Thanks to Sil for putting up a good fight as Sauromantia. The reason that I have so many entries in the hall of fame is that thugs were the best way I had to combat hordes of androphrag archers hiding behind large quantities of PD. Vanheim national troops are both expensive and incredibly vulnerable to poison (and I didn't have arrow fend/storm yet). Thugs seemed to work pretty well, in that the slightest hitch in unit orders didn't lead to them getting poisoned to death or routing in a few turns, but I had to get to critical mass to make the final push to his cap. Once I was comfortably safe from poison, Sauromantia switched to skelspam, so I racked up kills banishing away hordes of skeletons, not to mention damage control from some really ill-timed barbarian uprisings.
I have not taken any non-Sauromantia province (and they weren't too big) and there are definitely other nations that you should be more worried about at this stage of the game.
Also, Kailasa is AI? Did that happen recently? Are they almost dead?