Man, am I having a tough time playing these guys! Without healing, I'm burning all my money just keeping my units alive, and even then having to do everything possible to avoid combat. Is there any way to play this faction where you're a warmonger?



I like to attack early and often to build up XP for a couple of heroes and their armies, snowballing into unstoppable wrecking balls later in the game, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that when units simply don't heal.



Are Broken Lords purely for the peacemakers?

Plan your kills (units will heal from kills) and get some Dust Bishops. Also, heroes with healing (Drakken) or minor factions with healing will work out (Ceratan, blind dudes).



And produce massive amounts of Dust.

Maximize your Dust income. Remember that while your opponents have to spread their workforce over 5 resources you only Need 4 while industry can be somewhat surplanted with Dust, if you make enough of it.



Broken Lords are great as warmongers just Keep the Dust "rolling". Other factions have to rotate their Units to avoid losing them, BL can heal them between battles without losing time retreating or resting.

Ah, so healers can still heal BL units? I hadn't realized that. I assumed the faction ability prevented all regular healing. Guess I'm going hunting for some healer units :-) Are there any heroes who can heal?

Titan wrote:
Ah, so healers can still heal BL units? I hadn't realized that. I assumed the faction ability prevented all regular healing. Guess I'm going hunting for some healer units :-) Are there any heroes who can heal?

Drakken heroes heal.



Make sure you use Dust Bishops.



Minors - Ceratan, Eyeless Ones, Sisters of Mercy.



There is equipment (necklace) that heals too.



In research, focus on Dust and weapons/armor.

There are several ways to heal Broken Lords units without spending any dust:



1. Soul leech when a unit makes a kill. When a Stalwart kills an enemy unit a percentage of health is restored. In battle, try and arrange for multiple Stalwarts to target a single enemy unit and they will ALL receive the life restore at the end of the round.

2. Clever placement of Dust Bishops. Dust Bishops are a fantastic unit (one of my favourite in EL) as not only do they attack, but they also in parallel heal adjacent units by 50% of the damage. Try and boost their initiative with glasssteel weapons/armour, so they go first. Then you can move them into position and all adjacent units are partially healed.

3. Drakken hero healing. The Drakken hero heals units equal to its damage value, use this wisely to restore damaged units health.

4. Eyeless Ones healing. I've less experience with these units, but they also heal.



In my last Broken Lords playthrough, clever use of 1, 2 and 3 meant I could increase the health of my army. I very rarely had to use dust to heal any units - when my army health was low I'd attack an easy minor faction village (first parley for bonus hero XP) and this strategy worked wonders!

You folks are the best. Thank you for all the advice!

I prefer a good Drakken hero for these guys as an easy, partial fix.



But also I like to make the Harmonites my first assimilated faction. Bonus strategic resources are great all by themselves, but building Harmonites instead of Stalwarts seems better and better every time I do it. They cost a little more, but not only do have normal HP regen per turn, but they can dish out some good damage, unlike your basic stalwart.



You can try getting healers... but I find the stalwarts are just not good enough at dealing damage to be competitive as it is. Add in some units that heal instead of attacking and it just isn't the greatest. Unless you use strategic resources to arm your stalwarts with superior weapons. And then Harmonites are still good, both because they help produce more strategic resources, but the harmonite units also can be powered up with strategic resource equipment.



Dust Bishops attack and heal, but their attack stat is sadly quite low. Against challenging opponents they won't do much damage. Their healing is not targeted, but applied to neighboring units. So to use these guys you practically have to use a formation style setup for your group, which further hinders your ability to be aggressive.



Oh, and when I tried using Sisters of Mercy to give regeneration per turn to my Broken Lord units it didn't work. I assume it is a boost to the regular turn healing, so no help there.

I'm really, really happy with base BL units, and I barely heal at all.



In the early game, rather than attacking villages, I make it a priority to explore and parley. If there's a good reward, I'll teleport my hero back to a nearby unit and attack a village, but mostly, I get my xp from ruins and parleying. I don't bother with "attack these ruins" (yeah sure, there's likely as not a pair of demons in there) and I don't bother with Kanzanji villages. Dust is far too valuable in the early pre-plan game to spend on healing, and I'll often as not sacrifice a scout rather than healing it.



