natev wrote:
Xenophon, if you want my opinion...

I absolutely did, given that it's obvious that you are an extremely knowledgeable player!

natev wrote:




It's difficult and dangerous to consider military without considering economy. Economy will determine what level, how equipped, and how many military there are. Economy trumps base units.

Indeed; but it's also my tendency to ignore economics and focus on tactics; I would've been the classic sterotypical general who won battles but lost wars by neglecting strategy - especially logistics!

natev wrote:




But if you want to just look at base units, the strongest factional units are Necrodrones and Ancients-- Necrophage and Drakken respectively. Myst look very strong on paper, but Forgotten economy is weak enough that I've never seen an even match-up involving Myst, not even with high difficulty AI.

So flying is that formidable? Hmmm. I have yet to have much trouble with AI fliers as either Wild Walkers or Vaulters, but I guess I could beat AI with farmers wielding pitchforks.

natev wrote:

Drakken: Best starting hero when used as general, fast learner, factional tanks + ranged (Ancients), good support ability (Ancients) leads to one of the strongest militaries overall. Wyverns are unused.

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Why are Wyverns not used, may I ask? Is it because Ancients can do everything it can?

natev wrote:

Ardent Mage: Units waste all of the bazillion +attack modifiers in the game because they're so often capped, but stun spell makes up for their units' fragility once dust stops being a concern. All factional units are usable, with good diversity, but no real tanks. Hit hard by nerf to exotic weapons.

I have yet faced Ardent Mages. How does the stun work? Once per battle? Once per turn? And how many targets?

natev wrote:

Roving Clans: Fast armies with competitive stats. Most RC military weakness is because of the difficulty in making units that you may never use. Tier 1 defense and skirmish capability is unparalleled thanks to mercenary comforts. Yirmak remain unused.

Wild Walker: Good ranged units if they have the terrain or initiative to use it. Difficult to bring reinforcements to bear with fragile, ranged-heavy armies. Shaman completely unused, Walkers underused in favor of MF tanks, in part due to the requirements of their quest line.

Same "why" question regarding the under-utilization of Yirmaks and Shamans.



Thanks in advance, and this was very illuminating!

Nasarog wrote:
I think you need to consider one other thing: the BL have no late game when they are crushed in era 1/2 due to lack of dust. You can't expand, you can't hire heroes/minors, you can't war because you can't afford to heal. Those are all massive problems. The Vaulters get a science boost from the get go, and that helps them get into era 2/3 faster than anyone else all things being the same.



I understand what you are getting at, but I tend to look at the faction as a whole. To improve the BL, reduce their winter malus. They are undead anyways, what do they care what temperature it is outside/inside. Dust doesn't freeze... it's magic/nanomachines anyways.

I just think fixing economy and units should be done separately, BL don't need major unit tweaks outside of maybe different heal cost scaling and ryder lifesteal buff. They need economy buffs which belongs to the economy thread .

MANoob wrote:
I just think fixing economy and units should be done separately, BL don't need major unit tweaks outside of maybe different heal cost scaling and ryder lifesteal buff. They need economy buffs which belongs to the economy thread .

I agree, but I tend to look at the problem as a whole. You can't fix one without the other.



I would look at the whole support unit from each MF/mf and change the way it works. Add a few more powers there and change the length of the cast too.

Nasarog wrote:
I agree, but I tend to look at the problem as a whole. You can't fix one without the other.



I would look at the whole support unit from each MF/mf and change the way it works. Add a few more powers there and change the length of the cast too.

One thing I would do for supports that I already mentioned here is change "Low damage" from -60% attack to smth like -25% damage. This way they would damage much more consistently, because current penalty is frustrating and makes them worthless against high def enemies without adamantian necklaces. With damage penalty they would be consistent, just a bit weaker than combat units. Some of them do not deserve the "Low damage" part at all atm though, since damage and very weak buffs not even worth wasting turn on is all they do. But for dust bishops that will be a good change, that would cut down the crazy amount of heal a bit while making their damage more reliable. I think their heal ability is super good and they don't really need additional changes.



So probably my suggestions for supports for now:

Change "Low damage" as suggested

Shaman - Buff health and damage significally (stats should be on par with rangers, more defence oriented, "low damage" makes them a bit weaker damage dealers). Barkskin is actually not that bad if you have high def tanks. Maybe increase duration by 1 turn.

Bishop - just change low damage as suggested

Proliferator - remove "low damage" because they have no support ability that impacts combat. Parasite ability needs some fix, but it's a bigger topic.

Ardent mage hero - increased fire is completely useless, should be buffed to like 80% with greater duration. The hero is strong without it though. They need higher ini and lower damage I think.

