Do you know any other similar game where pure magic wins the day?

MoM and HoMM games didn't let you. Neither did Disciples or Age of Wonders.

The overland spells are crazy tough. I use Pillar of Fire on enemy armies and then just go in and one-shot stuff with archers.

maybe with fire magic? i haven't seen it.

this game has a balance issue like WoM did in that there's little challenge and every approach works.  melee just happens to scale much faster and more effectively than magic.

Maybe its not balance so much as not playing on higher AI?  Or that the higher level AIs aren't completely developed yet?  If the game is easy no matter what path you take that doesn't say to me that everything needs to be nerfed.  It says that the game needs to be harder.  

Nah, you just aren't stacking them appropriately.

Here are some of the talents you need:

Path of the Magi

Evoker (preferably several levels of it)

Fire Archmage

Anything with +Initiative.

Anything that reduces the mana cost of combat magic.

Use a staff or dagger that gives +initiative. Don't wear armor. Don't use a shield. Cast "Haste" as your first spell, if you've got it. Of course, cap every shard you can see.

Also, be careful how you use some of the spells. Lighting storm (the random one) is only particularly good when you are certain it will hit a high health target. Fireball is *amazing* at wiping out groups of stacks (since the damage is per figure, not per stack, and it damages all adjacent squares as well).

Finally, although the lower-level strategic damage magic is "inside your territory only", I believe the higher level stuff, like Tornado, or Pillar of Fire, is not. Some of those strategic spells are really quite amazing.

I have not extensively explored magic yet, but I think that there are *at least* two different "powerful" paths to take your mage: A) The ultra-buff, heal-all mage that turns your melee units into amazing fighters, and Mega-blast DPS utilizing fire spells. I prefer the later path; and with the right talents/spells, this is easily do-able.

I'm not that far along in my current game, but I'm having an absolute blast with Lady Pariden, one other hero (I think Snvyvd? The axe guy, he makes an okay fire mage), and stacks of 3, relatively wimpy melee units (Shield, Axe, Leather armor, 5 figures per stack). I've killed Torax the destroyer of mountains, ogres of all shapes and sizes, and huge hoards of spiders, wolves, and imperials.

Don't underestimate fireball I hate to say it, because I love magic, and prefer to play all 4x fantasy games with magic, but I suspect that at a high level magic may actually be slightly too powerful. Then again, IMHO, that is how it should be.

The one thing that I would like, if it were possible, is more global "effect" spells. I'm thinking global enchantments along the lines of Dominions 3 or MOM. You know, the spells that spawn random zombies in your town, or "darkness", the one that reduces ranged units damage by 90%, plus productivity. I think a few spells like that at a high level, spells with a very high per season maintenance cost, would complete magic in this game.