Defensive gameplay and other tactics.

:smile14: I started playing fan-made campaigns based on the 3rd expansion pack (found them on the Heroes' Corner), and they are very good (Dark Messiah, Day of Fire). In Dark Messiah (the quest campaign for the Dwarves), in one of the missions, a dwarf walks through a forest and constantly fights wolves. The combination of harpooners and berserkers turned out to be very effective. The wolves stop outside the berserkers' attack range on the first turn:smile14. And you can lure them into the attack range with harpooners:smile28. There was also a mission where you go through a forest with poisonous hydras (large groups are very unpleasant to fight). I placed summoning crystals around my troops (with a one-tile gap from my own). The hydras attacked them and died from the shards. There was a lot of mana, and summoning magic was well-developed, so out of a group of 80 hydras, only 5 remained, which I destroyed in close combat without any losses.

Added 12 minutes later

use "Puppet Master" on each of the mages, as they have it thanks to the AI.

I mean the Dominate spell