OK so after a good number of games under my belt, there seems to be a pattern emerging from the matches: stacked AI armies in full plate melted into stinky goo after 1-2 turns of tactical combat.  Or frozen solid, take your pick.

This wanton destruction usually comes in the form of a powerful mage or a dragon.

In other 4x games, Master of Orion 2 and Endless Space come to mind, AI opponents would actively counter whatever type of offense you were beating their brains in with.  It might take a few turns, but you would notice that their next wave of reinforcements would have a defense against what you've been blasting them with.  I can't say that I've ever seen that in FE:LH.  This is on Expert difficulty.  There are certainly a number of ways to counter fire or ice damage, but if they've done it it hasn't been effective enough to stem the carnage.

Furthermore, the AI doesn't seem to utilize this stuff itself at all.  I have never seen a dragon in an AI army.  That's not too surprising, I guess, since the AI tends to avoid all the uber mobs in general.  But I am pretty surprised that I don't see more fireballs lobbed my way.  And the AI should at least have a mage in it's most important armies to actively interrupt a cast such as Blizzard.

Then again, I think the way the AI utilizes champs could use some work anyhow.  They seem to spend way too much time buffing/debuffing, then meleeing.  And we all know how well melee champs scale for endgame, at least without super weapons dropped from Wildlands or Quest bosses, which the AI never gets.

Anyone seen better results?

I suppose I could just avoid mages and dragons but a world without nukes is a world without fun.  IMO.

P.S.  I HAVE been nuked to oblivion by STRATEGIC spells...once...which I posted another topic on.  But there was something not-quite-right about how that went down and anyway here I'm specifically talking about TACTICAL spells.