Death Worship faction trait, though Dirge of Ceresa is sovereign-only and only usually becomes an army killer if you convert a lot of shards over to Death Shards) are your single-spell army killers. I would suggest picking one role (damage or or cursing/blessing or summoning/blessing) and focusing on that until you develop all the traits necessary for that primary focus, which should tell you which elemental paths you want to have and develop. I would further suggest that you take no more than two elemental paths, nor would I suggest starting more than one elemental path at level 2 (if you do start a path at level 2, I would suggest that you either pick a path that gives you all the spells you want out of it by level 2, or a path that you eventually want to have at rank 4 or 5). Death + Air and Death + Water are excellent support caster choices, as both Air and Water only really need the first rank to be effective and the Kill spell at Death 5 represents an excellent use for all that spell mastery a curse caster has been stacking, as it's a single-target damage spell that is unaffected by Evoker traits and is heavily reliant on spell mastery, and Death has plenty of other reasons for you to improve your caster's skill within it (Death 2/3 is perhaps the weakest point for Death, as Mass Curse is not necessarily that much better than Curse and Death 2 doesn't offer anything great, and Drain Life is a bit weak in comparison to Flame Dart or Fireball, which you could have for a similar investment of traits; Pit of Madness at Death 4 is worth taking Death 2 and Death 3 for regardless of whether or not you're playing with the other toys you get from it, and Kill at Death 5 is only matched by Mana Blast or a high-level caster's Flame Dart for single-target damage).

As far as races go, Amarians are the only race which really has an innate bonus to spellcasting - they gain 1 initiative per Fire Shard and 1 spell mastery per Water Shard - while Ironeers are the only race which you really ought to avoid for tactical spellcasters (their tactical spells cost 25% more mana, though this has no impact on their strategic-level spellcasting). Wraiths have a unique trait available in unit design which allows your units to produce mana for your casters by getting the finishing blow on an enemy, though this can take careful management of the battle. Men offer Henchmen, which grant you limited access to trainable mages (importantly, a Race of Men Empire has access to Life Magic for healing) as well as a racial experience bonus, and given that mages tend to need to reach at least the low teens before they're really all that useful this is a nice, though not essential, bonus (blessing casters and, to a lesser extent, summoners are unique in that they're effective even at low levels, as they do not need to make spell resistance checks to apply full damage like a damage caster does or apply a curse like a curse caster does; blessings will always stick to your own units, and Haste, one of the best blessings in the game, is available to any caster with at least Air 1 and 4 mana to spend on it; Life blessing casters need a little more investment as you need Life 2 and 16 mana for Heal, though this is also available from the start of the game if you design your sovereign for it).

Death Worship and Flesh-bound Tome both offer useful spells (Death Worship offers Grave Seal and Infection, which are excellent for curse spellcasters, Dirge of Ceresa, which is a mediocre to exceptional mass damage spell depending on how many Death Shards you have, and Corruption, which allows you to turn any shard in your zone of control into a Death Shard; Flesh-bound Tome offers Cull the Weak, which heals the caster for 20 life and generates 20 mana at the cost of killing one of your own units, Candlecloak, which is not that great, and Consume, which gives you 200 mana now at the cost of losing whatever you'd have gained from the shard you destroyed; Cull the Weak stacks well with the Undead and Quendar as both can mass lots of cheap garbage units - slaves for Quendar and skeletons for Undead - that you likely won't mind trading in for the 20 free mana, though Undead suffer from an initiative penalty which is bad news for any caster and Quendar have no real bonuses for spellcasting); the Dead also have a faction trait that gives you some fun spells, including one that summons an army of skeletons, though I cannot recall the trait name at the moment. The faction trait Decalon is useful for allowing you to broaden your spellcasting abilities in the mid- to late-game (if you're designing around this consideration, I would avoid taking Water or Air on the Sovereign as both of these schools are useful in battle at level 1, which is what you'd unlock with a spellbook; Fire and Earth are rather less useful at level 1 by the time you're likely to have access to the spellbooks, and there are no spellbooks for either Life or Death), while Enchanters gets you the Scrying Pool if my memory is correct, and this gets you an extra city enchantment and increases the effects of existing scaling enchantments, useful for adding Meditation to get the mana supply going.

