I'd like to see a unit tier list as well (minor factions included).

Yes, there are many minor factions that are useless as they are, but can become powerful if properly equipped... And tetikes with a ranged hero have a reasonably respectable range, range 3...

Hey, this is a nice informative thread! It´s what I was looking for.



@propbuddha: nice work there! very very useful.

@natev: really useful graph.



I like Warlocks, Yirmaks and Ryders, they would certainly be among the ones I consider above average.



Warlocks with a T1 spear will kill any cavalry the early game presents in three turns tops. With a T1 glassteel spear, they can kill a titanium equipped Dawn Officer in two turns. They die, because they´re naked, but they can always cost more to the enemy, except maybe comparing to a necrodrone. High base initiative, spells, naturally fast. They´re the definition of pain.



I´ve already talked about Yirmak. It´s cavalry, and according to that graph, the most absolutely (as in, doesn´t require tiles) offensive cavalry in the game. Don´t let the game fool you!



Ryders are like Zombie Dervishes, how can that not be cool? They can only be killed in battle, they´re fast, they stun, they suck life from their victims. Their low initiative must be offset with glassteel, but guess what? Every single one of your governors are producing at least .5 extra strategical resources, so that´s not that much of a problem.



I also like Tetike ridiculously, but they´re really only useful when you have high level Ranged heroes. Vaulters should definetely get it, imo, if they have more than 2. The strongest army I´ve ever used was just Palladian Marines and Adamantian Tetikes led by Vaulters and RC heroes. Tetike becomes free-counter infantry, only they´re ranged. I seriously suggest this to anyone who has never done that.





Regarding early strat(offline/endless) - I would rarely ever have more than 2 cities before minding my Army. Only some RC scenarios push me into a four city expansion, or beginning the game on an island.



Almost every single time I´ve tried to choose for the third settler(or some extractor) before making sure I had around 10 units available before turn 30, the snowball of subsequent armies would take too long for me to be able to propperly hold the lands I settled.



It´s much easier and safer, IMO, to get the best strategically positioned second region that contain some strategical, get Production and Money, then the units that will grant you your first military-based expansion. After the immediate neighbor is dealt with, you simply fill whatever region gaps there are and start building districts, sewers and markets.

Propbuddha wrote:


...

• ... Language Square only if you are interested in ruining pacification quests.
  
  

@Propbuddha, what exactly do you mean by "ruining pacification quests"?

Thanks for all the advice in this thread. Very informative reading. I'm mostly learning the game in my own way but wanted to confirm that I was, at least, on the right track. Seems I am doing OK!

Guardians should be good units. They are certainly worth the industry cost. They are probably most appropriate to Vaulters (tech means early access, teleport compensates for unimprovable movement), Cultists (strong single-city production), or Wild Walkers (strong single city production + defensive focus in late game). To my mind, their greatest strength is the rapidity with which they can enter from reserves-- you could have an army and two guardians on the table on the first phase of battle.



But I have never actually seen one built in a multiplayer game. The speed with which I win (and, occasionally, lose) means that there's not enough time for these uber units.

How worth it / competitive are guardians?

I think the Necro starting unit is fine. Disease is a big deal that you can take good advantage of with hit and run tactics. The Cultist Preacher, on the other hand... If I hadn't heard that Preachers are effective late game units, I would have included them in the weak list.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Mages is that they have close to the weakest starting army in the game (maybe 2nd to Necros). They can't do ANYTHING against neutral armies until you complete the early faction quest that gives them 2 free units. But then it's such a huge luck swing if those 2 free units are crappy warlocks or useful zealots.

There's one thing to always consider other than stats/abilities. The nature of the combat system makes it tough to get the most out of Melee units compared to Ranged. Strategic equipment add flat bonuses to Life and Damage that erase differences in starting stats.



Due to the size of the battle map and their effective range, Ranged units almost never go through a combat round where they can't attack. They can focus fire better. Ranged units can usually pick the best hex to attack from or best defensive hex.



Especially in large battles, Melee units often get stuck in the back of a crowd, bogged down in a forest, or facing a cliff and get no attack. Often they have to pick secondary targets. They don't always get their choice of terrain. They may be tanky, but Ranged units can just fire over their heads.



Melee units need to be much better in stats to be useful. The graph doesn't reflect that.



There's always situations where you are forced to use Melee units (your starting faction unit is Melee) but you should pick up a Ranged unit as soon as possible.

