Mages (the ones that can be trained in a city). Why don't they have magic abilities?

I have not trained the default mages, but I have designed my own mages. These "mages" are just like bowmen: they launch magical rays (cold or fire damage), but they have no skills or traits for casting spells.

I would really like that a new trait was created for designing units, to allow magical skills, like the magical traits in the henchmen.

Agreed.  Not sure why they don't.  I can understand them not having access to every magic trait or class but give "MAGES" some MAGIC.

They use magic staves to conjure bolts of fire from thin air to throw at enemy troops. Sounds magical allright.

@OP: They are just a basic ranged unit that uses elemental attack instead of physical projectiles. They should not have bows but staves. If the default mages really wield bows then that's a bug, however you can always design your own using staves.

The choice of words, "mages," is not the best.  It's too easily confused with the Path of the Mage, and the champions and sovereigns who can be mages, with a full selection of spells.  Sorcerers might do, but they've also co-opted that one.  "Wand user" sounds like somebody under stress who can't get a date.

Perhaps Caster?  Or Bow Mage?

When you consider how much damage they can actually inflict with those staves, I wouldn't say that they're novices, they're just most skilled at using magical staves.

They are not Channelers.  They are just people trained to use magic staffs.  

Thanks guys!

They are better ranged units than bows and longbows.  I like to build them in a Fortress (better accuracy, defence and an extra level) as they're fairly expensive in resources.  It's worth increasing their firepower by adding amulets and rings for more elemental damage (fire and cold both work together) and mount them on a warg.  Wargs give extra movement on the map and +2 initiative in battles, which they need in big battles as they can fire more often.  They usually get targetted by other ranged troops so the extra dodge from the wargs increases surviveability.

My typical design includes some leather armour and the robe and I add the Fast trait for another +2 initiative and Precision for more accuracy (useful against troops that dodge).  That design is available in the middle game just after my Fortress gets to level 3 (for Impulsive) and it costs about 9 crystal, 1 warg and 109 production for each figure in the unit. Two or 3 four man units of warg mounted mages are great for adventuring and fighting against the AI cities and they level up nicely and stay effective into the late game when bigger, better and much more expensive units become available.

They are one of my favourite units

JJ

I agree with you UncleJJ, I tried them and are interesting powerfull units after a good unit designing.

But they are just that, ranged units with a special damage (elemental instead of pierce) and requiere lots of crystal, wich we all know, it is the most scarce and precious resource.

As champs are the only units that can cast spells (and hechmen, maybe some other "uncommon" unit I can't remember), it would be nice to be able to design units with some skils/traits to cast basic spells...

I can just imagine the expression on the face of my enemies when I have a company of fire mages all cast flame darts at the same time.  I mean hey, they might only get to attack every other turn, but they'll just annihilate anything that isn't immune to fire.

I do not think there should be trainable units that are channelers.  I think there are too many of them already.

It's because I haven't modded the mages any yet If I get suggestions on what to add for traits for the mages I can have that modded in the game by midnight tonight (5 hours from now).

The solution is to create your own henchman, which is one of the character choices along with male and female. You can pick as many of the elements as your abilities slots can hold.

I agree the Mage is kind of lame. It it got more powerful as it leveled up, that might make a difference.

There's nothing to say you can't mod in a stave that increases in damage as the unit levels.  Might not work, but you can try it.

I would like to see a difference between:

- Current "battle mages", with the staves, as just damage dealers. You can have bigger unit size (from 3 to 7).

- Real magicians, able to cast spells. These should be one-man units (or up to 3) to avoid OP. To deal with them, my suggestion:

 These units are created from a new trait that could be called, precisely, Channeler. This trait allows the unit to channel the mana from empire to cast spells. The trait should be unlocked with certain magical tech, and requiere some crystal ... I would also add +1 or +2 spellpower/level to the trait, to allow them be more effective with level up.

Then the 2 traits left could be individual spells, to choose from a pool. The pool is already created for the henchmen, and there are some other spells already created (like opression or confussion). Summonings could be nice too. Healing spells...or even skills like daze, entangle, root,... This unit would give a lot of design options.

 Finally, to avoid the "critical dagger" bonus, I would give them only staves, but that is optional...Just to not create a channeler with a boreal sword...but thinking again, why not?

Currently there is only one way to make a unit do what you are asking for and it has already been stated above.  The henchmen have the unique ability to use the adept traits.  If you wished to add a unit that could do this called generic_mage_unit you could take a page from Parrotmath's henchwoman mod where he created a new base unit then add that new unit to the trait as available unit_model.  This is the limiting factor that prevents different unit types from using special trait like the Juggernaut specials.