A class has multiple trees and skill sets. During the run of a game, it's extremely unlikely any given sovereign or champion will level up enough levels so he has
all skills in the tree (unless you
really put an effort to it). For example, it's going to be difficult for a Commander hero to be proficient both at traits that give bonuses to its army (the general aspect) and bonuses to city management and economy (the administrator aspect). So again comes the need to specialize as you level up. You can always put an effort to it, of course, and anything is possible, but there's only so much fights that happen in a given game, therefore there's a (soft) "cap" of sorts to the overall amount of XP you can get (which you can also boost with traits and trinkets, by the way).
What I wanted to mention is
how your sovereign's (and hero's) roles scale with the progression of the game, namely during combat
. This is a classical case of "linear warriors, quadratic wizards".
1.10 The Role Your Sovereign and Your Heroes Play Throughout the Game
Generally speaking, your heroes are the only ones who can cast magic, and thus affect your whole army in a way other units can't. In the early game you may be interested in keeping your heroes and sovereign in the same army so as to have an edge over beasts and units scattered in the terrain. But because the bulk of experience points are divided among heroes if they are present in an army, you are encouraged by the game to have an army be led by, at most, one hero. You can of course use two heroes or more in the same army throughout the game (for example a fighter type and a mage type) and make it work, so if you want to that's perfectly fine. However because I'm strongly interested in making my own units level up, I isolate and dedicate an army to each of my "fighting" heroes, so both them and their army's units can level up properly.
So what I'm about to say comes from the perspective of having one hero per army.
Having a warrior sovereign (all of this applies to other heroes as well), with fighting traits upon creation (might, hardy, and so forth) makes for an easier early game, as he/she will be at least as powerful as your early units. By the same degree, having a mage-type sovereign makes for a more difficult start of the game, as you may have some trouble killing early low-level monsters. Also remember that even if you learn good spells on level-up, you are still limited by the amount of mana you produce, which won't be staggering in the beginning of your game no matter what you do.
On the other hand, and by the same perspective, a warrior hero doesn't scale properly as the game progresses, while the exact opposite happens with casters. Why is this? Because of a number of factors.
As powerful and full of traits your hero is, he/she's a unit with just one person in it. Even if he's fully geared up in heavy armour and trinkets, and even if he has a weapon that strikes for 40 damage... he's just
one unit, while your soldier units will have 3-4-5 soldiers in them, each one with a weapon delivering a good deal of damage, and possibly even having much more health than your lone hero. So, do the math. Unless you're using a faction that has penalties on unit's abilities, you haven't researched properly, or you're giving yourself a challenge in unit design, your mid to late game units will surpass your hero melee or archery wise.
Another factor against melee heroes is that there's a stiff penalty for a hero to fall in battle. While your sovereign can get away with a little mana cost and without much problems if he "dies" during battle, your other heroes will earn themselves a "wound", which translates to a penalty of some kind. For example, less X% hit points, less dodge, less initiative, less experience, etc. These wounds, while not game-breaking, can certainly deter and possibly spoil your hero's performance and levelling, and can only be healed with specific potions that say in the description "cures a random wound". These potions are either obtained through quests or goodie huts/monster lairs (you're down to luck), or they may be bought at an apothecary, which is a high-level conclave building you're likely only get far down the road into your mid to late game. Therefore healing wounds is far from impossible, but not that easy nonetheless.
So if you don't want your prized heroes running around full of wounds, you're interested in keeping them as safe as possible for the most part. However, if you bring them close into melee range to mid to top tier enemy units, some of which do the likes of 18-22 x 5 damage... and some of which use blunt weapons which can therefore strike for double that amount... you do the math. In the late game, even simple militia units in enemy siege defenses will be armed with the best blunt weapon their faction has researched (because the game determined that blunt weapons bring some use to defending militia units). So even frail, a simple militia unit can deal a great deal of pain.
For these reasons, it's fair to say that your high-end units will easily take over melee duties from your sovereign and heroes at some point during your game, save for some unexpected or emergency situation. This isn't necessarily true in all cases. Again, if you're not focusing on unit military design, or if you have some kind of penalty to your units, your melee heroes can still remain an important piece in your army puzzle. I've seen people who complain the exact opposite, that their heroes mid to late game are overpowered and pretty much can fight on their own powerful armies. This isn't my personal experience though. I find melee heroes are great to have at the beginning, and tend to be less useful as the game progresses.
One thing your armies can't replace, though, is the ability to cast spells. In fact, this scales perfectly in the opposite manner as the game moves along: you generally have more mana available, you learn more spells, and your heroes may even specialize in magic using if they choose the Mage class (they don't have to choose that class in order to cast spells at all, though). What ends up happening in my games is that I usually find myself keeping my hero/sovereign at the back, in front of the archers, casting spells according to what's needed - even if he's in full plate armor and levelled as a fighter.
Remember that if your hero is casting a spell, he's not moving around and attacking other units. When the opposing armies get big, with lots of units, your sovereign tend to lose relevance, that is, it doesn't act as often. An action is either a cast or a melee/ranged attack - not both. So your hero leading the army will either be mage-ing of fight-ing, not both at the same time. The exception to this is if he has specialized in short-range offensive magic or abilities, and he has to move in melee range to cast said abilities.
So this information is meant to guide you through your hero leveling planning. Defender, Commander and Assassin heroes all fall somewhere somewhere in between these two classes of fighter and mage, in terms of roles they play. The Assassin is a melee specialist so will fall towards the fighter-type; the Commander (if leveled to give bonuses to armies) is naturally a dude that stands back and lets its army take advantage of its bonuses, as well as directing it sometimes, so it has some synergy with a caster-type or a ranged attacker; and the Defender is a Fighter that has specialized in bolstering its defense to survive longer, instead of attack.
This is not to conclude that you should play your sovereign and all your heroes as mages. I think you should play exactly as you want. This game lets a guy in full plate armour stand back casting spells (even if plate armor reduces your initiative), while a bunch of elite super-soldiers (or naked rabble for that matter) charge the enemy. Nevertheless, it stands clearly that a mage, with its magic specialization and mid-to-high initiative will remain as useful and as powerful throughout the game.
But this is not all. Just because when your chose your sovereign and/or heroes to be mages, that doesn't mean they're safe to be unarmored, with low hit points, carefree about others attacking them during battle. Enemy ranged units (and faction armies, depending on the faction, can sometimes sport
quite a few in their armies) will generally target that which they perceive is a combination of the softest/easier to hit unit, while also being a threat. This generally means enemy archers and mages will quite often target your own archers, mages, and catapults from afar, almost always focusing their fire on a specific unit until its dead (just as a human player could do, and this is also why HP is important). Sometimes, though, if they feel your sovereign has low enough defense and/or hit points, they will consistently have a go at your hero during battle. So this means that, even if your hero is a mage, be careful to invest in quality armor and trinkets, in its hit points and defense, unless you want it to be seen as a arrow magnet - and having you worry likewise.
1.11 Further Notes on Sovereign Professions
Your sovereign can only have one profession and it's chosen upon creation (or it's already preset if you use one of the standard factions). In my view, professions that help with the early game are more relevant than those that improve over time - because in this game, a strong start is everything.
Adventurer: +10 fame for completing quests
I'm not entirely sure how important fame is in this game, save for the purposes of getting heroes faster. This is important, I guess, to have access to more spell schools, and to play with lots of heroes. I understand the developers created the Fame mechanic to avoid having heroes scattered across the map. On the other hand, heroes tend to lose relevance battle-wise as the game progresses, and might even become outclassed if they're focused in melee. You're encouraged in having one hero per army, perhaps two max if you really want to, and throughout a game you don't have that many armies. So you don't really need that many heroes - you wouldn't know what to do with all of them anyway. Thus, having a profession that gives you Fame (or faction traits that revolve around questing, for that matter) isn't really helping at all, IMO.
Quests are indeed fun and an excellent source of unique items, money and experience. But still, the way thegame works, I'm not sure how exactly +10 fame per quest is an important component when it comes to build a competitive game-winning faction. I guess I'll never know, because I never use this meaningless trait.
