Actually, what I think Boron was saying was that the best troops are the summons in general. That does not mean Vans are inferior to Vine Men. Just in the aggregate. And you are still better off using your gold to build mages and gems to get summoned troops. And this is not even counting the fact that your troops cost a heck of a lot more in upkeep than the summons do. If anything, summons ought to cost more since they are superior.
National troops are much too weak in general late game. They are mostly used only as fodder from mid-game on.
Also, Cainehill missed the point above. He said that if the rule was that commanders could not stay on the battlefield without troops, the battles would be all about killing the chaff. But nobody except a weak player would play that way. No, it would be all about getting STRONG troops to accompany STRONG leaders, which is much more logical than the current system. If you send in a leader with chaff only and lose, too bad for you.
Arryn, on the other hand, made an excellent point above about berserk. That would be a good strategy if you didn't want your commander to retreat. However, berserk is a double-edged sword. Your defense drops and you get hit easier. And maybe some aflictions to. Also, you would want to be DARN sure you will win since the berserked guy will fight to the death. If you miscalculate, then poof, your SC is gone for good. But it sure is a nice tool to have in the toolkit.
I want to make another point on this subject. In Karan game, where I am subbing for Cohen, Vyelina is playing Ulm. She attacked a Cohen castle with a superb army, which included her VQ, 2 ice devils, an arch devil, a bunch of nice summons, and some national troops. She had it backed up with lots of mages casting all kinds of nasyy things. It was almost a pleasure losing to that army, for it was well constructed and excellently scripted.
On the other hand, Cohen had a super-powerful SC arch devil as his prophet. The devil simply cast fire shield and then attack. Pangaea hit it with over 100 troops and lost everything to a single SC. It was almost ridiculous watching that battle. It did leave a sour taste in my mouth for sure, totally unlike losing to the Ulm army.
Needless to say, I definitely admired the Vyelina approach far better. She certainly avoided the chaff problem with her SCs, like Cainehill was suggesting above would become the norm.
Now why do I feel like Yvelina was playing the game the way it was intended to be played and Cohen was taking advantage of a rule glitch?
Of course, I know that the developers are not going to put out a patch to fix the routing inconsistency. It would be a huge change to everything we are all doing now. It will have to wait for Dom 3.
On the other hand, fixing the routing inconsistency in a patch would make everybody come up with a new strategy and just might increase the longevity of the game. Who knows?
