Nations under CBM 1.6

[Sir_Dr_D]

But doing that, or giving them some other ability to make them unique is the only way to get anyone to hire those secondary commanders at all. Even if they were free, you are better off recruiting your most powerfull mage.
Even if some of those commanders could auto "train" a small number of troops, I would still see myself getting mages most of the time.

[Trumanator]

You're right, but that's just the way its going to be with the current system. Perhaps one thing that could help would be to try and make more national commanders thuggable, but that's not a real solution. In the end, unless you're playing an NI map or national commanders become recruitable outside a fort somehow they're going to run a very long third to mages and spies/assassins.