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.

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.

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.

Thanks guys!

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

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.

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?