Manual for Age of Wonders

Yes, there is a way to influence it. When you win a map, you get a selection of your 8 "strongest" units to choose from. It seems like the computer thinks of your highest-levelled units as strongest, and chooses randomly if various strongest-levelled units are present.

So you better just save right before your final battle (so you can go back if you find yourself not being ready for this battle yet), disband all of your unneeded units, and save again (so if you make a mistake during combat, you don't have to make the disbanding work again).

You cannot be suggested to take disbanded units into the next map (as they are neutral now and no longer belong to you), so it works. Tested and helped me to take my gold medal Pony Riders into the second map of the Keepers campaign on my first run instead of an army of Halfling Clerics that I used to heal my army of Pony Riders.

Heavengames has been an effective wiki for the first Age of Wonders games.

This page has compiled a list of units in Age of Wonders, by race, in a tech tree format. See images for part of the regular and printer-friendly versions.