JetJaguar wrote:
Of the following, which is the weakest faction?



Wild Walkers

Vaulters

Roving Clans

Ardent Mages



Until the AI is patched, I'd like to challenge myself by playing as the overall weakest faction. I just finished a game as the Drakken and I don't want to play as the same faction twice in a row. and The Broken Lords, Cultist, and Necrophages seem to have faction affinities and traits that may be best tried after one has experience with the more conventional factions.



Thanks in advance.

As far as I can tell there is no weakest faction no matter the settings vs. AI. But a harder early game experience could be had with the Broken Lords lol. Necrophages can be slightly interesting vs. AI, and Cultists I've never tried vs. AI. Everything else seems rather easy except maybe the Roving Clans because you can't declare war... in fact I'm not sure how to win with them, never played them Period. lol, I'm a warmonger and even if I set out for a Wonder or Science victory I end up with a Supremacy or Elimination because one annoyance leads to another and boredom sets in.

Broken Lords - They are crippled from start to finish. I'd call them Cripple Lords if it was more socially acceptable. Oops, never mind. I already did.

Unmoveable militia would definitely be a good one. It doesn't seem right that any 1-unit army can just rampage through your villages. When you get a 6 or 8-move cavalry piece running around the map, it's too hard to play zones of control and protect your exposed villages.



I would even settle for making newly spawned units cost zero upkeep until you take them out of the village. At least that way you can keep a unit in there until you need it, and have it be some kind of deterrence.

red_locust wrote:
Cultists seem great once you get past that initial fragile period where you can get royally screwed if someone hunts down your few minor faction towns. Once you get it going, you're a machine. Your one city with Cultist governor is an absolute monster. You build buildings far faster than any other city, which lets you spend time building uber archer units. Just pray you get glassteel in your region. You can use your free units to overwhelm the enemy with reinforcements.



The only weakness is the vulnerability of your minor faction towns. The AI doesn't get this, but it likes to kill villages anyways. A human player can totally frustrate you by taking out villages... the double influence cost to reinstate villages is just too expensive.

I think that allowing bonuses to militia and army sizes to apply to the villages might help. For example, they don't have a militia garrison as is, so their Militia garrison slots on city is 0. You research Meritocratic promotion, granting +2 militia garrison slots on empire, granting actual militia units to the minor faction villages. Of course, they would respawn more slowly, similar to the other units produced by villages.

JetJaguar wrote:
Of the following, which is the weakest faction?



Wild Walkers

Vaulters

Roving Clans

Ardent Mages



Until the AI is patched, I'd like to challenge myself by playing as the overall weakest faction. (...)

Wild Walkers - unique trait seems not that good at all, but are pretty powerful because of great t1 ranged unit and best production heroes in the game. In my opinion the are insane if given a nice woodland territory.

Vaulters - hell no. Vaulters are currently "EL easy mode".

Roving Clans - rough description above, but require a bit more skill to play to their best possible potential. Unless you use the "all boosters active for 5 luxury each no matter how many cities you have" trick, which is better than bonuses endless difficulty AI is enjoying. If you do, they are even better than the Vaulters.



Gotta go for Ardent Mages out of those 4. Although if you really want the weakest faction, go for Broken Lords any time.



Seriously. Go for Broken Lords.

Visko wrote:




OH and I'm not sure how smaller/fast games play out for Cultists, but it doesn't seem very good for them.

Nosferatiel is the Cultists guy. He'll know.

Cultists seem great once you get past that initial fragile period where you can get royally screwed if someone hunts down your few minor faction towns. Once you get it going, you're a machine. Your one city with Cultist governor is an absolute monster. You build buildings far faster than any other city, which lets you spend time building uber archer units. Just pray you get glassteel in your region. You can use your free units to overwhelm the enemy with reinforcements.



The only weakness is the vulnerability of your minor faction towns. The AI doesn't get this, but it likes to kill villages anyways. A human player can totally frustrate you by taking out villages... the double influence cost to reinstate villages is just too expensive.

