[Chris_Byler]

Well, some of them have supernatural reasons why they have to come from the specific site.

...Actually, the Bane Spider is one of those, with their God Mountain-forged standard equipment.

The problem is as Twan points out, other capitol only units overshadow the bane spider, cool as he is.

There's a fourth option: allow recruiting of 2 commanders per fort, but only 1 can be a mage (because you have only 1 lab; on similar grounds you could limit only 1 priest, but it's not as important as a balance issue). It would require some recoding and affect balance for everyone, but I think overall the changes would probably be good, especially for nations with overshadowed non-mage commanders (many of which are mini-thugs or assassins that see little use because it's more important to spam mages).