[Edi]

A low level nature bless on the steel warriors makes them a lot more durable since regen reduces the chance of afflictions by a large margin. It's especially good since they don't have shields.

I also used primarily warrior maidens and archers in absolute masses. First unarmored but later armored archers, and hordes of warrior smiths. The best kind of battle mage warrior smiths are the E3, E2F1 and F2E1 types, because when you give them earth boots and a girdle, they will be brutal at casting blade wind, magma eruption and fireball respectively. Magma eruption is easily my favorite of those, it REALLY gets rid of the annoying enemies in quantity even if they have shields.

Shamans and antlered shamans are good for casting panic and those should be the best against big low morale things like elephants.

Edi