Also note that Savant, which reduces casting time by 1 turn, requires the Prodigy traits which improve spell mastery. If you're looking at building a caster who wants to cast spells that have a casting time, it's worth considering focusing on schools which benefit from going up the Prodigy line, which means looking at curses and damage spells rather than blessings and summons. There's also a mage trait that reduces spell costs in additon to the 25% reduction you get for being a mage and any reduction you get from any equipment you pick up (there's a staff or two with a spell cost discount, and there might be another item or two), which I believe is also in the Prodigy line of traits, so if you're looking at expensive spells like Diamond Skin you may want to consider combining that with a curse school. Damage and curse spellcasters want the prodigy and evoker lines of the Mage tree, summoners want the summoning line, blessing casters don't care what traits you pick up but may have some interest in the spells available from the various -mancy traits.

You should also be aware that there are some things you can do with your empire to further improve your spellcasters, beyond just the faction traits. An Empire faction with at Death 5 caster can cast sacrifice, which turns people into mana at a 1-for-1 rate of exchange and kills half the population of a targeted city; stacking growth bonuses such as you can obtain from Consulates (Outpost upgrade) can let you turn a chosen city into a mana factory (and mass grave) using this spell, and it can let you turn a high-population city or two into mana in a pinch and gives you a use for that level-5 100 unrest city you just took from your enemy (though I think they call this use 'genocide'). Shifting your empire's city balance towards Conclaves can significantly increase your mana income, particularly if you back it up by selecting Oracles (which grant an extra essence for Meditation and some of the Conclave improvements to work on) or Scroll Scribes (which let you turn gold into instant-cast 0-mana Blizzards) at level 3, while the Pyre and the Bathhouse give you 2 Fire shards or 1 Water shard at level 5. Even if you're not going for the Spell of Making victory, the Forge of the Overlord and the towers it requires are good sources of shard power, and Ereog's Tower will get you an Air Shard (though Ereog's Tower is a wonder, so the computer might beat you to it, and it's not as good as the Spell of Making towers), and the magic tree has a repeatable mana production bonus tech (and a Conclave-heavy empire such as you might want to build for spellcasters has a lot of research for stacking the mana production techs and a large base mana income to boost with those techs).

Sadly, some people (devs and players) continue to confuse Mage heroes with the Mage-type units. Like Joeball said, Mages need to cast spells as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you've got enough mana to burn, you'll never use a basic attack.

A dagger, with the initiative bonus, is still the best weapon for a Mage. Also, they allow you to use a shield. There are a couple of useful robes however (2 or 3?) which reduce the casting cost of spells. Combined with 'Mantle of Oceans' (Water 3 spell) and the Mage bonus, you can get a 75-85% mana cost reduction. Very helpful!

As to your second question: Mages are probably the strongest class. If you create a powerful custom faction, you can beat Insane/Insane without too much trouble.

Best race: Altar or Mancers. Most magicky races: Amarian or Wraith

Empire or Kingdom: Kingdoms have it easier imho, as Life magic has heals and a powerful city enchantment. But if you prefer the power-hungry-slightly-evil-sorcerer vibe, you can't go wrong with Empire and pick Flesh Bound Tome and/or Death Worship.

Faction traits: See above. Besides those two, there aren't any picks which will make you a stronger caster. Stay away from the Decalon, it's not worth 2 points. Enchanters is arguably the best trait. Wanderlust can be useful because it provides extra xp. I personally like Binding, but there might be stronger traits.

Sovereign traits: Brilliance, obviously. Procipinee's Crown will save you a lot of mana. The rest is up to you. Spell schools: see Joeball's post don't pick Earth, any other combo of 2 is ok.

Summoner or Warlock: If you like to destroy stuff, you'll want Warlock, obviously. Personally I prefer Summoner as the early game will be much easier with 1 or 2 summons by your side. Pro-tip: the Air Elemental is the most powerful summon. Get it asap.

The ultimate items for mages are the mage robes imo. With a robe and mantle of oceans you can get your spells costs down to 0. 

Death also has a powerful city enchantment, it just comes later and is arguably stronger. Pit of Madness for +1 research per essence at the cost of -1 growth is very, very good; its only weakness is that it comes at Death 4 so you need, at minimum, a level 7 champion with Death magic to cast it. Aura of Vitality is nice and can provide a sizable bonus to base health, but Pit of Madness lets you get ahead in the research race.

