Why did I bother with the Elven wife at all?
She has two regalia slots and one artifact/regalia. No weapon slots at all. I don't care about the +1 morale for elves because they already have high morale with Anga's Ruby and also if you use Druids. So she is useless, IMO.
I wanted Xeona instead - who is the best wife in the game as far as I am concerned, so it was off to Demonis. It was very hard to sneak in this time because Katana and another demon army were guarding the portal, but I managed in the end.
To mock me, Fire Rain is EVERYWHERE in this game. I have seen it for sale in maybe six different places. And I couldn't find it at all in my last game.
Xeona is a very hard fight at level 20. The elf team didn't really work (partly because I had lost some troops) so I bought up a temporary demon team to do the job. With Xeona on my side, I can equip three weapons in total. You can't go past this, I don't think. A Mage will equip Archmage's Staff, and a Warrior a variety of nice swords, like Kerus' sword.
I've got the Pain skull but it takes so long to do its business. In fact, I have never seen it upgraded before because I HATE losing half my mana. I think it's down to 44%
So, in short, I'm winning. Money is a bit of an issue (only 300,000) but I have an excellent team now and still plenty of stuff to do in Kordar, Ellinia and even a few fights in Freedom Isles. It's day 20 so my score won't be very high.
Oh, and Hunters/Elven Archers are so good with the Dwarven telescope. The only place in the game that seems to reliably sell Hunters is a sorceror's tower in Demonis. He has over 600 for sale.
If I had Hordes of Lake Fairies/Sprites I would keep using them, but I don't, so here is my team at level 20 with 13,000 leadership:
6 Red Dragons
70 Orc Shamans (Xeona sells them for some reason
)
90 Horsemen
110 Hunters
220 Elven Archers
This is a pretty versatile team with a nice mix of ranged/direct damage, plus some decoy stuff from the Shamans. I am able to beat Match and Slightly Stronger stacks without any losses.