Grade: D
Bandit Lord: player starts with 2 bandit units and can convert bandits
This is meant to ease your early game, by allowing you to attack weak monsters from the word go, and it's obviously more advantageous to you if you happen to spawn in an area full of bandits. Bandits are rather weak units (weaker than beasts), so the advantage may wear comparatively shorter. Plus, they cost money to recruit and maintain, which it's precisely in scarce supply in the early game, so recruiting bandits may hinder you instead of helping. On the other hand, you may get access to ranged units earlier in the game...
Grade: D
Diplomat: +30% value of trades, and the silver tongue ability
The silver tongue allows the sovereign to convert enemy trained (faction). I suppose it has synergy with a defensive-minded playing style, as is the bonus to trading. Trading can be a viable way to exchange your surplus resources with research/money/resources from other factions, and a bonus to it helps to get more whilegiving away less. Diplomacy trades, however, while useful, aren't that much of a vital component of your faction's game, and converting units costs
100 Guildar. While presumably assuming you're taking advantage of your slick trading skills with factions you
aren't at war with, spending 100 Guildar to bribe an enemy unit (and then having to pay up its wages) may not feel very nice.
Grade: C
Hunter: +50% attack against beasts
This is an outright bonus to fighting beasts, which is a good chunk of the enemies you'll fight in the game. Still, this is strictly a very narrow, early-game bonus, and it affects the sovereign only. I'd rather
tame beasts, than having a single-unit bonus to killing them. I must apologise if the bonus applies faction-wise, because that's not in the description, and because I'll never -ever- choose this profession, not even for testing purposes. Horrible.
Grade: F
Scholar: 20% research
This is a faction-wide 20% bonus to Research (not limited to the city your sovereign is in), and it's cumulative with a faction's Scholars trait (10% bonus), which when coupled, will provide your faction with a whopping 30% bonus to research in all cities. Needless to say, this gives you a massive edge over the AI, and there's a reason why there aren't any pre-made factions with this combo, otherwise they would probably, in practice, play as if a couple of difficulty levels higher than they were configured to (just speculating, as I never tried it myself). If there's one thing worth pointing out against it, is that taking this profession obviously prevents you from picking a more "fun" and proactive one, such as Warlock or Beastmaster. Still, very much worth considering.
Grade: A
Warlock: sovereign's spells do 25% more damage
A very viable choice if you're doing a sovereign mage, or if you're simply intent in casting offensive spells more often with him. You'll feel the effect the longer the games goes by, and the more mana you have available to cast spells. Mages in this game are very powerful - in your hands - and keep getting more and more
overpowered powerful as they level up and pick up traits and trinkets. A 25% bonus, on top of other bonuses you may pick up from other sources, is considerable. In certain situations, a mage can turn a tight battle against superior AI units, into a no-contest. This isn't particularly useful in the very early stages, but you'll feel it throughout the entire game. Still, you already have plenty of sources to pick up spell damage multipliers, and for that reason the grade isn't higher.
Grade: B
Armorer: all units have 25% defense
Another major boost to defense. It's more or less negligible when you use regular leather, and if you don't boost armor/defenses in any other way. But it becomes significant 1) as the game progresses and you move on to mail and plate armor, and 2) especially, if you stack Defense-bolstering techniques on your units, such as training them in Fortresses, and using Earth-based enchantments. As with everything, this trait depends on context: bonuses to Defense only makes sense if you're investing in your Defense. Still, an extremely valuable bonus.
Grade: A
Beastlord: can take control of enemy beasts
This is as fun to play as useful in the early game. In fact, what this ability actually does, is allowing you to fight with an army of heroes and tamed beasts, foregoing in the early game the need to train military units. This is a actually a very good bonus if you consider the turns you spend training units, and the wages they cost - money and time you could be spending in another way, such as spamming/rushing pioneers and town improvements. Every help you get in the early game multiplies as the game moves along. In fact, low-level animals that you can approach in the early game generally have little to no armor, but most animals have some skills unavailable to faction units, that make up for it. If you tame a Cave Bear, for example, they have quite a few hit points, and they Maul when attacking (continue striking until they miss or the target is dead). Some spiders can entangle enemies in place, others poison them, and so forth.
In Legendary Heroes, quite a few beasts are powerful enough to be decent mid-game units. Therefore, the usefullness of the Beastlord isn't restricted solely to the early game.
Furthermore, as you play the early game, being a Beastlord makes you feel the terrain map like more of a world full of oportunities, rather than a hazardous place. The only issue with beasts is that a) most are one-soldier units, which doesn't scale well as the game advances, and b) they have low-ish defense, which means you have to be more careful not to expose them to high Attack enemies.
Everytime you tame a new beast, its stats are factored in your faction's power score, just as if you had trained a new unit in your cities. Plus, beasts, as any other unit, level up with experience, gaining HP, accuracy and magic resistance as they do. So in a way, you're encouraged to keep these tamed units and treat them as any other, throughout the game. The idea of the Beastlord,
besides being professionally awesome, is that you may skip training units of your own at certain points in the game, devoting instead that time into growing your faction economically. Or to chew your opponents face's with lots of teeth and claws.
 |
| Dances with Cave Bears |
The only issues here are, a) is if you have 40 mana to cast the taming spell, and especially, b) if the animal happens to resist taming. In the very early game, and more often than you'd like, that may end up with your sovereign defeated, your army dead, and turns spent healing in your cities. Animals can have up to around 30% resist to taming, depending on their level and your sovereign's. When you do level up, though, taming resistance of animals does tend to drop considerably.
Beastlord is is a fun and great way to amass decent units -
for no upkeep, good for your wallet - and bolster your power score in the early game, even if an army of beasts really isn't meant to be used for the long haul.
Grade: B+
Pro Tip: when you see an Umberdroth, tame it immediately. They are extremely rare, yet their stats are late-game worthy, plus with Overpower (Attack rating is per enemy soldier instead of unit).
General: +25% to army's experience
A decent option if you're intent on investing in your unit's level progression. Affects your sovereign only, though. Doesn't offer a significant advantage in the early game, rather, it's a long term effect, if you intent on having higher-level units as you enter the mid and late game. May have synergy with other experience-enhancing traits (such as using the Men race), and especially if you have many bonuses to your units that improve on level-up, such as hit points. Otherwise, this is not a grand game-affecting bonus by any means.
Grade: B, if you love to roleplay, if your units' stats rise significantly on level up, and you're investing in all of that. Otherwise, not very interesting. D
Noble: -10 unrest in all cities
Unrest is the single most important factor when it comes to building a thriving economy in this game. High unrest means your city is not producing anything at a viable rate, and it's not pumping out research either. The most relevant factor that creates unrest is the number of cities you have, and there aren't that many efficient, faction-wide means to effectively deal with unrest, at least until you get to a reasonable stage in the game. So having a -10 unrest modifier, in practice, means that your cities will produce more, your economy will be much more solid, and it allows you to simply be able to have more cities. This is primarily a strong, early to mid-game boost, but also a very strong bonus from an economic standpoint. Sadly, the coolness factor of being a noble, compared to, say, a Beastlord, or a Warlock, is not that great...
Grade: A
Summoner: +2 level for summons, unlocks Summon Shadow Warg spell
A boost if you plan on being (your sovereign) a summoning mage. I've spoken before about how I see the usefulness of summoning, and I'm not sure if +2 levels to your summons is that big of a bonus. Still, if summoning is something that you have fun with, by all means go for it. Coolness tops practical wherever possible. Summoned units, while not game-changing, are moderately powerful and serve an auxiliary purpose.
By the end of one of the summoning mage traits, you have a particular summon that costs 500 mana: Delin, the Fire Lord (an Elemental Lord), for "3 actions". Sounds awesome, but what they didn't tell you is that the duration of the summoning is 3 actions
of your army. So it's very possible for you to summon Delin, spending 500 mana, and have him not queuing up in the initiative queue in time to act, only perhaps contributing to
swarming action. This one impressed me, in a very negative way.
Grade: C
Warlord: -50% to unit wages
This is a big one, as unit wages are one of the big burdens on your account throughout the game. Money can otherwise be spent on things such as rushing improvements and units, upgrading units, diplomacy, buying gear at your shop, and so forth. Your economy's budget ceiling determines the limit of units you can have at a given moment, and it usually drives you into a strategy of fielding a few lightly equipped militia units mixed with heavier, more elite units (and you can even find more advantageous in this game to having lots of mediocre units, than a few elite ones). This trait, however, gives you a lot more freedom in this respect. With it you can a) have more money left, b) have a larger standing army, and/or c) train only top-tier military units. This also has synergy if you're the Quendar race and you can train slave units that cost
no wages.
