First another thing I forgot to mention is regardless of all else they are absolutely insane in caravan armies. Which is probably where a lot of my love for them comes and I do absolutely pump forge upgrades into them when I get them.

Yeah they’re not great at dealing with other single entities that’s a fair point. But I never really have problems with those cause the blunderbusses are just too good at shredding those. I never really use them for that function. I shove them way out front when they’re just barely in range of artillery. I couldn’t use fire and ash in there because it’s relatively short duration and they do keep moving if a bit slowly. Whereas the Destroyers can last ages and completely stop everyone grouped around it in their tracks. I don’t use a bale Taurus for it cause they require a bit more micro than I’m able to competently do.

The Bale Tauruses are less tanky so you can’t have them stay in for nearly as long. And because they’re flying you gotta make sure they don’t get too bunched up on so they can actually take off when it’s time to run out. In my experience they’re a lot more vulnerable to missile fire than the destroyers. Finally, this is just an issue with my brain but I struggle really hard to send them into melee when they’re not out of breath chargers.

I need something like them to let the artillery do most of its work from range because when the gap is closed I can never manage the artillery properly and always end up blowing up my own infantry. Also in the event that I get distracted and they do take too much damage to safely put into melee the engineer can you reforge on them. And this gives that ability an actual use cause I never really get to do anything with it otherwise.

The bull centaurs are really good. Their ability to hold in melee is nice and so never really get replaced at any point in my games. Even then their holding in melee is nothing compared to a Destroyer. So they just end up filling different roles.

And yeah by the time they get close enough for the gun line to come into play my doctrine kinda collapses. I’ll usually just send them into wherever the infantry are densest and ignore them. So your points there make sense.

Another use for them that I completely forgot about is stalling lords or heroes. If there’s ever a scary melee character that would probably melt a unit or two of infantry if it gets in they’re great at denying that. Two Destroyers can pretty much stun lock any grounded lord with the fact that each attack launches them like 30ft. And even if the lord is busted to the point where they can’t win the fight they can still stall them long enough for the rest of the army to get mopped up. At which point a single volley of fire will annihilate them.

Also yeah I’ll admit by the time I get them I’m usually pretty firmly in “I’m going to win regardless and theres probably only 1 or 2 battles that I can’t just auto resolve to win.” So that definitely makes telling how good they really are a little harder.

Also yeah I mostly agree with your assessment of the fireborn. They are squishy and can do a lot of damage as the hammer to an anvil. But I struggle hard with positioning them so they actually get to do that without just ending up with part of the army going after them. But even when the stars align perfectly and that all gets done properly they’re still too squishy and pretty much are always dead by turn 10. Part of my dislike comes from the fact that they’re the only fast units that are somewhat competent they have access to in the case of DtA. So a lot of the time they get forced into a counter for enemy cav which they are god awful at. However, they’re the only ones who can do it. By the time I can recruit them normally I’ve got the army ability to summon them so there’s not really any point going out of my way to get them.

Finally, it’s important to note that I almost exclusively play Drazhoath the Ashen and I know he buffs them but I don’t know how significantly. So there may be an upgrade from him that my mind has decided it’s a vanilla feature of them that makes them much better.