I don't understand what your post means. 

Path of the Mage already makes Spell Cost 25% cheaper AND damage 50% stronger right from level 4.  This is an approach I cannot abide.

And we can't prevent crits on spells because ranged attacks and special abilities are spells (essentially.)

Exactly.  As it currently stands, I find myself using magic in primarily a support role, even with a mage who has level 4-5 in all elemental books and life magic, simply because it's far more efficient for me to have a high-powered champion or group of troops.  Part of this is by design; spells like fireball and blizzard have a cast time, and while that's important for balance, by the time I get my spell off, the enemy army is already on top of me, and usually too spread out for it to be as effective.  By contrast, a high-init champion with a good weapon can one-shot the most dangerous threat or two in the opposing army before they have any time to react, AND they can cast any support spell they have access to, every bit as powerful as my supposed mage character.  Any of you guys ever actually used an army?  I do pretty regularly, and by the time my mage sovereign can get off a blizzard, the rest of her army has already killed everything. 

Damage in general is still in need of some balancing.  The current nerfs to most forms of champion damage are a step in the right direction.  But magic isn't just about hurling fireballs at an enemy.  It's about summoning hordes of elemental creatures to serve you, commanding the wind to turn away your enemies' blades and hasten your own, to rip open holes in the fabric of the universe and command the very forces of nature to obey you, and only you.  Every patch, I play as a custom Altar faction with enchanters, intending to have armies of archmages decimate my foes.  But every game, it turns out that having a more mundane army is much more efficient, both in resources invested and in battle duration, than my incredibly powerful queen who's rank 5 everything magical.  Why should a character who spent every possible leveling talent be relegated to the back lines while her army, ostensibly there as little more than meat shields, does all the actual work?  Why is her haste spell not more effective than that of Herpicus, the level 4 warrior who only learned air magic after he bought a book that would teach it to him?  Why can she not slow an entire army with a single spell (Pandemonium almost counts, except that it only has at most a 1/3 chance of slowing)?  Why do I not get to have an army of summoned creatures if I maximized my summoning ability?

I've been thinking about what should be done with magic quite a bit, and I mostly just want to make mages feel more magical.  I don't care about what any other champion does with magic, but a mage should be inherently better with all forms of magic, not just damage.  Firstly, I'd probably nerf magic damage a bit more, and improve the amount of damage path of the mage provides to compensate.  I would also make path of the mage improve the effeciveness of ALL tactical spells, not just damage spells, by improving the shard power of all spells that mage casts by +X.  Secondly, the summoner traits should either unlock additional summons, or increase the maximum number of summons that unit can maintain (I would personally prefer more summons).  Third, I would add in more spells that require a certain trait before they unlock (ie, Mass Slow requires Prodigy 1 and Water 3).  Finally, I would add a talent line, let's call it Quicken Spell, that would improve your initiative whenever you are casting a spell.  I would then make more spells have cast times, as I actually do like spells taking some time to cast, but dislike seeing my "backup" wipe the floor with an enemy before my Blizzard gets off.

Reduced the cost of Lower Land and Raise Land to 5 mana

Oh no, that's almost free.... why? Is it supposed to be easy to play God?

Don't like it either. It trivializes terrain.

The AI doesn't design its own troops.  Rather, it comes with a decent number of predesigned troops, and will use any troop design you make while playing that faction's race. 

People kept on going on how you can make an uberkill spell so magic keeps on getting nerfed... But throughout I always played melee... not because I like to. From a roleplaying perspective i want to play mage but they suck. so I play melee.

A defender wont be one shotting plate armies... but it costs 0 mana to kite the heck out of any army with ridiculous init and speed and decent damage. Amd I decimate enemy champions.

Only place I ever had problems was the "quest of win the game" part where you fight against a 6 dragons at once. (the one where you solo a super powerful single guy riding a dragon was a breeze though)

Exactly! mages SUCK!

Derpicus is even better then herpicus ... he only deals 30 damage btw but he is a walking tank with over 150HP, dodge, armor, init, and move speed up the wazoo. He has a traits making him immune to: Knockdown, crit, poison, retaliation.

And thanks to high init hits the enemy (no retaliation thanks to trait) and then retreats out of their range without them getting a chance to attack (sometimes hitting the enemy twice or three times before using a turn to retreat!)

Oh, and both herpicus (warrior) and derpicus (defender) are higher level of nerdicus (mage) because the lack of early game mana means you are going to have to pace yourself and avoid certain battles. With herpaderp your only limit is move speed.

You know what, shards should not even give spells bonus to power (or maybe only get a small increase at 1 and 2 shards and that it)... Shards should mainly give a pool of "free mana" that recharges to full every turn, but if not used is wasted. 15 mana per shard. So if I have 3 shards I got +3 mana gems per turn (permanent mana storage that can be traded and stockpiled) and a 45 a turn in discretionary pool. If I use 49 mana this turn then I have burned 4 mana gems.

