I usually use a different army in the different regions. I'm a Mage so i mostly use archers.

Greenwort
Bears Bowmans Alchemists Priests and i don't remember what else.
Islands of freedom. Bowmans with a lot of meele units(pirates sea dogs guardsman, Marauders) you can recruit there. With the Jackboots i've got they act before the enemy which is in most cases with the same army.

Kondar Cyclops Canonners Polar bears Drawers and Evil eyes.

I'm now in Elven Lands and i Still use the Evil eyes and Cannoners despite they lower the morale of my other 3 elven units - Hunters Dryads and Werewolfs. I had Anba's Ruby from the Holy Indulgence quest and my dryads are awesome. The item gives +3 to attack defence speed initiative and morale to all female fighters. With the high speed no retaliations and 3 ******* useful abilities this makes the dryads one hell of an unit. It can summon cannon fodder, sleep low level enemies and increase the initiative of my elves :).Not to mention charm and beauty when fighting humans. I can't wait to get demonesses though.

By far i consider Cannoners and Evil Eyes to be the most useful units for me. The double salvo is great and the hypnosis can prevent one heavy hit. Most unuseful unit... Hmm. Thorn Warriors, peasants, Archmages sucks too.

Cursed ghosts.

First time I am trying them and I just love them (Except sounds). They can tank stack of about same size and actually gain more units during fight. I started with 10 and now I got 30. And I have sacrificed about 100 of them to build up other units that are not sold on pirate islands.

Ha! Just had my first stack of cursed ghosts and kept wondering why they kept going out of control, immediately judging them as the buggy pieces of ****. Must've been their ability to, err, multiply. And going over the leadership count.

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Awesome units (with some management)
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ZOMBIES!
How come no one hasn't appraised zombies! Either the decaying kind or the normal kind. They're perfect shock troops. They're TOUGH, "fast" and are just made for taking that first retaliation strike. Availability seems pretty good, too. Initiative might be a bit of an issue but it's something that can be lived with. How did I ever manage to get anything done without my emplo-- zombies. Totally beyond me. Use with Haste.

GRIFFINS
Haven't employed them much but the unlimited retaliations and the high speed, HP and initiative, combined with a defensive spell (Stone Skin, Magic Spring) and you can't stop wondering if they would make the perfect assault stack, the one that is most likely to get hit most often. In fact, you just might want to park these next to enemy's ranged unit and never attack, just defend every turn until they've retaliated everything to death.

INQUISITORS
Not useful as a whole but they have one major advantage that deserves attention. The resurrection ability. How is their ability to resurrect any different from the spell, you ask? They can raise dragons. And other high lvl creatures, whereas the hero spell stops working at creature lvl 4. Consider letting them just stand under the Invisibility spell for the first few turns so they won't attract ranged attacks, since that's what AI seems to be fond of doing. Getting rid of ranged attackers first. Then later resurrect the troops that your spell version can't do.

ARCHMAGES
Yeah, yeah... not very high damage output. It's not the lightning attack but the armor spell they have. Use it on those Griffins I mentioned. Keep an eye on if the enemy stack gets shocked and use it to your advantage. Expensive old buggers, though.

BERSERKERS
God how I love these crazy little homicidal psychos. Even though never under your direct control you can slap a defensive spell on them and watch them go. Adjust your moves to theirs. Moderately expensive, since they don't usually last very long. Keep a huge stack in the reserve slot if gold is not an issue.

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Units that just don't manage in the job.
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Spiders. Too fragile. Every last one of them. You're fired. All of you.
Wolves. Same thing. Clean your desk and go.
Hyenas. Gah! If only they had more HP. In other words, too fragile also. Don't bother coming in tomorrow.
Bears. All of them. Polar and Ancient ones are only worth even remotely considering but all in all it gets expensive and tedious replacing them. Too slow and too narcoleptic for my liking. You're lucky I don't sue you for sleeping on the job. Now go.
Miners. Ho-hum. Boring. Can you see the paint dry as they walk around? No special abilities either. Time to retire, old man.
Thorn plants. Ugh. More weaklings. Royal Thorns might kick some ass. But that requires hiring them, which requires finding them in adequate amounts first. Sorry, but I'm just going to have to let you guys go.
Snakes. Other than Royal Snakes. Too weak and fragile. You're fired. *snake hand*

Cannoneers. Especially with Scope and Keg set (which adds 30% crit bonus). Total ownage salvo first, high hp, high initiative, even some fire res! And siege gun, to suppress/upgrade items easier :) Orcs have catapults, but they're not so good, and fire kills them too fast. Human archers die way too fast also. Must see elven units yet.

I really like the Veteran Orks...their counter attack ability is great.

My main gripe with Cyclops is you ocan't heal them with magic, or can you some other way? Im in Kordar mines using Warrior and at level 15 A)14 D)22 I)6
and i'm finding it tough going I must say.

I really must settle on a strategy this time round as my previous go at the game on normal with mage was great! I used hypnotise/sacrifice (of enemy units) and resurrect to replenish units and was doing well in the Elven lands/Land of the dead but this time I can't even find the hypnotise scroll grrrrr

u can get hypno scrolls from the hypno neckledge if u find that.

I'm still unsure which is the best 5 to use if money is not an object :confused:

dragons ?

yeah, my final army was black dragons, red dragons, emerald dragons, orc shamans and knights. Pretty unstoppable.