I haven't gotten to treants yet, but notice that archers aren't getting involved (or taking damage) as long as sword dancers are on the team. I auto fight. So I have started training mostly sword dancers, especially now that they are advanced.
Another related question: How are multiple armories an advantage (besides looking nice?)
1) Strategy. Avoid auto-fighting if you want to preserve troops. The AI is similar to that of the enemy. It's set to charge. Charge, if in range of anything, attack that. If in range of more than one thing, attack that with the highest initiative. This is why you lose sword dancers over archers. By having them charge they will be in range before the archers, and when both are in range the sword dancers still have higher initiative.
When fighting a combat the terrain differs. This means your first move will either be a good 1st barrage of the enemy, or simply your troops moving into line of fire of the enemy. This is why you should fight manually. Often waiting a turn, or moving into position on the outside of the potential enemy range
will give you the first attack. Despite
retarded damage calculation, getting the first attack greatly increases the rate of victory and preserves your troops.
2) Multiple armories increase the amount of troops you can queue in one go. If you are not active enough to keep your armory queue filled it may be beneficial to stock up on armories. If you on the other hand spend loads of time on the game and have no problems with replenishing your troops then you should NOT have any armories at all. It costs valuable space, workers and culture. Arguably fights get more and more impossible, possibly eliminating the feasibility to ever fight and thus removes the need for armories. All in all, I would recommend against them and suggest you skip quests related to armories - I can't recall one I couldn't decline.
my experience with treants seems to be different than everyone else here...
I find treants to be completely useless except for clearing out the orcs and dog provinces.
I feel like elves got screwed on the troop types
it doesn't seem to make any difference, what i use, every battle costs me 4 hours worth of casualties. there is no possible way to complete battles in the 5th ring and onward without losses, they just get too ludicrous putting you up against 8 squads at a time of mixed, cannoneers, archers and heavy knights and stuff
I mean elves have no "fast" units.
and no "long ranged artillery"
elves have nothing that can move like the dogs. and nothing with the range of the cannoneers.
at least the treants can deal with dogs but any battle against cannoneers has me scrambling forward, losing the first 3 turns trying to get close enough to hit the ranged units while they bombard me with mortars. and then they put heavy knights in front of the cannoneers to kill any sword dancers that try to get close, and you can't send in treants because a cannonneer can take out 80% of a treant squad in 1 hit and they can destroy a squad of archer II in 1 hit.
and then there are the mages...the mages are just BS, 4 movement rate?! and a ranged attack that debuffs your attack power 50%?! and they just kite your troops always moving just out of melee range.
and why is it that the enemy units get bonuses of like +80% attack and defense, while my units only get +20%. that's BS
granted, i still have not unlocked golems, but those look crappy as well, I guess golems are elves "artillery" unit but they have shorter range than archers and move as slow as treants. what's the point of a ranged unit if it has to get in melee range to use it's "ranged" attack?
I wholeheartedly agree that elves drew the shortest of sticks when units were handed out. The treants are of very limited use. Humans get the strong cerberi unit to kill off archers giving a bit of strategic alternative. They do not however get cannoneers. That ridiculously powerful unit is enemy AI only. Granted they "randomized" the damage by giving it a humongous range, so you
can get lucky some fights >_<
The aim is clear though. To promote using real-money currency ressurrecting your fallen, and/or to prevent people from fighting their way forwards without significant casualties - thereby forcing you to wait in order to tech up.
I agree with you that the current state borders impossible once you get out to rings 5 and up. The tech for your own units at the time does NOT compare to the enemies you face.
Golems should balance out the elves vs humans I suppose. The idea being that humans get a unit similar to the heavy knight (2 move, 2 range) where elves get a less ranged range (3 move, 3 range). It's not pretty at first, but quite often waiting your turn, forcing the enemy forwards would allow the golems to be a strong 1st-attack unit. At least compared to the human's paladin unit we win there ^_^!
As for your troubles, I suggest mainly negotiating the tough fights and keep the fighting to the easy provinces only (good terrain, lots of melee enemies, no/few mages/cannoneers). Trading combined with the repeatable quests allows you to build up ressources rather well, minimizing the troubles needed for negotiating. Of course this requires some sort of people willing to help eachother and not just powder their own cake...
Wooo wall of text over.
Tl:dr;
* answers for cassandrailium
* I agree with femaiden