Visko wrote:
Not in 4x Strategy. League of Legends I'm very familiar with. Several several several thousand hours, and no, that concept is not valid here. First off DnD isn't competitive multiplayer. Second off, League of Legends you don't die permanently. Lastly, in Endless Legend, you die, game over. So you can NOT start off weak if you can be killed early on. It's balanced in LoL because you can defend yourself behind towers and farm safely as time progresses, the enemy has to take advantage of your low power to establish an early power grasp so that when the late game comes you won't overpower them. If they fail to do this, you see that player crush the enemy team. *cough Nasus* In Endless Legend however how would you suggest the Broken Lords defend themselves early game? Okay, and now how do you suggest they don't just wreck everyone late game? Okay, and now has your suggestions led you back to making the Broken Lords not appear like your Wizards there?

Permadeath is a valid concern that changes the nature of this sort of power progression, yes, and D&D is not primarily competitive, as Player versus Player combat is not only possible, but so is accidental friendly fire. It is primarily designed for a group of cooperating players and that is how it is primarily played, however it is not uncommon for players to have in-character disagreements and conflicts that culminate in combat between party members at critical points of the story. More to the point of Endless Legend, I wasn't really talking about the Broken Lords and I'm not well informed on what's wrong with them. I was simply addressing that it's okay for a faction to be weak early on and strong later, if it's balanced properly. And even then, only if that is the intention of the developers. As it stands, this is apparently the nature of the Cultists, and if it's not intentional, Amplitude needs to figure out what can be done to fix it.



For example, let's say that the problem with broken lords is that their dust bonuses are out of whack, either not good enough early on, or too good later, as you would suggest. The answer is simple: their bonus is derived from a formula that defines a fluctuation in the bonuses based on empire/population size, and how many turns the game has progressed. It is not difficult to provide a logical, lore friendly explanation, either. I'm not familiar with the entirety of the BL faction story, but I came up with this from what I know: "In the youth of your empire, Dust is plentiful, and you want only for more hands to help collect it. Eventually, however, the production and distribution of Dust for larger populations can become difficult. Underpaid (underfed?) workers will turn to other, more sinister sources of Dust, and the population will suffer as a whole." So what does this mean? The BL's bonus to Dust production will increase as they are able to put more and more people to work on its production, refining and growing the industry to a grand scale. Then, it starts to level out, and if the empire is too large or the population density not spread out enough, it eventually becomes less efficient as more and more Broken Lords abandon the laborious production of Dust in favor of simply leeching it from others.



Again, I don't know the exact issue with the BLs, this is just a hypothetical example based off of what you said.

Nasarog wrote:
Cultists are bungholes. Whenever I start near them, I have to go out and exterminate those religious freaks.

Oh yeah, I've only ever played Cultists in multiplayer. But they have a hilarious playstyle that I have no idea how to bring beyond Era 2. It's usually quite easy to win within 2 Eras though if the game is small enough and there's no islands.



It essentially boils down immediately focusing on growing your city so you research the building techs, but you can't build them all right away so you don't need to research them all first. You do a vast amount of exploring, so the searching ruins tech proves to be useful. You send your preachers out to parley with villages and hope to gain some easy to accomplish quests (keep armies out of the region for 5 turns) or save dust to bribe them. After so many turns you essentially plop all of your population into nothing but Dust/Influence depending on what you need more and you just go out bribe/converting tribes which net you additional research/industry/food/science/pop/military lol. You use all the free units and make numerous armies in which you purchase Cultist heroes and outfit them all with the Cultist Quest accessory that gives them lvl3 regen. Put some decent gear on them and they're pretty op compared to other heroes and offset their army imbalances with attributes like +30% attack +30+ defense, +def +hp, and these are all stats minor factions come aplenty of. You give them initiative and damage with the other accessories and you have decent minor faction armies that you can easily and cheaply pump out. The armies themselves are free, you should be producing insane amounts of dust and spending insane amounts of dust and you can always sell off excess troops to by an additional hero to throw on that other army. But beyond Era 2 their advantages appear to wear off since they can't retrofit those armies and their levels don't mean much in comparison to retrofitting so... I think at this point you begin selling off your armies and begin building custom armies but I haven't played long enough to tell and you should have a few factions assimilated so your custom armies at this point should be pretty decent too. I think your goal is to crush every player's capital? So if the Cultists are in your game, they're the "I'm going to be a royal PITA all game, be prepared for me" because that's their playstyle. I always get people mad at me for attacking them so early on... bleh.



OH and I'm not sure how smaller/fast games play out for Cultists, but it doesn't seem very good for them.

Andras wrote:
I don't think there's anything wrong with a faction who is weak early and strong later. It's comparable to D&D/Pathfinder or MOBAs such as League of Legends.



