No pvp experience, but I've been experimenting on the higher difficulties a bit, mainly with Loth and Arleon on challenging difficulty.

-Loth's best troop from a resource investment standpoint is the Legion, their ultra troop. Expensive, but incredible value for what you pay comparatively. But I would say their best troop from a meta standpoint are the rats. Legions take a while to get and cost amber when upgraded, but rats are so effective for their cost that they make it very easy to expand and grow your economy. Most of the early game is about clearing neutral mobs efficiently with minimal cost and rats are quite possibly the best 'trash' mob in the game for this purpose.

As for worst units? Not sure Loth actually has any lol. Some might say the cultists but the building that generates them is primarily for making necromancers, so the cultists just feel like a bonus troop considering the building is worth getting for necromancers alone. Everything has to be assessed within context. If I'm getting the building anyways I'd rather the cultists be there than not. I think you'll find a lot of the game works like this.

-Arleon's best troop are hands down the Fists of Order, the upgraded knights. Absolutely insane quality for their price point and possibly the best unit in the game in that regard. They do cost celestial ore though which can gate you from recruiting them early unless you get lucky. And if you're curious, it's not worth buying the ore to recruit them, or any unit for that matter unless you're either drowning in gold or have built 4-5 trading posts (and in both of those scenarios you're probably winning anyways).

Worst units are sadly the Faey. All of them. They're just not as efficient as the human troops in my experience. The Faey Spirits take the cake for the worst of them though. They hit like trucks but they're also made of paper and you'll have to replace them constantly. And unlike the rats, they're not cheap. They become a real strain on your economy if you're overly reliant on them and the horned ones you get from the same building don't make up for it, unlike the necromancers with cultists.

That's really all I feel comfortable commenting on. I still need to experiment more with Barya and Rana to get more insight into their troops.

Originally posted by BadAssMilkDaddy:

No pvp experience, but I've been experimenting on the higher difficulties a bit, mainly with Loth and Arleon on challenging difficulty.

-Loth's best troop from a resource investment standpoint is the Legion, their ultra troop. Expensive, but incredible value for what you pay comparatively. But I would say their best troop from a meta standpoint are the rats. Legions take a while to get and cost amber when upgraded, but rats are so effective for their cost that they make it very easy to expand and grow your economy. Most of the early game is about clearing neutral mobs efficiently with minimal cost and rats are quite possibly the best 'trash' mob in the game for this purpose.

As for worst units? Not sure Loth actually has any lol. Some might say the cultists but the building that generates them is primarily for making necromancers, so the cultists just feel like a bonus troop considering the building is worth getting for necromancers alone. Everything has to be assessed within context. If I'm getting the building anyways I'd rather the cultists be there than not. I think you'll find a lot of the game works like this.

-Arleon's best troop are hands down the Fists of Order, the upgraded knights. Absolutely insane quality for their price point and possibly the best unit in the game in that regard. They do cost celestial ore though which can gate you from recruiting them early unless you get lucky. And if you're curious, it's not worth buying the ore to recruit them, or any unit for that matter unless you're either drowning in gold or have built 4-5 trading posts (and in both of those scenarios you're probably winning anyways).

Worst units are sadly the Faey. All of them. They're just not as efficient as the human troops in my experience. The Faey Spirits take the cake for the worst of them though. They hit like trucks but they're also made of paper and you'll have to replace them constantly. And unlike the rats, they're not cheap. They become a real strain on your economy if you're overly reliant on them and the horned ones you get from the same building don't make up for it, unlike the necromancers with cultists.

That's really all I feel comfortable commenting on. I still need to experiment more with Barya and Rana to get more insight into their troops.

that's very interesting, thanks for the great response! also thanks for the tip about not buying ressources not buy expensive units, i do it all the time and was questioning myself if it was really worth it economically. I haven't played alot with Loth but I noticed the rats being quite easy to spam, i also didn't really like the necromancers, they died all the time lol but i guess that's just a skill issue.