I haven't found exactly how a unit's wage (money cost per turn) is calculated, but it's directly related to how much the unit costs to train. A unit in plate armor has higher wages than the exact same unit in leather armor. You can see how much the unit's wages will be when you're designing it, and in the training screen.
Grade: A
1.12 Further Notes on Faction Traits and Penalties
I've discussed before martial specializations (Defensive, Archers, Great Hammers and Axe Mastery), as well as the Master Smiths and Tough traits. I'm also not addressing all of the rest of them, but I'm going to speak about a few.
Light Plate costs 0 points, as it's basically a choice for you to have a stronger version of the middle tier armour (which is normally mail armor) in exchange for higher metal (resource) and production (time) costs. I recommend choosing it only if you're either playing toward it (focusing on gathering iron ore in-game), and/or you also have the Master Smiths trait, which halves production and metal costs for units altogether. Otherwise, metal costs for metal armor can get pretty niffy. Masterwork Chainmail is the opposite; it trades the top-tier plate armor for a lighter (less armor rating and less cost to produce) armor, and the purpose is to cut down metal and production costs at the expense of defense ratings. This has synergy with the Archers trait as you also won't need as much metal with it, and it's perhaps meant to discard the need to have a large territory and many sources of iron.
Stealth is a large boon because monsters won't attack your units. Otherwise, not only do you have to be careful about leaving your units (military ones, scouts, pioneers, everything) next to monsters when their turn ends, but most importantly, you're more or less constrained as where you can build cities, if settling spots are near monster lairs. This is because if your city territory encompasses a monster/bandit lair (because you're built the city next to it, or because the city territory has grown) the monster group in that lair will become "dislodged" and start to roam your territory, sometimes destroying terrain improvements, sometimes attacking your city(s). This is not very important if the monsters are low-level and you can handle them; but if they're not and you can't fight them just yet, you're in for some trouble. This trait ends that issue, though, and that's why it costs 2 points to get.
Scholars, as I already mentioned briefly, is a large bonus to research, and you can create a sovereign with the Scholar profession that further adds to this amount. It also opens the Study immediately, allowing you to build it right away at the start of the game. The only thing is that you may be able to get around research shortcomings by focusing on good city planning, prioritizing research buildings, and also if you intent on focusing heavily on just a few techs and don't intent to research them all. So this trait can become a little relative and it's dependent on your playing preferences.
Enchanters allows you to increase a city's Essence count by +1, which is the main plus of this trait in my view. If you use heavily Essence and enchantments to give stat bonuses to yout trained units, with this you can have a 4 (!) Essence Fortress training units with +4 Fire Attack, +4 Hit Points per soldier, +4 Defense ... Enchanters also gives you a special melee staff weapon (an extremely cheap way to train simple units with a decent attack rating) and a unique lighting-attack ranged staff, to create mages with.
Heroic doubles the amount of experience from quests. It has synergy with 1) Wanderlust, 2) the racial trait from Men that already improves gained experience, and 3) the General sovereign profession. When you go through mid-game and the world starts getting settled and monster lairs start running out, you can make use of quests to earn money, unique items, fame, and above all, experience. Also, when you play the race of Men, their units have a trait available to them, Potential, that further adds +25% experience gain for the unit. Go for these combos if you want to maximize gained experience and develop high-level units easier.
Civics makes the unit start with the Civics tech, allowing it to begin rushing production (of pioneers, mainly) and producing Bell Towers (decrease unrest) right away. Personally I'm not entirely sure if it's worth a point spent on your faction, but the rush ability from turn one has synergy if you make your sovereign have the Wealthy talent, making it start with 500 gold, while the decreased unrest allows the faction to build things faster at the beginning of the game. Consider coupling it with the Earth school of magic, which allows you to cast Enchanted Hammers on your starting cities and further boost production.
Binding and Cult of a Hundred Eyes are 2 traits that are meant to compliment your armies with further units that either spawn in your territory, and/or you can train them in your cities. From personal experience I didn't find the specific units particularly useful or strong, but these traits are more defensive in nature, because they are meant to assist you with providing more units to your armies if you're not focusing heavily on production and unit tech.
Slave Lord is a trait that transfers half the population of a city you raze to your capital, and men or fallen (humanoids) defeated in combat are transferred to the nearest city as population. Population growth, which allows your cities to level up giving you powerful bonuses (both for the city and faction-wide) can be relatively hard to come by. Therefore this expensive (2) trait can be a useful to have, but only if you plan beforehand being at war with other factions a lot, so you can fully benefit from it. There aren't usually enough neutral bandits and syndicate thugs around to justify having this trait.
Warrior Cast is a rather mild bonus, considering a unit leveling up "only" affects 1) hit points, 2) accuracy, and 3) spell resistance. It's a bonus you should consider as a combo for other straightforward combat traits and unit bonuses, such as Tough, but that I usually don't consider seriously having. It should probably have a cost of 0.5, IMO. Warriors makes you start with the tech that allows the building of barracks, which has no other use, in my mind, than to spam military units throughout the early game, for example to do a zerg rush your near neighbour can't defend against. Otherwise skip it.
When designing a faction you may also be interested in taking a weakness, i.e. a penalty (only one is allowed without mods, sadly) so you may have an extra point for traits. Some penalties are more "penalizing" than others.
Vulnerable to Magic (-20% magic resistance) is, in my mind, the mildest of all penalties. While it kind of makes your units more susceptible to magical effects (and ranged mage attacks, I believe), the effect could be worse if the AI made a more concerted effort with using magic effects. This, in my experience - at least as far as the expert difficulty - isn't the case, at least, I don't feel it penalizes you that heavily. It would take a seriously hardcore magical enemy casting powerful and crippling spells left and right to make you really hurt this magical resistance penalty, but those are not that common when you play. Magic in this game is relatively powerful and versatile, but it's not something that *usually* takes a central part in determining battles - unless when you use it, naturally.
You can compensate this penalty in some ways, being two main ones 1) focusing on leveling units up, as units get bonuses to magical resistance when they level; and 2) choose the Ironeer race, which has a natural 30% resistance to magic - so you'll design a race with 30% - 20% = 10% base overall magic resistance. Not too bad. Keep in mind, though, that this penalty is a percentage, therefore if you take it, your units will never have any meaningful spell resistance no matter how much they level up.
No Armour and No Ranged Weapons may seem a big deal, but depending on how you want to play, they might not be that problematic. The first means you can't wear armour more advanced than leather or robes. I played once a game with the Quendar race, and most of my late-game units were slaves wearing no clothes, just weapon and shield, and they were very capable in their own right. I know by experience you can have efficient units in the mid and late game even without mail/plate armor, if you design them right, if you allow them Defense and Hit Point bonuses, use shields, traits and trinkets that enhance Defense, and so on. But even if you don't care about enhancing your unit's Defense ratings, late game weapons sting just as much in the hands of plate armored units as in naked ones.
The second trait, No Ranged Weapons, may be offset if you focus on melee. It's perfectly possible to field a melee-only army, and you can still build catapults, which do a good job of weakening enemy ranged units, and use ranged magic. You'll just have to worry about facing an opponent that focuses heavily on ranged units (arrows or magic), in which case you need to design your army to have sufficiently high initiative and mobility to get to those units in the back of their lines, before they seriously hurt you.
The remaining two penalties are actually much more serious, and could had been designed to give you +2 trait points, or even more, for their actual worth.
Rebels increases your unrest by 10%. Unrest cripples your economy production and research, and ways to deal with it in a sistematic, faction-wide manner, exist, but don't abound. If the early start is fundamental in a 4X game, having your production and research crippled from turn one, and throughout most of the game, is a seriously violent drawback. I'm used to getting things done as fast as possible in the early turns, and everytime I choose this penalty I feel so pulled back that I usually give up and start over. I suppose it's bearable if you're planning to have a small, defendable territory to begin with, if you love to turtle with a single city or two. But who does that? How often do you settle for two or three towns in your games? If you are an experienced 4X gamer, you know size matters: you develop the instinct to expand as fast as possible, to reach a critical mass, the point you usually feel safe enough to build upon. Therefore, this is not a penalty I'd choose lightheartedly.