In D&D/Pathfinder, it's said that warriors have linear growth and magic users have exponential growth.



This is a graph detailing this phenomenon. Essentially, magic users start off very squishy and with very little in the way of useful or damaging spells. While the warriors are growing at a constant rate, the magic users' power expands exponentially, eventually surpassing warriors as they gain the ability to rain fireballs, command extra-planar beings such as elementals and demons, and so on and so forth. Early on, they depend on the more mundane warriors for protection, and can only offer their support, until one day they are able to return the favor, leading the charge from the sky, blasting crowds of enemies from on high with fireballs, whilst their mundane allies tend to the survivors.





Similarly, in League of Legends (I don't have much experience with DOTA2), which is a team based game, there's a meta-game surrounding the composition of teams. Typically, the optimal team composition is considered to be a tanky character in the top lane capable of sustaining a lot of damage and staying in lane as long as possible; a ranged character in the mid-lane (usually a mage); a character dedicated to controlling the regions between the lanes (called the jungle, hence the name of this role being the "jungler"), who also serves to be a looming threat to the enemy team, capable of emerging from the jungle unexpectedly to get or prevent a kill; and lastly, the relevant part, in the bottom lane, a support character paired with an "AD Carry" character. AD stands for Attack Damage and the term is often abbreviated ADC. AD Carries are often ranged characters called Marksmen, whose abilities rely on timing and precision to hit enemies ("skill shots"), but have the tendency to be very strong. They are called AD Carries because with the help of their supporting teammate, they can rack up kills and gold and faceroll in the lategame. Of course, this depends on them doing good in the early game.



The concept of a character being weak early on in a game but with the potential to steam-roll later on is pretty well established in the industry. These sorts of characters, however, when their design is intentional, present a different challenge in the way of balance. So if Amplitude wants to keep this design for Cultists, it may take some balancing work to make sure it's intentional and not a byproduct of other designs.

Not in 4x Strategy. League of Legends I'm very familiar with. Several several several thousand hours, and no, that concept is not valid here. First off DnD isn't competitive multiplayer. Second off, League of Legends you don't die permanently. Lastly, in Endless Legend, you die, game over. So you can NOT start off weak if you can be killed early on. It's balanced in LoL because you can defend yourself behind towers and farm safely as time progresses, the enemy has to take advantage of your low power to establish an early power grasp so that when the late game comes you won't overpower them. If they fail to do this, you see that player crush the enemy team. *cough Nasus* In Endless Legend however how would you suggest the Broken Lords defend themselves early game? Okay, and now how do you suggest they don't just wreck everyone late game? Okay, and now has your suggestions led you back to making the Broken Lords not appear like your Wizards there?

Visko wrote:
As far as I can tell there is no weakest faction no matter the settings vs. AI. But a harder early game experience could be had with the Broken Lords lol. Necrophages can be slightly interesting vs. AI, and Cultists I've never tried vs. AI. Everything else seems rather easy except maybe the Roving Clans because you can't declare war... in fact I'm not sure how to win with them, never played them Period. lol, I'm a warmonger and even if I set out for a Wonder or Science victory I end up with a Supremacy or Elimination because one annoyance leads to another and boredom sets in.

Look in my thread about amazing regions.. that's a Roving Clans game. Look at my economy.

Of the following, which is the weakest faction?



Wild Walkers

Vaulters

Roving Clans

Ardent Mages



Until the AI is patched, I'd like to challenge myself by playing as the overall weakest faction. I just finished a game as the Drakken and I don't want to play as the same faction twice in a row. and The Broken Lords, Cultist, and Necrophages seem to have faction affinities and traits that may be best tried after one has experience with the more conventional factions.



Thanks in advance.

I had the idea, but the original artwork (Adventurer Blitz) is not mine (someone care to help out)



Save the Broken Lords...

Eji1700 wrote:


[...]Also i have to say I still feel cultists are the absolute worst. Yeah they're a late game powerhouse, but the fact that they can just get totally screwed early game by poor starting neutrals/regions, combined with a weakness to early rush, really makes them subpar.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a faction who is weak early and strong later. It's comparable to D&D/Pathfinder or MOBAs such as League of Legends.



In D&D/Pathfinder, it's said that warriors have linear growth and magic users have exponential growth.



