Morale of all human army?

[Keneth]

That's funny, I could say the same for you.

It's true that I haven't tried one-race armies per se, that is, I've never added that one last troop though I've had 4 troops of the same race on many occasions, getting a +1 to morale is a decent thing but I'd much rather make use of the special abilities of others like emerald green dragons for mana generation and general tanking, inquisitors for resurrection and their free bless, shamans for the totems and axes, demonesses for charm and teleport, necromancers for lvl5 magic lock and raising undead, ogres for dishing out huge ammounts of damage, and so on.

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by Keneth

That's funny, I could say the same for you.

It's true that I haven't tried one-race armies per se, that is, I've never added that one last troop though I've had 4 troops of the same race on many occasions, getting a +1 to morale is a decent thing but I'd much rather make use of the special abilities of others like emerald green dragons for mana generation and general tanking, inquisitors for resurrection and their free bless, shamans for the totems and axes, demonesses for charm and teleport, necromancers for lvl5 magic lock and raising undead, ogres for dishing out huge ammounts of damage, and so on.

Those are all reasonable benefits. But SITUATIONAL. I can think of at least one situation where the eleven army is a good choice: the situation where you simply want to deal as much damage per point of leadership as possible as quickly as possible. For this, the all-elf army is hard to beat. Hell, I'm not sure if there is a single mob that does more damage to a large high defense stack (e.g., dragon, arch-demon, etc.) in one hit than a Dragon Arrowed hunter in an all-elf army.

For me, the determination goes something like this: what can I use in place of a +2 morale elf unit that provides more VALUE, considering that the rest of my army is composed of fast melee hitters? Unlike you, I don't find that to be an easy answer of "shamans are always better!" or "green dragons are always better!"

In other words, your metric of "ridiculous" seems pretty specific. Each one of your examples provides specific benefits, but also has specific trade-offs (e.g. demonesses are going to knock -2 off morale, dragons/shamans/inquisitors/necros aren't going to do anywhere near as much damage, etc.). Certainly the trade-offs are to the point where you can't say that they are hands down better.

The difference as to who is being more "stubborn" is who's statement goes out on a limb more- yours saying that there aren't any situations where an all-race army is a good choice (even under your powergamer criteria) or mine that says that an all-race army isn't a ridiculous choice.

So, do I keep non-elven reserves even when I'm running an all-elf army? Sure. But their they're in reserve to cover specific situations, not because I like leaving my best players on the bench, intentionally.

[Keneth]

So you've provided one situation where the elven army could possibly be the best choice although that could be argued, let's ignore that for a second and say there are one or three such situations. Wouldn't you say that insisting on using that army for all the rest of the situations is ridiculous? I might agree the other way around, using the reserve to form that one-race army on those specific occasions but having a multitude of excellent abilities complement the army better on any other occasion. Sure, you can do it your way, the game is easy enough to do it with any style of play but it doesn't make it the most efficient one. So who's really being stubborn here?

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by Keneth

So you've provided one situation where the elven army could possibly be the best choice although that could be argued, let's ignore that for a second and say there are one or three such situations. Wouldn't you say that insisting on using that army for all the rest of the situations is ridiculous? I might agree the other way around, using the reserve to form that one-race army on those specific occasions but having a multitude of excellent abilities complement the army better on any other occasion. Sure, you can do it your way, the game is easy enough to do it with any style of play but it doesn't make it the most efficient one. So who's really being stubborn here?

If you think doing as much damage as quickly as possible is a rare situation that happens only once in a blue moon, then yeah we're in agreement.

Strangely in my games, I find that situation occupies a fair amount of my play time. Especially compared to such common situations as: a) wanting to suck mana, b) teleporting a unit, c) throwing down a totem, d) locking their abilities down, etc.

By the way, given the existence of only two reserve slots, it's not like you can haul around unlimited specialists. The more situational something is, the less likely it will be in my roster (e.g., green dragons and necros).

Surprisingly, I find outright killing them before they twitch to be relatively effective, for most mobs.

Again I come back to your initial statement: "I've never used a single-race army, why would you want to do something as ridiculous as that?"

My rebuttal: No, it's not. There's a fair amount of time where it can work damn well.