You can have 9000 attack and the staff will still hit for 12 (or 6) damage.
I think if you manage to get a real bit of physical attack into that 9000, that full 9000 attack will start contributing to the staff damage. The reason it doesn't currently is that the only things that improve actual physical attack are weapons, and staves don't include a physical component to the attack. All of the bonuses instead provide a physical attack boost, which only gets added in if there is a nonzero physical attack to start with. Thus, if you were to mod staves to grant 1 physical attack in addition to their current elemental attack, you would see those bonuses from traits add in.
Quoting Earth Force Captain,
3) There is actually a better staff (Hailstone Staff, 12 Cold Attack -6 Initiative) in game, but it's part of the equipment of a recruitable champion, a female Mancer Mage called Ritressa who I could pick at the 200 Fame mark I think.
This type of staff, and also the Incineration Staff (12 fire attack, -6 initiative), is available in the shop and for unit design after researching Arcane Weapons. I believe I have also seen these as loot on occasion, though I'm not sure. Even including that these ignore target defense ratings due to being magic attacks, they aren't very good weapons for champions, though.
3) I found many increasingly better melee weapons but so far none of the ranged staves had more than +6 attack. My sovereign is mage and her damage is pitiful[/quote]
For mages, particularly mages with Fire or Water Magic or Greater Necromancy and a decent investment in the Evoker traits, I'd sooner use a dagger for the initiative bonuses or one of the various staves with a spell damage bonus or spell mastery bonus, because spells like Fireball, Flame Dart, Blizzard, and Horrific Wail can do terrible things to anything they hit, and support spells like Curse, Graveseal, Heal, and Haste can greatly benefit your own army or hamper the opposing army, and using a dagger you can fire more of these spells off, while a staff granting spell mastery makes curses and damage spells more likely to stick and have their full effect, and a staff with a spell damage bonus just makes those damage spells a bit better (my opinion is that in general I'd go with daggers on most high-level spell casters and staves with spell mastery or spell damage bonuses on lower-level spell casters, because a high level mage doesn't usually need more spell mastery and, if specialized for damage, probably doesn't need help in the damage department, either).
A further note about daggers and staves - daggers provide a small critical chance bonus, and a few provide a bonus to critical damage, while most staves with spell mastery or spell damage bonuses provide a penalty to critical chance. Damage spells can hit critically. (As an aside, this makes some people consider Assassins to be decent damage spell casters. I personally disagree, as I think that a guaranteed 180% (or 200% for Fire spells) of normal spell damage every time you cast a spell, with lower spell costs, higher spell mastery, and lower casting time for those spells where that is a concern is superior to having a chance to roughly double
1) roads - how do I build roads?
[quote who="FatherAntics" reply="5" id="3384595"]mancer pioneers can build roads.
A further note on this - any faction with Mancer Blood gains the Road Building ability in the unit design screen, so if you wanted to you could create a cheap road-builder (i.e., not a pioneer who costs 30 population at start of training).
