So, i made a thread about a year about my troubles with strategic resources in this game, specifically the lack of them. I must admit, I got fed up with constantly falling behind the AI, and cheated a fair amount, giving myself whatever factional traits I so desired, just to play around. EL's user friendly .xml files let me do that easily. But even with veins of Auriga, I find myself simply unable to produce more than 3 or 4 units armed with strategic resources, and not nearly in the level that the AI was deploying them. I just peeked over in my game and saw that my Vaulter AI neighbor had produced nearly TWENTY squads of marines, all of whom had more initiative than I could manage (they didn't seem to produce any dawn officers or Titans, so that problem still exists with the AI, devs). I'm assuming they'd made the leap from Glassteel and Titantium to the next tier, which, since this is on impossible, was very much likely. I'd set the difficulty that high because, as I mentioned, I'd cheated a fairly large amount with the custom faction editor. 

I'm assuming that this is not a problem in the game itself, but rather with my playstyle. So, how exactly does one produce armies in the quality and quantity required for war in this game? Each and every single time, I've taken a look at what foe stood before me and alt+f4'd because there was no way to triumph, seeing things from the statistical viewpoint. Do I just say heck with it, and start deploying units with iron and dust only and save the strategics to be escorted with heroes? If so, how should those elite units be designed? Shine unto me your wisdom, oh gurus of internet wisdom!

You do know that the AI gets huge bonuses to every resource they produce on higher difficulty levels right?

So for every one Glassteel deposit that you get 1 a turn for, they get something like 4 or so on Impossible. Maybe not play on the highest difficulty level?

oh, I am well aware of that. I was just asking for tips so I could make better use of my supply. 

From what I recall, your best bet might be to go on the offensive early and quickly move your closest neighbor off the board. Might have to be hyper aggressive to do it but you'd then create breathing room to expand and get more resources.

Actually vaulters also gain triple of their holy resource during the winter. And even if you matched their equipment they gain an additional 30% bonus on stats granted from equipment made from their holy resource. So.. if you want Strategic resources go vaulters.

I used to make a high quantity of units and just not use strategics on my units at all, but deck out my generals in strategic accessories.  Doing this I would just auto my battles and lose a lot of units, but I would just rebuild them.

Lately I've been building fewer units with strategics and manualing my battles to minimize losses, but I'm considering switching back, I'm torn.

You really only need 1 - 2 equipped armies for a war.  What I've found to be the best use of strategics is to use a strategic weapon and iron/dust for everything else and no strategic accessories on units.  If you want to use strategics on units at least.

On higher difficulties you really have to manual your battles to minimize losses if your units are valuable.

djtooth wrote:

Actually vaulters also gain triple of their holy resource during the winter. And even if you matched their equipment they gain an additional 30% bonus on stats granted from equipment made from their holy resource. So.. if you want Strategic resources go vaulters.

Vaulters + silics + fortresses = insane. 

I was playing a mp game with a few friends (I was roving clans, he vaulters), and he earned a ton of resources. he had the luck of having 5 silics villages. 

So played them in SP, got 3 silic villages, and yeah, midgame you can quite easily make 20-30/ turn.