In tier 2, Dust Bishops are my very first research (->Meritocratic->Weapons->Armor). I make it a goal to get 2 Dust Bishops and 4 Stalwarts, all with glassteel weapons and titanium rings, hero with a pair of insignia. Only once my army starts coming together do I bother with clearing villages. At this point, clearing villages doesn't mean I have to heal afterwards. It's like Soviet medicine. Villages heal you.



With my fully upgraded 6-man army, I'm actually ready to take on the world (seriously, all I have to do is keep up with armor upgrades). Hero gets +25/+25/+50 life, and a combat-related assimilation is useful, but after that it doesn't matter. Only time I require dust care is following a few Necrophage encounters (and sometimes not even then). There are many games where I never once spend any dust on healing.



This is on Endless difficulty, so seriously, it works. My army is usually ready by turn 40, sometimes a few turns later, sometimes as early as turn 30. (Ooh, and with custom factions...) My confidence in my army is enough that I rarely play these games all the way through-- it's usually more interesting to see how fast I can get the military ball rolling, and I'll quit after my first capital.



Playing with Dust Bishops takes some practice, but not a lot. Hold Position is invaluable against higher initiative opponents. You'll usually find yourself using either a line formation (hero + 4 stalwarts in a line, bishops in the two divots left in the line) or a circle formation (bishops adjacent to each other, other units wrapped around the bishops to reduce avenues of attack to the bishops). They are, in my opinion, the single most useful unit in the game.

natev wrote:
(Ooh, and with custom factions...)

Interesting - which custom faction options do you use for your Broken Lords?

Titan wrote:
Interesting - which custom faction options do you use for your Broken Lords?

Usually, fast traveler 2, industry efficient, and landscapist speed my play the most. Beginning techs can be dropped, as can dust efficient (landscapist usually generates equivalent extra dust).

natev wrote:
I'm really, really happy with base BL units, and I barely heal at all.



In the early game, rather than attacking villages, I make it a priority to explore and parley. If there's a good reward, I'll teleport my hero back to a nearby unit and attack a village, but mostly, I get my xp from ruins and parleying. I don't bother with "attack these ruins" (yeah sure, there's likely as not a pair of demons in there) and I don't bother with Kanzanji villages. Dust is far too valuable in the early pre-plan game to spend on healing, and I'll often as not sacrifice a scout rather than healing it.

I chuckle when I have a unit of stalwarts barely survive a battle in the early game. They get sold to the marketplace for the same price as an unwounded stalwart. It's tempting to keep him around to heal later... buying from the marketplace is much more expensive than healing stalwarts... but then I consider the upkeep cost per turn and selling seems like the best move a lot of the time.

CloveTheWildmage wrote:
I chuckle when I have a unit of stalwarts barely survive a battle in the early game. They get sold to the marketplace for the same price as an unwounded stalwart. It's tempting to keep him around to heal later... buying from the marketplace is much more expensive than healing stalwarts... but then I consider the upkeep cost per turn and selling seems like the best move a lot of the time.

Yeah, selling is a good strategy, but if you can eke out two more ruins with that Stalwart... These days, I don't research Merc Market until probably tier 3, so it's stopped being an option for me.

That brings up an interesting point. How many heroes do you normally go with? I tend to try and get a second hero early on (again, so XP can build up) and then possibly a third just before the mid-point of the game to be a governor rather than general. Of course, I'm not playing the toughest difficulty levels, so perhaps that's not a viable strategy as I take on bigger challenges?

Titan wrote:
That brings up an interesting point. How many heroes do you normally go with? I tend to try and get a second hero early on (again, so XP can build up) and then possibly a third just before the mid-point of the game to be a governor rather than general. Of course, I'm not playing the toughest difficulty levels, so perhaps that's not a viable strategy as I take on bigger challenges?

I think you'll get different answers from different people, but lately, I have 2, to go along with 2 armies. Since my dust in tier 1 goes to improvement buyouts and in tier 2 towards upgrading units, and since I'm not a big fan of +3 dust/pop empire plan, I tend not to have a dust surplus until I start building a few dust refineries. That's when it makes sense to me to get a second general (my starting hero is always a general).



It might be smarter to do it earlier, I don't know-- my second army is never even close in power to my first, and can't do the conquistador thing like my first army can.



Eventually, tons of dust starts rolling in, but I usually don't even spend it, because the game is clearly won and that point, it's just about the process of mopping up. (I guess I could have a third army at this point, but am just too lazy to manage it.)