I mainly played Arleon and Barya, for Arleon I 100% agree that the faey spirit are complete garbage, probably the worst unit in the game and for that alone I don't think it's worth going for faeys either... I like the horned one but they don't feel as strong and cheap as the Barya brutes and the Faey noble feels very average for their last tier unit... it's a shame since I like the nobles alot. Haven't really played alot with the knights, weirdly played with alot of their units beside them, maybe that's why I thought Arleon felt kinda weak lol

Barya I absolutely love, might be my favorite faction, they're a bit lacking in terms of magic, mainly focusing only on destruction and a bit of order but the guns and canons are very easy to use and powerful. The most fun i'v had though is with Dreaths spam and Brutes, absolute powerhouse! A little buff with the pipers and a few muskets and you're ready to go! Spears are also pretty strong, the AI use them alot and they feel very dangerous.

Originally posted by Opochtli:

i also didn't really like the necromancers, they died all the time lol but i guess that's just a skill issue.

You have to upgrade them to get their ability that generates their essence again and then cast Strengthen Essence on them twice. With just two casts it gets them up to 6 Arcana and 3 Destruction on their turn, then you use the ability to do it again. You can generate 18 mana a turn on a single unit, which you may have noticed is a ♥♥♥♥ ton. It essentially turns their ability into "instead of attacking, cast Arcane Storm or Fireball". It's real silly. Just remember to pair them with Legionnaires or Legions for the order essence. You need it to cast Strengthen Essence so bring at least 3 of them.

Also magic is busted, if that wasn't apparent.

Edit: Cultists also give order essence, but you should really focus on Legionnaires or Legions. You need a frontline.

Some of these factions I'm a little out of date on maybe.

Arleon:

Militia are great for early ranged attacks and they're pretty tough and not terrible in melee.

Minstrels make great essence and have a nice buff for your whole army, especially when upgraded.

Agreed that the Faey are pretty bad in general - I guess it's a positive that you can get Horned Ones and Faey Spirits from the same building but otherwise Horned Ones really can't keep up with Knights.

Faey Nobles really don't impress for the price. Compare one to a Fist of Order - sure, they're ranged but still...plus the tough building requirement.


Loth:

Rats or Oathbound are both solid, also fond of Toxicologists. Oooh and Spectres - the upgrade stealing essence is nice.

Not a fan of Scholars/Necromancers actually. Sure, they make a lot of essence but they're expensive and frail and will be murdered by every enemy ranged unit. I'd rather get essence from upgraded spectres.


Rana:

Chelun. Chelun Elders are my favorite unit in the game. They're like Necromancers except tougher and incredibly resistant to ranged attacks. If the enemy tries a ranged fight, they won't hurt the Chelun. If they walk forward through all your acid clouds and hit the Chelun they're going to get retaliated against and probably pretty hard. A slow tough melee unit is the perfect place for charge essence, where a frail ranged unit with no retaliation is the worst.
Ravagers are also good.

I don't understand Guards at all. They're feel like they're supposed to guard ranged units, but Rana isn't likely to have a lot of ranged units to guard. And Chelun don't need a slow, low damage guard.


Barya:

Dire Dreaths, obviously. Tinkerers are also great, and I'm fond of Musketeer/Pikeneers as a combo from one building. Honestly I kinda like all the Barya units.

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Chelun Elders are my favorite unit in the game. They're like Necromancers except tougher and incredibly resistant to ranged attacks. If the enemy tries a ranged fight, they won't hurt the Chelun. If they walk forward through all your acid clouds and hit the Chelun they're going to get retaliated against and probably pretty hard. A slow tough melee unit is the perfect place for charge essence, where a frail ranged unit with no retaliation is the worst.
Ravagers are also good.

Not trying to be a contrarian but Chelun are terrible essence generators when measured against Necromancers, to the point that they're not even comparable units. Mainly because Rana doesn't have access to order essence units. You can't cast Strengthen Essence without order, which means that Necromancers are a whopping 3 times better than Chelun when it comes to essence generation, generally speaking. Chelun are still great units but that's because of their crazy stats, not their ability to generate essence, that's just a nice utility bonus.