Uneducated gives you a penalty of 10% to research. Research is vital for you to be able to survive and put up a fight - differences between different tiered weapons really show. I suppose there are ways to compensate for this penalty, such as planning for, and focusing on your research efforts, but you'll always be dependant upon your terrain quality. I always shiver at the thought of choosing this in higher difficulty levels. This is a game that, when designing your faction, is all about combos and maximizing bonuses that work well together. And this penalty looks to me almost as the perfect opposite of that: a penalty to everything. Too bad you can't choose Rebels and Uneducated, it would certainly give you a feeling of living in the stone age forever (if you managed to survive other factions long enough, that is).
1.13 Further Notes on Pre-Existing Factions
I don't ever play the pre-existing factions, nevertheless I want to add some notes about how they should play, based on how I played with their racial, faction and leader traits, and how they behave as AIs. I guess this is meant to talk a little more about racial and faction traits that I haven't mentioned yet.
Tarth (Kingdom)
Sovereign: Lady Ariadne (Hunter, +50% Attack vs beasts, Air and Life magic)
Race: Tarth, +3 Attack, +3 initiative when in army of 3 or smaller, Double Strike, strike twice for -20 accuracy
Faction:
+Master Scouts: no movement penalties
+Stealth: monsters don't attack player
+Archers: bowline that is more powerful, fast, and doesn't cost metal
+Masterwork Chainmail: lighter and less costly armor that replaces plate
-Rebels: +10% unrest
Tarth is geared towards having a 1) fast start scouting-wise, moving freely and fast around the map, and clearing terrain from beasts and monsters on its own terms, with its bonuses to combat in small armies, while being able to choose its best city founding perks regardless of monsters; and 2) having a slow start in terms of city productive ability, due to unrest penalty. Tarth seems to be geared to have a small territory, with less cities, while on the other hand having some advantage to spot the best locations fist and choosing where to place them. The Archers trait, together with Masterwork Chainmail, plays along the small territory idea, as it 's meant to reduce greatly the amount of metal your units will spend, if you focus on training light archer units and mail-wearing melee units. Lore-wise, Tarth seems to be a kind of rebel, nature-loving, hardy and honorable warrior-gladiator types. Be sure to use Life and Air magic to boost your unit's health and initiative. You won't always be able to field small armies of 3 or less units, living up to the Tarth motto of "a few and elite" and using guerrilla-like tactics, but when you can, do take advantage of their racial bonus when fighting with small armies, which is +3 attack per soldier - not too shabby.
Tarth is generally an aggressive faction when controlled by the AI, which actually doesn't favor them, as their small territory tends to place them at the bottom of the faction power score, hence they often get attacked and defeated instead of defeating others.
Magnar (Empire)
Sovereign: Magnar (Warlock, +50% spell damage, Death and Fire magic, Brilliant, 10% experience and spell mastery per level)
Race: Quendar, 50% fire resistance, -50% cold resistance, Flame Tongue, does 2 fire damage per level, melee range ability, ability to train Slaves: human unit that has -1 HP per level, -10 accuracy, -4 initiative, costs no wages to keep)
Faction:
+Slave Lord: Razing a city transfers half population to capital, men or fallen defeated in combat are added as population to the nearest city (doesn't have anything to do with the racial ability to train slaves, you can choose both separately on faction/character creation)
+Flesh Bound Tome: unlocks death-type destructive spells that focus on sacrificing units and resources to gain some kind of bonus for the short-term
+Masterwork Chainmail: lighter and less costly armor that replaces plate
Magnar is an interesting combination of traits that can be both fun and advantageous to play. First of all, the ability to train slaves is phenomenal. That penalty that slave units have may be misleading, and is by far compensated by the fact that these units do not consume wages. This is like having a sovereign with a Warlord profession, only better. You usually are forced, throughout a game, to ration your unit-building resources (metal, crystal, production times, money). You need a considerable number of units to be able to defend your territory, but it's generally impractical to build only elite units, simply because of lack of resources, and money, to do so. So what I end up doing is designing top-tier units with the best equipment and bonuses, and then serviceable "militia" units, that are effective at what they do, but usually use leather armour, less traits, and so on, that cost less to train and maintain. But with the Quendar racial ability to train slaves, your "militia" units will be replaced by slave units, which instead of costing less to maintain, cost nothing. And you can for example equip a slave with a full gear of your best armor and weapons, without gear limitations. You can do such things as designing slave scouts, to save on scout wages. You can do all sorts of things with units, and the penalties to HP, accuracy and initiative, for a unit that doesn't cost maintenance, can be compensated with other things, if you know what you're doing.
Other than the ability to train slaves, Quendar (non-slave, original "race" units) have Flame Tongue, which is a little ability that is akin to breathing (spewing) fire. Now, this ability does 2 fire damage per level, per soldier in unit. That means, for example, that a level 5 unit, with 4 soldiers in it, will do 2x5x4 = 40 fire damage of "magic" damage, just by breathing fire. Any unit, even a pioneer! It may not look much on the description, but if you're focusing on leveling up your units, this can get to be an extremely powerful little ability. Other than Flame Tongue, the racial resistance modifiers are a like-for-like trade, that isn't too significant and can be offset with gear if you so choose it.
Slave Lord, a trait that I've already discussed, is at its best when you're dedicated in war efforts against your unfortunate neighbours, obviously more intent on vacating (destroying) their cities instead of keeping them. So in a way you're encouraged in investing in your own original settlements rather than conquering a large territory of half-developed cities. Interestingly, the AI playing Magnar is also more interested in building up its economy before throwing themselves into war. But because they seem to invest heavily in slave units instead of their native Quendar ones, this may actually make them, and their territory, look vulnerable and juicy to your human eyes, if you're playing next to them. Magnar himself is a Death and Fire Warlock, which asks you to develop him as a fully offensive mage, powered by the mana produced abundantly by your well-developed conclave cities. Having this well-grown cities and economy principle in mind, be sure to make good use of the Death Opression spell, which reduces unrest in each city by 10%.
Resoln (Empire)
Sovereign: Oracle Cereza (Summoner, +2 level for summons and Summon Shadow Warg, Death and Water magic, Attunement, +2 mana per season, Sovereign Bond, allows summoning of Familiar - can cast your spells - Scarred, always heals 1 HP per season regardless of level - which is a bad thing)
Race: Wraiths, +20 dodge, -1 HP per level, Wraith Touch which drains 1 HP per level from the victim
Faction:
+Adepts, can harvest shards from turn one and have +40 mana at start of the game
+Death Worship, unlocks some pretty nasty spells even compared to 'regular' Death magic, and can convert any shard to a Death shard
+ Binding, an assorted array of beasts/demons/monsters of average strength spawn from shard harvesting shrines under your control
+ Cult of a Hundred Eyes, can train a few types of spiders in cities
+ No armor - yes folks, only leather and robes allowed
Resoln is
the extremely magic-oriented magic faction if I have ever seen one. Starting with the sovereign herself, she's all about summoning things and plenty of them, with several different traits combined that grant bonuses and summoned variety. Other than summoning, she's extremely versed in Death and Water magic, which is the combination to go if you fight your battles almost exclusively with the intent of messing with your enemies around. Curse your enemies to completely remove that annoying heavy armor defense rating, make them suffer critical hits from all attacks, slow and freeze them, suck their health dry, and then make all these negative afflictions spread from one single unit to all others in their army! And to top it off, Cereza can summon its familiar to cast all of these goodies twice as fast. So if there's a faction that is completely focused in fighting with magical things, it's Resoln. For this reason, playing with this faction can be a fun and different experience.
The upside of this magic specialization is that the actual military component suffers. Wraiths have less hit points due to racial attribute (although they do have extremely high dodge ratings, and it shows in battles), can't use armor greater than leather/robes, and lack of access to Life magic reduces the ways you can boost your unit's health. Furthermore, this faction asks you to go deep into the Magic research tree to make the most out of its strengths, and that usually ends up neglecting the Military one (you can't use armor anyway), so the shields you can equip aren't going to be top notch either. All of this means that your units towards the mid to late game may tend to be a little less competitive in comparison to other factions.
