I attack the throne, with a neat little magical trick. Five earth/astral mages use their astral magic to form a communion, boosting one of them up to earth 3, allowing him to cast Curse of Stones. This spell causes all enemies to become greatly encumbered. Hopefully this results in them falling unconscious halfway through the fight.
More to the point, its a global battlefield spell coming around the year 1 mark. Pretty powerful. So of course, the independents at the throne somehow have a wizard with a natural fire 4 path. He proceeds to cast Flaming Arrows, a spell human players base entire armies around, turning their mass of crappy slingers into a deadly force. Then he produces two fire elementals. These are ethereal, meaning my troop's physical attacks have a 75% chance of doing nothing, and they also retaliate with 12 armor piercing fire damage. For reference, humans have 10 health. My frontline breaks entirely against the fire elementals and then retreats under a withering hail of burning sling bullets. In the end there are over 60% losses including four of the mages (I think the fatigue of the communion knocked them unconscious).
Adding insult to injury, the next turn the Abyssinians use their innate heat resistance to effortlessly swoop in and size the throne.
Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension. The real death is that this particular game is getting micro-intensive and the inevitable singleplayer boredom-quit is on its way.