Also my Necromancers never get shot because they always have tanky order producing units in front of them and the AI is horrible at target acquisition. It will pretty much always shoot the closest thing to it. Though I can definitely see them being worse in multiplayer against a human who can focus them. But against the computer they should always die last. This has never been an issue for me.

Originally posted by BadAssMilkDaddy:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Chelun Elders are my favorite unit in the game. They're like Necromancers except tougher and incredibly resistant to ranged attacks. If the enemy tries a ranged fight, they won't hurt the Chelun. If they walk forward through all your acid clouds and hit the Chelun they're going to get retaliated against and probably pretty hard. A slow tough melee unit is the perfect place for charge essence, where a frail ranged unit with no retaliation is the worst.
Ravagers are also good.

Not trying to be a contrarian but Chelun are terrible essence generators when measured against Necromancers, to the point that they're not even comparable units. Mainly because Rana doesn't have access to order essence units. You can't cast Strengthen Essence without order, which means that Necromancers are a whopping 3 times better than Chelun when it comes to essence generation, generally speaking. Chelun are still great units but that's because of their crazy stats, not their ability to generate essence, that's just a nice utility bonus.

Also my Necromancers never get shot because they always have tanky order producing units in front of them and the AI is horrible at target acquisition. It will pretty much always shoot the closest thing to it. Though I can definitely see them being worse in multiplayer against a human who can focus them. But against the computer they should always die last. This has never been an issue for me.

Eh, sorta. Spending your first turn strengthening essence for future turns instead of just killing enemies is of questionable value since it takes awhile to pay off.

I guess with careful arrangement you can keep the ai from ranged attacks, but it's still tricker.

A big part of it is the magic access to me - destruction is not as good compared to creation. Although looking at it maybe they nerfed it a lot since I last abused Chelun.

Acid cloud absolutely ruins everyone.

Earth block was the best spell in the game but I think they fixed that, so this is a point against. When it made two blocks it made every melee unit useless.

Entangle still exists, and it's worth mentioning that if you hit lvl 3 a single Chelun makes enough essence to keep an enemy unit from ever moving and have enough to spare to drop acid clouds on him.

Repelling an enemy through an acid cloud back to the other side of the map for massive damage is a beautiful thing.

Basically melee units are useless against chelun (heck, you also have access to a 50% melee resist spell AND initiative manipulation so you always hit first twice in a row if anyone somehow makes it through the acidic knockback entangle hellscape) and ranged units can't ever stand still and do low damage.

Necromancers look flashier but strengthen essence on turn one doesn't even pay off until turn three or four, and you don't have the time to spend turns doing nothing on any actually hard fight.


These are all just my opinions though, I'm definitely no pro...and like I said some of my experience is based on old patches where the balance was different.

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Eh, sorta. Spending your first turn strengthening essence for future turns instead of just killing enemies is of questionable value since it takes awhile to pay off.

I guess with careful arrangement you can keep the ai from ranged attacks, but it's still tricker.

A big part of it is the magic access to me - destruction is not as good compared to creation. Although looking at it maybe they nerfed it a lot since I last abused Chelun.

Acid cloud absolutely ruins everyone.

Earth block was the best spell in the game but I think they fixed that, so this is a point against. When it made two blocks it made every melee unit useless.

Entangle still exists, and it's worth mentioning that if you hit lvl 3 a single Chelun makes enough essence to keep an enemy unit from ever moving and have enough to spare to drop acid clouds on him.

Repelling an enemy through an acid cloud back to the other side of the map for massive damage is a beautiful thing.

Basically melee units are useless against chelun (heck, you also have access to a 50% melee resist spell AND initiative manipulation so you always hit first twice in a row if anyone somehow makes it through the acidic knockback entangle hellscape) and ranged units can't ever stand still and do low damage.

