Qm said

[DenStoreFrelser]

DrPraetorious' idea of splitting animals off from sentient creatures seems pretty good. If you do this, the elephants will always have abysmal morale (Unless you put them in a group with other, braver animals...). If you also add animal trainer commanders with standard abilities that only affects animals, you allow players to continue to use elephants against each other without resorting to silly uses of heavy infantry.

I don't think Bandar units should be seen as animals in this regard, as they appear to be intelligent enough to be considered people, except maybe the markatas. Pangea seems like a more likely candidate for special rules. I guess it wouldn't break the game to just give animal standard effects to their leaders, but that would "force" you to send dryads and the like to the front lines.

Also, if you do implement animal leadership, you might want to consider having units require their own size in leadership. I'm sure you can think of a decent excuse for this, and it would reduce the increase in power for cheap animal summoning spells.