I think one of the biggest problem in magic it is that archimages do friendly fire very easily . I succeed to win in multiplayer vs a guy who used lot of archmages. I killed more than 20 archmages with few horses (due to the fact that archimage kill themselves) .
Archmage should have intelligent attack. They should not attack if the ennemy is to close of you own units.
Explaination:archmages should remain as they are,and for those of you who thinks tech is stronger or magic is stronger, i am telling you they are completely equal. Tech only SEEMS stronger because most of you are used to playing real-time strategy games where you build the building, and create the unit. When you upgrade the building, the units automatically upgrade. Tech is only slightly different from that, you need to chose the swordsmen upgrade into the guard. And all the battle units come from the other buildings different from the building you start with. Magic only seems harder because it's not like most factions you use in other game. Majority of the magic's massive damage battle units come from the main base, they upgrade from your peasants, which i am betting most people are not use to. In most real-time strategy, peasants are just miners, but glest is unique, the magic faction's peasants are it's main army, the daemons are just damage takers for ghost armors while ghost armors are just damage takers for battlemages and archmages. battlemages and archmages are the attack force, the ghost armors are the defence force. You need to micromanage so only the ghost armors take damage and the mages attack. As for the archmages splash damage, let a few ghost armors stand in front so fast units like knights cant get to them than blast away with archmages till their energy blasts clean, then just send all your remaining ghost armors and battlemages up to wipe out the remaining enemy forces.
Magic Guide:In the start, send 2 initiates to get gold and 1 to make a Energy Source. While the 1 makes an Energy source, use the main base to make another initiate, keep making initiates till you have 13, once the 1 building the energy source is done, send it to mine stone, send all the ones from the main base to mine gold till there is 1 mining stone and 5 mining gold. now you have to send 1 gold miner to build a summoner's guild near the trees. soon as the summoner's guild is done, send the initiate that was building it to cut trees that are right by the guild, then upgrade to ghost armor, DO NOT MAKE ANY SUMMONERS YET, when ghost armor is upgraded, use your 1 summoner to make ghost armors right away. send 5 more initiates to mine gold and 2 more to mine stone. By now you should have 9 gold miners and 3 stone miners and 1 woodcutter. 1 woodcutter is all you need unless you want to mass produce behemoths, i wouldn't advice on it, too expensive and even though it has a lot more hp, it doesn't take much more damage than ghost armors because it's armor is too weak. Don't ever stop making initiates, turn 3 of the newly made initiates into battlemages and send the rest that is made to mine gold. when the enemy attacks, send 1/3 of your ghost armors to slow them down while you make all your gold miners, but 9 of them into battle mages, after they become battlemages, send all battlemages and ghost armors to wipe the enemy army out.......the rest is up to you, I would't make dragons or behemoths though, both are too expensive and weak in armor while not that strong in attack, I'd definetly make archmages, separate archmages into 2 teams, 1st team with a few ghost armors and daemon to kill knights and the 2nd team with a few ghost armors and battlemages, use ghost armors and battlemages to kill the guards and swordsmen while your 2nd team archmages sneak by the side and use the firebolt attack to wipe out all the achers....