The two faction traits that grant you extra units, plus your summoning skills, are meant to compliment your roster and help defend your territory, giving you lots of average magic and fantastical units that are best suited to further mess around with your foes and making them die in a slow, horrible, and extremely dishonorable manner - rather than actually killing them with a few strong punches. But you'll never actually own uber units that are great at stomping all over your neighbours, unless you're extra careful with your unit design. You can for example recruit a hero with the Earth school of magic, and train your units in a fortress with Aura of Might cast on it. This would be an example to bolster your unit's defense throughout the game.
Cereza's army in particular will have the whole lot of sumoning and magic options available (since some of those nice spells are only hers to cast) and thus you'll be able to work... magic... with her. You can play both an offensive and a defensive game, but you'll probably find that Resoln is actually better suited to sit back and achieve a magical victory, rather than a conquest one, since you're going to invest heavily on the magical tree anyway. And this is actually what the Resoln AI, more often than not, ends up doing. Sooner or later you'll see those little towers appearing below Resoln's power rating, eagerly anticipating the Spell of Making victory. When fighting against Resoln, expect a little bit of ranged mage units, some spiders and daemons, and a lot of weakly wraiths in robes and leather armor, trying to suck your life from you. For this reason, though, Resoln's military is not the strongest to fight against, because of the native penalties to their units, and because the AI also follows Resoln's motto of "magic first and fight later". When you wish to invade, simply invest in your unit quality, watch out for Death magic casters, and you should be just fine.
Gilden (Kingdom)
Sovereign: Lord Markin (Armorer, 25% defense, Earth and Life magic, Hardy, +1 HP per level and immune to poison)
Race: Ironeers, +30 spell resistance, +1 HP per level, tactical (battle) spells cost +50% mana to cast, can train Golems (trainable mid-level, single unit constructs, with 100+ HP and 30-40+ defense)
Faction:
+Master Smiths, 50% reduction in resource and production costs, 50% reduction costs in upgrading units
+Great Hammers, (even) better hammers than the default versions
+Light Plate, replaces mid-tier mail armor with a better and more expensive plate "light plate" version
What to say about this one? Gilden (or the Ironeers) is the complete opposite of Resoln or Magnar: it's meant to pretty much forego magic in battle, and instead hitting you hard in the face with a giant maul, preferably only once. Ironeers already have +1HP per level; Aura of Vitality cast in fortresses will see it that each Gilden unit has a lot of health indeed; and Earth's Blessed Hammers combined with the Master Smiths' trait, will see that your units are going to be pumped out sufficiently fast. Light Plate takes advantage of your discount in training units in metal armor, and the cherry on top of the cake is the Great Hammers: your units won't hit hard, they'll hit
extremely hard.
However, once you design, and fight with, a unit in heavy armor and wielding a blunt weapon, you'll soon realise that these unit's initiative won't be very far away from a measley 10. Initiative determines when a given unit will be given turns to act in a fight. 10 is a very low number; 16 is an average to decent one; 20 and higher is a good value, that will allow your units to fight first and more often. A unit with higher initiative may very well act
more times than units with comparatively lower values. So you see, so take advantage of Guilden's traits - Master Smiths and Great Hammers, you're aiming at having extremely resilient and hard-hitting units, that are
extremely sloooooow to move, effectively trading speed for strength and stamina.
When playing this faction you're foregoing the heavy use of magic, but to defend from it (and from being so slow) your units get a very reasonable +30 magic resistance bonus, which only grows as your soldiers level up. This is a nice faction to play if you're going for a straightforward, non-complicated way of playing this game.
Golems are a nice-to-have addition to your mid-game roster, as their extremely high defense rating (for the mid-game) coupled with over one hundred hit points, gives your AI enemy a large brick wall to hit. Think the tank role in WoW or any other rpg. However, each Golem is o one-soldier unit, and will do one weapon's worth of damage in its turn, therefore it's intended as a defensive, hard-to-kill weapon. Also, if you're really investing in your soldier's design, your top-tier units will surpass Golems in defense and hit points if you so wish, so it's not like the ability to train Golems is a massive game breaker.
Yithril (Empire)
Sovereign: Warlord Verga (Warlord -50% unit wages, Earth and Death magic, Hardy, +1 HP per level and immune to poison)
Race: Trogs, +2 Attack when under 50% hit points, Berserk ability: +2 attack, +2 initiative, unit is under AI control and acts independently from the player
Faction:
+Warriors: factions can build barracks (unit training discount building) from turn one
+Warrior Caste, units are trained with +1 level than they would normally
+Tough, all units have +10% hit points
+Axe Mastery, unlocks dual-wielding versions of all the regular axes in the game (higher attack rating - and initiative?)
If Gilden is about having resilient, heavily-armoured and hard-hitting troops, Yithril - despite its delicate sounding name - is a faction of pure rage, power, and berserking through and through. The multiple warrior traits are meant to bolster unit's hit points (higher level units have more hit points) while making them easier to train, and able to train them earlier if you so wish to - also helped by Verga's Earth magic and its Enchanted Hammers (+1 material in city). More on a long-term note, Verga's Warlord profession allows you to field a larger number of good wage-costing soldiers, without your economy being quite able to support it otherwise. This is all of the economic help Yithril is going to get, though, so if you play this faction you better be strongly inclined to spend your entire game on everyone else's face.
In fact, when Yithril is being controlled by the AI, you can pretty much bet that Verga's stacks are the first ones that come knocking at your door. He's very easy to ask for tribute and to declare war, once again, showing that the AI really lives true to the faction's lore. You can expect Verga to research almost exclusively the Military tech tree, sometimes getting to the end of it - thus unlocking really powerful stuff like heavy armour and Juggernauts - well before you're trying to grow your farms properly. You can expect really strong, powerful, and heavily armoured units that don't die easily, even if each unit might have less soldiers than you, because they haven's dedicated themselves to research the Civilization tree. Also, if anything, there's no ranged units available to them: it's all melee. If you see Yithril's power rating suddenly shooting up by large chunks,
stuff is being trained over their territory, and you can expect trouble (or someone can, at least).
The Trog race allows you to click a button and let your units scramble forward on their own (controlled by the AI) as you watch, hoping they will subjugate the enemy by their sheer power, effectively giving you the feeling that they're really "berserking". Personally, while I do understand the concept, I love to direct my units and making all the choices, so this racial trait kind of puts me off. The other racial trait, +2 attack when under 50% hit points, means in practice that Trog units tend to have not only more hit points, but that their attack rating suffers less if the unit is half-damaged or below, still giving them a viable chance to kill the enemy when wounded. And this is more noticeable, both if Yithril is your opponent or if you're playing them yourself, the better the armor they're equipping. But, what's really, really fun (to you if you're Yithril, or to your Yithril opponent) are Juggernauts.
These little beasties are akin to Ironeer's Golems, except with the opposite idea: they have lower base defense rating, lots of hit points, and above all else, special traits which greatly bolster their high attack rating, and also do splash damage (damages the struck unit, and a percentage is also delivered to
anyone else to the sides, including allies). Juggernaut's attack animations are even speeded up, so you're guaranteed to have a kick when one of them reaches the enemy's melee line and units start flying through the air (if you're Yithril you get a
good kind of kick; if you're
fighting Yithril, you'll feel a different kind of kick, I guess).
As with Golems, Juggernauts are not necessarily the most powerful thing ever, or at least, not everyone's cup oftea. A unit of 5 mounted knights fully clad in plate, and with proper weapons and bonuses, will be a much more solid, durable, and effecive unit than a Juggernaut, while retaining some design flexibility to still be able to deliver a lot of damage (5 soldiers with weapons). Lower defense, and inability to wear body armor, means that Juggernauts always be squishy targets, and you better make them get quickly in melee to have them do their thing.
Although, you do have the possibility to exchange some of the offensive traits with defensive ones, plus you can give them a shield and one-handed weapon just like anyone else. This, with a couple of defensive-minded bonuses and trinkes, should make for a relatively durable Juggernaut design, if you so choose it.
