Oh yea, one of the biggest black marks I put against the commander class is that the AI is terrible at playing it.
I have seen how he plays via the F11 option, however I am handicapping myself by letting the AI play both sides (its too big an unfair advantage for me otherwise).
Also, it saves a good bit of time to have it auto resolve.

> but with illusionary battle you can level all of his troops

I'm curious - what does the "he realizes it was fake and his morale is lowered" bit do? It didn't seem to make any difference to his morale when I used it.

well leveling all troops is even better don't you think so
and his morale and the moral of his troops is reduces by one - i think -but troops regenerate morale between the shard turns
so it is not his maximum morale that is reduced but the actual morale you can see that if you right click on a unit - it is like the HP/ammo/Stamina bar that gets reduced in combat but morale is more like HP and restores slowly and not like ammo/stamina which get instantly restored after a battle - that is why early on i dont like to fight against sorcerers with a small army - their fear spell can deplete the moral of all troops and even if you win your army will be crippled for the next turns - because just like low Hp/stamina if you have low morale you get a penalty on your damage

I am pretty sure it says province morale was lowered..
Aka, the people of the province are pissed that you disrupted their daily lives with a big fake training battle running through their town and get a temporary penalty to content level...
I think that is what it does, I am not sure.

It temporarily damages the unit's morale - not the provinces. As if they had a fear spell cast on them, or they had a friend die nearby. It'll regenerate to whatever their morale stat is.

Okay. He must have regenerated whatever morale he lost in the process - I didn't look at the rest of his army, but maybe they were feeling the blues (or lacking it, in this case).

You can also be above your base morale - killing enemies, winning fights knocks your morale up - it can stack pretty high. I've seen mine in the mid 20s with a base 10 swordsman. Since if morale is 15 or higher you get a stat boost, it can be pretty nice.

So heroes get more XP if they personally finish off enemy units? Oh man, and I always avoided killing stuff with the heroes to level the troops because I thought the hero gets all the XP anyway.

Thank you Gremlion, that is very detailed. You really know the game inside out.

So casting the more spells you cast/stamina you burn the more xp you get, even if you never attack? Good to know.

What, except not getting points prevents me from camping on a map when the game is won and massing karma in this time?

Ummm, so a summon heavy Wizard is going to really be gimping his xp gains for both himself and his regular troops?

This would be a yes but sometimes you would not win without the summons so therefore it's actually getting them exp right? lol

So... I just failed a shard invade on Beginner. I went after Beleth immediately after it became an available choice.

I backed up my save first, because I knew that I wouldn't attempt this so soon otherwise. But I'm curious whether it makes any difference, and I'm also curious whether Master domains are random or not.

In my case, it was a bit rough. There were Mandrake and Wood in the second ring, and... that's it. Horses and Iron were both super deep in Beleth's territory. I had Brigands and Archers for almost the entire game. I went Scout --> Commander, and I got fairly deep in, but it was so hard to defend the Iron deposit, having just barely made it there in the first place, and having to run to a Storehouse every 2-3 turns.

I eventually failed after I tried to invest in Tier 2 troops to make use of my new resource. By the time I had Iron, I only had 1.5k gold saved up, which just wasn't going to do it at all. I wanted to go pikeman-horse archer-monk-swordsman, but it just wasn't going to happen at that rate. I was also hiring Guards almost every turn just to keep my borders safe and my Scout connected to home, and I had to do so without Iron.

It really sucks getting screwed for resources. If it weren't for my epic quiver/bow I found in a random shop, I never would have even made it that far.

I'm not sure what to do. I could go slower and even resort to manual battle every battle all game long, but Eador is really time-consuming even with auto-battle.

Maybe there's something to be gained from having more shards, but I doubt it. Getting a couple buildings on Turn 1 can't really make up for not having horses and iron, and I don't really need to unlock Tier 3 or the rest of Tier 2 in that case, either. I just don't see this being any easier if I come back to it later.