How is more damage a waste? In act 2, you can maximize every unit as long as you don't go beyond the first batch of mercenaries every week.
I was referring to the fact that he basically has no army now, so yes, he will need to do that to replenish it.
KB/HoMM sim in this game is all about archers, not about melee whatnot.
Melee whatnot is a cannon fodder only to shield your (different stacks of) archers.
1. As such the cheapest melee units are the best units.
2. You'll never have to waste ress on building mercenary related buildings.
3. Better a money spent on a bunch of rangers and thielfling archers you don't have but will combine, than on melee mercs.
Yes the enemy wizards will use their damage spells directly on your archers stack.
You counter that by the healing spell provided by the general.
Your army strength is not of much importance there but the level and skillset (spellset) of your general.
Of course, you can't go with 2-3 archers as you can't heal them if the whole stack was destroyed. However people spend all their $ on stupid hellknights and nothing is left to recruit archers, and then experience heavy losses.
I'm speaking from normal difficulty point of view.
Maybe on other difficulties the secret of success is buying only hellknights and nothing else.
On normal difficulty hellknights are overrated and overpriced trash that guarantee only a headache, not conform wins with cheap investment.
If he will continue with investing into hellknights nonsense, the blame is not on me, I've written already a few times that buying those is basically a fraud.
You know, that's a lot of hours just to try to prove people wrong!
In my game my archers got defeated easily. My footmen put up a valiant fight but were too squishy. My riders were next to useless. The HK is the unit that survived and let me win the fight.
There is no right or wrong here, you could have recruited conscripts, paladins and whichever mercs appear in that chapter.
Your choice. And not only yours, everyone and their mother on internet is shilling for hellknights except me.
I'm just saying that ingame $ could have been spent more efficiently.