Still, Juggernauts do scale much better than Golems, because of their multiple bonuses to attack and spash damage, meaning they can take full advantage of top-tier weapons to inflict an healthy dose of carnage, despite being a single-soldier unit. A Juggernaut with axe(s) and maul, will strike and keep striking until it misses, and when it does,
it will still do a backswing with the axe. With the latest axes in the game, two-three strikes and the enemy is dead. There's always something coll about a Juggernaut lunging forward with two huge axes in each hand. Though, If you do reach this stage of the game, chances are it doesn't really matter what you're using, as long as it's cool.
Juggernauts are extremely fun to fiddle with. The idea here is that they are "all-attack" type units. When you're battling a Juggernaut, being the smart player you are, you're going to focus all your ranged, melee, and magical attacks and effects on it, to reduce its impact in the battle and to bring it down as soon as possible. The spells Slow (Water) and Shrink (Life) are my favorites when fighting Juggernauts.
Kraxis (Empire)
If someone ever designed a turtling faction in a 4X game, this is it. Kraxis and emperor Karavox are the epitome of being "peaceful", quiet, and
slithery in everything they do. A Defensive faction (uses "hoplite" units and has bonuses defending cities), its racial features are having +8 Defense when under 50% hitpoints (the conceptual opposite of Trogs) and the ability to "fortify" tiles in battle. A unit inside a fortified tile, if its defensive bonuses aren't enough already, gets +10 accuracy (so it makes sure it does kill whoever is attacking it) and +20 dodge (so it's harder to hit). Karavox himself is a Diplomat by profession, meaning he gets +30% value in all trades, and can convert units trained by other factions. If I'm interpreting the value of trades correctly, it becomes much easier for you, as Karavox, to have better deals with other
civs factions, and to bribe them to go to war for you. In fact, this is what the AI Kraxis also loves doing. Furthermore, Kraxis starts with 500 guildar (Healthy trait), and has Fire (attack magic) and Water (versatile magic). Last but not least, the faction trait Betrayers grants a spell that can convert an entire city to you (!) through magic. I'd say that Kraxis is screaming for you to stay at peace (or staying in a defensive attitude in wars) at all costs, dealing your dice in diplomacy, manipulating your enemies, and possibly conquering their cities through "other means".
I'll refer briefly to the remaining factions,
Altar,
Capitar,
Umber, and
Pariden, since they're the ones I'm the least familiar with. Altar and Capitar seem to be all-rounder, adaptable "human"-type factions, which let you play however you see better. Altar are clearly focused on doing quests, while Capitar are a little more versatile and economy-driven, with some bonuses to money (guildar) producing.
Altar's racial attributes (Men) grant them +10% to experience of units, the ability to train Henchmen (trainable heroes with low-level magic spells), and they can
Rush. Rush is a nice, versatile ability that allows your units to move
twice in battle, effectively giving them double movement points in that one turn - which in practice is very useful and is meant to rush your opponent, or at least, take better advantage of positioning and swarming bonuses, for example. The racial experience bonus is nice to have, I guess It's only worthwhile - i.e. it will make a significant difference if you really do lots of quests, or if you design a custom faction with further bonuses to experience (Lord Relias is an Adventurer and not a General, for example, but he does have Air magic, whose spell Tutelage grants bonus to experience gain to individual units). Training Henchmen, on the other hand, is borderline useless IMO, as leaders tend to lose relevance to military units as the game progresses, and if you want all the spells in the game, you can access new magic schools by getting new heroes via Fame with Altar, if that's your thing.
Capitar's Carrodus is in fact a General (could probably trade places with Relias to take advantage of the experience bonus?) but Cautious (can leave battle if things aren't going your way, without penalties for losing -
or if you didn't want to fight the battle in the first place, very useful) and Tactician (+1 initiative to its army). Also he has Life magic (more hitpoints to your units and powerful useful spells), and Air magic (more initiative and dodge to units). Capitar starts with Civics (allows rushing from the get to), and has Legacy of Serrane (more money available, the Bazaar improvement (cuts down rush cost and gives more money when a city is building Wealth), and Caravans are never attacked - rare, but it can happen) and Lucky (all units have 25% accuracy and 25% dodge). All of these seem to indicate both economic and military bonuses, both in a offensive and cautious sense. Capitar also has warhorses, which give one more attack and initiative in the first turn than normal horses. Capitar's race, the Mancers, have one more movement point (both in the strategic map and in battle), which is very nice, and +1 accuracy per level, to help make sure you do strike your opponents, both with melee and ranged attacks. Capitar has the lore of being
solid yet mobile, and in fact it has special horses to go along with that idea. When you battle them, you'll find balanced armies with cavalry, foot melee, and archer units, while their economy will usually be solid, if not among the best in any given game.
Pariden are the "good" magic users, and they have the faction trait
The Decalon. Sadly I haven't experience this one yet, but it's supposed to let you your sovereign and heroes learn magic schools that they haven't started with - because otherwise a sovereign/hero is stuck to the spell lines they began the game with. This ability seems nice (it costs 2 points in faction design), and I'm sure I'll eventually give it a try to explore it. Together with their other traits, Pariden is a purely "magical" faction like Resoln, but this time focused on the Kingdom side instead of Empire.
Finally, the Empire of
Kulan are from the race Urxen, which you can translate to "wolf-men", "beastmen", or maybe werewolves, if you'd prefer (they're humans with a little more blu-ish hair on their faces and a general beast-like look). Lore-wise, Kulan and Urxen are supposed to be a more in-tune-with-nature faction much like Tarth, but this time on the Empire side. Urxen get +2 Attack (per soldier) in armies of 5 or bigger, and they have double the swarming bonus, so the game is asking you to act like wolves and "overwhelm your opponent from all sides", so to speak. They are Warriors and Master Scouts which again gives the impression that they run around like wolves through the forest, unimpeded like regular humanoids. Like Tarh they also use Masterwork Chainmail, so he idea is to have cheaper top-tier units, and also much like Tarth, Kulan the sovereign is "Cruel", which is a penalty that gives him +1 attack but +5 unrest in all cities (a little like Tarth's Rebels trait, to align with the idea that these are beast-like people).
Umber also has the trait Assassin's Tools, which can make your units deliver poison damage in their attacks something that is only available to sovereigns and heroes through items) and use a sword that has high initiative, has 1 counter-attack (like most swords) and can
backswing. This, together with Kulan's Air magic, suggests you should design units that are quick, fast, and should swarm its targets as much as possible. Last but not least, Kulan does have access to Death magic.
1.14 Further Notes on Recruitable Units From Camps
You can train specific units from specialty camps, that is, you don't train them in your cities like other units, instead what you do is to build a camp on the terrain resource, and by doing so that camp will continually spawn new units of that specific type, to a maximum of two. That means if your faction controls two special units of that specific type, the camp will only respawn another if you lose one of them. These camps usually are extremely rare in a map (you may never find them in a given run through a game), making them a viable way to turn the balance of a game in your favor.
Each camp is usually guarded by one or more of the units it spawns, or an army with them in it. As a general idea then, you must be able to defeat the unit type you're trying to gain control of. In 'normal' difficulty levels you can get away with extending your territory over the camp in question, and let the 'dislodged' units wander around for a while, without fear of them attacking you... but in higher difficulty settings, they will, most often than not, dart into your territory, with ill intent towards your property. Even monster units dislodged by other factions in their territory will have this tendency to dart towards you, while leaving the AI alone and living among them in peace and harmony if need be... just because.
Anyway, because the units in these specialty camps are mid-tier decently strong units, you generally may not be able to defeat and safely use them, until your late early to mid game.
Dragons are recruitable by building dragon training camps on the respective resource. This is available to any faction alignment, but it is mostly an end-game feature (because the camp will be guarded by a DRAGON), and by that point, hopefully, if you've thrives through the rest of your game, this won't make that much of a difference. But it's still awesome, nonetheless
Kights of Asok are human-like mounted units in horses, in mail armor and with two-handed spears, available only to Kingdom factions (Empire factions can't access the technology, thus can't build the respective camp). Because they are armored in mail, that makes these knighs extremely solid mid-tier units, which you can take advantage of in your mid-game, if you happen to have access to the resource and you beeline your Research to the Alliances tech. However... in true mercenary fashion, each one of these units will cost you quite a few Guildar per unit to maintain. A decent early to mid game unit has a maintenance of about 0.4 - 1.2 Guildar; a Trog Juggernaut costs around 1-6 to 2 Guildar in maintenance; but one of these knights will have a wage of about 6 Guildar. These units, therefore, are meant to provide you with a considerable boost... at a cost.
