With the champions of law start, you can pump out four paladins from the get-go for 4,000 gold. It's not much, but you can also afford a marketplace, plus "buffer" buildings. You might even fit a monk or two in there, if you so desire.
Agrela's healers can really help out, if they're kept safe. An excellent scenario is where a couple paladins are knee-deep in goblins and berserking on their green arses, while a healer or two stand in the background and keep their health topped-off, thus rendering them practically immortal.
A not-so excellent scenario is where the positions of the paladins and the healers are reversed.
Oh, one more thing... Ruins of Esterhausen (what I used to use before I gave up completely and settled for goblins) and cannon fodder will both result in ratman shamans showing up. This means plague, the oh-so-wonderful ailment of the masses.
Well, I discovered a long time ago that healers are capable of curing plague with their healing spell. If they see anyone who's infected, even if they are not otherwise injured, they'll toss some magic cure-all at them and continue on their way. Even peasants and tax collectors.
This is one more reason why Agrela is just ace.
On an unrelated note, I really just don't understand why people would want to build a temple to Helia. Sure, infinite-range attack spells are fun, and the warrior-priestesses ain't too shabby when it comes to smacking stuff, but they pale in comparison to what Lunord offers.
The Solarii are slow-ish, and they spend too much time hanging out in the wrong places. Sure it's nice to beef up a guardhouse with the extra power, but it's quite often that you'll put a guardhouse in places where "a guardhouse" is sufficient. You don't need a hero on-call just to fight off the occasional giant rat (regardless of what years of classic RPGs have taught us).
Adepts, on the other hand, are only middling fighters. But they're freakishly fast, and they will patrol everywhere. Plus, if you do decide to tempt them away with a juicy reward flag, they'll be out there in a flash.
But what I really like are the temple spells... Or, more precisely, the spell. Winged feet.
I don't care how much damage you do with sun scorch, heroes will always be your main method of dishing out the hurt. But you'll never have a hero who can put turbo jets on your caravans, tax collectors, and long-range peasants.
Wind storm has its uses, but it seems a bit expensive for having such a short tossing range. It's brilliant for scattering a pack of goblins or ratmen however, allowing you to single out the shamans while their bodyguards are otherwise occupied.
If you really desperately need more thugs, I suppose you could go for Helia. But Lunord's adepts got a major buffing-up with the expansion, so now they've got a host of cool new spells to help them out.
On another completely unrelated note, a fun way of playing is to disable all guilds and temples in the build menu, and then just play with the reinforcements special option (possibly veteran heroes as well, if you're not using the other slot for something useful).
By the way, has anyone ever had a "high-intelligence hero" learn one of those public access spells in the library? I think I remember having a priestess of Krypta leatn power shock, but I'm not entirely sure. I always wanted to figure out exactly what was going on with that...
In other other other news, Zesty Puddle is now one of my favorite hero names. Cultists are just so damned cool.