[thejeff]

I agree.
Conceptually it would be a great way to boost the weaker troops and force some hard decisions about recruiting commanders vs mages.
In practice it would be used to buff thugs, sacreds and other elites for early rushes.

This is particularly true since in general a buff that boosts a strength is better than one that boosts a weakness, so good troops benefit more from a given buff than weak ones. And that the only real way to control the strength of most of the potential buffs is to change the AoE, which again means it'll be more effective on a few elites than on a mass of chaff.

A mod nation designed around the concept could avoid most of the pitfalls.