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Saber Cherry said:
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alexti said:So the idea is to buy many cheap national armies. They won't have supply problem, their number will compensate for lack of mobility and upkeep won't be too high.
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Got it; I misunderstood you. When I think "National Army" I think:
200 Ulm Infantry + 8 Smiths + 20 Black Knights
or
200 Mictlan Slaves + 200 Warriors + 25 Eagle/Sun Warriors + 10 mages and 50 blood slaves
or
30 Hydras with several poison-immune-item mages to cast body ethereal
or
30 Valkyries / Vans with 200 Hirdmen + 200 medium indy archers + 3 Vanadrotts + 5 Smiths
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Those are also "national armies". By "national army" I mean any army you can buy for gold at any time and which costs you 0 gems. Your examples I'd qualify as "large national armies", which are quite a big investment, thus worth fortifying them with all available means.
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Saber Cherry said:
... and so forth. These numbers don't include various arrow-target units or bodyguards for the mages. Your "national armies" are much cheaper, much smaller, and much more mage-centric. Obviously they are effective for you, so I'll have to try them... but I would consider them "raiding parties" 
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One doesn't exclude another, "national army" describes content and "raiding party" describes the purpose.
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Saber Cherry said:
Still, it seems to me that a party with 5-10 fighting units would rout too fast to do anything, e.g. if one of the units took a single arrow from a defender, Dominions II gives the entire army about a 50% percent chance of routing. Once two units are killed, they'll all leave for sure, even if the mages could win singlehandedly.
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I don't think so. I haven't observed concept of routing for the army as a whole. Each squad seems to route independently. I often observed some squads routing and other keep fighting. So, when a unit is killed it may only cause the remaining half of the squad to route (assuming 2 units per squad). And for some of those armies, there's enough commanders to use 1 unit squads.
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Saber Cherry said:In other words, it seems like they'd have trouble attacking province defense of around 20 (especially backed by a mage or a few archers) let alone taking castles, conquering indies (at settings of 6+), or really doing anything useful except invading provinces where the opponent forgot to hire any province defense...
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It depends. Caelum's or C'tis squads should have little problems with 20pd, unless PD is flying. With Jotunheim armies it's a bit a matter of luck. Pan's army should do fine if their several units are Centaur Warriors. If you add few (like 5-10) archers, it won't change results much, if you add a mage, that depends on the mage, with good mage (like sauromancer or seraph) PD is likely to win. But people rarely buy 20 PD (because it's like paying gold to give the enemy army free experience), so those armies work well until they meet some more serious army.
Of course, you're not likely to storm any forts with those armies, but you can always gather them together when needed, moving supporting summons and SC at the same time, so that you instantly getting a strong army in the required spot.