Drakken hero - good support as is

Ancient - support ability is not that good, low damage is not justified for pricy age 2 unit that is a huge dragon. Remove "low damage", reduce ini and health a bit.

Preacher: their buff should be 2-3 times as strong at least and last maybe 1 turn longer. Buff health to at least 50 and damage to at least 20. I also suggested that armies composed only of preachers should not be attacked by roaming armies.

Justicar - need ini buff and a big health buff. Like 80 health and 30 ini. +1 buff duration

Certan - will actually be weaker with suggested "low damage" change. Think cocon should be tweaked. It's a weird mechanic forcing you to make sure driders go last and heal units that already moved.

Yea, that's an improvement for support. I think we need to look at every faction and pick 2 or 3 win conditions they are most suited for, and then adjust them accordingly.



I'll give you an example: The Drakken. They are a weird beast. Powerful and ancient, they prefer the diplomatic victory. To achieve the diplomatic victory, you need to have some kind of an edge. They do, in diplomacy, but they suck at practically everything else. Powerful? they aren't! Ancient? who cares. For them to be functional, they need to be a military force. A slow growing, and perhaps titanic once fully enraged, you know... like dragons and whatnot. How do they enforce their diplomatic edicts on Auriga? Through fear and intimidation.

Their flying unit needs an AoE attack that's fire/ice/acid/farts/evil-eye all from classic D&D lore. Their support unit needs a skill that lets them enrage the rest of the army because they roar such powerful words or scare the crap out of the other units. Things like that.

Nijel wrote:
Regardless of their military potential I feel that the Vaulters are overpowered because they can tp their armies, meaning they can conquest easily and defend as well.



Dawn officiers are bad but♥Titans are powerful.

I agree, Vaulters have the best military BECAUSE they can teleport everyone in any of their cities - event if the armies themselves are mediocre you win by concentration of forces.

I just don't get the Drakken ancients. Can somebody explain this unit to me? Horribly weak.

red_locust wrote:
I just don't get the Drakken ancients. Can somebody explain this unit to me? Horribly weak.

Not I. The support class is utterly useless as a whole right now. The buffs/de-buffs don't last long enough. Their roles are weird at the moment.

Hello,



"Which faction is the best in military?": you have chosen the Necrophages and the Roving Clans.



We will take your opinion into account.



Thank you again for your precious feedback!

Ok, people who haven't played cultists, they are by FAR the MOST powerful of any faction. You can get tons of easily defended outposts for only culture. Free soldiers every 5-10 turns (depending on game speed) and they aren't necrophages weak level 1 units. For every one of those outposts you control you also gain all of the resources on surrounding tiles (including food, science, production, gold, etc) along with 10% strategic/luxury resources/turn. 10% doesn't sound like much, but when you are in control of 50-60 of them, the stockpiles aren't bad. Besides you will only EVER need 480 influence (at t4) to keep ALL the added perks going all the time, the cost will NEVER go up. You only have 1 town to defend, and that has a ridiculous defense and easily defended.



Necrophages: Amazing but OP. If you play them do not bother with any units other than their t2 ranged unit. Get 2 of them in your army and just walk the countryside, make sure you can sell the free guys you get. You can get armies with 100+ units in them just by walking around. Does it matter that they are level 1 and not upgraded? not really, tell me, can 15 800 hp units kill 100 140 hp units? nope. And you can get stockpiles from 1/8 of the units killed, which is every thing you can find, wandering units, burrows, quests, players etc. They can also get 1 burrough/population, unlike the rest which can only get 1 burrough/2 population



Ardent Mages: Fun to play but not nearly as OP as the first 2, quite balanced as far as advantages go. Their top tier unit gets really awesome, considering if it falls in battle, it will return 3 rounds later, making focusing on that unit the focus of every army, while the rest of your army just picks on the guys attacking 1 unit. The pylons that they create are pretty awesome too, especially when you build them in adjacent squares.



Wild walkers: the only race I have yet to really play enough to figure out how to completely break them. As i play Multiplayer with a bunch of friends, and not able to declare war is not possible, because we play domination only (not my choice, but cant always have your way )



Vaulters: Slightly OP, as they are the only race that can take advantage of strategic resources. They also get huge bonuses to science, which no other race has. They also have the cool Teleport to base with army feature, which is kind of cool, but kind of lame, as you have to be inside the bounds of a city to do any teleporting. They do have some awesome units all around, except their Calvary which stinks to high hell. The titans are great for defending the marines while they rain hellfire down on all those silly units that keep attacking the titans. They are a defensive type army, and the calvary do not fit well as defensive shock troops. The 20% science boost from titanium is just amazing...too amazing to be honest. but still not up to Cultist standards.