This is a graph detailing this phenomenon. Essentially, magic users start off very squishy and with very little in the way of useful or damaging spells. While the warriors are growing at a constant rate, the magic users' power expands exponentially, eventually surpassing warriors as they gain the ability to rain fireballs, command extra-planar beings such as elementals and demons, and so on and so forth. Early on, they depend on the more mundane warriors for protection, and can only offer their support, until one day they are able to return the favor, leading the charge from the sky, blasting crowds of enemies from on high with fireballs, whilst their mundane allies tend to the survivors.





Similarly, in League of Legends (I don't have much experience with DOTA2), which is a team based game, there's a meta-game surrounding the composition of teams. Typically, the optimal team composition is considered to be a tanky character in the top lane capable of sustaining a lot of damage and staying in lane as long as possible; a ranged character in the mid-lane (usually a mage); a character dedicated to controlling the regions between the lanes (called the jungle, hence the name of this role being the "jungler"), who also serves to be a looming threat to the enemy team, capable of emerging from the jungle unexpectedly to get or prevent a kill; and lastly, the relevant part, in the bottom lane, a support character paired with an "AD Carry" character. AD stands for Attack Damage and the term is often abbreviated ADC. AD Carries are often ranged characters called Marksmen, whose abilities rely on timing and precision to hit enemies ("skill shots"), but have the tendency to be very strong. They are called AD Carries because with the help of their supporting teammate, they can rack up kills and gold and faceroll in the lategame. Of course, this depends on them doing good in the early game.



The concept of a character being weak early on in a game but with the potential to steam-roll later on is pretty well established in the industry. These sorts of characters, however, when their design is intentional, present a different challenge in the way of balance. So if Amplitude wants to keep this design for Cultists, it may take some balancing work to make sure it's intentional and not a byproduct of other designs.

Faladrin wrote:
Sure you are right but whatever is your style, Vaulters and Wild walkers are the best factions ever. As you said : good or great economy and army for them. What else ?

I'm not sure of the strengh of the ardent mages, have they got such a good army ? My wife played with them and she was defeted by a cultist AI ...

So for me, the mages are the weakest.

Cultists are bungholes. Whenever I start near them, I have to go out and exterminate those religious freaks.

Sure you are right but whatever is your style, Vaulters and Wild walkers are the best factions ever. As you said : good or great economy and army for them. What else ?

I'm not sure of the strengh of the ardent mages, have they got such a good army ? My wife played with them and she was defeted by a cultist AI ...

So for me, the mages are the weakest.

It depends on your playstyle - but all of those races are fairly decent.



Wild walkers have good economy and great army.



Vaulters have have great economy and good army.



Roving clans have great economy and average army.



Ardent Mages have average economy and great army.

I'm not sure why you would resent customising your factions. The flavour of each is usually very much intact. You can keep it simple and just drop in industry efficient for great results with any faction, or you can rejoice in having one more set of interesting choices -- isn't that what strategy games are all about?



I guess there are two areas where custom factions might be objectively undesirable, being multiplayer (if people want a consistent playing field), or youtube/twitch.

Eji1700 wrote:
Dunno about the mages, but stock broken lords are just a mess since they're literally undercost. I hate the idea of being forced to customize, but since they're crippled otherwise you might as well. Once you do that they're decently strong as you can ignore all industry and food tech, and just focus solely on dust, influence, and military. Not sure how viable it'll be against better players, but it seems to give decent timings if you can get it off the ground.



Also i have to say I still feel cultists are the absolute worst. Yeah they're a late game powerhouse, but the fact that they can just get totally screwed early game by poor starting neutrals/regions, combined with a weakness to early rush, really makes them subpar.

They are powerfull. It's just that compared to other factions they have a hard time to keep the same pace.

VieuxChat wrote:
Ardent mages and Broken Lords are the two weakest factions of the game, which is sad because they are my two favorite ones lol

Dunno about the mages, but stock broken lords are just a mess since they're literally undercost. I hate the idea of being forced to customize, but since they're crippled otherwise you might as well. Once you do that they're decently strong as you can ignore all industry and food tech, and just focus solely on dust, influence, and military. Not sure how viable it'll be against better players, but it seems to give decent timings if you can get it off the ground.



Also i have to say I still feel cultists are the absolute worst. Yeah they're a late game powerhouse, but the fact that they can just get totally screwed early game by poor starting neutrals/regions, combined with a weakness to early rush, really makes them subpar.