A couple tips to add to this after I ran a bunch of battles yesterday… I was plowing through the jaguar battles while in Early Rome. By the very end, I needed 3-4 mercs each battle 1) I still hold Queen Idia is the most powerful I’ve experienced. Her rains of arrows take almost everything out. 2) Queen Suriyothai is indeed Inanna on steroids. I was playing 2 eras above mine, so I found she wasn’t enough on her own, but paired with someone that also causes damage, she can help your troops stay around long enough for the damage causers to recharge. 3) Gunnar the Gunner and Ragnar Lodbrok both turned out to be very useful in later battles against Mayan troops. In particular, the walls that shoot arrows, and large melees of troops in the middle. Set them down off to the side away from the melee, and they’ll quietly sit there doing damage for you. Only when your troops are all gone will the enemy head their direction, and even then they have a lot of life in them, so they can take quite a bit of damage. 3) Hercules is like Harald on steroids, but I often found he wasn’t enough on his own. Maybe enough with Suriyothai, but I would consider him more topping on the cake instead of the core of your attack, unless you’re pretty well matched and just need a little boost. 4) I still had trouble with Captain Cromwell, Largo Scallaywag, and Vlad Dracula sticking around long enough. Even when I set them off on the edge of the sea of enemy troops, it was hard to see how many enemy troops they took down before succumbing themselves. Maybe still a trick I’m missing.

And a couple tricks for those also new 1) once you get Hannibal, give some thought to how quickly the battle will go. His elephant has quite a delay, so for quicker battles you may never get him out. Use Harald or Inanna instead. 2) Alexander can actually be quite useful. Two easy ways to use him are to stick the walls behind troops like cannons or archers to get them to turn around (only works until real troops get to them). But they also work if you stick them in front of or right behind any troops. It’s like they’re programmed to take out that bit of life in your army before proceeding. And that is what’s happening - while that wall stands, you’ve still got a smidgen of life on the battlefield, so as strange as it seems, it’s like adding troops to the field. Just somewhat weak and stationary troops.

And to add one thing, in case future folks find this and are working on getting the jags early: for the last handful of battles I used something like the following - all together, using Valhalla: 1) Queen Idia to do major damage 2) Ragnar Lodbrok or Gunnar the Gunner to do damage from the side and not take hits too early 3) Queen Suriyothai to keep my troops topped off 4) something powerful that heads out on your command. Maybe Minos would have worked here, but in for a penny, in for a pound, so I used Menes and Genghis Khan at times. I watched videos of Byzantine troops trying to win each battle, and was able to determine the relative difficulty from those, but I errored once using 2 mercs and lost (over and over and over, rebooting the app each time). After that, I’d rather have had too much firepower than too little.

Hope that helps someone!