The eternal question: which heroes are better, mages or warriors?

The best mage is one who has invested in warrior skills. Warriors have a much higher chance of acquiring the most important secondary skills, such as logistics, tactics, attack, and defense. Therefore, a warrior will find it much easier to capture conservatories and hives, and subsequently utopias, where they will receive artifacts that boost knowledge and strength, as well as spellbooks. As a result, a warrior will become a much stronger mage.

It is only worth playing as a mage in one case: if there is an opportunity to rush the opponent (many skill points invested in SP, and there are castles that often give a bolt in GM2, such as Tower, Dungeon, Stronghold). Then you need to find a bolt as quickly as possible, invest in SP, and attack the opponent on day 117-122; attacking later is pointless (of course, if the opponent is not building a capitol, but is doing useful things).

However, there is one exception. Perhaps the only mage who can compete with warriors is the Moon faction. Her specialty doubles the damage from the fire wall spell, and, by maxing out fire magic to expert level, she can immediately capture the first-level conservatory with a loss of 6 fairies. And when the spellpower reaches 8, she can capture the second-level conservatory with the same losses. And she can easily defeat walking neutral creatures, which allows her to develop a very good tempo.