Broken Lords: Army is decent, they are slow, but incredibly hard to kill. You never need to get food, as dust is your all. Don't put population on anything but dust, all that needs to be done, the whole game. Kinda simple, but quite effective. Did you think you needed production? buy the buildings you need, thought you needed science? buy the science buildings. Thought you needed influence? Buy burroughs near anomalys.



Drakken: Coolest looking units, the only faction that has amazing native units. Their native units have the 2nd most HP of any unit in the game (to start) and when upgraded are amazingly hard to kill (especially with a hero with healing), it is just too bad that their top level units have much to be desired. The getting of influence from ruins is cool, and seeing where everyone starts is a cool gimick, but compared to some of the other races, massively underpowered. Not enough passive abilities, having healing heroes is cool, but just not enough.

Hey guys



I think this is a difficult question...



Broken Lords (My Favourite)

I think I'd consider Broken Lords at the upper level. Not only do they have units with high health, their unit composition allows them to just stand like a rock in the sea. With Defenders at the front and healers in the back, it is hard to overcome them. Fights take long though, as they usually do not deliver devastating damage. I consider the Ryder useless though: Slow as a cavalry unit and without a trait that is respectable, they are just a waste of research points. I usually tend to give them a Drakken Hero for Health boost. Then they are real Paladins (of the dark).



Necrophages

I don't know if they can be considered as strong military... Seriously, their military is weaker than other factions' but they do have the proliferator... Seriously, I need only one army to hatch enough of those fighters with the proliferator, then I don't need my 1st and 2nd units anymore. And seriously, while the hatched ones are not strong, it's still not easy to kill them all if they are in numbers of 10 or more per army. And usually, if a fight causes (m)any losses in hatchlings, it was probably a strong one with lots of units, which in turn will hatch as new units for you once dead.



Ardent Mages

I think I'd consider them the strongest military, because you don't want to mess with them They can easily one-shot enemies at levels where you need 3-4 hits for an average enemy. Their low health seems to balance this out a bit, but still they are dangerous. I haven't played too much with them yet though because I'm so in love with the (not so) broken lords



As for the rest, I haven't really played much with them. I do like the Archer of the Cult, but I don't consider the rest of their troops as strong enough to compete here.

How much of this still applies after the recent patches?



I'd like to see someone write up an updated, detailed comparison of the militaries.

Xenophon, if you want my opinion...



It's difficult and dangerous to consider military without considering economy. Economy will determine what level, how equipped, and how many military there are. Economy trumps base units.



But if you want to just look at base units, the strongest factional units are Necrodrones and Ancients-- Necrophage and Drakken respectively. Myst look very strong on paper, but Forgotten economy is weak enough that I've never seen an even match-up involving Myst, not even with high difficulty AI.



If you want more detail...

• Drakken: Best starting hero when used as general, fast learner, factional tanks + ranged (Ancients), good support ability (Ancients) leads to one of the strongest militaries overall. Wyverns are unused.
• Necrophage: Excellent unit in the necrodrone, available from turn 1, flying, with good stats and sweep counter, means that you can use them nearly thoughtlessly and that they're dangerous even without strats. Battleborn strategies are more about dust and food generation than they are about serious military strength. Disease is the meta against the popular health stacking and means that even if the necrophage lose, it's going to hurt.
• Cultist: Good accessory in quest, but typically insufficient strategics to use it, leading to heavy use of strong minor faction units, most typically Demons. Conversion means they're more likely to have their choice of MF units. Starting unit is useless.
• Vaulter: Good reinforcement flag control in the Dawn Officer, but other units are weak; strategic + technolover use is a must to compensate for weaknesses.
• Ardent Mage: Units waste all of the bazillion +attack modifiers in the game because they're so often capped, but stun spell makes up for their units' fragility once dust stops being a concern. All factional units are usable, with good diversity, but no real tanks. Hit hard by nerf to exotic weapons.
• Broken Lords: Very resilient armies, hurt hard by healing nerf, good starting hero for use as a general. Ryders are underused because they lack a distinct battlefield role.
• Roving Clans: Fast armies with competitive stats. Most RC military weakness is because of the difficulty in making units that you may never use. Tier 1 defense and skirmish capability is unparalleled thanks to mercenary comforts. Yirmak remain unused.
• Wild Walker: Good ranged units if they have the terrain or initiative to use it. Difficult to bring reinforcements to bear with fragile, ranged-heavy armies. Shaman completely unused, Walkers underused in favor of MF tanks, in part due to the requirements of their quest line.
• Forgotten: Assassins aren't good until the strats and techs to dual wield strategic weapons are available. Mysts are good. Economy is weak enough that it's hard to talk about their strengths beyond theory.