Ogres are single-soldier 'horned monster' units wielding a large blunt weapon, allowing them to power-attack, and with the ability to 'throw a boulder', a ranged attack that has reasonable damage to it and that it's meant for the Ogre to still attack someone while it's making its way to the melee line. Ogres have 3 movement points, a robust Attack rating (around 20-ish), and decent hit points, but little to no armor. This is a reasonably solid attack-minded unit that's meant to rush to the opposition and bash it silly - although it can get wounded and killed fast enough if the AI happens to focus on it first (it doesn't happen all that often though). Ogre camps are usually guarded by a respect-imducing army with an assortment of Ogres, Bone Ogres (stronger), Trolls, and mire skats.
Trolls are also 'monster' units much like Ogres, also available to Empire factions only. Although in the same line of though as Ogres, Trolls have slightly lower stats than Ogres and are innacurate in their club swings, however, they regenerate health per turn (most often +4 hit points), making them an annoying thing-unit for the AI to deal with. Troll camps are generally available in the terrain only inside wildling/specialty areas, the ones which are unlockable only when you explore all of their bonus/camp/goodie tiles.
1.15 Further Notes on Races
Your choice on race, either by picking a pre-designed faction or by creating a custom one, is another layer that adds variety to your playing style. Races have different combat skills, and some of them also unlock special traits to be used in unit design.
Men (Amarian) units have 10% bonus to experience gain, and the Rush ability. Rush is an ability on cooldown that allows you to move the unit twice. Thus, when you're using men you have an added ability to ...rush... your opponent to their melee line, or at least, to better position your units for strategic purposes and swarming bonuses. In practice, your units will be able to move twice when you use Rush. A foot unit will move 4 squares instead of two; a unit on horseback will move a maximum of 8 tiles instead of just 4; a foot unit on an army with Tireless March cast on it will be able to advance 6 tiles. This is a rather practical and useful ability, which you'll learn to depend upon when you use it, and miss it when you can't.
Men also have an unique trait available to their units that grants a bonus of 25% more experience gained by the unit, cummulative (I suppose) with its base bonus of 10%. Since each unit only has 3 trait slots available, it's arguable just how much are you willing to spend one of them for this trait; but it does allow you to create a unit with a much greater bonus to level-up.
2. Faction Management
2.1 Landscape and Tile Basics
You can't build settlements anywhere. Only a portion of the tiles are "settleable", when they have marked their food/production/essence yields. Also, your city only uses the tyle yields it's created on (unlike other 4X games like civ), and it blocks in a given radius around it (6 tiles, I think) any other potentially fertile tiles from being settled, both you and by anyone. For these reasons, one could say the land that is available for cities is at a premium, both in quantity and in quality.
A little further into a game, you can research in the Magic tree a spell to turn fertile portions of land you own in your territory, so you can hopefully have more spots to settle if you need them. Also, the Earth school has ways to convert hills, and even water, into flat land. For some reason I don't use these tools much. For now, and for the purposes of speaking about city placement, I'm going to ignore these features.
The tree yield types of settleable tiles are as follows:
Grain: determines 1) the max population cap in a city, and 2) how much it grows.
The Grain value (let's say, 3) is used to calculate your city's actual Food value (each Grain produces N Food). The difference between the max population your city can possibly achieve and its current population is used to calculate its "Food Surplus", determining your Growth value. A Growth of 2 means your population will increase by 2 every turn (season). At the base of these calculations is the Grain value of the city, and the Food it draws from it.
In the city you will be able to build improvements that will increase the amount of Food each Grain provides to it, possibly increasing its max population and growth.
When the city, of whichever type, reaches a set level of population, it levels up, unlocking a few bonuses that may affect it and/or your whole faction, as well as bolstering some of its production values. In a certain point in time, the amount of Grain/Food may cap your city at a certain population in a way that it can't level up.
I'm not going into detail just how exactly are the base values and calculations, because it's not that visible or intuitive in-game. Over time you'll get an intuitive grip on how much the tile values will then translate into actual city growth and size.
Rest assured, 3-4 is an average value that's decent for every city; 5-6 are excellent values and will make your city grow the most quick even without much improvement; and 1-2 are very low values that will cap your city at a low level, and it won't grow much beyond level 2 for quite a while, at least until some of your other cities (of the Town type) develop improvements that grant faction-wide bonuses to Food.
Material: Determines your city's Production, which it uses to build improvements and train units, therefore determining how fast things are built. Each Material translates to a given amount of Production, and you can build certain improvements that increase the amount of Production calculated from each Material.
Essence: Determines the following:
1) How many magical enchantments you can place on a city;
2) The effectiveness of some enchantments, namely those that provide 1 something per Essence, such as:
- Arcane Forge (Researchable): +1 Material per Essence in the city
- Aura of Grace (Air): +1 Initiative per Essence to trained units
- Aura of Might (Earth): +1 Defense per Essence to trained units
- Aura of Vitality (Life): +1 Hit Point per Essence to trained units (*)
- Heart of Fire (Fire): +1 Fire Attack per Essence to trained units (*)
- Meditation (All): +1 Mana per Essence generated by the city
- Propaganda (Air) +1 Guildar per Essence generated by the city
- Gentle Rain (comes with Hidromancy, Mage trait) +25% Food per Essence in the city
- Pit of Madness (Death) +1 Research per Essence generated by the city, -1 Growth and attacking units have Fear cast on them
(*) per soldier
Other enchantments don't depend on Essence, for example Life's Sovereign's Call , which adds +2 Growth to the city, or Water's Inspiration, which makes the city generate a flat +1 Research.
3) Essence also affects the effectiveness of a few select buildings. For example, a conclave's Alchemy Lab improvement gives +1 Mana +1 per Essence, +1 Research +1 per Essence, and +1 Material per Essence; a Temple of Essence, which you can only build one per faction, provides -10% Unrest and +1 Mana per Essence in the city where it's built. You should therefore pick cities with Essence to build these special buildings.
Some harvasteable resources increase +1 Grain (Wild Grain) or +1 Material (Clay) in the city, and they stack if there's more than one. Hence these are extremely valuable and you should definitively consider them for your city placement. It's completely different having a city of 2 Grain - 4 Material, or 3 Grain - 4 Material with a Wild Grain farm.
2.2 Grain, Material, Essence Priority, City Enchantments
In my opinion, out of the three tile attributes, Essence is the most important and generally takes priority, not only because it's far rarer - it's possible and common for "fertile" tiles not to have Essence at all, but they always have minimum 2 Food and 2 Material - but because Essence gives an added degree of flexibility to your economy, mostly because of enchantments. If one of your heroes or sovereign knows Earth magic, you can place Enchanted Hammers on a city and give it +1 Material straight away, just like that - it makes a big difference in the city's production, and especially crucial early game. If you happen to have Life magic, place a Sovereign's Call and you have +2 Growth, making the city level up quickly. If you need Mana because you're focusing on using magic, place a Meditation spell to have +3.
If you have a building or bonus in the city that increases Mana output by a given percentage, your Meditation spell that gives you +1 Mana per Essence will be included in the multiplier.
If you have a city that has 3 Essence, imagine you place Arcane Forge, Meditation, and Propaganda in this city. These spells will add +3 Material to the city (which then will be multiplied with the base value to calculate Production), +3 Mana per season (before multipliers), and +3 Guildar per season (also is affected by multipliers).
If you have a Fortress city where you train your units, imagine you place Aura of Might, Aura of Vitality, and Aura of Fire. Units of size 3 (with 3 soldiers) will have a bonus of 3x3=9 Defense, 3x3=9 Hit Points, and 3x3 Attack... and these are the flat bonuses, before being used by multipliers and any other factors. Even simple low grade militia units will have decent stats thanks to these.
So you see that Essence's bonuses can grow exponentially based on the enchantments you place on a city, depending on what you're focusing upon. Remember you won't have 40 cities in a average game, you'll be restricted to just a few, at least in your early and mid game. So every detail and bonus you can get with enchantments is vital and very important.
Of course, you do need access to these magic schools to be able to cast these different kinds of enchantments to suit your needs, but they won't all be available to you throughout the game, and certainly not at the start of the game. So how do you get them?
