[Sombre]

Here's a modding trick that I think could have some use in making non mage commanders worth recruiting. I talked about this in the lizardman thread, but I thought it was also mentioning here, as it's a technical trick.

You have a recruitable commander, let's say a "Royal Guard Captain". The recruitable form of this commander comes with a summon5 and a domsummon of "Royal Guard Infantry". It also has a firstshape pointing to another instance of "Royal Guard Captain" which does not have these summons. Now when you buy the Captain, you get some free troops with him, in a limited supply, without the drawbacks of onebattlespell combat summons or endless streams of summon allies or autosummons.

I haven't tested this, so the method may need a couple tweaks, but it will definitely work. Of this I am entirely sure.

Of course it eats an extra unit slot, possibly two, per commander you use it on. But then you wouldn't use it on every non mage commander. Just some of them. The 'free' troops are a compensation for hiring a non mage commander.

To make this make more sense, the captain you buy could have a big banner, be immobile and have a description explaining how captains will rally troops for a month before setting out to lead them (and others) in battle. The second form (the regular guy you move around as normal) loses the big graphic of the banner (or horn, or whatever) and is no longer immobile.