Necromancers look flashier but strengthen essence on turn one doesn't even pay off until turn three or four, and you don't have the time to spend turns doing nothing on any actually hard fight.


These are all just my opinions though, I'm definitely no pro...and like I said some of my experience is based on old patches where the balance was different.

So just to clarify how it works, you can cast Strengthen Essence on Necromancers before they get their first turn. Necromancers have one of the lowest initiative stats in the game, which actually works in their favor since you need to generate order essence on your frontline first in order to cast Strengthen Essence. With the right army composition/skills you can cast it twice before a Necromancer even gets a turn. It costs 12 total essence to cast 2 Strengthen Essence, 6 order and 6 arcana, which is not a tall order on Loth. When your Necromancer gets his turn (this is still turn one mind you) they generate 6 arcana and 3 destruction, then 6 arcana and 3 destruction again for 18 total essence. Without Strengthen Essence they would have generated 6 total essence, meaning you spend 12 essence to immediately get it back the same turn, then you generate 12 for free the next 1-3 turns depending on your order/arcana magic levels (which should be high because magic is busted on Loth particularly).

In short, it's a net neutral investment on turn 1, then pays dividends the next turn. And the turn after. And the turn after. Spending the first turn to "do nothing" on Necromancers doesn't even matter. Most units do nothing on their first turn anyways as they either move up to engage or position on high ground. Necromancers don't need to spend their first turn moving because spells can be cast from anywhere. In fact, I usually move them as far back as possible because there's no reason not to. They are effectively an infinite range unit with 1 turn of charge up time, a turn most units spend not attacking to begin with. The point being that Necromancers have no downside that other units don't already suffer from. The only difference is that other units don't let you cast a top level spell literally every turn after the frontlines meet.

Huh, they must have made strengthen essence a lot cheaper than I remember - it looks like it got buffed the same patch that earth block was nerfed and I just never looked back.

It used to be a pretty hefty negative investment and also not stack, which was pretty rough.

I'm still not sure they can compete with the complete invulnerability to anything but magic that Chelun offer though - Necromancers need support, Chelun can beat any AI army with nothing but an army full of stacks of 1 Chelun Elder each.

Heck creation is so nuts I've beaten huge stacks with like, 7 troubadours just because they make enough creation essence. If necromancers had creation I'd probably think they're better, but...without it...Loth really just feels behind Rana as a busted magic faction because you miss out on the best damage spells and the best disables.

True, you do miss out on disables but I think that's by design. As for damage, Loth gets Rupture, which is the highest single target damage spell in the game, and Fireball, which has the same AoE as Acid Cloud while dealing similar damage. Pretty sure Loth was designed to just have a billion damage options because they get like 6 more damage spells on top of those. Honestly Rupture alone makes Necromancers insane. Get both destruction and arcana to level 3 and that spell will erase anything you put it on.

Also I don't think needing support makes a unit worse. Barya Hellbreaths need support and that unit is insane.

1x necromancer in each slot. Hero with max unit slots and 3x in destruction magic and arcana? Research initiative, and max initiative via items/hero.
You get to play before enemy, use 2 the huge aoe arcane blast, and huge aoe firestorm. Then use rest on single target spells.
If enemy is not dead. Your next army can be anything and you scoop up the rest.

Originally posted by banetrapperdev:

1x necromancer in each slot. Hero with max unit slots and 3x in destruction magic and arcana? Research initiative, and max initiative via items/hero.
You get to play before enemy, use 2 the huge aoe arcane blast, and huge aoe firestorm. Then use rest on single target spells.
If enemy is not dead. Your next army can be anything and you scoop up the rest.

You can do the same with Chelun Elders with the added bonus of being completely immune to enemy melee units and mostly immune to ranged ones (it's a little harder keeping them entirely out of range, but possible)

In particular magic resist counters the Necromancer plan pretty hard, but the Chelun Elder plan literally doesn't even care.

Sure, magic resist 75% of my damage, doesn't matter when you're stuck immobile in an acid cloud for the whole fight!