Well, you'll get them through new heroes. You'll get to choose a new hero from two options, everytime you reach a threshold of Fame, which you get by fighting battles, building certain city improvements, and performing quests. When I'm given a choice for a new hero, I tend to pick one that has a spell school that I don't have yet, unless I feel like having some of the unique melee and fighting skills some heroes have, for example. You just need one hero with those spells available to be able to cast them - even if you let your hero at a low level, full of wounds, standing still inside a city, etc. Heroes won't access higher level spells in their schools if you don't actually use them in battle, but economic city enchantment spells tend to be in the lower-tier levels in their schools anyway, while the most powerful ones are either battle-driven, or strategic spells that aren't city enchantments. So the game allows you to keep non-fighting heroes for the sake of their usefulness further back in your territory, while you invest in leveling up your "fighting" ones to unlock spells and skills usable in battles. By mid to late game, you'll have a decent range of spells with 3-4 schools available to you if you play your cards right, if not actually all of them. If you're a Kingdom and you make an Empire faction surrender to you at some point, you'll get their sovereign as a hero, and if that sovereign has Death spells, you'll have access to Death spells as a Kingdom (and vice-versa as Empire and Life spells).
Settling locations with high Essence values (2-3) may not abound (3 is particularly rare). In a given game, you may only have readily available to you one or two locations with high Essence, if any at all. So you'll have to prioritize what kind of cities you'll want to build to take advantage of its Essence. If you're focusing on having a solid economy, you'll turn your high Essence cities into Towns, and cast enchantments to bolster Growth, Money and Production (more about city types later). If you focus on military might, your 3-Essence city must be a Fortress, and you'll cast Production enhancement magic and/or enchantments to unit defense, attack, hit points, and so forth. Likewise for a magic-focused faction, who'll turn its Essence cities into Conclaves.
The possible exception to this, when you may forego a location with Essence (or if you don't have much choice, really) is if you consider a tile location 1) next to a river, or 2) next to a wooded area.
Wooded areas generally tend to have less Essence yields in their tiles, most of the time, actually none. However, if you place your city next to a wooded area, you'll unlock the Logging Camp/Lumber Yard line of improvements, which further enhance production rating, and which you can build in addition to workshops and all other improvements that improve production (but the wooded area has to be right next to the city center, won't work if you build the city far away from the woods and then expand your territory to them). Wooded areas are generally great for production and less good for food, therefore the city you build there may not have much Essence or a good Growth rating, but it will build/train things faster. I generally prefer to build Conclave cities in these areas, or a Fortress if I have a need for one and/or I don't have any better place to found my main unit-training city.
If you place your city next to a river, you'll unlock the Dock/Harbour line of buildings, which greatly bolster Food, Money, and Production ratings. These improvements can be built in all city types, but because they are great all-rounders, and because they really focus on Food and Money, these may be prime motivators to specialize river cities as Towns. High level (grown) Towns, as we'll see further ahead, have the ability to provide Food per Grain bonuses to the remaining cities in your faction, allowing you to raise their population cap so they can level up that way.
2.3 Settlement Types and Level Up
Once a village reaches level 2, you'll be asked to choose one of three specializations to it: Town, Fortress, or Conclave. Each level up grants you a certain boost to Money, Production, or Research, respectively. Also, each new level unlocks higher tiers of buildings and building improvements to construct. Furthermore, upon further level ups beyond level 2 (up to level 5), you'll get to choose a specific bonus, according to the settlement type, which will benefit the city or even your entire faction. Therefore city Growth is important 1) to continue bolstering that particular city's main production (money, production or research) and 2) to benefit you with faction-wide benefits.
The difference between city types is as follows:
Town: Bonus to Guildar generation, building line focuses on guildar and food/growth
Towns focus largely on food, growth, and money. They should be placed on the high Grain tiles, because when they level up, their high-tier buildings will grant bonuses to Food per Grain both to the city itself, and faction-wide, i.e., to the rest of your cities. This means that Conclaves and Fortresses that you've built that don't necessarily have high Grain/Food values and are capped at a certain level of population, will have have their population cap and growth increased, possibly allowing them to level up. You could say that it's the towns that provide your entire faction with growth. Towns also grant other very useful faction-wide bonuses on level up, that benefit your economy. Most of the bonuses of the multiple cities will stack up with each other, so it's in your interest to have a few of them and have them grow as much as possible.
Bonuses on Town level up (you can only choose one out of three, at each level up, per city):
Level 1 (village)
Level 2 (Town specialization)
Level 3:
Guild Grocer: +5% Hit Points to all your faction's units
Slums: +5 unrest penalty, +3 Growth
Guild Warehouse: +50% Guildar when the city is producing wealth
Level 4:
Embassy: Negates unrest penalty from number of towns
Governor's Office: +1 Production per Material in all cities
Almshouse: +1 Fame per season
Level 5:
Guild Lendinghouse: instant 2000 Guildar
Mint of Ruvenna: +5 Guildar per Material
(other bonus)
Fortress: Bonus to Production, building line focuses on training units
Fortresses can build but the most simple of research and food-related improvements, but have unlocked specific barracks, forge, and blacksmith-like improvements that reduce unit training costs and give them stat bonuses, which aren't available to other types of cities. IMO, when selecting a city to be a Fortress, you should prioritize Essence/Material, and only then Grain, so you give your units the best stats possible, and have them train as fast as possible.
Bonuses on Fortress level up (you can only choose one of three, at each level up, per city):
Level 1 (village)
Level 2 (Fortress specialization)
Level 3:
Infirmary: Trained units get +1 Hit Point per level, heals 10 Hit Points per season to all stationed units
Strike Garrison: trained units get +2 initiative
Watchtower: Trained units get +1 Move and +2 Attack in first turn of combat (Impulsive trait), +1 Catapult when defending this city
Level 4:
Gallows: Unrest doesn't affect production
Prison: -10% unrest in all cities, -1 Growth in this city
Mining Guild: +2 Metal per season
Level 5:
Conclave: Bonus to Research, building line focuses on research and mana generation
Conclaves are specialist cities that focus strongly both on Research, and also in magical enhancements and Mana generation. Conclaves have access to the Sage line of buildings, which specifically improve Research. Likewise, on level-up, Conclaves provide both local and faction-wide bonuses to things related to Research and Magic. Naturally, if you're heavily magic-driven, you want to prioritize Concave placement and development, but you don't want to neglect them either way, since they're the foundation of any faction's Research efforts.
Bonuses of Conclaves on level up (you can only choose one of three, at each level up, per city):
Level 1 (village)
Level 2 (Conclave specialization)
Level 3:
Archivist: +50% Research when city is building Research
Oracle: +1 Essence in city
Scroll Scribe: +20% Research in city
Level 4:
Academy of Revelation: +10% Research for entire faction
Amethyst Vault: +2 Crystal per season
Tenfell university: Unrest doesn't affect research
Level 5:
Hedigah Bathhouse: +1 Water Power, -30% Unrest in city
Pyre of Anniellum: +2 Fire Power
Tower of the Magi: +10 Spell resistance for trained units
When you're planning your faction and choosing city types, I have the impression that the proportion of Towns/Conclaves/Fortresses among your cities is not that different for each faction. Because from early to mid-game you have a limited number of a few cities, and you're never going to have 4-5 Fortresses among 6 cities, or 1-2 Towns for that matter. You want one main Fortress (and maybe a secondary one) where you train most of your units, with good production and enchantments, so your soldiers get maximum bonuses; and you always need a backbone of Towns to generate sufficient money, and a backbone of Conclaves to generate Research. Yes, you may replace a Town or two with Conclaves if you're magical faction. Another consideration to have more Fortresses is that they can build walls (improves that city's siege defense), and at level 4 they allow you to choose a bonus of -10 Unrest in your entire faction, which is extremely useful. But this is not a critical point when you're designing your first few cities in the beginning of the game.
What I find what's most important and relevant is not the proportion of city types you have, but how you prioritize your cities with the terrain available to them. If you like having lots of money to support a large military (and maintain a large territory) you're going to give your best city locations to Towns; if you need mana and magic more than anything else, your best locations will have Conclaves in them. And if you're like me and your unit's quality is above all else, that one location with 3 Grain / 3 Material / 3 Essence is always going to be a Fortress.