Empires can also gain access to healing if you make a custom Race of Men Empire, as the Henchmen will still have the Life Adept traits and these provide access to Aid for 8 health healing at Life Adept I and Heal for 16 health healing at Life Adept II. You can't get any shard bonuses going for the heals as an Empire, nor can you get Compassion (+50% healing), but you don't really need either bonus for the healing spells. You can also always try to force a sovereign with Life magic to surrender to you, which can get you Wellspring (a strategic-level heal for 24 health to each unit in the targeted army or a tactical-level heal for 24 health to all friendly units on the battlefield).

Decalon is potentially worthwhile if you have Henchmen, as you can use the spellbooks to grant your henchmen access to real magic instead of (or in addition to) their Adept paths, though this can only get you into Air, Earth, Water, or Fire; Life and Death are not available. It is also potentially worthwhile if you want to create the mad sorcerer-king or sorceress-queen with 5 ranks in all 5 spell schools and great traits, as you can design him or her with the national magic type (Death or Life) and develop that and your go-to traits while leveling up your sovereign, and buy the first rank of each elemental school from the spellbooks and then sacrifice a total of 16 champions and henchmen to get the second through fifth ranks of each spell school (you can reduce the total number of sacrifices if you use some of your sovereign's levels to pick up ranks in the secondary schools). If you go the sacrifice route, make certain to only level your sacrificial lambs enough to get the next rank of the spell school you're taking from them (so if you have Fire I and want Fire II, level someone until they have Fire II and then sacrifice them, preferably at the minimum level they need for Fire II, then do the same thing to obtain Fire III). Remember that you cannot gain multiple ranks in one magic path with only one sacrifice, nor can you gain one rank in multiple magic paths with only one sacrifice, and you cannot gain rank X in a school from someone who has rank Y < X in that school. Henchmen are ideal sacrifices as you can churn them out quickly and with lots of experience bonuses and they don't penalize you for stacking them with your sovereign.

Beyond that, if your chosen sovereign design did not include Air or Water, it's never a bad thing to unlock either or both of those schools; Haste and Slow are great spells regardless of what your caster was built to do, and are more than acceptable as fallback spells if you decide that the current battle isn't worth spending the mana on your big nuke spells or major summons, and all you need to cast them is Air 1 for Haste and Water 1 for Slow, which you can get just with the appropriate spellbook. If New Pariden or a custom faction with the Decalon trait is in the game, you don't necessarily need to have it on your faction, but having it does allow you to guarantee your access to them.

Binding and Cult of the Hundred Eyes are traits which give a faction a magic-like feel but which do not in themselves improve your spellcasters. Both of these also favor Empire factions, as some of the features of the traits are unavailable to Kingdoms (Binding gives nothing from Life Shards, while the top spider from Cult of the Hundred Eyes requires an Empire-only technology). If you're looking for things that make a spellcaster feel strong, like Larsenex appears to want, then neither of these traits is really worth taking except for faction flavor.

For a damage caster, the Staff of Souls (Soul Staff?) is also a good item available during sovereign creation, as it gives a 25% bonus to spell damage (which stacks with Warlock and the Evoker traits). Procipinee's Crown is more useful if you want to stack up unit enchantments (e.g. Tutelage, Evade, Burning Blade) or strategic summons with your sovereign or some other caster, or as a 'gift' to a Warrior/Assassin/Defender champion that you want to stack enchantments on. If you're only using tactical spells or strategic level spells with no maintenance (e.g. city enchantments or instant-effect strategic spells), it becomes less useful. Also note that Procipinee's Crown only affects spell maintenance costs for enchantments active on the unit wearing the crown - i.e. your caster's own summons, or unit enchantments applied to the champion wearing the crown.

General is a decent profession to take for a spellcasting sovereign even though it doesn't directly impact your casting ability, as it makes leveling up faster, though for a damage caster it's better to take Warlock and summoners may be better off with Summoner (although the bonus to summoned creature level is fairly small, and Shadow Wargs become fairly useless relatively quickly).

You're probably better off using most summons as tactical summons than as strategic summons, with the only real exception being the Air Elemental. Air Elementals are an exception for several reasons: first, they fly, which makes them excellent, high-mobility scouts and raiders. Second, they can cast Titan's Breath, an excellent curse-type spell, but in order to cast it effectively they need to pick up levels to gain the spell mastery bonus. Third, they come equipped with a weapon that has level-scaling damage - 2 lightning damage per level - which is exceptional for a single-figure unit if you can keep it alive and level it up (which can be difficult, as Air Elementals are one of the more fragile summons). You should also be aware that most summons have an affect on the tiles around the one you summon them into if you cast the summon in a tactical battle - Air Elementals have a chance of knocking down their hostile neighbors, Earth and Fire Elementals deal a bit of damage, Grave Elementals give friendly neighbors a one-time self-resurrection spell, the second Life summon blinds things, Crag Spawn create movement penalty tiles, etc.

