At turn 85 in my restarted high elf campaign. Been focusing on building up settlements, but still at war on multiple fronts with four nearby factions, and trying to expand a bit to increase income to fund better units. The Dread Fleet pops up every few turns to attack from the west, the other pirates attack from the east, and Saphery keeps attacking my eastern province and Tiranoc is being pretty aggressive in the northwest as I try to expand a bit. I'm constantly broke or near broke, but I need a second army to help guard closer to home. My second army is headed up by a noble who can by and maintain dragon units for cheaper, and that seemed cool, but I'm not sure how to use them well aside from even more protection, which I can't afford currently.
I'm also not sure how to properly use cavalry or chariot units, as they always get wiped out or close to wiped out by enemy infantry. In general I'm bad at the battling, and usually go for auto-resolve if the odds are in my favor since that usually results in less overall damage.
Help?
Hmm You're Lothern on that map? From my own HE playthrough, you're at war with too many people. Too late now obviously but it's fairly easy to keep everyone in check with high elves using influence and just have trades with everyone. Lots of trades, lots of money, lots of armies, lots of stomping other people. I'd try going to peace with one faction at least, preferably one that's also at war with another you're at war with, so you can just kill that one in peace. Basically need to pick a side and just march on until that faction is dead.
Seems you have 3armies on this map, why 2 armies on Lothern? They're not even full, are you in the process of building them? If not, transfer the units into one and dismiss the 3rd lord, that's wasted income. That or just transfer then use the solo lord to sail around and grab treasures in the water. Not sure how many there are if any, but if you can see a bunch, that's a lot of potential gold, and it's basically free. Worst case your lord gets killed at sea and you don't have to pay for his income for a few turns, until he rez and you can resume the sailing around.
On cav and chariots, you have to micro them, so you don't want too many. I generally go with 2(of either, I don't do chariots+mounts, just one or the other), and put them on the sides of my army. Basically, move them on the edges far enough, then turn them around and rear charge. Then break from the melee with them(you often have to spam click away a bunch until they're well broken), and charge again, maybe a different units, maybe the same. Basically keep doing that and make the infantry crumble. Never let them into a melee with other stuff, they mostly suck in melee, especially chariots(at least the traditional ones, shit like Skaven bells and Dark Elves blood cauldrons can kinda fight well enough). That's why I don't get more than 2, it's a pain to micro too many but if you play on slow speed/pause a lot it's doable.
But personally on VH with High Elves, I just stacked basic units, no fancy stuff, I didn't like their cavs until the dragon knights and at that point I figured I'd rather have actual dragons than dragon knights. I'm not recommending you do that but the point is, High Elves don't really need to focus on fancy units. Bunch of spearmen, bunch of archers, a lord and a caster(or a caster lord, preferably one with healing stuff), that's good enough to beat most other armies until lategame and even lategame it can work if you replace spearmen with phoenix guards. Key is, focus fire your archers to melt shit, and spread your spears wide so nothing gets to the archer. And you need enough archers, none of this balanced AI 2-3archer units crap. You want like 8-12 of them. When you open fire, you need to see a solid stream of arrows, so that when you click something, it will basically break on the first or second volley, none of that "support fire" nonsense. High elf archers are exceptional and the more you have the better in my opinion, as long as you have enough spears to put in the way(and you don't need that many, spears are fairly solid at holding ground, and they don't need to hold ground for too long with enough archers in their back).
I rode the archer train all the way to T5. It started getting rough at some point mind you, especially in multiple armies battle due to ammo issues and it being harder to control your line, so having lightning strike to do 1vs1 helps quite a bit. But you can use more traditional tactics with some cavs on the flanks and some elite melee units in the center to pierce the lines(or on the flanks to work with the cav, works too). I just tend to favor archer strats a lot so when I play some elves, you can bet I'm stacking archers.