OK, finished the Necro game, and I'm still not thrilled. Not gonna play a Necro again for a while....
My current game is an Elf Queen in the Dark Ages with extra forests. Yes, I'm stacking the odds a bit in my favor.
Elf Queen is really interesting because of all of the freespawns. My forest & jungle squares are popping all sorts of interesting units. Wolves, brownies, sylphs, great eagles, satyrs, fauns.... Unicorns! (I'm not sure exactly what the unicorns do, but they look cool.)
Then, there are some really high-quality freespawns...
Nymphs: Cast mass charm on every turn, get a bunch of free recruits!
Then, there's this guy:
Llanhollen, the Lord of the Dance. Here are his stats:
Yeah, he's that good. CoE2 does have supercombatants, it seems.
I also got some Sylph Queen. She isn't as impressive as Llanhollen, but she can fly. If you also have access to flying troops, then flying commanders are great! I'm stacking her up with a bunch of sylphs and great eagles to form my quick-response team.
Thematically, playing an Elf Queen almost feels like playing Ermor (Ashen Empire) in the Dominions series. Freespawns, freespawns, and more freespawns! Every chance you get, recruit a commander to round up all of the freespawns, and you have another army.
Except -- unlike Ermor -- you don't burn your economy to the ground. Therefore, you can keep recruiting troops at the most-convenient fortresses
and gather up the freespawns. Before long, you have a ridiculous amount of troops. And then you win.