[Boron]

one problem that makes national troops which you could use in large numbers so bad :

SUPPLY .

as vanheim e.g. i could use hordes of skinshifters or everyone hordes of barbarians .
they are not bad units in theory .
but given the fact that they require low resources why shouldn't you take a watchtower / mausoleum ?!?

vanheim e.g. can't forge supplyitems early on .
so even if you build only e.g. 60-80 skinshifters you run soon into supply issues .
if you take a castle it is a shortly later time but when you are 3 provinces away from your capitol it is the same and you can build castles not as easy as a watchtower .


for ryleh this is very severe too : if you have enough gold you can produce hordes of illithids which are quite useful .
but they are size 4 so they eat a lot .

caelum could produce hordes of their cheap archers .
they would be really useful for their prize but supply is again the limiting factor .



so the supply system is just too harsh at the moment .
without supplyitems in any province 2-3 provinces away from the nearest castle with 2-4k pop and those are quite common in mountain/swampland you just have about 20-50 supply .
rarely you have over 100 supply when only 2 provinces away from your next castle .





overall earlygame at least 30 slingers / archers = cost 210/300 would beat 1 mage probably .

but supply prohibits you to use more than about 50-100 troops anyways for most nations .
midgame the archers aren't useful anymore because they have little chances damaging most mages at all .
e.g. 1 ulm mastersmith casting invulnerability + magma eruption would defeat about 50 archers very likely .


there are several severe problems :
- most national troops have 8-14 hp which kills them with 1 single hit by almost any spell most likely .
- scs get easy lightning + fire resistence . with 20-30 protection + lifedrain even 50 knights ( e.g. ulm ) lose probably . if the sc has fire shield this is just absurd .
with f9 blessing you have some chances but if the sc has fire shield + high protection etc. you defeat him perhaps but at least lose lots of your troops .

i think you all admit that any national unit without f9 bless or n9 berserk bless ( only true for jotunheim + pangenea ) can't even defeat a standard banelord cheap sc .


it is just national troops suck against most mages after the first 10-20 turns .
most have no chance against scs .
summoned creatures are upkeepfree + have often a really good morale so you don't need that many to prevent routing .


so you always buy only as much as you think is enough to avoid routing and replace them soon by summons .
not that most summons are directly that stronger than national units but most summons have high morale , need not eat and cost no upkeep .

as panther said that approach was good in age of wonders .
there the summoned units costed mana as upkeep .
so though they were the strongest units you couldn't field too many of them .
and for national units there was a techtree .
so your armies were about 2/3 national troops 1/3 summons .
the lvl 4 national units were almost as good as the lvl 4 summons and the lvl 5 summons were the most powerful units but 2 lvl 4 summons / 3 lvl 4 national units were normally enough to kill a lvl 5 summon .
since you had about doubled gold income compared to manaincome normally this was really fun + well balanced .

with the combat system that each definding unit has only 4/5 retals cheap lvl 1 units to steal defending strikes to let the lvl 4 units kill the enemy lvl 4 units without having the risk of being killed too made the lvl 1 units quite useful too .

with heroes of might and magic series this was true too .
there lvl 1 / 2 units could kill lvl 7 units too .
so they all served a purpose .