I meant Sovereign's Call.

I prefer to play 'fast-paced' games, playing as efficient as possible. So the early game is important to me. That's why the Staff of Souls and the Decalon are very poor choices in my book. But to each his own, I guess.

Quoting Fallenchar, reply 8

Sadly, some people (devs and players) continue to confuse Mage heroes with the Mage-type units. Like Joeball said, Mages need to cast spells as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you've got enough mana to burn, you'll never use a basic attack.

A dagger, with the initiative bonus, is still the best weapon for a Mage. Also, they allow you to use a shield. There are a couple of useful robes however (2 or 3?) which reduce the casting cost of spells. Combined with 'Mantle of Oceans' (Water 3 spell) and the Mage bonus, you can get a 75-85% mana cost reduction. Very helpful!

 

As to your second question: Mages are probably the strongest class. If you create a powerful custom faction, you can beat Insane/Insane without too much trouble.

Best race: Altar or Mancers. Most magicky races: Amarian or Wraith

Empire or Kingdom: Kingdoms have it easier imho, as Life magic has heals and a powerful city enchantment. But if you prefer the power-hungry-slightly-evil-sorcerer vibe, you can't go wrong with Empire and pick Flesh Bound Tome and/or Death Worship.

Faction traits: See above. Besides those two, there aren't any picks which will make you a stronger caster. Stay away from the Decalon, it's not worth 2 points. Enchanters is arguably the best trait. Wanderlust can be useful because it provides extra xp. I personally like Binding, but there might be stronger traits.

Sovereign traits: Brilliance, obviously. Procipinee's Crown will save you a lot of mana. The rest is up to you. Spell schools: see Joeball's post don't pick Earth, any other combo of 2 is ok.

Summoner or Warlock: If you like to destroy stuff, you'll want Warlock, obviously. Personally I prefer Summoner as the early game will be much easier with 1 or 2 summons by your side. Pro-tip: the Air Elemental is the most powerful summon. Get it asap.

This is absolutely true.  They need to either give Init bonuses to Mages using "mage weapons" or a penalty to mages Init using any weapons other than "mage weapons."

One last thing before I forget, just to specifically address the concern in the original post about Mage champion damage:

Yes, it's true that the various staffs/staves with spellcasting bonuses have much lower base damage than the high-end bows do. However, this does not matter. Take, for example, the Staff of Souls. If I recall correctly, this staff has an attack score of 4, grants 3 mana per kill (though I think only in melee), and offers a 25% damage bonus. Let's say that I have this staff equipped on a Mage Champion with Fire 2, Evoker 2, and Warlock, and the champion is level 12. Let's see how much damage I can expect from Flame Dart:

• Basic damage: Flame Dart deals 2x caster level + 2x Fire Shards Fire damage. Caster level is 12, so that's 24. That's already 6 times better than the staff's basic attack and 33% better than the 18-attack bow referenced in the original post. Since I didn't mention anything about Fire Shards, we'll assume I have none.
• My caster has Warlock for +25% spell damage, Evoker II for +20% spell damage, Evoker I (because I have Evoker II) for a further +20% spell damage, and the Staff of Souls for a further +25% spell damage. These all add together to give me +90% spell damage. As a result, my Flame Dart is now a 45.6-damage attack.
• Now we need to account for Fire resistance. Common resistance values are 0%, 25% (basic cloak or Athican Leather), 50% (Quendar, Dragon Scale Cloak, Athican Leather + basic cloak, or the Resist Fire spell from the Mage trait Abjuration), 75%, or 100% (Quendar with Dragon Scale Cloaks or certain monsters). The only resistance values that are really problematic are 75% and 100%, as even at 50% I'm still making a 22.8-damage attack, comparable to the bow listed by Larsenex, and 75% is rather rare among computer-faction troops while 100% is exclusively the domain of the Quendar as far as trained units go (it's possible for non-Quendar units to attain 100% fire resistance in battle using the spell from the Abjuration Trait in combination with a Dragon Hide Cloak, but I don't think I've ever seen the computer cast Fire Resistance, and it's not a spell that I'd normally cast either; you could also on rare occasions run into someone who can get there using Nature's Cloak or a Defender with the Fire Resistance trait and a Dragon Hide Cloak, but once again these are not common occurrences and I'd expect that if you saw it it'd be pure dumb luck on the computer's part).

