Yesterday, I have played Alarielle with Radious mod on hard diffuculty. Oh man it was total blast. N'kari has phoneix gate from start, both her and dark elf send armies to conquer Ulthuan. The moment you deal them, Belakor instantly declare war. Also all forest battle maps are total nightmare for range based armies. It was challanging and fun!
one of the things i noticed while playing her is that her spellcasting is actually fairly weak compared to the default mage options. default life mage can outdo her. her damage spells are extremely expensive and don't really do as much damage as they can. her vortex is only worth it if you have a fairly large blob of enemy infantry to cast on due to high magic cost. arcane unforging is pretty much the same, though it is a fairly good single target spell, but only when compared to other single target spells, on the battlefield i didn't notice anything substantial from this spell. tempest is a situational spell damaging and slowing flying units. a fairly redundant spell, the amount of ranged you should have in your army means this spell aint that usefull, especially considering the dark elves you fight for the majority of the game don't really utilize that many flyers for you to utilize this spell on. for supposedly being the embodiment of an elven goddess of healing she sure as hell doesn't feel much like a healer. she really needs to get a complete spell overhaul to get her feel right.
you getting money for joining safe wars is a result of this game diplomacy system being weak af. In EU4 youd never get money for that cause the game would do 1 Power check of your faction 2 Distance check 3 Not attacking enemy settlements would inflict diplomacy and reliability penalties. 4 Check if your help is needed at all 5 Taking provinces that AI wanted would most likely result in your alliance crumbling