Order of the Dragon is just weak

[KaBandha]

So supposed elite faction with less numbers on the field has no unit abilities whatsoever. Why would samurai have deflective armor ability considering they were weaker than medieval european knights? Cataprachts with heal AND trample? Jeanne d arc healing her entire army during combat and reversing the battle in her favor etc.

Shouldn't it be logical for smaller,stronger and MUCH more expensive army to have one or two of these abilities? Instead you have to rely on making like 5 prelates and babysitting them all the time for heals.

Their economy is simply utter garbage. Their units are so expensive that you have to choose between few units or going to castle age, and their units do not justify their cost with their strength. Too weak for such cost. And out of all variant civs their are the only ones without new unique unit (prelate is just a priest). Their only gimmick is literally that they have somewhat higher stats than others and are crazy expensive, nothing else.

[Bubs]

They are thought to be the weakest of the new stuff, but not by some massive amount.

Having tougher troops supposedly means that when you win a battle you're guys will all be injured and healable instead of having to be rebuilt.

The only issue I find with them is walling is harder as you can't afford to put guys on them to man it, or your outgoing armies will be too small. That's worse on a bigger map size than smaller, and that's all i've tried.

[KaBandha]

Originally posted by Bubs:

They are thought to be the weakest of the new stuff, but not by some massive amount.

Having tougher troops supposedly means that when you win a battle you're guys will all be injured and healable instead of having to be rebuilt.

The only issue I find with them is walling is harder as you can't afford to put guys on them to man it, or your outgoing armies will be too small. That's worse on a bigger map size than smaller, and that's all i've tried.

Yeah, all of their units should have passive heal out of combat like french royal knights, ALL of their units. Having blob of priests healing your army stops you from putting further pressure, slows you down

[Many-Named]

yeah they're pretty weak, especially coming from maining HRE I feel they are quite gimped. Also they are very susceptible to mass ranged damage due to their 2x hp pools.

They often feel like an oversized afterthought tbh, they clearly came last in the dev cycle...

[KaBandha]

Originally posted by Many-Named:

yeah they're pretty weak, especially coming from maining HRE I feel they are quite gimped. Also they are very susceptible to mass ranged damage due to their 2x hp pools.

They often feel like an oversized afterthought tbh, they clearly came last in the dev cycle...

Yep, such expensive units being mowed down by mass archer is just stupid

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by KaBandha:

Their economy is simply utter garbage. Their units are so expensive that you have to choose between few units or going to castle age, and their units do not justify their cost with their strength.

This was my own main gripe for them.

In SP, skirmishing against CPU opponents, Order of the Dragon can work because it's against a CPU, after all.

But against a human player you'd have to get more units out earlier, and that's where they have some issues with their economy, because yes, that cost for units is very prohibitive until you get quite a strong economy going.

Order of the Dragon's whole design/concept isn't that great, IMO. It was always going to either be overpowered if the unit costs didn't go up enough, or (and what actually happened) be underpowered if the unit costs were increased even just to a reasonable level, as this would mean building any early units at all would delay ageing up.

My overall verdict is that Order of the Dragon is one of my least favorite factions now. Even in a comp stomp, you're basically going to want to build as few units as possible the first two ages, using TC or towers to do the defending. Then spam the 400+ hp fully upgraded MaA and finish the game. That's it. There's no flexibility to really rush early, especially since you don't start with the prelate as them (who could do the healing after a rush/harass of their villagers).

It's a bad design of a faction, and was only done because it meant being able to just do stat tweaks and pallet-swaps. It's a step down even from Jean d'Arc, who at least got the RPG-esque thing going for the unique unit representing her.

[KaBandha]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

Originally posted by KaBandha:

Their economy is simply utter garbage. Their units are so expensive that you have to choose between few units or going to castle age, and their units do not justify their cost with their strength.

This was my own main gripe for them.

In SP, skirmishing against CPU opponents, Order of the Dragon can work because it's against a CPU, after all.

But against a human player you'd have to get more units out earlier, and that's where they have some issues with their economy, because yes, that cost for units is very prohibitive until you get quite a strong economy going.

Order of the Dragon's whole design/concept isn't that great, IMO. It was always going to either be overpowered if the unit costs didn't go up enough, or (and what actually happened) be underpowered if the unit costs were increased even just to a reasonable level, as this would mean building any early units at all would delay ageing up.

My overall verdict is that Order of the Dragon is one of my least favorite factions now. Even in a comp stomp, you're basically going to want to build as few units as possible the first two ages, using TC or towers to do the defending. Then spam the 400+ hp fully upgraded MaA and finish the game. That's it. There's no flexibility to really rush early, especially since you don't start with the prelate as them (who could do the healing after a rush/harass of their villagers).

It's a bad design of a faction, and was only done because it meant being able to just do stat tweaks and pallet-swaps. It's a step down even from Jean d'Arc, who at least got the RPG-esque thing going for the unique unit representing her.

I like the concept of having smaller elite forces being more expensive, thats why I want to main OOTD but they need their economy fixed or something. Their units are way too weak for such costs, opponent can literally come with few nests of bees or mangonels and wreck all your melee super costly infantry while they can just replace theirs with no problem. Not to mention that like 2-3 freaking DLC factions have some kind of passive or active heal abilities and don't need damn priests to heal them. While OOTD needs 5 prelates to sustain and heal your damaged army. Nonsense.

[Many-Named]

truth is, 2x ressources is too much even for 2x hp and 2x damage

[Harris]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

It's a bad design of a faction

Dragon works if your opponent is willing to play SimCity for 30 minutes until you reach post-imperial, and if you're playing with 3 friends on Discord who are willing to feed you resources, heal your stuff with Rus monks/Dervishes etc. In every other scenario outside of those very niche circumstances - it doesn't work. So bad design indeed. They went too far in terms of "balancing" the unit power.