Propbuddha wrote:
Nice! I was compiling a top 10 and that was mostly my list. The only one I'd add is the Vaulter Marine. It starts out OK for a Ranged unit but get really good from Technolover bonuses in Era 2+. Probably add Orc too simply because it is a Ranged unit.

If you look at that chart, it's pretty interesting. The tankiest unit is the stalwart. The glassiest cannon is the marine, even without Technolover, which makes them even more offensively-focused. Glass cannons really shine as the game progresses and you can afford to shield them. One stalwart could beat one marine, but eight stalwarts would never be able to beat 5 marines and 3 tanks on anything other than an open field.

Nice! I was compiling a top 10 and that was mostly my list. The only one I'd add is the Vaulter Marine. It starts out OK for a Ranged unit but get really good from Technolover bonuses in Era 2+. Probably add Orc too simply because it is a Ranged unit.

That's very difficult to address for a few reasons.



Rock beats scissors. This game is (thankfully) not really big on the rock-paper-scissors thing, but it exists to a certain extent. How good are Necrodrones? It depends a lot on whether you're facing Rangers tanked by Harmonites.

Composition. Support and ranged units benefit a lot from the presence of tanks. Tanks benefit a lot from the presence of healers. Ideal compositions depend on terrain.

Battlefield goals. If you need to hold a chokepoint against a horde, Titans are pretty ridiculoawesome. If you need to rush reinforcement points, they're not so hot.



It's probably easier to list the units that aren't very good.



Teslem Warlocks. The main problem with these is that they lack enough staying power (at even tech) to serve as tanks for Zealots.

Enequa Wing. Good units, but the industry cost is too high, and t2 techs are at a premium for AM players.

Yirmak. Don't serve a role in their faction and require a tech.

Ryder. Don't serve a role in their faction and require a tech.

Shaman. Fragile and ideal targets for their buffs are likely to be capped at 1:2 attack:defense.

Tetike. Too fragile to get good use of their free counter, and poor passive means low assimilation rate.

Ceratan. Caecator have better healing.

Vinesnake. Fragile.

Dredge. Fragile.

Justicere. Useless buff.



Most other units are good. There are, however, a few standouts:



Nameless. A fragile ranged unit fits into the Cultist lineup perfectly.

Zealot. Fantastic AoE, quarterstaff access complements stun spell.

Necrodrone. Fast, affordable, flying, disease.

Dust Bishop. Best healer unit in the game, contributes damage at the same time.

Ranger. Long range makes these the only units that can solo starting villages.

Demon. Tanky, does damage, flies, high strategic speed, ridiculous vision, good passive from assimilation. Only drawback is industry cost which is still affordable.

Caecator. Good healer that can prevent casualties in a faction that already grants a good passive.

Burdeki. There exists no other unit with a stun like this, at an initiative like this.



You might find this graph very handy for judging various units. It doesn't describe their strengths perfectly, but it's very useful for judging which units are tanky and which are glass cannons.

I realized I haven't really seen what a competitive early game looks like.



What's a general, non-faction specific startup people go with? First buildings? First settler? First borough? How fast do you expand regions? By what turn do you want a strong offensive army?

The strongest Necrophage player I know is Furude. He uses a lot of Proliferators and Battleborn. They're good for all the reasons that Propbuddha said, but also, a huge stack will eliminate fortification in a single turn of siege and kill all garrison in the next. However, Furude only plays custom Necrophage, and I can understand why. Default Necrophage take longer than most factions to get going. Ironically, if you want to play vanilla Necrophage competitively in a multiplayer environment, it's going to take a lot of politicking to protect yourself during your vulnerable early turns.



To my mind, the weakness of huge stacks of Battleborn is their speed. It takes a long time to march across a map at 4 tiles per turn, and it rules out turning back from your target to deal with enemies in your own territory. Erycis assimilation becomes really handy. Battleborn can be part of a Necrophage strategy, but I think you still want some Necrodrone or MF armies.

Atik wrote:
So, Propbuddha, where do you rank the Proliferator in your "unit usefullness"?

LOL, you're going to get better opinions out of natev, last time we played he whipped me.



Proliferators are nice because they have the unique ability to make free units. I think they work best running around taking out minor faction villages/armies and making a huge army of Battle Born. That horde of Battle Born acts as a huge meat wall to protect and grant Morale to your "real" units (high Damage dealers, Ranged units).



