The problem of low hit points on humans

[UninspiredName]

The way that the system works though is that human combat mages can gather a couple of doezen kills over their career without any gem investment and with fairly minimal danger. A human commander is virtually never going to reach that goal.

But a human commander shouldn't be trying to reach that goal. They're an entirely different breed of unit. Asking for them to kill enemies in melee combat while being in minimal danger seems, again, ridiculous. Once, I had a skinshifter commander on the frontlines who racked up a large number of kills unequipped, but as I was playing as Patala it technically cost me 10 nature gems for the Lycanthropos Amulet, and either way it was certainly not safe for him. He even turned the tide (or so it seemed from the video) of a few 20-30 men per side skirmishes.

The morale system is still broken and still autorouts commanders when their troops die,

I'll go back to the Patala vs. Jomon battle from before, in which the enemy definitely fled. I even got the 'The armies of Jomon are routing' message up top, and the battle continued for maybe ten turns after that up until his commanders destroyed me. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a glitch in that case, but I'm sure I've seen non-mage commanders linger while the entire remaining army flees.

yet now it even affects beings that aren't even hurt by the attacks they are experiencing.

I'll give you that one, as I haven't had any Dom2 experience with that sort of situation.

Quickness no longer affects spells, so all those mages (and there are a lot of them) that cost extra gold for W1 no longer see any benefit from that extra path.

It allows searching for water sites, which shouldn't be underestimated, as well as limited item forging and easier empowerment, which you can take for what you will.

Research is at the very difficult setting by default, so that pushing armies around the map, especially armies composed of undercosted sacred troops is the best strategy for the majority of the important turns of the game.

The ever-so-popular F9/W9 bless only really helps for melee combat. (and reaching ranged combatants, I suppose) They still wither under attack spells, most outstandingly Blade Wind, and projectiles, and other blesses have similar weaknesses. Still, I'll admit it can cut through independents like butter.

Commanders are not just slightly more elite than your normal troops. They have such supposedly impressive abilities that you can only recruit a single one per month.

It's not that they have such impressive abilities, just look at the many relatively crappy level-one priests that also take up that precious slot. I don't know about you, but I'd usually take a commander over one of them. It's that they're not run-of-the-mill military that stops mass-recruiting.

If he can't, then there's no point in his existing in the first place. That's why people use independent commanders who are cheaper and just as good at standing behind the troops.

Whether they have a point in existing or not depends on the commander in question. Some have standards, a couple are stealthy, some are priests, some have limited magic capability, and many have a much higher Leadership score than the generic human Commander.

That's a game mechanic convention, nothing else.

Perhaps, but it's a cruicial one. Unless you're suggesting they remove the Leadership mechanic from the game altogether, Leadership is at least somewhat valuable.

I wasn't aware that recruiting battle mages prevented you from recruiting independent commanders to move your troops around, becaue that's what you're arguing here.

Your arguments sort of suggested that battlemages were solidly 'better' than commanders. I'm simply saying that's not the case. I apologize if I read between the lines too much.

Then the elite versions might as well not exist for all the gameplay effect that they have. You get more survivability and more utility out of three independent commanders than a single black lord, and they both have the same cost.

I'm not familiar with the Black Lord unit, and you could very well be right. Still, there are plenty of other cases where human commanders can be more worthwhile than their independent counterparts.

EDIT:

On top of that, your cost-benefit wasn't too good there. You lost 6 mages at about 180 = 1080 to kill 100 troops at, say, 15 = 1500. That's ahead, but not by much. Even if you can get some of the stronger early magic going it's possible to be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, as you experienced.

I didn't plan on them dying.
I was actually against another human in that game, and we had agreed for various reasons to call the game once we defeated CPU Abysia (Down to one province and outnumbered), so I decided to go out with a bang.