[krpeters]

Regarding morale, the best solution I have found for this is to recruit loads of H2 priests and use them as my main commanders. Casting Sermon of Courage works very well. The downside is that this makes it harder to recruit mages, but you'll have this problem anyway because you can't use indy commanders (miasma). Also they catch arrows frequently, but any large army will have several (each can only carry 40+ units) so losing all of them is unlikely.

I find a mix of elite lizard warriors and city guard mixed together does an adequate job of chewing up heavy infantry while surviving arrows.

With a skull staff, marshmaster skellyspam is moderately effective. I still don't see any good mid-game options, though.