Yeah. The zombie dragon is just... Such a huge disappointment. I build Mannfred for pure combat power (probably not the best, but heh!) he was my missile that I could point at any enemy unit, or even a group of enemy units, pull the firing button. And they'd be taken care of.
Now on a zombie dragon I feel like I have to babysit him all the time, be way more careful, and he doesn't even feel like he's much more killy for it! It's just a really sad 'upgrade' all around.
I cry every time.
I think maybe a better compromise for monster riders would be to give them two healthbars, sure, make them more killy (even more killy then they are now) but have they die quick, but when they do die that just means the monster is wounded (maybe needs some amount of cash/time to nurse back health?) and the lord steps out of the carcass and keeps on slaying. Or at least something better then this ultimate sadness...
Edit: Also I have to say, in comparisons to the total war games I've played in the past, the combat seems pretty disappointing. Not the like, tactical stuff of moving your dudes around, getting flanks, and that sorta thing, but the actual unit to unit model to model combat and how the health works and such. Stuff just seems... So much more resilient. Even on low difficulty I can charge a unit of bog standard T1 infantry with multiple units of shock Cavalry, and when zoomed out it looks properly glorious, broken bodies splaying out 20 feet back. But then disappointingly all the dudes who were throw back just stand right back up and walk into the fray, at which point the units just sorta gyrate against each other for about a minute, the infantry apparently largely unbothered by the fact that they were just partially surrounded by four times their number in heavy Cavalry that sent them all flying on the charge, until eventually their moral ticks over and like 2/3 of the unit of infantry are still alive and they just walk away. And of course I need to send a unit to chase them down otherwise they just go for like 50 meters and then think "You know, that wasn't so bad. Lets go back in for seconds lads!" Combat between infantry also has this issue somewhat, I'll totally surround a T1 unit with five times their number in high tier anti infantry infantry, and it'll be like... five minutes to kill half of them! It really seems insane. And when I zoom in it looks like that's because all the models are just buzzing against each other, only the very odd swing, and I wonder if there's something happening that lowers the damage done in a combat by overcrowding, as insanely stupid as that thought is. The only halfway satisfying combat I've found is with flying units, probably because there's not really a limit on how many models can crash into one unit. When I have a full half of my army flying, and send the whole group crashing into a single low tier unit, and there's not an enemy general nearby, if I'm lucky sometimes they break on the charge.
Whew, that turned into a bit of a rant. I still think this game is really fun. But, yeah, everyones health seems really inflated to me, and I can't help but wonder why that is. To bring it back around to monsters, this resiliency makes them quite disappointing. Mannfred charges in, sends the unit scattering, they just get back up, doesn't matter that like 4 tons of zombie dragon just smushed them and that they should probably be more interested in modeling for vampire blood pancakes then they should be in fighting at this point. Just get back up and wade back in. And oh look since they can all attack at once, the dragon gets totally wrecked as it sorta gyrates about doing practically nothing.