Questions about orders on "recruit army" for pretenders

[Endoperez]

Generally, archers are the bane of lightly armored troops, cavalry the bane of archers, Heavy infantry do well against both archers and heavy infantry and heavy cavalry is expensive but works against most things. On the other hand, mass of crossbows can kill small Groups of heavily armored units quite easily, but because they are slower to fire they won't be versus masses of light infantry.

As you see, the unit type does affect the outcome of battle a lot. You just have to be sure that the troops are able to do what they are good at without distractions. As an example:

Put your archers or crossbows on the upper and lower sides of the formation box, about mid-way horizontally. Now they don't have to shoot over your own troops, and friendly fire is lessened. Put them to fire, depending on who you want to take care of. Put your heavy troops in front with orders of Hold and Attack, as this wil give your archers time to fire. If you ahve no heavy troops, you can use any infantry which has shields, but they will take more losses from friendly fire. Light troops without shield are not useful in this if not protected by magic because they will die, and then rout, and your archers will get slaughtered.

If you want to take care of enemy archers, put some fast units like cavalry to the sides (up/down) of the battlefield and order them to either Attack Rear if you want them to go straight on or Hold&Attack Rear if you want to wait till the frontline of the enemy has advanced and the archers (and commanders/mages) have less infantry guarding them. Generally, Attack Rear does just fine, although you might want to try it out yourself.

For commanders, without any magical items they are propably too weak to put to the frontline. Exceptions, like Niefel Lord, exist, but even they benefit greatly from magical abilities like Luck or just the better attack and defence and damage of the magical weapons. Generally, no commander should melee if you don't know what you are doing. Try normal troops first.

For mages, they are of no use before you have researched some spells. Depending on nation, you have many different choices. If you want to try out something rather simple, choose Abysia as their national troops are immune to the fire magic their mages use. Research Evocation. Even though some lesser spells like Fireball and Holy Pyre (versus undead) are good, Falling Fires at level 5 is just beautiful. And it gets better... You might want to risk sometimes by putting your mage in the front just behind your units, and order him to cast Falme Eruption. It affects a large area, and can be cast over your own troops without damaging them as they are immune to fire...
Abysians are not very accurate, though, but I have heard this has been a lesser problem since the Last patch.