Dominions Player Preffered Playstyles "Poll"

[Boron]

I would like to know which troops , summons , items , spells , mages and SCs are the favourites of the players .
Since there are too many answers to do it as a poll i would suggest that everybody makes a small ranking system with small comments why he chose it this way :

Here i start with my preferences :

I.National troops

1.All Upkeepfree ones , e.g. Carrion Beasts
2.Blessable troops , mainly Vans + Jaguar Warriors
3.Elephants + Mammoths
4.Jotunheim troops
5.Longbows ( together with flaming arrows + wind guide )

II.Summons

1.Devil (Cheapest)
2.Mech Men (overall most useful troop because of good abilities + cheap price with 1,5 earthgems each)
3.Vampire (2nd cheapest)
4.Abomination/Iron Dragon (best for special lategame tasks)
5.Black servant (best hoarding mule)
6.Most other Bloodsummons

III.Mages (without considering wishing unique mages like Belphegor)

1.Tartarian (best combat mage)
2.Demilich (best homedefence SC killer , ghost rider caster , Tartarian summoner)
3.Ivyking (charm spam , GoR duties)
4.Spectre (cheapest way to get flexibility with magic less flexible nations like Abysia/Ermor , also good researcher , can also be used as mule for fetishes)
5.Vampire lord (can be used for most bloodneeds : Blood forging , Vampire hoarding , Horde from hell , Forces of Darkness , in times of need a halfdecent combat mage also , at least either skeleton spamming or wither bones casting is easily possible)
6.Good national mages , mainly King of Deep , Pan and Starspawn , because they are extremely flexible but expensive though
7.Good rush mages , but fragile , hence obsolete in lategame like Seraph/High Seraph , Theurg , Sauromancer
8.The big rest

IV.SCs/Thugs

1.Devil (cheapest Thug and together with the banelord the best Thug)
2.Aella (best SC)
3.Ettin Mandragora (best SC in Undeadarmies)
4.the other uniques , common feature : not worth to be wished , ADs and IDs in particular are very good though
5.Bane Lord

V.Playstyle

Normally turtling + hoarding , if possible starting wars at turn 80-100 and then hopefully winning them . Normally i design my nation around hoarding and chose no real SC pretenders , rather either good scales or a rainbow or a hoard enchancer like the daughter of land .
My most liked maps are Edi's faerun and small faerun , Karan , Cradle of Zen and Inland .

VI.Game parameter preferences

Magic research : Normal-VH
Magic sites : 40-50%
Indeps : 6-9
Renaming allowed (this is a must for hoarding)
Map richness : Normal

VII.What i like most in Dominions 2

I like most hoarding and then the huge wars in lategame where all the gigantic deepness of Dominions is shown .
You have so many different strategies there and against slightly unfair things like the earlygame hard to defend against caelian false horror mass raid are now easy to defend against .
So you can win lategame only by deep understanding of dominions and good tactics .
Also the battles are beautiful to watch with thousands of combatants at each side and lots of spells etc. being used .

VIII.What i dislike in Dominions2 and should be improved in Dominions3

I only dislike peanuts in Dominions2 . If they get improved in Dom3 though it would be even a step closer to the perfect game .
Main dislikes :
-About 95% of National troops and 80% of Summons are obsolete very quickly , most even from the beginning , e.g. as pythium i only build principes , theurgs and communion slaves and a few arch theurgs . Similiar with most other nations .
-Bad Ai , if the dominion3 ai could build castles + use SCs or good combos of mages , troops and the fitting spells e.g. tartarians with lightning resistency ring + mech men + wrathful skies + storm would be awesome
-Better UI , as very good example for comparison i recommend Victoria - An empire under the Sun which is probably even deeper then Dominions though there the main focus is on Economy and not on Warfare
-Not full modding abilities in dom 2 , please full modding abilities in dom 3 when it is published already




My 2 main reasons for this poll are 1st to help Kristoffer + Johan spotting little used Troops etc. by most players that they can think of improvements for them in Dom3 to add to the flexibility and deepness of Dom3 and 2nd my own curiosity if there is something like a trend or if playstyles differ to much that you can say there are basically 2 categories : Rushers and Hoarders .