That was definitely part of it, but at 18 damage + 3 per fire/air shard it couldn't have been more than 30 or so damage per cast...unless you can cast it like 5 times per turn (?!?!?).

And if it was...that's certainly OP.

Glad to hear that the AI is using strategic spells effectively, even if it's a pain in your case!

I can think of ways too. Spreading out your troop more comes to my mind first.

It would really be nice to get a better indication of the strategic spells the AI casts on you. Having to guess what spells were cast is not fun.

I agree more information as to what happened would be helpful, but why is it unbalanced? You wouldn't say it was unbalanced if your armies had been defeated by the AI with armies, so why is it unbalanced if the AI beats you with spells?

I've not had this happen to me, but I assume spreading your troops out more and giving them magic resistance cloaks would help. Falling Star specifically says is does fire damage, for example, so fire resistance should protect against this. If all else fails, you can knuckle down for a war of attrition. Build two stacks, maybe one of cannon fodder, one well protected and mounted for fast movement, send in your cannon fodder to get obliterated while you leave your stack of doom inside your borders. After the AI has cast lots of spells on your cannon fodder army, send in your well protected army, which should hopefully be able to survive whatever the AI has left. You can cast Call of the Titans on any tile, it doesn't have to be in your borders, so use it to move your stack of doom next to the AI's capital city after it's used all its spells on your cannon fodder stack. I find it hard to believe you couldn't take one city at a time, and certainly on Expert, the AI should run out of mana eventually.

I posted just as you were merlinme, thanks for the suggestions.  I guess knowing what is about to happen, I can go back and try something a bit more coordinated.

Still, my gut feeling is that Tornado shouldn't be so easily spammable.  

If you have access to Nature's Cloak (Earth spell) I imagine that would immediately solve the problem. It's cheap enough to cast on every unit in a stack, and will give +25% resistance to all magic elemental damage, + x% per earth shard. (It says +10% per shard online but I thought it was +5%.) Even at +5% per earth shard, if you have four shards that gives 45% protection against all damage. If the AI only has access to one damage type, with the right cloaks you can give your troops 95% protection. Even if the AI is using both, if you equip half your stack with cold protection and half with fire protection, the AI will have to use both (and accordingly burn more mana). Even the damage you're not cloaked against will still only be 55%as effective.

I don't think resistance is effective against Tornado (which seems to cause physical damage), but Tornado damage is relatively low anyway, unless they have a lot of air shards.

I thought they'd raised the mana cost of Tornado, but I don't have access to double-check at the moment.

From memory I think you can check the AI's mana reserves in the Foreign Relations window, or, failing that, you can quit a game and check the graphs to work out how close the AI is to using up its mana stores.

I question I have is why were these stragetic spells not being cast throughout the rest of the game? Why now at the end only when you have only one faction left?

Is this the first time you've approached Paradin?

Were you unaware of the potental damage strategic spells can do?

Is there inconsistency to when these strategic spells are being cast?

Yes to the first three questions.  I had been on good terms with Pariden until she was the only one left.  I had never seen the AI use them except for an occasional Freeze/Pillar of Flame and the Pillar had never done THAT much damage.  Also, I had never really used them much myself, because I rarely find myself on the defensive side of things.

In response to Fallenchar, there were messages regarding all the Tornadoes, but not whatever spells were doing the damage.  Maybe that's some kind of bug.

I don't know how I overlooked Nature's Cloak, that would indeed be the counter I was looking for.

Thanks everyone for all the helpful input.  Gonna reload and see what happens.

Tidal wave can be used offensively to soften up stacks before engaging You also have that freeze town spell that lowers initiative by 3 and stacks if a city looks particularly nasty. 

While fire magic is awesome early game, get enough water shards and things start really looking scary end game. (blizzard scrolls are OP, hint hint )

Last time I checked, you got a message for spells like wither, freeze, and curses affecting cities (Antipathy and the like). I personnally have yet to be tornadoed; but I quite confident you DON'T get any notifications for Pillar or Flame or Falling Star - and something it is quite surprising to see a whole portion of the fog of war reappears without knowing what happened to your stack

I always thought that wishing the AI would use strategic spells was a case of being careful what you wish for!

I think FE/LH would be better with a limit on how much mana can be expended on strategic spells each turn, like MoM has.

Nonetheless, it is good to hear that the AI has learnt to cast spells! (I don't have time to play right now so haven't experienced myself )