Need help - I am screwing up (again)

[Vynd]

The first thing to understand is that the Saurolich is Immortal. This makes him very difficult to deal with when he is fighting inside of his own dominion. For one thing, he will never rout. This is why the decoy strategy your opponent is using works. (A commander without Immortality sent in with just a few decoy units would run away as soon as those decoys were killed.)

An Immortal unit that is killed within its own dominion reappears in that nation's capital at the beginning of the next turn. So even if you can figure out a way to kill the Saurolich, that may not help you very much.

OK, so enough with the bad news. The good news is that the Saurolich only get these benefits while he is within his own dominion. So you don't have to worry so much about him coming outside of his dominion to get you, and if you can push your own dominion into C'Tis's territory then he won't even be able to use the Saurolich to defend that.

As for how to kill it, I think you were on the right track with the idea of using mages. It sounds like you just needed more of them, so you could kill his decoys and still have plenty of spells left to hit the Saurolich. The Saurolich is susceptible to fire so I can see why you were trying that. But if his Protection is really high you might want to try Lightning Bolts instead. If you are playing Spring and Autumn Tien Chi, building Masters of the Dead and scripting them to cast Dust to Dust a lot should work wonders.

I wouldn't recommend trying to equip one of your normal leaders. They don't have enough hit points to survive for more than a round or two of battle against the Saurolich, and I doubt that would be enough time to kill it. A summoned commander with good stats like a Bane Lord could probably do it, but I doubt you can get those right now. On the other hand, the Celestial Soliders available to some themes of Tien Chi are pretty decent. A group of those might be able to take out the Saurolich without horrendous losses.