With enough shards you can throw around a LOT of spells every turn... including overland spells for great win. Heck, with enough shards you could even cast celerity every turn for free or massively modify the terrain... and that is FINE (since you literally have to control the whole map)

And spells should get most of their damage/effect from their tier... so in addition to mcsucky old 10 damage spell at tier 1 you add a 50 damage spell at tier 5 and maybe a 30 damage spell at tier 3.

Rather then using a tier 1 attack spell and having it be utterly useless unless boosted with traits and shards

The damage of the soldiers is reduced by the defense of the target. If the target has a defense of 6 (Leather Armor + Leather Greaves + Leather Vambraces + Leather Boots) it reduces the damage by 50 % to 42. The spell damage can be reduced of course, too, but it is much easier to get a high defense than a high spell resistance.

It is difficult to kill a hero with units, because the hero uses many buffs and magic items to improve his surviveability. Units should do more damage and should have more hp than a hero, because otherwise it is pointless to spend the gildar and time to train them.

Burning Hands would be the wrong spell for a banished ogre, because the damage would be multiplied with the number of units. A Flame Dart would inflict 13 points of damage against the banished ogre ([10+3 x 100%]/2, thanks to ogres' fire resistance) and it would be dead after two spells.

I guess Herpicus uses magical equipment that he has found during his adventures. I have not used any magical equipment in the damage calculations and only 1 shard. Currently a mage would look like this:

Blizzard:

6 base + 4 two shards x 7 group size + 200 % profession, traits and items = 210 points of damage within a 2 tile radius

Fireball:

18 base + 8 two shards + 200 % profession, traits and items = 80 points of damage within a 1 tile radius

Horrific Wail:

30 base with a level 10 caster + 200 % profession, traits and items = 90 points of damage against every enemy

I applaud the changes they have made to the spells. 

I still think Path of the Mage is a bit off course and out of whack at +50% damage and -25% mana cost. 

I would change it to focus on spell resist and spell mastery bonuses (this changes the primary focus of the mage from damage dealing to utility), and let the follow-up traits specialize in damage and mana cost bonuses, as well as other things.

The goal should be to avoid spells that one-shot powerful enemies. Magic attacks should do less damage, but be affordable to cast every turn. I think the problem with firedart is that it is the only ranged spell. Focus makes that spell do double damage. It gets way out of hand because none of that is tied to Path of the Mage and firedart increases in power per level. And none of this is going to miss or be resisted or is currently reduced by AI elemental defense. They don't use counters to magic, so you get to do max damage pretty much always. Perhaps that is why we can't get the scale to feel right?

How can we fix this? We could make some interesting traits to give choice to mages. The per level damage is a good mechanic, but not for non-mages. Let's make Path of the Mage do +5% spell damage per level. Evoker should increase spell damage, but we also should get some mage differentiation. More damage should mean less Initiative. Less mana cost should mean less spell damage and higher initiative. A little trade off here is a good thing. Higher level traits should give a straight Initiative bonus to make it clear what gives a mage their power.

Assuming all that, damage spells would work nicely in the 3 categories, but you would build your mage to fit the spells you have access to. Base damamge for firedart should be 10 + 2 per shard with no level bonus. The mana cost should be 5 and no cooldown. Now you have a light fire spell that is okay for a warrior to use while he is moving to melee, but choosing to be a mage has a significant advantage. 

I like the Focus interaction in spells, but I think it should increase spell mastery and spell resistance for 2 turns to allow easier casting of longer spells. Really we need another mundane ability like focus for warriors and assassins.

Sean, I agree with absolutely everything in your post but this:

I had thought about this for my mod, but I still feel like any time you give a mage damage with no cost you throw the balance out of whack. 

How about this:

Path of the Mage: +25 Spell Resist, +35 Spell Mastery, -20 Weight Capacity

Evoker traits: +X% spell damage, +X/2% spell cost

Affinity traits: -X% spell cost, -Z/2 initiative

Quick-Casting trais: +Z initiative, -X/2% spell damage

Then, if you get to level 3 of all of them:

Meta-Mage traits: +X% spell damage, -X% spell cost, +Z initiative

It's probably too late for this, but the Path of the Governor thing hasn't been addressed yet. That is, cities don't give XP, so keeping a champion in a city as governor is not an option, hence the Path of the Governor becomes useless, since you send governors who can't fight into battles just to level them up.

Champions as scarce as they are, so if the Path of the Governor is to be a viable option, cities have to give constant XP (not a 25% chance of 1XP/turn) so governors can level up and help their cities by staying in them.