I'm in an elf city and admittedly haven't unlocked the drone rider, so I'm basing this off the Faineant Frog promotion and the poison dryad.
Two things outside of the analysis though: 1. its an easy quest. 5,000 units is less than a day of production, and if you're going to do the Amuni quests at all, this one is much less onerous than a lot of the others, so it would be silly to stop here. 2. even if the units aren't "great," any unit at this point is decent Round 1-2 tourney fodder. So I think doing the quest is a no brainer.
Pros:
-These troops are VERY sturdy for light melee. They hit twice as hard as axemen, and have twice the health. They also have a higher initiative AND move 1 step further.
-Usually the "most technologically advanced" shared unit is your best bet. I'm finding the Frog to be very powerful once I hit the tech upgrade; same for the dryad. I didn't expect them to perform as well as they did.
Cons:
-No protection against mages, and not a ton of bonus damage. Not ideal if you hope to avoid attrition. The same can be said for Cerberus vs Light Range, but I find Mages to be a priority in every fight. Their damage plus debuffs is usually too painful to ignore.
-I generally don't use Drone Riders anyways. Let's look at the tourneys where Light Ranged is the primary unit:
Planks (secondary unit Light Melee, counter unit Heavy Ranged);
Scrolls (secondary unit Mage, counter unit Heavy Ranged).
Planks, I'm more likely to use Heavy Ranged, since I'll get bonuses against the primary unit and secondary unit, and be neutral to the counter (if I send Drones, I'd get bonuses to primary, neutral to secondary, and weak to the counter - not ideal). So that's one tourney that's right out for getting lots of use out of Drone Riders.
Scrolls, I'm more likely to use Cerberus or Mage, depending on the enemy comp. For mostly mage fights, I prefer Cerberus for its absurd movement range and ability to one-shot abotts - with its range, its rare that my units aren't able to attack in Round 1. With Drone Rider its likely they will have 1 round of just taking damage. For mostly heavy ranged fights or for fights with a mix of all 3, I'm probably sending my Heavy Ranged. They have much higher health, and they'll suffer more damage, but likely won't lose outright.
So maybe I'll build a bunch and test them out in Scrolls to see whether the attrition works in their favor. But even then, I'm only focusing them on probably half of the fights of one tournament?
Thoughts?