So, what's the cost to me? Well, Flame Dart costs 24 mana to cast, but Mages have an innate 25% tactical spell cost discount, reducing this to 18. There's a Mage trait that can add a further 10% discount to take another 2.4 mana off the casting cost, though you might not be able to get there by level 12. There's Mantle of Oceans from a Water Mage which gives you a 40% discount on casting costs (9.6 mana off on Flame Dart), and there are a couple of items that I might be able to find or equip to further reduce the spell cost. Note that Mantle of Oceans will not necessarily save you any mana overall; you have to pay 25 mana up front for the spell and you'll have to pay a further 1 mana per strategic turn to keep it on your unit (unless the enchantment is on a unit equipped with Procipinee's Crown). Further, Flame Dart can only be cast once every three turns (it is on a two-turn cooldown). As a result, the damage over time for Flame Dart from a level 12 caster with what I listed above is about 15 damage per turn, comparable to the bow listed in the main post.

Of course, your caster ought to have something else that you can use while waiting for Flame Dart to come back; a minor blessing like Haste from Air 1 or Focus from Fire 3 or another damage spell like Fireball from Fire 3 (particularly in conjunction with the Mage trait Savant) are good options; Fireball with the Savant trait will moreover likely supplant Flame Dart as your Fire spell of choice once you have the mana income and mana pool to support it unless you really want to lay down a lot of damage on a single target - the level 12 caster with all the damage bonuses in the example above has a 34.2-damage Fireball which costs ~38 mana if the only cost discount is the 25% discount for being a Mage (base cost is 50 mana), and with Savant you can fire off one of these per turn and and hit 9 tiles for 34.2 damage each, which means slightly inferior single-target damage when compared to Flame Dart (with Fireballs cast while Flame Dart is on cooldown to keep the damage per turn up) but greatly superior overall damage if you can hit a couple things with it. If this particular level 12 caster has access to Horrific Wail, you can alternatively make a 45.6 untyped damage (i.e. no elemental resistances or defense scores apply to the damage) attack on every enemy unit on the battlefield every 3 turns (unlike Flame Dart where the damage is front-loaded, Horrific Wail's damage comes at the end of the three turn cycle); damage is halved if they pass a spell resistance check. Horrific Wail and Fireball can both benefit from Savant, while Flame Dart will not. Savant reduces casting times by one, which will make Fireball into an instant-cast spell and improves Horrific Wail to one cast per two turns (same as Fireball without Savant), but does not impact spell cooldowns.

The above should, I think, adequately demonstrate why a spellcaster with a large enough mana pool should never bother making a basic attack. Even a Mage specialized in summoning who has Horrific Wail can by level 12 be dealing 24 damage every three turns to every enemy on the battlefield if you run out of summons to play with, which despite not being as good as the damage-specialized Mage's performance is still very good in comparison to the bow listed in the main post (after you account for hitting everything on the battlefield, anyways; ~8 damage per turn to each unit on the battlefield is better than 18 damage per turn to 1 unit on the battlefield unless there are no more than perhaps 3 enemy units on the battlefield).

Also, please note that the damage numbers given above are maximum damage numbers; as with normal attacks, spell damage typically runs between one half the maximum damage and the maximum damage, though there are a couple of spells which deal fixed amounts of damage or have abnormal damage ranges (typically noted in the description; one example is Kill, which will always deal enough damage to kill the target if the target fails the spell resistance check but does nothing if the target passes the spell resistance check). Damage spells will also typically be reduced to half damage if the target passes a spell resistance check (though certain spells, like Shadowbolt, cannot be resisted, and other spells, like Mana Blast, may have essentially the same effect whether you pass the resistance check or not), unlike curses which generally either work perfectly or don't do anything at all.

In my experience, Joeball's correct. The equivalent of a high level physical weapon is the mage's offensive casting. Grab as many mana shards as you can, upgrade altars and then shrines, build cities that are magical powerhouses, and be sure to give your mage every ability that will increase the experience gained with every successful battle.