MANoob wrote:
Well, I was not considering any other traits the factions have outside of the units themselves while giving these ratings. Teleportation and Veins of Auriga indeed make Vaulters one of the stronger military factions later on. I would also change some of the marks I gave here, for instance forager would definitely go up to 3/5 due to great ini and dawn officers are also better than I gave them credit for with great ini and 2h weapons (default shield setup makes them look weaker), so probably 3/5 as well.



I would still rate early Vaulters as 3/5 because earlygame marines are quite bad with their low ini and average stats. With Technolover (mostly) working they turn out to be much more powerful later on, endgame maybe second only to AM actually. Until that kicks in however most of their units are average/below average for their class.



Broken lords do indeed suffer problems with healing earlygame, however their heal with dust ability is actually a big military advantage later on allowing them to keep constant pressure. I never use BL heroes as generals earlygame, I agree that life drain would be nice and make sense for them. But your 1st hero makes a good governor and it's much better to hire a Drakken hero to lead the army (will solve a lot of the healing problems too). All BL units are quite good stat/ability wise.



So I'd say if rating units alone I'd still keep my ratings BL being 4/5 and Vaulters 3/5 progressing into 5/5. If rating the factions as a whole, yeah, Vaulters will probably easily crush BL in era 2 with tons of strategic resources and technolover unless BL manages to rush Vaulters early on.

I think you need to consider one other thing: the BL have no late game when they are crushed in era 1/2 due to lack of dust. You can't expand, you can't hire heroes/minors, you can't war because you can't afford to heal. Those are all massive problems. The Vaulters get a science boost from the get go, and that helps them get into era 2/3 faster than anyone else all things being the same.



I understand what you are getting at, but I tend to look at the faction as a whole. To improve the BL, reduce their winter malus. They are undead anyways, what do they care what temperature it is outside/inside. Dust doesn't freeze... it's magic/nanomachines anyways.

Flying is formidable, but that's not the only reason those units are good, and not every flyer is good. Necrodrones have fearsome base stats and cause disease. Ancients have an awesome support ability, granting extra morale to adjacent units, and ranged + flyer can be unbeatable against certain armies, on certain terrain.



Players tend to use, at most, only 2 of their 3 factional units. That's because of competition between techs and because it stops being useful to have too much diversity (a little tends to be good, though). Wyverns aren't used because they're fragile, and ancients are more effective when used in conjunction with the Drakken starting unit, which is a serious tank. I'm not familiar with exactly why Yirmaks aren't used, but I would suspect it's because they have lower strategic movement than other RC units, and so slow down entire armies when added. Shamans aren't used because they require too perfect play to use well-- their buff can be awesome, if you use it under the exact circumstances in which it shines, but otherwise, you'd rather just be more killy, and it's pretty useless unless using high health tanks to guard squishy rangers, so you're already at an army with too many moving parts, too many points of failure.



The AM stun spell lasts one turn, and has a one turn cooldown, so it's generally used on turns 1, 3, and 5. It's only scary in its leveled form, which a 7-tile AoE, the center of effect and the surrounding tiles.

natev wrote:
Flying is formidable, but that's not the only reason those units are good, and not every flyer is good. Necrodrones have fearsome base stats and cause disease. Ancients have an awesome support ability, granting extra morale to adjacent units, and ranged + flyer can be unbeatable against certain armies, on certain terrain.

As a follow-up, then, how would you rate the MF fliers? More specifically, I want to use the Nidya flier and not the others for role-playing purposes (I hate "evil" or "evil"-looking units): Would this be to gimp myself?

natev wrote:


The AM stun spell lasts one turn, and has a one turn cooldown, so it's generally used on turns 1, 3, and 5. It's only scary in its leveled form, which a 7-tile AoE, the center of effect and the surrounding tiles.

Jesus; I will make sure to get rid of Ardent Mages first in future playthroughs; I've yet to run into them.

Phalnax811 wrote:
Please make Heroes faction-specific. I don't want to fight Vaulters while fighting Necrophages while playing as Vaulters. Chuck in some minor faction heroes for variety if you so please. (And then rewrite whatever quests want you to hire another faction's hero.) This ruins immersion.

Totally agree.

More specifically, I want to use the Nidya flier and not the others for role-playing purposes (I hate "evil" or "evil"-looking units): Would this be to gimp myself?

Nidya are fine. With axe + shield, they make a fine ranged slayer, and they have a good aoe. They're a little on the fragile side is all.

natev wrote:
Nidya are fine. With axe + shield, they make a fine ranged slayer, and they have a good aoe. They're a little on the fragile side is all.

Great; I won't be compelled to choose the Ended or the Daemon then.

They are also cheaper to produce than Ended and Daemons, so are more reliably mass producable. And they are faster on the battlefield as well.