>Curse is the great equalizer

Agreed. I can live without "remove curse" (a wish seems logical however, and probably easy to do with a patch). I must admit that Curse is very special : it never misses, it always targets the biggest unit (more hp) and MR offers no protection. I see no other spells like that.
Only solution I've found is to give *bigger* units to your pretender. In my first game I was able to completely avoid curse on my 20hp Medusa because she had vine ogres (43 hp) around her. If you have a 125hp dragon, try Blood Vines, Abominations or Iron dragons (nothing can save a 500hp Sphinx, I'm afraid).

But, well, that's an equalizer. Without Curse (or even if MR negates) it'll be _much_ harder to kill the biggest creatures IMHO, like Sphinx, Great Mother, FI etc.

And think positive : Curse only gives more afflictions and afflictions can be removed (hard to do but far from impossible).

Cheers