[HoneyBadger]

If you're trying to affect your own troops, I'd suggest (atleast, it seems logical to me) to position your casters around and inside of, a body of troops. Say one in the middle and four of them at the cardinal directions, scripted to Cast (song), Cast (song), Cast (song, do something else, do something else, and then follow troops, cast spells, or whatever. And then script your troops to hold, then attack. That ought to give you sufficient coverage for most of your troops, if you don't have a huge amount.

An alternative might be to script your mages to cast, cast, cast, cast, cast, position them *in front* of your troops, and let your troops then move *through* the casting area (past the casters), allowing the area they're moving through to be targeted.

In the case of targeting the enemy, you might script cast, cast, cast, cast, cast, run away, put them up front, right behind a line of militia, and hope that the militia will soften any initial attacks long enough for your spells to take effect, and your mages to run away, and then time your heavy troops to arrive on the scene in time to cover your mages' escape.