However, this takes a long time to do. By the time you get the Proliferators and build the horde, other players have been running the map with T2 Glassteel stacks for 20ish turns. I like the unit, but I don't think they have an impact in competitive games as they get good too late.



In general, I find Necrophage to be slow starters which is not a good thing in competitive games. They have one of the worst economies of the factions and their military advantages are not good enough to offset.

So, Propbuddha, where do you rank the Proliferator in your "unit usefullness"?



I really do love the Battle-Born, but if I get early Orcs I tend to find them much more effective as my go-to ranged units. I know Proliferators also have support bonuses, but it seems kinda risky to shove them in with Orcs, due to the smaller meat-shield.

fahbs wrote:
Does competitive play bother keeping approval at happy or fervent?

I'd consider "Happy" a nice to have but you want to keep it at "Content". This is one reason (natev mentioned above) you don't go too crazy building Districts as it hurts . Sewer Systems (maybe with a Luxury Booster from a quest reward) should be sufficient until you start conquest, then you can start building Central Markets or possibly get the Level 2 Expansion Empire Plan.



I never let slow down conquest though....

Does competitive play bother keeping approval at happy or fervent?

fahbs wrote:
Yeesh. That's way more than I ever built.

You can make do with 2 cities before building an army, but I think you suffer for it. You won't be competitive in a peaceful game without settling, conquering, or converting more than 5 cities/villages over the course of the game.

Usually I made the starting hero a governor, only putting him with the army in the case of Necros as they razed every village in sight. Or Drakken just for the heals.

I'm not sure it's ideal, but I usually:

• Explore with Vaulter, WW, BL, RC, or AM starting hero
• Parley/raze with Drakken starting hero + initial army
• Raze with Necrophage starting hero + initial army until lvl 2
• Parley/explore with Cultist starting hero until lvl 2
  
  

So people just ignore boroughs until they're maxed for horizontal expansion?

As BL, I do, but a lot of that is due to the cost of population for BL. A settled city gets you >= twice as much exploitation and influence, additional strategic and luxury access, faster empire population growth, and costs the same approval as a borough.



However, some good players hold off on early settlement. I don't want to make it sound like there's a single way to play. You'll have to find your own way.

fahbs wrote:
Interesting ignoring faction units. Hadn't heard of that before.

I clarified above. I was talking about the Era 1 faction units specifically, but the same thinking goes for Era 2. Unfortunately the majority of the unit designs are replaceable paper dolls to carry strategic equipment. I think the top tier units are Ranged, Healers and AoE attack units with gems like the Ateshi Zealot (Ranged AoE), Dust Bishop (Ranged unit with an AoE heal) and Dekari Ranger (4 range) being the best. The rest are situational, have substitutes or just plain suck (I'm looking at you Yirmak!). For example, a Vaulter player can add a Iron Talisman to a Marine and get a ranged unit that moves just as fast as a Dawn Officer. Whatever you have, load them up with T2 Glassteel (Initiative + Damage).



I'll be honest, I've played exactly zero multiplayer games where I felt all of the players were playing competitively (including myself). The usual dynamic is one player goes military early and wipes out another, becoming the king of the hill. The other players either work together to halt him or get wiped out in turn. The only thing that breaks this cycle is if a competent Drakken player is in the game that Force Truces his way out of trouble. Either that player is the king of the hill and conquests at his leisure or that game turns into a race for one of the other victory types between the Drakken and the other player that swallowed up everything else. I'm not sure what would happen if all of the players went military early and no one was crippled in the first 50 turns.



I agree that this dynamic needs to change so that more strategies come into play. There's a lot of different approaches to solve this (I've been experimenting with these in my mod). First is removing the brain dead stuff like the Military power Status Screen that tells you exactly who your next target should be (sorry Amplitude, but someone there likes this feature way too much, we all hate it). I think the massive leap in power from T1 Iron to T2 Glassteel is a problem. Also, the lack of inherent defensive bonuses (Siege army action eliminates Fortification bonuses) and lack of penalties to conquest (easy to offset expansion penalties, no war wariness, rebellion is solved in one turn, low military upkeep). I know Amplitude is open to changes, but the crunch to get Guardians out the door was the priority. I also think this would help the AI.

Yeesh. That's way more than I ever built.



Usually I made the starting hero a governor, only putting him with the army in the case of Necros as they razed every village in sight. Or Drakken just for the heals.



