Qm said

[thejeff]

There's a long way between Black Hawks at Conjuration3 and when normal armies aren't useful any more.
You could use your animal leaders with 10 elephants to expand and push research in Conjuration. Should be able to get there within the first year and have a nice backlog of elephants waiting for a leader.
(On the gripping hand, do any of the elephant nation even have Nature magic and income? Arcosephale, though only N1 right? )


More importantly, even if it addressed the elephant rush problem, it introduces all sorts of micromanagement and unforeseen hassles. Does every nation get animal leaders? Do no animal leaders have regular (or magical?) leadership? What about the ape nations? Do they only have animal leadership? So they can't use independents? Nature mages should get animal leadership. But then you can mix elephants and regular troops. Unless no nature mages can lead regular troops. Do indy elephants come with animal commanders? Are the various summon animals (pack of wolves/bears/lions, etc) spells now even more useless?

In general, the problem is tramplers, particularly elephants and this fix addresses animals in general.

I like the repel idea better. It's more specific to the problem.