So people just ignore boroughs until they're maxed for horizontal expansion?

fahbs wrote:
I had heard of the rule of thumb "race to t2 alloy equipment, then push military to win", and had gotten the feeling that a lot of later era techs/buildings simply weren't worth it. Like who cares about boosted food production past era 2? It would only help brand new cities and those cities don't have the industry to produce the later food buildings anyway.

I don't think t2 buildings are dummy traps, but you need to think long and hard about building them in lieu of military, especially in a multiplayer game.



Exploring with your starting 3 independently (unit, unit, hero) is usually a good idea, but it varies by faction.



My particular turn goals for a military-focused BL are:

• By turn 8/12: You've settled your second city.
• By turn 12/18: You've settled your third city.
• By turn 17/25: You've reached tier 2.
• By turn 27/40: You have a 6 unit army fully equipped with strategic weapons and titanium rings.

Fast/normal, vanilla factions.



You don't have to play the same way, but it should give you an idea of when to expect me on your doorstep in a multiplayer game.

Interesting ignoring faction units. Hadn't heard of that before.



I had heard of the rule of thumb "race to t2 alloy equipment, then push military to win", and had gotten the feeling that a lot of later era techs/buildings simply weren't worth it. Like who cares about boosted food production past era 2? It would only help brand new cities and those cities don't have the industry to produce the later food buildings anyway.



If any ONE thing needs to be fixed in the game, it's the absolute zero advantage defenders get in war with the absolute zero penalties the aggressor gets. That's why the game is over once one side gets a slight military lead.

Based on 1.1.1 version



This assumes you are playing competitively. The fastest patch to victory is Supremacy, which means you need a strong military.



Goals



[LIST=1]

Have a strong and economy

Expand to 4 cities including a region with Glassteel

Be in a position to field army/armies with tier 2 Glassteel as early as possible

[/LIST]



Research



Use early game research to focus on developing , and expansion. And set your self up for a strong military in Era 2

• Research Mill Foundry is first unless you have a ton of and zero
• Get Seed Storage, Public Library and Alchemist Furnace (assuming you have T1 Strategics in your start region) next, in order depending on if you need or more. It's important to start harvesting strategics early.
• The remain techs depend on your starting region, faction and start spot. Language Square only if you are interested in ruining pacification quests.
• Avoid Military Science and Search Party, which are not good techs.
• Get the Era 1 faction unit only if it is something that is strong and can't be replaced by minors (Ardent Mage's Zealot, Roving Clans Kassai). Cultists usually need Fanatic because Preachers are not good combat troops.
• You'll need Mercenary Market, but don't get until you are ready to purchase a hero (~500 in the bank).
• You'll need Sewer System, by the time you are ready to settle your third city.
• Once you hit Era 2, you want to get Alchemical Alloys, Alchemical Armors, Prisoners Slaves and Volunteers and Meritocratic Promotion for your military. Central MArket is also good if you are expanding.
• Dont be afraid to go back to Era 1 to pick up techs after you hit Era 2
  
  

Development



Build your cities to be and centers.

• For first city, I usually build Founder's Memorial, Mill Foundry and a Settler in that order.
• Move workers around so that you can get your first Settler out ASAP. This means that Research for Mill Foundry should complete on same turn Founders Memorial finishes and first population should come out before Mill Foundry completes.
• For subsequent cities, I always build Mill Foundry first. After that Seed Storage, Public Library, Strategic Extractors depending on needs.
• You best city should build Settlers until you have 3 or 4.
• Glassteel is critical to a strong army, you'll need Titanium too but make sure you have Glassteel.
• Once you have 3 cities start building Sewer System in each to keep up.
• I like +20% for first empire plan.
• Expand to 3 or 4 cities before focusing on other things.
  
  

Military



Use your starting army to scout and pacify minor faction villages while leveling up.

• No matter what you are doing use your hero-led army to pick search ruins to gain XP.
• First priority is to scout a good spot for your second city.
• Attack or quest to pacify nearby minor faction villages so they don't become a nuisance later.
• Ignore quests that require too much travelling.
• Upgrade your starting units to T1 Iron before you take on Minor Faction villages.
• Upgrade your hero and units as soon as you get Era 2 Weapon armor techs.
• Meet other empires so that you can use the Military graph on the Status Screen (F10) to keep an eye on you're opponents' military strength.
  
  

After you've completed your initial expansion, you probably want to start looking for a military target....